 This program is brought to you by cable franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you. I will proceed, right? Yes, and I'll keep watching for her to come on board. Okay so Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of March 3rd 2021 based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law General law chapter 30a section 20 and signed Thursday, March 12th 2020 This planning board meeting is being held virtually using the zoom platform My name is Jack jumpsick and as the chair of the Amherst planning board I'm calling this meeting to order at 6 35 p.m This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst media live stream minutes are being taken as normal board members I will take roll call when I call your name and meet yourself answer affirmatively and then place yourselves back on mute Maria chow Doug Marshall Present Janet McGowan Okay, we're still trying to get her on and Johanna Newman. I'm here and Myself and then we know we we know that Tom Janet Janet is here. Oh good. Okay and and Tom long and Andrew McDougal have given us notification that they are unable to be here tonight So that's five of the seven planning board members Board members of technical difficulties rise We may need to pause temporarily to correct the problem and then continue the meeting if you do have technical issues Please let Pam know the session may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed and the minutes will note if this occurred Please you please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak after speaking remember to remute yourself Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment item and other appropriate times during the meeting Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period If you wish to make a comment during the public comment period you must join the meeting via the zoom telephones teleconferencing link This link is shown on the slide and can be entered into a search engine by typing the link shown The link is also listed on the meeting agenda posted on the town website via the Calendar listing for this meeting or you can go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda which lists the zoom link at the top of the page Please indicate if you wish to comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is listed if you have joined the zoom meeting is a telephone please indicate You wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone when called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking Residents can express their views for up to three minutes and at the discretion of the planning board chair of a meat of a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their lot of time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. So the first order is to look at our minutes and those in the minutes from February 10th. Correct. And Is there any board comments or anyone to make a motion to move do I get a second. Maria second. Any discussion for the discussion very good. I thought the minutes are pretty good. There's a lot that was going on during that meeting so we will do A roll call. Maria Maria Prove Doug I Janet Hi You honor Hi And myself. Yes. And I believe that's all the minutes right Pam is correct. So now we can move on to the public comment period and we have attendees Any attendee wants to speak. They can use the raised hand function and we will acknowledge you. If not, that's great. You can reserve your comment for specific items within our agenda. Mr. Chair. Yes. Could you mention that this public comment period is for things that are not on the agenda. Yes, I think that's in our intro, but maybe not. But yeah, so These are your your if you're raising your hand During this period and I see Dorothy Pam raised it's not concerning any items on the agenda. So Dorothy Just keeps wanting to promote her to panelist and that's what I want to do. I'm going to have to promote Dorothy to panelist. I don't know what's going on. Okay. And then we will ask her to go back. There she is. Hi, Dorothy. I don't see her. Do you see her? Oh, yeah. She's there. Yeah, she is muted. Maybe I do. I see. Can you hear us. Yeah, I don't I don't see where we can mute or unmute her. Looks like she doesn't have her microphone working. Right. Well, and I wonder if that's why I could not give her permission to speak. It's a panelist. So Dorothy, you Your, your microphone is not working. And Wave down, I think Could she call in? Yes, but She could call in. I mean, we can proceed and she can do a general comment. You know, when she is ready. I mean, she probably has to reboot her computer or something. She's, she's gone. So We'll be looking for her to come back. Yeah, we'll let her, we'll let her in for the general comment whenever she's Back if you keep an eye out, Pam. Yeah. So on to the first item of our agenda, zoning, zoning priorities, continue discussion about removing footnote M section six, table three zoning bylaw additional lot area per dwelling unit for townhouse and residential housing. Additional lot area per dwelling unit for townhouses and apartments in the RG zoning district. So we have an update. We have more in politics and updated presentation. Okay. Okay. Hi, everyone. Let me pull up my presentation. Let's see here, if you screen. Okay. So, hi, everyone. I'm my name is Maureen Pollack. I'm one of the staff planners with the Amherst Planning Department and we are continuing this discussion about About footnote M, which is part of the dimensional regulations in the zoning bylaw. So tonight's presentation will go through providing the total number of units allowed with and without footnote M. And talk about whether the town should consider Consider having footnote M For larger projects. And And removing it for smaller incremental developments or increases of units, but keeping it for For larger increases and I will provide you images of existing residential developments in Amherst and provide you a 3D model of of a residential development, as an example, and provide a draft language for the town to consider for footnote M. So we've seen this map and some other maps to come. But this map shows the net change of number of Units allowed Based on lot size and the existing uses in on the right side where you see the different colors that represents the different Existing uses and the majority of uses that are part of our study are single family and two family homes and and then the numbers over each parcel represents the net increase of For example, that where you see my mouse like on Lincoln Street, a lot of the homes along Lincoln Street Avenue, sorry, are single family homes and where I'm Moving my cursor, there could be an increase of five units on that particular property and but the reason why I'm showing this map is just to point out that of our study area. Of the 172 parcels that I was able to determine the existing uses about 500 more units may be provided with footnote M. So if we do nothing about 500 units could be provided. In a footnote M was removed. Of our sample area of 949 more units may be provided if footnote M was removed and In the next slide where I'm going to show you a couple maps for our two focus areas one for Lincoln Ave. This shows the same sort of map as before, but now it's just sort of honing on the properties that are within the red line. That's our focus area. And so with footnote M which exists today in the zoning bylaw 97 more units may be may be provided And if footnote M was removed 191 more units may be provided. Again, this is based on blood size and existing uses. It's not factoring in any other elements like lot coverage or stepbacks and parking requirements. And I just wanted to revisit one of our examples from last time. This was example two, which is a parcel along Lincoln Ave. The existing use on this property is a single family home. It's about 1.16 acres or about 50,000 square feet in an area size. With footnote M, you this property could have nine additional units. With if footnote M was removed 15 additional lots could could be allowed there. And this example is showing Is playing out the scenario with footnote M. So you can see there are 10 units 20 parking spaces and they meet the dimensional regulations. So this again example is showing with footnote M, which they could currently do. And in this next example. This is the build out for the same property. If footnote M was removed. So you could this site plan shows 16 units and 32 parking spaces and they're just over the lot coverage, but You know, perhaps with creative design. They could, you know, meet that lot coverage. But as you can see between 10 units and 30 parking spaces. So there are 16 units, which could be allowed today and 16 units allowed if footnote M was removed. You have to begin to ask yourself, are these small incremental increases of development that the town wants to pursue on streets such as Lincoln Avenue and on on sort of side streets. And it is 16 units appropriate along this street, for example. And with it, do we want to go above 10 units that could be allowed here on this property today. Do we really want to provide 16 units on this property. And another question would to would be for the town to consider is if if if the consideration is about removing footnote M perhaps the language of the of the of that footnote M could be for small incremental increases. And what I'm recommending is is up to five units total on the property. So, as we already know, the majority of properties that are within the RG zoning district are single family and two family homes, and that would accommodate them to add three or four more units total. And so if they added six units, they would actually have to go and follow footnote M, but if it was five or less they could just refer to the additional lot requirement per unit, which is 2,500 square feet. And so now we'll go to our focus. Oh, and then I to jump back to the maps from before. This is a focus our focus area for Gray and High Street. Currently with footnote M 53 more units may be provided in this focus area and 106 more units may be provided with footnote M removed. And, you know, you can you can see some, you know, properties that that, you know, could accommodate if footnote M was removed, they could add eight more units, 11 more units, six more units, seven more units. And, you know, perhaps that's, that's not a small incremental change that that the town wants to pursue and would rather provide more infill development opportunities for parcels for properties that you know are single family or two family homes that could add, you know, three units or perhaps four units or even just one more unit. So, I wanted to show you just a couple examples of residential developments that are three, three units five units and one actually six units which is would be one more than what I'm recommending. But that 32 North Prospect Street property was approved with footnote M. So I wanted to show you just that and then the two other examples. So 15 North Whitney Street has three units. You know, I'm showing on the screen the an aerial map showing where the the houses are located. The driveway is long north Whitney Street adjacent to the rail, the train tracks. And as you can see this is a very lovely home, and there's three units there and they maintain their property very well. Here is 150 151 Amity Street where the Marshall home is located. The Marshall home is located closer to the to the road itself and and there are five units in total again this is a nice lovely development. And I believe their owner occupied condos and it's, you know, a different diverse demographic of retired couples work working working families, young families, and the like. Here is, which is adjacent to 151 Amity Street is 32 North Prospect Street. The home, the image on the right was originally a single family home. And as part of this project, it was converted into two family. And then the image on the left shows the townhouses so I guess that would be the four for remaining townhouses are located on the on the rear of the lot. And this does meet footnote I will say that they are, you know, right on the edge of of exceeding their lot coverage, but, but it's another just lovely, you know, project, I believe, in town. So I wanted to provide you a new example, which is located a parcel located on High Street. The existing use on this property is a single family home with a supplemental apartment. The lot size is 0.67 acres or 29,000 square feet with footnote M. So if you add three more units, and if footnote M was removed, five units could be added. And so that would be the this would be the, the most that if footnote M was removed. This is, you know, five is the limit. So, so any, you know, six or more units that that wouldn't be applicable. So this is one of my recommended sort of threshold. And so this is this, the build out this is the concept site plan. The house, the prince, the single family home would be converted into a two family home. In the parking, they have a two car garage, and then they allow currently two other parking spaces in front of the garage so those would remain. And then there would be unit three additional units in the new construction of this of this building that I'm showing on the slide. And so again, there would be a total of five dwelling units on the property. There would be 10 parking spaces. So again, there would be two parking spaces in the garage to the front of the garage, and then the remaining, the remaining by the, the three unit behind the three unit townhouse or apartment building. And so we felt very generous with the unit sizes. The previous examples, the unit sizes were 800 square feet. The unit sizes in units three, four and five in the new building would be 1250 square feet, and the unit sizes in unit one and two in the existing home would be 800 square feet. And we wanted to consider that as, as we are as a town trying to promote working, the working class in, in, you know, families that need, you know, need, need space and maybe perhaps, you know, tiny, smaller units wouldn't be appropriate or feasible for, you know, having children or having a home office and those sorts of things. And this does meet the building and lot coverage as well as the setbacks. And this is image of the 3D model that I've made. It shows this development in context of the neighborhood. It is keeping with, you know, the height of, of the adjacent properties in the neighborhood, they're all mostly two family, two floor buildings. The, the, and let's see here. Here's another image of this new proposed development. And you can see that, you know, there are front porches, there's a setback, you know, perhaps there would be, you know, shrubs and trees and, and you know, this sort of development of course would and use would of course would need to go through the zoning board of appeals for a special permit. And, you know, they would be looking at those sorts of details of, you know, the landscaping, but this gives you a snapshot image of a development such as a five unit residential development. And so you can see the back view of this proposed development. Again, this, this new construction is three units there's parking behind the building and then you can see that the existing building is now a two family home. And there's a detached garage, which provides more parking. And this just shows you another sort of birds eye view, coming from the back of it. So you can see the backyard has as there's, you know, ample open space for, you know, cookouts and in stormwater management. And it's, I would say that this development is, is, you know, not dramatic is not sort of dramatic in scale but like it's not like a 20 unit building it's, it's, it's keeping with the scale and proportions of the neighborhood. So, so we're proposing this is the, I just cut and pasted this from the zoning bylaw. And what you, what is color, the text colored in red is what I, we are recommending for the, for the, the amendment of photo M. So, so, you know, photo M we're recommending that photo M remain for developments that are six or more dwelling units total on any given property. And so for those it would be the 4000 square feet for each new dwelling unit. And the first one, and in five units or less, the additional lot requirement would be 2500 square feet. And that's all I got. Thank you. Thank you, Murray. All right, well, and I just wanted to say one other thing is that, you know, possibly in, you know, in the future there could be a further study to look at larger properties. And that could, you know, accommodate, you know, a bigger increase of adding more units. But for that study, we would need to look at, you know, a variety of different, you know, factors such as road with sidewalks, transportation access such as like bus stops and bike lanes, and look at, you know, on street parking and lighting and those sorts of things. You know, we, but we've, we feel for right now that we would want to recommend that there'd be, you know, for your for the town's considerations small incremental increases of infill. So, marine, so you're, you're the proposal here where you scale it back to removing footnote and for properties with less than five drawing units. And you mentioned 500 units currently are within or with the current situation with footnote and and so the 949 units he said was that with this current proposal in terms of the full build out. So you said 49. 949. With the current phenomenon you said I thought you said 500 units additional. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, and so that is actually that's factoring in. That's a very good question. That's factoring factoring in any sort of development that you could add like 17 units, all that and so it would be interesting to see if we did just limited us to five units total, how many more units could be added, but I didn't provide that data. Okay, so the 949 500 is with the current situation for full build out within the RG with Yeah, let me just let me go to that slide sorry because I'm not. So with footnote for our study area, which is looking at now 172 parcels. 900, I'm sorry 500 more units may be provided with footnote. Okay. And that's for all sorts of, you know, scale of development of unit types and then in, if I go to them. In 949 more units may be provided if when I was removed. Okay, so your proposal with the five units is somewhere in between there. Basically with full build out. That would be a really good question. I mean, you know, I would say that this map and data skews skews that data because there are larger parcels. You know, a whole wealth of units. So, you know, there's like a couple unit parcels I could add 38 more units or 60. This one says 61 more units. This one says 32 more units. So it'd be interesting if now if if five units was the max, what would be the amount of units that could be could be allowed total in our study area. So very good. And I appreciate the 3D modeling that was a nice addition. And again, I, the clarity is, is pretty good. I see Doug's hand up. Yeah, thanks Jack. And thanks Marine. It's nice to see how the evolution of your work is going. I had two questions. For anybody on staff who is more familiar with the ZBA than I am. Can the ZBA just deny a special permit. So let's say somebody came along and wanted to tear down one of the really large houses along sunset. And I think that we thought, you know, that the town thought had historic value, but the zoning with or without footnote M would allow a bunch more units on the property. Can the ZBA just deny it? Or, you know, given the way the regulations read, are they all, do they have by right the ability to go ahead and do that. I realize there'd be a demolition delay or something, but I guess I'm thinking about the multiple thresholds or obstacles that we have now to more development. And footnote M is one, but we also have the ZBA process. So how, how much of a filter let's say is the ZBA. Well, yeah, so those are really good questions and and just, I know you said that, you know, regardless of the local historic district commission, but that would be one mechanism is that they would have to have a demo delay application process. And the ZBA would certainly be taking comments from the from the local historic commission as well as the historic, the local local district commission and the historic historic commission as well. And for, so is your question specifically, you know, can the ZBA just deny a project because they're demoing a building? Well, yeah, basically, if a particular thing is allowed to happen only by special permit, can this special permit be denied? Well, so the board, the ZBA needs to make specific findings under 10.38, which gets into a variety of factors, you know, such as, you know, keeping with the character of the neighborhood and keeping with the architecture. So yes, is the answer. Yeah, I would say so. Unfortunately, I always feel like, sorry, I always like to talk longer than I need to. So yes. Okay, so then, then, so that's that's helpful. And then the second question I had was, did you consider similar to the proposal that Nate presented us in the BL? Did you consider whether we might want to relax or eliminate footnote M along main streets? So say, you know, along North Pleasant Street, where or triangle street rather, or, you know, so that we don't threaten the interior part, you know, the interior neighborhoods, but where there's main streets with public transportation, where we're kind of thinking maybe it's time for those to get a little more built up. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you know, I definitely feel that the planning department in the town, you know, would, would be open into providing a, you know, further study, looking at, you know, properties that are either larger properties that are maybe two acres plus and also properties that are along our main, our main streets, such as, you know, triangle street, main street, Amity Street, and yeah, in North Pleasant. Yeah, exactly. And you know, and for that, you know, we would, you know, there's so many factors which that we would want to really hone in on, as I mentioned before, like roadside sidewalks, transportation access, parking, lighting, things of those nature. So would you entertain modifying your proposal to eliminate footnote M on of any, you know, of any development size along a main street. I think we would need to do a further study just to see what what would happen so I mean for this for our city now I think this was a really great process of of providing some concept plans to really sort of get a sense of what that would look like. So I don't think that the planning department is ready to, you know, add another element to our draft language, at least right now but personally I would love to continue this study so Maureen, would you mind kind of throwing up your, your, your, your standard, you know, coding within the RG with regard to just so we can kind of see the draft language that we're. Oh wait, sorry, what was your question? Your main GIS figure there for the RG area that's color coded showing the existing. So this is with M and then without M. Is this what you're wanted to look at? Yes, yes, yes, full of you. And just so everyone knows. So the, you know, as I already said, the parcels that have different colors on them. Those are the existing uses so like this, this big hunk of red here that's this property. There are 100 units on that property and you know you can see that going all the way down to when there's one unit but the ones in purple. Those are also on our study so that can give you a sense of the ones that have colors are in the RG. But unfortunately the ones in purple. I haven't been able to determine what the existing uses are yet. I see have to manually look that all up. So with with the main street. Inclusion, you know, maybe looking at a couple of dozen properties. With regard to what Doug has proposed. Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay. All right, we have a couple other Chris. One to say two things. One is that the local historic district commission has a tremendous amount of power and those and properties that are outlined in that dark gray outline around Lincoln Avenue and Sunset Avenue to the west, and then around the Emily Dickinson house where it says main street. Those are all very tightly controlled by the local historic district commission and the local historic district commission has the ability to say no to demolition. So unlike the historical commission the historical commission can say they can put a delay on a demolition, but the local historic district commission can actually deny the demolition and they actually and they also have a lot of control over anything that's visible from the street. So, from a visual standpoint and also from a standpoint of saving historic buildings they have a lot of power. So I just wanted to point that out, and also to reiterate Maureen's comment that yes the special permits are discretionary so the zoning Board of Appeals can deny them. Oh, and one more thing, which is that the next one of our next steps is to do what Doug said, which is to study other mechanisms for allowing more housing in the RG zoning district but for this particular project. We felt that this was the amount of the amount that we could get done in the time that we have allotted to us. Thank you, Janet. Thank you Maureen. Like every, every time you come here, I learned so much more. I, you know, I had, I had the same question as Jack about like how many more units can you produce with your kind of revised language so that probably be next week. I did want to say just quickly as to Doug is. I don't think anyone has, I don't think this DBA has turned down a special permit since I've been in town I'm not sure I may be wrong but I think that usually what happens is they, they would just adjust the conditions. Even though we like to call site plan review permits by right, you can also vote no if it doesn't, if the project doesn't meet the requirements of our zoning bylaw and so nothing is automatic you can vote no on a site plan review permit application you could vote no on a special permit but I don't think that's happened since I've been in town I don't know. So I just I think in a way what happens is that you would the project gets adjusted by the, the board. So I, I, you know, I think what I've learned from this process is that the RG is zoned for much more density than I thought I always knew it had to it was it was zoned for more density than we see. And also I know that sometimes you're looking at a house and you don't know how many units are inside of it. It seems appropriately dense to me you know like nine units an acre seems much better than 13 or 14 an acre. I do wonder why people aren't developing lots and I think that's probably going to happen organically over time and so I think we're sort of in a good space. You know I sort of was brooding about this issue and I went and looked at the housing production plan, which was, you know set out a schedule for housing production between 2013. And 2017 that's five years, and we actually hit the mark. And so we hit the mark for new units, but we didn't hit the mark for affordable units. And I, you know, I think that's a whole other discussion so you know the mark was producing 587 total units in that five year period, and we got 483 units. The majority of those units were multifamily units. And so, in the, in between 2000. I'm trying to look at my numbers. And then in the following time you know so and then in, you know, so another 312. Janet, I got a question. So, so I think there's a lot of housing production going on in Amherst. And it's mostly in village centers or downtown, which follows the goals in the master plan and the RG is zoned for more density which also follows the goal so I feel like we're in a good place. I'm interested in this revision to footnote and I'd like to get more details about that. So, Sorry to interrupt you, Janet, but because what you said like we hit the mark there I from, you know, Mr. Hornick with the housing. Commission, I don't want to try to come up with the acronym there, but he has always been stating that we're far short. So which, which mark are you saying that we're hitting, because I was under a standing that we're falling way short of the housing production plan was looking for Amherst to produce 487 total units in that five year period, and we came in with 483. Unfortunately, we did not hit the mark for affordable housing. And that could be the problems with our inclusionary zoning, you know, special permit, you know that whole thing and so, I mean, I'm not saying that we're there but it's clear, you know, from the permits for the last two years. And, you know, it's like housing is being produced in Amherst, it's going to the centers we can argue about how it looks we may want to have it more family size we might want more condos. But, and we may want I think we do all want more affordable housing in those units but you know so when I look at the RG and I think okay you could have, you know, 500 more units. That seems right to me, you know, and I think over time he might shift that goal, but I, you know, I think we're at a good we're at moderate density in the RG and, you know, keeping the community together and I like Maureen's focus more on family housing and workforce housing, and not just filling up people, you know, as you know, just to rent, you know, to students and things. So I just that's my comment. Okay, I guess I'm still confused because I know from John Hornick's extensive studies that were forced, you know, maybe someone on the planning department can kind of clarify and help but Maria. I have those numbers from Nate actually so I could send those charts out. Okay, Maria. Thanks Maureen. So I appreciate the wanting to sort of make the more incremental changes deeper in the centers of the neighborhoods. And I think it was probably a risky choice to pick Lincoln Avenue. There's so many sort of protections there already but also is just you know that's one of the most beautiful streets in the, in the town. You were just literally showing math and just showing like what could happen not this is what is going to happen. But I think also taking a step back from this, if you look at the definition of town homes and what was it townhouses and apartments, the sort of description of them is that the areas close to heavily trafficked streets areas close to business commercial and educational districts areas already developed for multi family, multi family housing. So I captured the image that I could keep referring to it and honestly, you know, kind of like Doug's point, amity main street that's one quarter, the sort of whole pleasant street corridor. That's route nine, the college street. There's very few pieces of property there on those main corridors that fall, you know, that could be developed for more than five units. And then the ones like Lincoln Avenue, I'm not sure that's a main artery, you know triangle street is but again there's very few properties there. So why are we limiting the removal footnote and when there are any factors there that are limitations, like we said, there's the historic commission, there's the special permit process which can deny projects it just maybe hasn't but they definitely can deny it's the site plan review is by right and so there are a lot of conditions put on but technically we're not supposed to, you know, it's a lower bar than special permit. So there's already a lot of protections in place and I think that, you know, a more careful study of the larger parcels makes a lot of sense, but it seems like we're missing some of the basic definitions of these multi family units and that, you know, I don't, you know, even though there's one parcel of 661. It doesn't seem like that would be an appropriate place for a townhouse or an apartment by the definition of those uses so I guess I worry that we're loosening things and then tightening them up or making them over complicated, but I do appreciate Maureen what your point about just maybe set it to five and maybe it's go ahead and present back to Town Council and see what they, you know, want to discuss about that but again, I feel like there's already a lot of protections in place. As far as where these sort of larger multi family developments can happen. I, I, yeah, I would like to not tighten them up on the main arteries because that's exactly where you want development and RG is the most dense residential zone so if it's not here that we do the multi family housing where else would it be you know, the RLDRO, they all are meant to be preserving open space and not providing infill housing the way RG is meant to. So, yeah, I think that I would support what you proposed with the ability to. Again, I don't want to overcomplicate but if there's a way to loosen that number for the properties, the very few properties that are on the main arteries. I just, yeah, I don't want us to prevent growth where it really should happen so. And I guess is like a question for Chris or Rob. Is it next week that we're having a joint meeting with CRC or is or are you guys going to CRC with this. What is the. I mean, not that the discussions and I'm just curious what is the next step as far as what we've seen and how it goes to the CRC. We're meeting Rob and I are meeting with the CRC next Tuesday afternoon at three o'clock. So from three to five, we're going to be presenting. That we've been working on the, but no M, the supplemental dwelling units or ADUs and the BL district and along with a couple of other things. So we're going to be making a presentation to them on Tuesday. And then you would be saying that this is just the first draft and it's in progress and you'd be continuing the work and research. Well, I think they would probably do more public outreach. And we may continue some of the work on these things but also we're going to be looking at the other things that the town council has asked us to look at as well. Okay. Okay, thank you. Any other comment on the board. So. Yes. Yeah, following up to Maria's question. Is there a meeting that Chris has in mind when we should vote on something and recommend something formally. Or, you know, can that happen anytime. Yeah, I answer that. Sure. So things are working differently now from the way they've worked in the past before we had town council. So what's happening now is that these zoning amendments are developed by the planning department and sort of showcased by the planning board and the planning board is listening to public comment and receiving public comment. When these, when these things are developed enough, we're presenting them to the CRC and then the CRC will carry forward a public process and then once the CRC is settled with them, they will send them to town council. And then town council sends them back to the CRC and the planning board. And at that point the planning board would have hold a public hearing and perhaps joint public hearing with the CRC and vote and make a recommendation to town council. So that's when, excuse me, that's when the planning board would actually take a vote on these things. But if you wanted to express your opinion now, that would be helpful. Well, I will express my opinion then. And that is that I agree with Maria, I think we're a being a little too timid, and we're not appreciating that there are a lot of other constraints already in place, and that we should remove footnote M, all the way consistently through the RG district. Thank you. So I would, I would add I believe we were saying that there were. Was it five properties or five units per year that were being built within the RG pursuant to this footnote M. Is that so. So the proposal is that for developments that will provide five or less units total on a given property. Do not need to need to pursue the footnote M and that they can just which requires for 4000 square feet per additional odd area. They would in lieu of that they would need to meet the 2500 square foot requirement, which is listed in table three. And so that would be forever. So that's not per year that's just for the for the for the property so like three years later, if the property owner wanted to add a six unit. Then they would actually, they couldn't be able to do that. So, or they would have to apply I believe they would have to apply all the additional lot area requirements for for the 4000 square feet for for more than five units. Okay, well just on that so Maria and dog get your. That's what you're supporting. Is this latest no, just getting rid of a total okay. My what what I meant, Marine was that I think during the historical development that we're saying what the rate of building was in the last, I don't know how many years, but I thought I, there's not a lot of building going on pursuant to footnote something on the order of five units per year over the last five years, 10 years, something. Did I miss hear that, or is that correct. Chris. I don't remember that, but that could have been part of Maureen's earlier presentation Rob more. It's just stressing that there's not a lot of building going on right now. No, in this in this manner. Okay, that's that's a point I wanted to make Maria. I think maybe that. What was that called Occam razor what Doug was saying was this just the simplest answer is probably the best way because I do appreciate like I said earlier Maureen sort of careful study of the sort of interiors of neighborhood streets. Again, I don't think that with historic district and the special permit that that's quite where townhouses and apartments might end up but also I attended this really great great webinar about how zoning can be segregationist and somewhat racist, because of this embedded sort of way things have developed over time and that you know the single family housing zoning. Is a sort of a deep rooted problem of why we're in this housing crisis right now and there's this thing I've been studying a long time from zoning subcommittee work the call there's a thing called the missing middle which is the sort of it's not necessarily afford what the capital a is just affordable housing it's the sort of what we're all talking about we're trying to get young families, working families people who work in Amherst who want to live in Amherst we can't afford to live in Amherst and again it's not capital A for what was just trying to bring more diverse housing stock into our town. And one of those ways is through multifamily infill housing and for us to limit those opportunities that we, you know, we can study this for infinite number of years, we won't see every possibility but for us to limit it at this point. It seems a little bit like we're just, you know, to do ourselves in the foot we really should be offering more opportunity to address this issue that we've been hearing it's coming from not just Mr Hornig but you know, the legislative bill that was just passed about relaxing the ability to change zoning in particular directed toward more housing. It's a situation we're in and I'm really thankful that town council and CRC has brought these particular items to the planning department and the planning board to consider. And I'm really thankful that the department planning department has put so much effort and time into this implying forward. I just want to be one of those positive voices because I've noticed all these emails are all very negative and some of them are constructive and some of them are just negative but I just want to be a positive voice and thank you for your hard work and study in this because it's such a need right now and I think that footnote and is doing one of those things we need as far as creating this toolbox of a lot of different ways to bring more housing. Of course we all want affordable housing with the capital a but this is also doing that sort of more just affordable housing for the general public, which we really need so. Yeah, I didn't realize we could voice our opinions in a more formal way but I do support removing footnote and not over complicating it by adding more texts or more areas where we have more here and not there. It's really simple as just remove it, try to get more housing into the places we need it which is this RG area so that's my two cents. Very good points Maria thank you, Janet and then you Hannah after that. So, I love the detail and what you've been bringing to this and you know Amherst is a really progressive town, obviously has a checkered past at a checkered present, but no housing district no residential district in Amherst is single family and it every district allows a backyard ADU or supplemental. I'm trying to a supplemental dwelling unit backyard dwelling unit expansion to accommodate that the RN where I live would allow more units than that three or four depending on the size of the property and you know whatever the criteria is. And so I think that we're really progressive and we're a college town and we, we have a lot of neighborhoods that are mixed in 5000 ways. There are obviously neighborhoods that are economically segregated. I mean, you can see that and then, you know, I think a lot of the subdivisions have been more recent ones are pushing that way but I wouldn't say that it's ethnically segregated as much as, you know, as relentlessly as my childhood, where I started out in Levittown, New York in one of those housing developments that's notorious and so I think that it's, I think I love the missing middle stuff that we were doing in the zoning subcommittee and I, my question is, you know, Amherst is zone for more density. We're seeing it in certain areas and not in others and the question for me is why, and not to jump into, I don't assume the zoning is at fault. I think a lot of people. I think that's a question to ask people in the RG is like, do you know that you could build X, Y and Z or, you know, an accessory dwelling unit or do this or that. Would you be interested in that do you want to be a landlord. Do you know how to do it. People might be interested might not understand the finances how to get a loan had a kind of contractor. You know so there's a lot of reasons people and a lot of people I bet in the RG just like their house, you know, and you know a family might buy a single family house knowing that can convert it. But that information needs to sort of circulate in the community more and I think we have to dig in deeper. I think the question is, why isn't producing enough units I don't think the answer is make it more dense so people will. I think the question is, why, why are people doing what they want, what they're doing, and are there tools to help them do more. You know, to learn more and we're not doing a great job of, of explaining our zoning to, you know, homeowners basically. So, you know I just wanted to put that forward. Thank you, Johanna. Thanks for the presentation Maureen what a lot of work. I have two questions and one of them I guess bounces off of what Janet was just saying which is, you know, it's striking to me that almost 500 units could be developed in this area, but aren't. And so, I'd love to just hear from Chris or Rob or someone else about, you know, what are what what are the challenges right now and would removing footnote and be the solution. So that's my first question and then my second question is, I don't know that much about the historic district commission and who the players are and what the process is there. Yeah, I'm, you know, in particular, I know so many of the comments we've gotten regarding footnote and have come from the Lincoln area and so I'm just curious to know what that what those protection, like what that additional layer looks like. Sounds like questions for Chris. I'll try first and then Rob can join in. So, is removing footnote and the solution. We think it is because, you know, we've been talking a lot about this it may not be the single family homeowner who wants to add three or four units to a property it may be a developer, a developer comes and buys a large house and converts it into two units and then adds three townhouses to the property, or that would be the case in the scenario that Maureen is painting. And in order for the developer to really make it worth his while to do that, he's got to have a certain number of units and one is really not enough. And if you just if you had two units. Well, you may get into this situation where you have a three unit building that requires a sprinkler system, because it's more than two units, and that is an extra expense so a developer wouldn't want to add that. He would want to have enough units to make back his investment so you know it's not only going to be the homeowners who are doing this the homeowner may want to add one unit by converting his house or converting a garage or something like that but it would be more likely in my house to be a developer who's going to be adding these multiple units and that's probably the more likely way we're going to build up the numbers of dwelling units that we have in our town that we have been told that we need. I don't know why the 500 units are kind of theoretical but given the current setup, no developer would come in and do it, because it's not economical and then for, you know, a homeowner it's kind of outside of the average homeowners and I think to be thinking oh I'm going to add units to my, to my lot that's not, you know, they're just living there living their lives. That's right that's why Rob is actually in along with being a building commissioner he develops land in other towns. So he has a pretty good idea of what developers are interested in and you know I don't think we should think of developers as bad guys because developers are giving are doing a service for the population by providing housing. The governor has said that Massachusetts needs more housing, the governor has made different laws or has promoted different laws, along with the legislature to promote the building of housing. They come to Massachusetts to work if they can't find a place to live and we do have a lot of good jobs here, but we can't attract good people to come because we don't have enough housing. So that, that's my spiel on that issue. As far as the historic district they actually do have a lot of power. They, they control everything that you can see from the road. So, if you're changing something, you know, I don't think they cover windows doors although Rob may correct me there but if you're doing some something reasonably significant to your home on the building not on the landscape but on the building you have to go to local historic district and they really put people through the ringer I must say they're very very careful and very detail oriented and I think Amherst media is a good example of that Amherst media had at least seven meetings with the local historic district commission before they finally came up with their final plan that went to the planning board so they can they can deny a request to remove a building. So any buildings that are in the local historic district would have to go to the commission to get permission to tear something down and that's along with the ability of the historical commission to put a demolition delay on on the building. So, so I think there are, you know, safeguards there. So, was that an answer. Is that a good answer or the answer you're looking for do you need more is Rob can probably provide more. No, I think that's good. So, you know, in terms of how, like, you know, my office used to be on the corner of fearing and sunset and so my walks took me along Lincoln often it's you know it's a wonderful street right that feels just absolutely delightful with the trees and green spaces and beautiful homes and it sounds like even with footnote and removed that feel of the street and the character of it that the historic commission would, you know, would safeguard that feel the low commission would safeguard that field. Thank you. That really helped me to articulating that so it does Rob do you have anything to add. I just I just wanted to just kind of remind everyone of Maureen's presentation also made an example out of another neighborhood that isn't protected by the local historic district. So the same, you know, we come to the same place when we're when we're looking at the analysis is that in, you know, the high street example, which was a smaller number of properties. With footnote and could generate 53 new units without could generate 100 and something more units with more than one example of 456 10 additional units under the current zoning. So I think, you know, I mean these are all great comments and I feel like we agree with almost everybody and every comment made so far is that, you know, to Janet's point, maybe footnote and removal isn't the only problem. And we're trying to figure out what that is, is it the reluctance to go into a special permit process. Is it you know that the special permits are generally granted but for converted dwellings, not for apartments and townhouses and somebody mentioned there aren't a lot of denials. That's correct there aren't there have been a few in my time here in nine years. But generally when an application isn't going well the applicant or their team sophisticated enough to withdraw the application and hold off to another time or regroup or re reconsider their proposal. And that's how it ends it doesn't necessarily ended in denial so we don't get a lot of those in that way. So, you know, I just wanted to make mention of that is that, you know, we felt like there's more to be studied here we feel like this isn't the end of the conversation with the recommendation we're making. We agree with Doug and we feel like there's definitely a need or an opportunity to create more dense opportunities. We want to look at how you do that. Is it an overlay is it another residential district is a prep splitting the district. It may not be just a remove them or don't remove that maybe more than that. So we wanted to take a look at that and we certainly don't have the time right now to start that but all this work that moraine did got us to a point to that there's something we can do that we feel really comfortable with and confident about, and that's what, you know, is being proposed now at this moment will likely go to the CRC. Of course we're going to, you know, all your comments will be considered but there'll be a presentation to the CRC that will be probably similar to what is presented in moraine's presentation. Thank you. Thank you. And Janet you have your hand up. So, you know, to address what you Hannah is comment is, you know, if you look at the tables. I was thinking that as the blue tables that marine has put together, you know, if you were on, you know, Lincoln Avenue and the property, you know, was, you know, one acre, you could build nine units with, you know, with footnote and and without footnote and you can build 14. If the property was hunt, you know, one point, you know, an acre and a third you could build 13 units with footnote and and then without footnote and you're up to 20, 20, you know, units. There's also, you know, constraints in terms of lot coverage and things like that. But I think that that would, you know, would that change the nature and feeling of Lincoln Avenue and the answer is, I think so and I also begin to wonder, you know, are we looking at, you know, it's, it's like with footnote and there's a lot of density allowed. And the question is, do you want to allow so much more and what what what the effects are. And who benefits. And I, you know, I'd love to, I'd love to think that the density would help, you know, the BIPOC, you know, people in those categories. I don't know that's necessarily true and someone had to really explain that to me in a lot of ways that, you know, how we get from X to Y, you know, to Z to the thing and I think I actually think we need to add that question of impacts to all of our analysis and I appreciate the materials that were provided by everybody on the planning board. Last week's I listened to that and I really, you know, I listen and read all those things, but I do think you have to sit and say footnote and allows a fair amount of density it's it's it's a moderate type of density it's not a high intensive density and it suits the district. If we want to do more density. I think it may be in a nuanced way but I think we can't jump to the conclusion. We don't know why people aren't building as much and you know, but again, we are producing a tremendous amount of housing compared to most of the towns, you know, around us or in in in Massachusetts we do not have exclusionary zoning that you find in many suburban towns. You know, the affordable housing nut is going to be a tough one to crack or actually I don't think it's that tough but this does not. I don't think this is going to really address it. Thank you. Maria. I think it actually addresses it right on. I mean, it's exactly what is going to bring more affordable housing is relaxing. When I said they're the single family housing. I'm not saying that we're zone for single family housing I'm saying that some of the properties are locked in that way that they are non conforming so they're stuck being the single family houses they currently are, or their lot sizes you know some things they're restricting them from becoming more than single family houses I realized we're not zone that way. But saying the example you set again the local historic district wouldn't allow what's currently allowed I think let's let no M in place. A huge mass looming next to another house on Lincoln Avenue probably won't pass, but the other example marine gave about the high street neighborhood of Gray Street high street. And that's where, yeah, they could there's one probably that can add 11 units with and remove so again that goes back to my question of, would that even fall under the, you know, with the special permit even allow that because it's not on a main corridor, it's not in a place that currently has a lot of multifamily housing. So I guess we're already we're already limiting so much of this type of building that I just. Maria, the criteria isn't a lot of multifamily housing the criteria is has multifamily housing I think it'd be hard pressed to find a street and embers that doesn't have it. And every, every how every lot can add an ad you without any increase in lot coverage. Right, but the definition of like where townhouses and apartments are appropriate are those three criteria and so I don't know that it's, is it and or is it or like only one of those criteria. Marie. I just thank you, Maria and Jack. I just wanted to say that the the sections related to townhouses and apartments. You know, say that the proposal shall be located close to a heavily traveled street or streets to close to business commercial or educational district or three in already in an area already developed for multifamily use. So, you know, it doesn't say that it has to be on main street or a heavily traveled street or street it could be close to, you know, that it's like well then what what is close is that a half miles at a mile. And then a same with close to a business commercial educational district but it does say or so, you know, any one of those, any one of those and then so a multifamily use would be three, three dwelling units or more. And so we do know that there are there are you know, there are there are some three unit buildings in the RG and more that are scattered. Right, and I guess my worry is, as soon as we put that cap, then are we limiting some properties that could happen along main or college or pleasant street that now no one is locked again because the value of having that frontage and having more units is now capped at five and so. Yeah, I, I guess more study is good but I think I still stand by my recommendation of the simplest solution, which was brought to the planning department to study. So, marine I don't know if you had more but Rob has something as well. Yeah, go for it. I just wanted to add to that what Maureen was saying that I think when we're advising the zoning board of appeals and that's the role marine and I have. We would suggest that the entire RG district would be suitable for the apartment or townhouse and meet one at least one of those criteria and qualify at least just to get in the door. But I think I think I would be multi is anything multi units is anything more than one. And then predominantly through this district is either single or two family homes is you know outlined in the earlier presentation that marine put together that I think I think just about everywhere you can you can run into a property that has more than one unit on I think that alone would qualify it. If nothing else. And I just wanted to say that that this, this proposal wouldn't tighten any, anything for developers on, you know, Main Street or larger parcels, because they would, they would need to meet the existing footnote and requirement so we're not saying now, now they need to do something else so nothing would change for them it would be status quo would be the existing requirements. So the proposal is just that it would reduce that lot area requirement per additional unit to from 4000 to 2500 for units up to five units total on the property. Nate has his hand up. Sure, thanks. The, you know, when, throughout the discussion, I, you know, I, you know, my thought is that with what we're suggesting tonight we're trying to not, you know, allow too many units without having some, you know, some, some way to, you know, some provisions there in terms of the footnote because, you know, we could say that we like infill but I do think that the footnote and right now already allows a fair amount and maybe it's not happening because of the permit processes. But you know, you know, when we had the staff meeting we had this idea of having some, some threshold some cut off because, you know, under that, that number, whether it's four or five or six maybe that's the, where people would be willing to develop and you know, if you've done right it doesn't change the streetscape as much or the massing or the, you know, the development pattern, but over that, even on an acre lot, you know, we, we don't know how someone will develop a property you know more example was nice but they could do a converted dwelling they could do a totally different development than she provided and, you know, we can anticipate all the different variations of a development, I mean they could be small units they could be large units they could have parking in front you know it could it just. So for example is nice it's just we can't assume that every development is going to look nice, even though we wanted to. So one piece the other one I was thinking is staff also talked about, you know, defining in the bylaw, you know, different types of unit so right now we have a you know one family two families and then it just jumps to apartments and so we've all often said you know, maybe another component of this is defining a three unit building defining a four unit building and then, you know, maybe five units and more becomes an apartment and so, you know, we have units for townhouses but maybe, you know, in terms of asking why certain development isn't happening, you know, maybe if we said okay we call a four unit development we call it something we permanent a different way than it's permanent now. That would allow for some development, maybe we make it by site plan review and we have some conditions there that we have, you know, we can put those in the bylaw and so, you know, the difficulty now is if you're, if you're building four units it's an apartment building. We don't have another definition really, you know, maybe a townhouse but I think, you know, maybe we could refine what we call different unit types and or development types and we permit them differently and that might help with infill development. You know, so getting a finer grain on, you know, our, our defining housing. And I guess to echo off of Nate, sorry, if I may, is, you know, if there is, you know, a new use cat classification for a tribe, a three unit building and maybe a four unit building, you know, perhaps unlike the other residential uses like to family or apartment or townhouses those require a special permit, perhaps that that would be go through a site plan review through the planning board and so through a special permit process. I don't know if that would, you know, sort of attracts homeowners or developers as another way of making making it easier for them. Great. So, Maria, and we're, we were going to take, try to take a break around, you know, eight o'clock. But we're not done discussing, but also have a public comment period there for 10 minutes a lot of that so. And then, so we can take a break but then we come back I guess we have kind of decide. You know, do we make a recommendation as a board based on what Doug and Maria have suggested. Or what but Maria. So, I'm so glad I had a discussion because I'm kind of coming around now where maybe we don't need to worry about the main streets because those properties are already so large the ones that I was worried about having that five unit cap that they probably don't have enough square footage for the parking requirements anyways for by the time they reached that number. So I'm wondering if I can change my recommendation. I like, I like the idea that okay let's do the incremental in the neighborhood. Not worry about the quarter since all of our G is okay for townhouse and apartments that you know there's only a few sort of red and orange parcels that are that would be like penalized in a way but like Morgan said they're not really penalized because it's status quo it's just they can't do even more. And I'm all for that sort of triplex quadplex idea to bring infill housing that's not for this discussion this is related to footnote and but in the future for different ways to bring more infill. That's definitely a way to do it. That ties to that whole missing middle piece that we studied a while back, but I actually am changing my recommendation that I now support Maureen and the planning department's idea of just doing the cap and not worrying about the sort of corridors because it's not relevant due to the lot sizes and how much parking required. That makes any sense. So sorry to do that right before break that but I mean I guess that's the whole point of the discussion is to like, you know, play out the ideas and talk it through and come around to what we think this, you know, the best idea in our heads but that's where I am. All right, so the question do we take a break now it is almost eight, or do we take public comment. I don't know Chris, do you have a preference. She's muted. I think she's working on it. I think it's probably a good idea to take a break now. Okay. Five minute break. Five minute break and then we'll take public comment. Okay. Eight oh five. All right. Pam, are we the only person that I have seen that has not arrived back is Johanna there she is. Okay. Well, we can go. At this point, straight into public comment. Okay. And we have 10 minutes and again each speaker is allotted three minutes. So we have Pam Rooney first. Hi, Pam. Hi, everybody. Pam Rooney, 42 cottage street. Thanks. Very nice presentation Maureen. Lots of really good data. So I'm going to be very positive too. And I'm going to positively support my. Interest in seeing a really good accessory dwelling unit. I think that's a really good strategy for the scale and character of most of the R and G neighbor. My feeling is that. Put note M plays a role. And I think we've, we've seen it played out with some of these examples that Maureen has put forward. The, the 4,000 square feet per dwelling unit. I think is, is a. It's a cap that really limits and protects. From big, big development. I don't think anyone is worried about the incremental one and two and three units that are added to neighborhoods. It is literally those bigger, bigger developments that people get kind of haired up about. It occurred to me as I was hearing Ms. Chow talk about the fact that originally we were looking at. The idea that there were no large large apartments in town houses being, being oriented on. Main corridors. And that in fact. Are we going to have to revise and. And rewrite the definition for apartments because I think it's a little incongruous to be. Having an. A definition that says it really should be on the main drags. And yet we're really. them in the heart of some of the residential neighborhoods. I think the other point that I'd like to make is that it seems a little premature to be actually trying to vote on an M up or M down at this point because none of you have started to address the impacts of footnote A, which I believe Mr. Ross was encouraging to be applied in all districts, all residential districts. You haven't talked about lowering the cap on the number of units or increasing the cap on the number of units and also tinkering around with lot coverage and building coverage. So all of those are still in the works and it really feels like before you move forward with a footnote M decision that you really need to know what A and B and you know all these other footnote changes are really going to do to that formula. Thanks. Thank you Pam. We have what Sandy? Sandy is next. Hi Sandy. Sorry about 38 North Prospect Street. It's a little alarming coming into this to find one delving into a fine subtopic of footnote M, but I do notice in the master plan that while mentioning housing the key direction, the first key direction of that master plan is to maintain Amherst's existing community character. I think probably footnote M advances that keynote direction. So why are we changing it? I understand and we've heard again that the number of building permits have been executed or at least issued and indeed executed has been rising in recent years and then Ms. Pollock tells us that under the current regime we could put 500 units into the area. So why are we removing footnote M? There has certainly been no rush on the part of residents of the centre to take advantage of even that quite generous potential of 500 units. So why are we trying to expand it in this manner? So when does the call for removal of footnote M come? It doesn't seem to come from the electorate, the councillors who are meant to be representing those residents. It might be coming from the governor apparently for more housing, but please note the major driving force for housing in this town are the students and our experience so far in the large apartment buildings that have just gone out downtown there's not encouraging. Apparently they're there with some breach of the previously agreed height and setback standards, no increase in low market rate units, designs that could not possibly accommodate a family and no provision of the parking, the reduced diversity by appealing largely to students. So all those highly desirable objectives that come in the plan seem to have been thrown out and going to be lost with removing footnote M. And that, as I say, will be a ruination of the Amherst existing community character. It's extremely diverse. There are many size units in the area and those are adjacent. So I suggest that you drop the idea of removing footnote M. All right. Thank you, Sandy. Jennifer? Hi, Jennifer. I'm sorry. I didn't. I'm sorry. I'm Jennifer Tav. I live at 259 Lincoln Avenue. I will also start on a positive note, echoing Pam Rooney, that I think the accessory dwelling unit would be a terrific way to go. And a part of what, in addition to the fact that it's, I believe one unit per lot, it also has an owner occupancy requirement. And in the RG neighborhoods adjacent to the university, whenever properties are bought and there's not an owner, I mean, basically all the non-owner occupied properties are rented out to students. So I would also start by saying that when Marine Pollock flashed the slides up and showed 32 prospect, and then I don't have the address, but it's the yellow condos on Amnity between Lincoln and Pleasant. And they were described as lovely. They may be lovely. They are condominiums. So they are owner occupied. They are not affordable housing. I mean, even the new units that went up on 32 prospect are selling for up to $600,000. So when condominiums are built, I mean, developers do not build affordable housing. Developers are in business to make money. So they either rent to students where they can charge per bedroom at a high price or they're building condominiums, which again, the ones that have gone up around this area are not affordable. I have two student houses on the other side of my backyard fence owned and operated by Eagle Crest. And that has been our experience and actually why we founded a local historic district to protect the neighborhood because properties were being bought up by absentee landlords rented to students. There are eight students on the other side of my backyard fence. They each pay about $900 a month. So the property owners making a huge profit. There is no interest. I mean, there's no affordable housing going on here when developers develop. And I might also say that we did develop the local historic district to keep all these historic houses from coming down because developers would have bought them or just turn them into student housing and they would have been trashed. I might add that the planning board fought us tooth and nail on that, but we did prevail. And again, to echo what has been said that the demand for removing footnote M is not coming from the residents of the neighborhood because the ability to add I think it's 97 more units, which with footnote M in place, 97 more houses could go up in our few block neighborhood. 191, which is what could go up with removal footnote N would destroy our neighborhood. And it's very upsetting, frankly, to have a planning board, none of whom lives in the RG are promoting densification and promoting affordable housing and promoting, you know, all this activity when it doesn't affect where the planning board members live in their outline areas. And when I hear that, well, that's what the RG is for. I kind of feel like we're all we're being treated as frankly, you know, kind of the dumping ground for the town, like, you know, we'll just put it in the RG. And that's just going to put that out there. And again, the demand for removing footnote N and the who would take advantage of being able to add all these accessory units are not coming from the residents who live here. Nobody wants a parking lot on the other side of their backyard fence. And when I guess when Miss Pollock showed some of the drawings, and even when you have the I guess the 3d model, it didn't really show the parking lots in the backyard. And that's really the kiss of death. I mean, if you're going to have 20 cars, you know, going in and out of that, you know, your adjacent properties, there will just be flight from the neighborhood. And what we've always wanted to avoid is just turning the neighborhood over as to be an extension of student housing for the university. Thank you. Thank you. We have Ira, Brooke. Hi, Ira. Hi, how are you? Very well. How are you? Good too. Thanks so much. Let me just set my timer here, sorry. So I just want to also start by appreciating the work of the planning department and how this is evolving. And so thank you, Chris and Rob and Maureen. And I want to say that I also appreciate that you're wavering on these issues because there's no clear way to see that this is the problem that can be solved with this. This is not an infection that you can give penicillin. We don't know what the consequences are by making a neighborhood more dense. You've run the risk of overcrowding it, which is one of the main ingredients of how a slum is formed, for instance. I want to point out, you all know this, the housing study is past its rate of life. There's been a lot of changes in the world and in the town. It would be crazy to read in the paper that the planning board is recommending another housing study. We'd be a laughing stock, or you would. But it's also illogical to go by old data, which is so incorrect. We are not hearing how many units exactly have been built just in this meeting. People are saying we're hitting our mark. We're not hitting the mark. We don't know what the supposed shortfall is of housing right now, especially considering how UMass and higher ed is getting rocked by COVID and just world economies and things are not going back to the way they were with offices or universities. We don't know how many people, I don't know how many people can be housed in these 500 currently allowed units or 900 units that would be allowed if M is removed, if I'm remembering that correctly. Is it four people, unrelated people per dwelling unit? That's thousands of people. How many dorm rooms can be built on campus where UMass has been saying for several years now that they're going to do that public-private partnership and build more dorms on campus? We are one of the small towns that host a flagship state university. That's not a common situation. When you mess rags, the percentage of people that they keep on campus, that is dumping a lot more people in a small town that are usually dumped in a big city. How many people could fit above stores if we did upgrade a few of the buildings to three-story buildings, retail and restaurants and such on the first and then apartments above for two stories, my favorite number being three-story buildings. I agree with what Janet was saying, that maybe education is what's needed in the RG. I'm almost finished, Jack, to just tell people what they're also able to do right now and see what happens with that incremental change. Maybe this whole conversation is moot and overkill. I also agree with Pam and Jennifer that if some small step was needed to do something, the tiny house idea appeals to me just that it limits the chaos, it limits the greed, it limits the absentee development, if that system can be tracked so that it must stay owner occupied. If you're going to buy something with an additional unit in the back, you need to live there. Those are my thoughts. Thank you so much. Thank you, Myra Ross. Hi, Myra, can you unmute yourself? There you go. I think I did. Okay. I couldn't say it, but Ira and Jennifer and, hold on, I have to turn off speech. Okay, I feel very strongly that footnote M should not be changed. I think there's a possibility to build plenty of housing here without making it a free for all, really. I've heard a lot of sympathy on the planning board for developers, but until all the people started speaking, I didn't hear any sympathy except from Janet for the people who actually live in these neighborhoods who could find a big parking lot next door to them, who could find two little ranches that are adjacent to each other being demolished in order to build a very large townhouse complex on a little tiny street. That is not the kind of neighborhood that we bought into, and I want to also bring up on this side of town. The water table is very, very high, and if you allow people to pave a lot of the area in order to put parking in, you're going to have trouble with water. There are many houses in this neighborhood. I live not in Lincoln Avenue side, but on the other side in the High Street neighborhood. There are many houses that have some pumps that have enormous amounts of water in their basements. There are springs under some of these houses, and if you pave a lot, you're going to find that you have much more trouble than you ever bargained for. And I think that's one thing that you really need to think about. But I think it's really imperative that you consider the feelings of the neighborhood, the accessory dwellings, the owner occupied. I'm all for that. I'm a parent of three adult children, none of whom own any property because it's not affordable. I understand that very well, and I agree with Ms. Tau about that. But I don't think this is the way to do it, and this isn't the only area of town in which you could put some dwellings. You say, well, it's reserved for open space, that's the way it's always been, but that doesn't mean it has to continue to be there, be that way. Affordable housing could really be built anywhere. There are many large, minimum lot sizes in lots of areas of town, and perhaps those people would like to sell off a little bit of theirs and make an affordable lot size that somebody could put a small house on. So I think that putting all of your eggs into general residence is very unfair to the people who live here who don't seem to have any positions other than two people that we elected to the town council, nobody on the planning board. And I think it's important for you to really listen to the residents and to increase affordable housing all over town. Thanks. Thank you. Next we have Karen Winter. Okay. Hi, Karen. Can you unmute yourself? Am I now unmuted? Yes, you are. Okay. You know, the problem is that if you're making it high, it sounds like you're trying to make it highly desirable for developers to make it worth their while to come in, which I do understand. I understand that it's nice to have a dense downtown that's thriving, but there will be no way that somebody that wants to have a little house with a yard, a family in other words, is going to be able to compete. There'll be more and more of these houses that go on the market. A developer will come in to make money, and you, by removing footprint M, will give them the means to put on so much housing that it'll be worth their while. And the families won't be moving in there. It'll be again the push from the university. There are many of my neighbors who have fled downtown because they can't stand the noise and the chaos of these houses that one by one are falling to landlords that understand that the way to get rich is to have as many people crammed into these houses as they possibly can. And for example, Marcy Slope, who was one of the persons that was started the neighborhood brunch, this feeling of community, she was so sad to leave, and she reached out to students to invite them to work with them, talk to her. She now lives by Atkins Reservoir, and we who live in this area, we're the ones that are committed, want to be on the committee, want to build a better school, pay very high taxes because of this community of people that we want to be with. But if one house after another falls to more and more of this encroachment of the university, you're going to not have Lincoln Avenue as a beautiful town road to be proud of. One of those houses will come on the market, and yes, the historical society can say something about this isn't keeping on the neighborhood, but they won't be able to say, okay, you can't build five houses there. Is this the way you want Amherst to go? Do you want it to be a town that is just kind of there as an extension of UMass, where families with children, like my friends the Shrouders who live very close to UMass, find that it's extremely hard to put up with this kind of pressure. I think you have a residential area which is endangered, and you have to think about that. It's not going to help UMass. It's not going to help the town of Amherst thrive. If you have residential flight, and there's a real danger of that, talk to the residents, listen to the residents. But thank you for giving me a chance to voice my opinion. Thank you. Very good. There was some chattering during Karen's call. Did everybody hear that? Okay, I'm sorry about that. I should have tried to rectify that. Dorothy? We're getting the same thing with Dorothy. I'm going to promote her to panelists, because it's the only option I have. I'm not sure why that. Her audio did not work last time. Did she come on over? She should be here. Hi, Dorothy. Again, I'm not seeing your audio, and I'm seeing that your video is off. Do you, how about if I leave her in the panelists and she can work on that? We have one more hand raised. Okay, Dorothy, we will get back to you if you can hear us. Hi, Jeff. Can you unmute yourself? I had no intention of raising my hand. I'm just watching. Oh, okay. Thank you, Jeff, for letting us know. Hi, Jeff. Thank you. Hi, Jeff. Ken Ruzzlefall. Hi, Ken. Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for letting me in. Before I make a comment, I have a question for Maureen, because I'm not sure I understood the numbers that we can do with footnote M and without. Maureen, in your maps, you had some houses that were pale purple and you said you hadn't evaluated them. Are you including those numbers in here? No, I'm not. No. So I am, I'm just going trying to get to those slides. No, so I am only accounting for the total number of units that could be allowed for this 172 parcels that I was able to determine the existing use. So it's not for the purple parcels. It's only for the parcels that had colors, because those colors represent uses. So I don't mean to misrepresent you, but the numbers that you gave us are much smaller than the actual numbers. In other words, there are many more numbers that could be there as of right now without any change, and then others that would come if you took them off. And I think, I think before you make a decision, you really want to know what those total numbers might be. I hope you've had a chance, but I doubt that you have to look at the letter I sent you, the planning board. I want to make this point now that we've been very fortunate these last few years to have a very diverse and mixed neighborhood here. Just on my immediate property line, six small children are there playing and it's a wonderful, wonderful to hear small children laughing and playing especially outside in the cold weather. And that's partly because the regulations we have in place now, and especially the rental permits, have helped property owners sell to other families who want to move into this neighborhood. And I represented a deceased couple on Fearing Street who wanted their property sold only to a family and we were able to find a family that moved onto Fearing Street. And Fearing Street is a very, very close to the university, but they moved there with their children. We're very lucky for that. The plans that you have here make sense if this was a virgin community with nothing built. You would want to have a development in which you could have a lot of infill and a lot of diverse housing, but you can't now. And so what happens is there is going to be a slow degradation of this neighborhood or these neighborhoods. I do recognize that Doug is a member of this community, Doug. So we know that not everybody in the planning board lives a little farther away. But the point I want to make is that these things happen slowly and then the pace picks up. First happen, first somebody will find a neighborhood, a neighbor next door with parking and paving in the backyard and it will make it harder to sell their house when they're ready to sell to anybody but a developer and then the second developer will move in and then the third. And we know who are going to go into these units. They're going to be students because the demand for students to live close to the university is insatiable. And what you're designing here is a plan to bring this neighborhood into becoming a student neighborhood. And I don't think that's what you want for the town of Amherst. I don't want to say anymore. I put my thoughts in writing and I hope you have a chance to look for it. But I do want to add one thing. I thank you for your patience and listening to us tonight. I know that you're putting a lot of time into this and we really appreciate the chance to come and talk with you about this. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. That was a very good point about the purple. Lots not being included. Good. Do we have Dorothy yet? No. No Dorothy. Okay. No boys for Dorothy. You do have at this point one more hand raised in the attendees. Be one of Fred. Yeah. I went ahead. Can you unmute yourself? There you go. Okay. I'll be very quick. I live on Fearing Street and I'm so glad to hear Fearing Street mentioned by Ken Rosenfall. I really appreciate that there's someone who understands that part of, you know, a lot of the concentration has been on the historic district and the Lincoln Avenue and that sort of south of us. But I want you to take a look at your diagram. I can't bring it up again, but Fearing Street, I lived right across from that whole strip of green. And in one place along there, there's the number 10 on one of those little lots. And I'm thinking it would just, you know, Fearing Street is a great actual family neighborhood. One of the reasons it has remained that possible for that is that there is some space around the houses. And people can use their backyards because the street itself is an extremely busy street with delivery trucks. And when the university is in process, there's a lot of student activity. And I'm sure you've all heard about that. I'm not going to go on about that. So one of the things that has made it livable is that there is some space around. And I would like you to keep that in mind. I can and there's plenty of space wherever things could be built, obviously, I didn't count up the number of units that would be allowed if M was removed, because I can't get that up again. But I would be very much against that. And I think that we have learned a lot about the value of that kind of outside space for everyone during the pandemic. And this whole idea of quickly switching over to more dense infill without some really careful thought does not seem wise in this time. It seems way too fast. So I would be against that. I thank you very much for your work on this very difficult question. Thank you. Thank you, Winifred. And now we have Robert Greeney has raised his hand, Jack. Okay, let's welcome Rob. Hello, Rob. Hello. Good evening. I know it's a long night for you. I'll be brief. I came late, so I might have missed some important information. But I just want to say, I want to emphasize that I live on McClellan Street. And I think, well, I'll speak for myself. I'm all in favor of infill, actually. I think it's a good idea. But I urge you to be very careful about the kind of infill we get. And the kind of infill I would like to see would create student housing. It would be an infill by residents. It would be residents expanding their properties and adding onto their properties and renting units, which makes it possible for families to live in town, pay the high taxes, and still create rental units. And more often than not, if you go through that neighborhood, Lincoln, Sunset, McClellan, you'll find that a lot of people are renting out rooms to students. And those rooms that they're renting out are rented out at a rate that's much more affordable than a lot of the new units. So we're not against infill. Please think carefully about the kind of infill we're going to get, though, with the zoning changes you make. Thank you. Thank you. So we had another hand there. We did, but it seems to have, well, now we have a different hand, which is Linda Slakey. I hope I pronounced that correctly. Hi, Linda. Could you unmute yourself? Good evening. And thank you for the opportunity to speak. I understand that the nature of this meeting is to come forward with a proposal one way or the other about footnote M. I did take notice of several people, especially Janet McClellan, focusing repeatedly on the desire that the whatever infill is done, create affordable, small affordable and family housing. And I've puzzled all through the discussion as to what kind of proactive approaches will achieve that. I do understand you have to make a decision about footnote M, but candidly, I think that's beside the point of achieving stable, affordable family housing in this part of town. And so when it's appropriate in your agenda, I would really urge you to consider what kinds of proactive measures you can take that will actually encourage that kind of development. Owner occupancy being an obvious one that's within the purview of the kind of aspects of law that it's your job to work with. But also, I think the kinds of educational ventures that Janet talked about are important. Thank you. Thank you. I think I've been remiss in terms of getting people's address all the time. Yeah. I mean, some people I know, some people I'm able to look up some in the minutes, it's not listed because they can't find it. I apologize to the board and the department when I forget that. So something, Jack, we are two more than two hours into this first part of our meeting and we still have another section about the BL. I noticed, yes. So I think we should probably cut off public comment and go on to the next topic. Okay, we did have a hand up and that's down. So at this point, I think we can do that, you know, distance lay and move on. So you have your meeting next Tuesday. You don't need a vote from us. I think you have the gist of how we all feel one way or the other. But though we can just move on to the next topic is your recommendation, Chris. That would be my recommendation. There is one more hand up. You might listen to this one more person. Okay. Yeah, he did have his hand up before we mentioned. Cutting it off. Richard Bentley, yeah. Richard, can you unmute yourself? It says unmute. You are not now. Well, this has to do with downtown development. Isn't that what we're meeting about? No, that's not what we're meeting about tonight. What are we meeting about? We're meeting about the general residence zoning district and a particular footnote in the dimensional table having to do with the general residence district. And what does it say? It says, well... You know what? You probably could call Chris and get clarification. Why don't you tell me? You're right here. Tell me. We're about to launch into a new topic. I'll tell you very quickly and then hopefully you can give a very quick comment. It has to do with requiring either 2,500 or 4,000 square feet of additional lot area per dwelling unit for apartments and townhouses in the RG zoning district. Right. Bad idea. That's my point of view. I think what the problem is with downtown is that it is an historic district. There's the whole area that goes along North Prospect and back toward Lincoln Avenue. There's the museum, obviously. There are a lot of historic areas in the downtown that I think are going to be harmed by having garbage trucks and other service vehicles surrounding the downtown. I think it will be a mistake. There are plenty of areas. Well, you know, when the when the planning board knocked out the idea of additional parking for the downtown, that was it. That was like saying, sorry, but the downtown is done. And if you want to do some property or development or whatever it is, do it somewhere else because the planning board has said forget it about downtown development. No more parking. All right. That's what they say. That was your decision. And I would support it. No more parking means no more development. Thank you, Richard. What's your residence so we have 24 North Prospect Street. Great. Thank you. If you know that district, you'll know that I'm living quite close to the downtown. Yes. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Alrighty. So with that, let's move on to the discussion on BL proposed changes to the BL limited business zoning district adjacent to the BG, which is a general business zoning district to allow more dwelling units to be developed in this particular BL district. And we have a presentation, I understand. We have a presentation by Nate Malloy, planner in the planning department, senior planner in the planning. Very good. Derek, planner is fine. I have a presentation and then I have a sketchup model that we can zoom around in a little bit. So it's a static presentation and then a model. So yeah, I'll share my screen, Pam. And then the planning board hasn't seen this yet. So it's some new information from last week and then it can be provided after tonight. We're still looking at, and can everyone see the screen all right? I just want to make sure that it's visible. I can. Great. We're looking at the limited business zones in downtown just north of Triangle and along North Pleasant Street. We're not focusing on the other BL area downtown or the other areas. The goal, the charge was to look at increasing residential opportunity in the BL area, whether it's through new development or redevelopment. As part of that, we're looking at sun design guidelines, streetscape standards, and then updating the inclusionary zoning bylaw concurrently to this effort. And so just to reiterate the strategies for just allowing the residential development is, we had decided on an overlay zone 100 feet off from the front line, possibly allow apartments by site plan review in this area and overlay as opposed to special permit adopt mixed use building standards and then changing inclusionary zoning bylaw. So there's possibly even more. So I feel like changing one little piece, residential development, there's so many, it's complex and there's so many things that are involved. But for now, that's what we're considering. I'm just going to go over what we've heard to date both from the planning board and from the public, the public comments, can help guide some of the decisions. And so there is the demand of student housing and as we've previously heard tonight, that has to be dealt with. I mean, the student housing market and the demand they put on housing is tremendous. There's the loss of unique buildings. And so in place, there is a demolition delay bylaw and that would still be in place even with any zoning changes. So at some point, we have to be judicious in how we apply demolition delay and allow for redevelopment. I think there's a need to balance density and new design, the ability to retain and attract small businesses. That was mentioned a lot. And I think we discussed that the town has a limited ability to regulate what businesses come into town. I think if we allow for business space to be developed, that's what we can do through zoning and certain techniques. Maybe an economic development director could work with the chamber and the bid to get more businesses, but they're doing that. They're already trying to get businesses downtown. Again, increased housing opportunities for non-students, families, local employees, the capacity of parking and public transportation, make neighborhoods. So make places that people want to be in and walk around. More specifically with the overlay, what happens outside the 100 feet? So that's something staff considered from last week. Design standards, affordable housing component, and then the context of downtown. So there's historic common, there's Amherst College, there's a linear strip of commercial retail, there's Kendrick Park, and then there's UMass. So there are different sections within downtown. Elements of downtown planning. I just want to go over what some of the tenants were using and some of the principals were using when we look at downtown planning. And so these images are from the internet, but they do show what's happening in Amherst in terms of the farmers market and sitting outside of Antonio's Pizza. So there is some areas of wider sidewalks and site amenities. So we are trying to keep the distinctive community and have some place making really activate streets. So that is something that zoning can work on, even if there's not a large public right of way with sidewalks, we can have setbacks and things to try to activate the street and allow for space to have pedestrian experiences and public open spaces. We're trying to encourage mixes of housing types. So we have a diversity of housing, diversity of residents, and retail and commercial uses design standards. And we really are trying to have a build out along the frontage of a property with parking behind. So we'd like to pull buildings up to the street and have a streetscape and have any parking or utility space to the sides and behind buildings. So that is something in the BL and the BG in the downtown areas and village centers to really have that streetscape element. This helps make it walkable, have transportation choices and then adaptability and climate resiliency. Those are things that I would say are relatively new in the planning world, but something that we are considering. So how do you accommodate all of those when you're looking at changing, you know, planning in a downtown area? So existing conditions of the BL zones, the two we're looking at, it's 18 properties on a little over nine and a half acres on all of the streets. There's 3400 feet of frontage. So that's, you know, north pleasant triangle, east pleasant cottage, Halleck, McClellan. So if you, you know, if you add all that up, there's, you know, there's quite a bit of linear feet that could be developed along the street. Currently, there's about 89000 square feet of building coverage in that area. It's mostly one to two and a half stories. It's a mix of architectural types, mostly, you know, retail and commercial uses. So it's not, you know, we have a list of definitions in our bylaw, but you know, say for these, for the most part, we could say that they're non residential uses. Parking is behind the buildings. There's lots of impervious surface and there's limited public open space along the street. So even along north pleasant street, where the property line is set back from the curb, we may have some sidewalks and benches, but as we can see in this in the top image, but there isn't really, you know, activated public open space along the street. You know, some more existing conditions, you know, these images on the on the screen are, you know, figure ground. And so you can see north of triangle street that the black represents pavement and impervious surface. So the current zoning really encourages parking parking lots because it has a low building coverage requirement of 35%, but allows up to 85% of walk coverage. So it's, you know, it's almost encouraging parking and, you know, a lot of impervious area with limited building coverage. So I think that, you know, the figure ground shows that especially north of triangle, there already is a lot of impervious area. And so what, you know, what we're looking at too is, you know, here's the current zoning standards, the dimensional standards, you know, it's 20,000 for a minimum lot area, 4,000 per additional unit residential unit. And that's something that, you know, was was examined. There's a minimum frontage requirement if there's residential units. There are setback standards here. The footnote here, you know, the superscript, the A means it can be waived. So the front setback and the side and rear setbacks can be waived. You know, the building and lock coverage is cannot be. So the 35% maximum building coverage means that, you know, only 35% of a lock can be covered by building up to 85% of a lock could be covered by other other surfaces and three floors with 30 or 35 feet. You know, single family homes and duplexes are prohibited. Townhouses, apartments, converted dwellings and overnight lodging is by special permit so that, you know, these types of residential unit uses are by special permit and next use buildings is the only one that's by site plan review currently in the deal zones. So, you know, the, the, the objectives of the overlay, you know, increasing opportunity for residential development, I've already gone through some of these, you know, it's really also to activate the street and enhance public experience encourage the build out along the front of the property incorporate design elements and also provide guidance to the zoning and the zoning bylaw for the, you know, developers and permit granting authority so they can make decisions. So, you know, and some of the bylaws I've reviewed, you know, it just has some plain language about, okay, if we want parking behind buildings, we can say that and maybe it's not a requirement, but it can help guide the discussion in the permitting process. If we want a look open space, you know, even with these requirements shown in green here, if we have setbacks, you know, a developer may just propose a linear strip that meets the open space requirement, but the hope would be that through the permitting process, the permit granting authority could say, okay, well, if you're having a restaurant, let's make that open space more of a plaza. Let's make it, let's program it and design it with, you know, in a certain way so that we can have more tables and chairs. And so, you know, my thought is within the bylaw, there'd be some language that could talk about certain standards that the board could use and developers would use it as well. And what I'm going to jump to now is staff developed a few concept buildings, you know, using some of the lots that are in the BL zone to show, you know, what some of the standards would look like if used. And so, you know, this is one concept on North Pleasant Street, you know, it almost fills out a property. It's 100 feet, that's, you know, it'd be three floors, mixed use building. And if it's a 7,300 square foot footprint, you know, the required public open space, we've changed it to be 20% of the footprint. So there's, you know, open space that would be required to be provided on the front of the building. You know, the first floor is commercial. So, you know, you could have, you can see here a fair amount of 6,200 square feet of commercial with could be three, four, five, six commercial spaces. The upper two floors designed here would be eight units of floor with an average of 750 square feet. So 16 units. The building depth is 76 feet from the front to back. And so most apartments in town are, you know, range from 65 to 75 feet in depth, you know, from front to back. They usually aren't any deeper than that because at that point you, you know, the added space, unless you have bigger units, but even then, you know, with a central corridor and units on either side, buildings really aren't much deeper than 80 feet. They just, that gets to be too massive without having allowing light and sunlight in, you know, so what we had for design standards was that if we're looking at the top, this is the ground floor, you know, that at half the frontage buildout, you'd have to have a step back in the facade. And so in this example, we have this step back. You know, every 35 feet, we'd say that you need to have some architectural relief, a minimum of six inches. So there's these vertical pieces. And so, you know, this design achieves that and we'll see it in the sketch-up model. So, you know, in this type of property, you know, you can have some upper floors overhang the first floor, but you still have these architectural elements that meet the, you know, some of those design standards proposed in the overlay. For the concept, second concept, you know, it's a, it's a combination, you know, there's a combining of two properties. So if a developer owner owns two properties and they want to propose a larger building, makes this building on a corner, there's, you know, frontage on two sides of the building. This is showing the ground floor. You know, it's an approximately, you know, you know, 10,000 square foot building on the first floor usable space with, you know, five to 10 commercial spaces. The upper floors have 16 units of floor that are 600, an average of 600 square feet. You know, it's required to have 2,300 square feet of open space out front. And so, you know, what the notes here are saying that, you know, there was a discussion about how do you step back the facade of a building. And so this actually isn't breaking up the facade as much as the design standards would acquire. So, you know, like every, you know, 50 percent of the frontage, you have to have this step back of the plane of the building. And this, this doesn't do that. It does have architectural relief to break up, you know, the length of the facade with these, you know, with these architectural elements. But, you know, this is just showing a potential building, you know, on the upper floors, the windows are punched out. So it has this architectural relief. And, you know, the design standards that we were writing in would say that you have to have something every 35 feet to break up the plane. And then there was this discussion about whether or not we would require so much of a building to be built out along the frontage, you know. Some people like the jagged edge. Some people liked a more consistent, you know, facade. I guess, you know, one thing that staff noticed is with these larger buildings, even with this public open space, you know, it could just be a linear strip, you know, it could just be a 6 foot by 100 foot strip, you know, 4 feet by 100 feet to meet that public open space requirement. And is that sufficient to allow for the streetscape we want, you know, or is it that the planning board could say, okay, if this is a restaurant here in the corner, we really want to have some setbacks here. And, you know, this really needs to be a plaza area. And the rest, it's okay if it's just a wider sidewalk. And so, you know, that's a consideration that we haven't resolved. And it's something, you know, that you, you know, we can receive comments on. On Triangle Street, there's, you know, two more concepts. The larger buildings, again, three-story possibly, you know, mixed use with larger commercial uses on the first floor, you know, and then residential units above. So the lots there are, you know, all these buildings fit within the 100 feet, you know, Triangle Street has a 20 foot setback along the frontage. So there's quite a bit of open space in front of the building. And then, you know, there's these larger buildings with units above. Concept 4 is something similar. It's a smaller building, again, but it's, you know, a three-story building. We're limiting it to three stories. We did not adjust the height to four. We're still keeping it at three stories in all of the overlay and step down to two stories behind. And so, you know, I think there was discussion about it could go higher. It could be different. But I think in terms of the overall size and mass of a building, you know, three stories, we're saying, you know, even in these buildings, you can get, you know, 20 to 30 units, maybe 40 units in a larger building. And so, you know, and we're allowing the height to go up. So we have a 15 foot first floor and 12 feet on the upper two floors. And so, you know, in this type of development, you have large commercial uses on the first floor retail uses, and two floors are purely residential above. And so you have, you know, almost 40, 40 units. And so now I'll just go, I'll pull up a the sketch up model, and then I can get back to the presentation. And, you know, if we're looking here, this is, you know, we have a massing model of the BL area. And, you know, if we zoom in, you know, these are the buildings, the footprints that were shown. So here's concept one. And, you know, it's a full three-story building. We have this right here so that it's, you know, 16 feet setback and then a 21 foot setback from the property line. So there's ample open space. And it still fits within, you know, the 100 foot setback here. The, you know, that's not necessarily a requirement. You know, it exceeds the public open space requirement we have. And so I think, like I said, that's a consideration. Just to show, you know, what, you know, what the design standards would call for are these, you know, these vertical elements that have some relief on the facade. And so, you know, and a stepback here. And so there's different ways to treat that. You know, we're not prescribing materiality or what exactly that means, but, you know, some architecture relief. And on the first floor, you know, we're just showing a larger ceiling. We have a sign band, you know, on, on, on the, you know, at the top of the first floor. And then there's different ways to treat entries in retail spaces. You know, do you have, you know, all glazing or do you have, you know, a limit on the amount of glass on the first floor. And so, you know, interestingly enough, as you're working on the models, I feel like we start to get to the details really quickly, but we're still trying to say, okay, how do we allow for residential development with some design standards? And we're not, you know, the town still plans to hire a consultant to look at a more detailed design set of standards that would apply townwide, not just in this VL overlay. And so these concepts are really to say, okay, if we, if we allow, you know, more density within these first hundred feet with relaxed dimensional standards. So we're saying that there's no longer this additional lot area per family. There's no side yard setbacks. There's just a front setback to get the streetscape and there's a cap at three floors. It can't be waived. You know, what's a, what's a potential build out. So here's the building on the corner. And, you know, we're showing that there's enough open space in front of the building on private property to have benches and walkways and plantings. And so, you know, on North Pleasant Street, we're recommending last week, we had a five foot setback. We're saying now a 10 foot setback is a minimum, just to have enough distance between a three storey building and a property line to have, you know, this, this activated public open space. You know, North Pleasant Street does have a fair amount of space between the property line and the curb. You know, here's realignment park. There's parallel parking along the street, muted spaces, and there's, you know, some trees planted here. And there's a sidewalk, but in terms of actually having plaza space or other, you know, places to sit, we're really encouraging this to be on private property. So, you know, it becomes part of the development as opposed to having it in the public right of way. You know, in this type of development, you know, again, vertical elements every 35 feet, it doesn't meet that, that step back requirement at 50% of the frontage build out. So, you know, this is a more linear building. You know, the windows are punched out to have that broken up. You know, the 40 yard design guidelines talked about having a projected canopy between the first and second floors on mixed-use buildings. You know, possibly having corner plazas that are even bigger than this. Is that something we'd want to require as part of public open space? And again, the glazing requirements. In this example, the building, you know, fits within this 100, this overlay. And the thought would be, you know, if a developer owned both properties, they could put a two-story addition onto this building, but it would have to satisfy the existing BL requirements in terms of lock coverage, building coverage, and setback. So, you know, if they were to put an addition on here, you know, it's the 35% building coverage, 85% lock coverage. You know, one thing I will say about the area between here's Cole's Lane and Hallett, the, you know, there's only one or two property owners own most of this, and there's quite a bit of parking already. And so, a question was what's happening outside the 100 feet? And the thought would be that, you know, we'd eliminate it to two stories and then the rest of the dimensional standards and uses of the BL apply. And so there's still development potential, but at the same time, if there's more residential use and more uses, intense uses on the street, you know, having parking back here to me would be, you know, would be a benefit. The thought too would be to really encourage access from side streets, not along the main thoroughfare. So right now, you know, there's many curb cuts coming off North Pleasant Street. They're not shown here. And so the idea would be to, you know, reduce those, maybe eliminate all of them, except for one, and have an entry off Hallett and so that there's shared parking between the lots in the back. And so, you know, we're in the municipal parking district, parking isn't required, but you know, if we're getting more residents downtown, more units, you know, it'd be nice to have parking and it'd also be nice to minimize the interruptions to the streetscape. And so the buildings in gray are the existing buildings. We're going to just slide over to Triangle Street to show these larger buildings. And I will say that the housing production plan looked at this site in 2013, and they had something similar. They spent more time with the building facades, but they thought the Triangle Street area could be benefited by townhouse developments that are three stories with, you know, residential actually along the street and the only mixed use on the corner here. And they thought, you know, it was large enough that you could have a grocery store, but, you know, whether or not a grocery store would move in, they, you know, that's what the housing production plan had. So in these, in this concept, these buildings are, you know, setback at least 20 feet is the minimum along from the, from the property line. And what that does is allows, you know, more, more possibly more programming of public open space if there's retail spaces or restaurants. And so, you know, on such a, on a large building like this, they could get away with just a linear strip of public open space. And so, you know, we're really going to encourage the permit granting authority to consider working with a developer. And, you know, in the back, the BL extends behind here. This is already existing parking. They could still put these lots are so big, they still could do two unit, two story development back here. And so again, we'd be limiting back here to two stories with existing law coverage of 85% and building coverage of 35%. So we're really trying to bring development up to the street. You know, this is Kendrick place roughly accurate in terms of height. And so, you know, we're, you know, Kendrick place is pretty close to the street here. And we're really trying to bring this back to have more space just to soften the mass and the scale of, of the buildings. And, you know, I can, you know, I think with the design standards, again, these are flat facades, there is some, you know, something that will change the plane every, you know, we're recommending, I'm recommending 40 feet now, but, you know, to the idea about how much articulation do you have along the front of a building, you know, this shows a step back here, you know, is that a preference or do you like having, you know, more of a consistent frontage. I'm just going to go back to my PowerPoint presentation just to, you know, additional considerations for the overlay is something, you know, from last week is not having a maximum front setback. So originally we were saying, you know, you'd have like a 10 foot and a 20 foot earth, you know, be, but I don't think you need a maximum because we have this hundred foot overlay. So within that space, if you have a, if you just have a front setback, if it's 10 feet on north pleasant and 20 feet on triangle, you're giving a developer a window to work in and they, a building will fit within that if most buildings are less than 80 feet deep, increase the public open space requirement to 20 percent of the building footprint, limit landscaping within the public open space to 20 percent, you know, increase the length of the facade build out along the front setback line. So right now we're saying, you know, 50 percent, you have to then have a pretty, a step back and you know, the 40 R and other communities have, you know, 75 percent. So you can allow 75 percent of a facade to be right along that minimum front setback. You know, I looked at North Square that beacon developed and, you know, those are two large buildings and they were hoping to make those buildings look like they're multiple buildings through facade articulation, roof planes and other things. And, you know, one thing it made me think about in some communities do this, they say that if, you know, if a building facade is over a certain length, so here we're saying if it's over 100 feet in length, so if you have, you know, combined two properties, you know, the front facade must have a minimum of five foot change every 80 feet or something. So, you know, most of the lots are not that wide. So I think if you have a single building development, maybe you don't need to have this, this jagged front setback, the stepback, but if you combine lots, you know, and we're not, we're saying now you can build out, you know, along 75% of it, you could actually have quite a long facade without any, any stepbacks. And so one way to try to guide that is having this kind of requirement. You know, I do think, and then having this change in facade articulation, you know, last week we had proposed 35 feet. We're saying 40 feet. And most of the examples we showed, it may not happen on the first floor because if it's a mixed-use building, depending on how the glazing requirements work and the spaces work, you know, the interior layout of the spaces, you actually don't have a very systematic way of having, okay, let's have a 40 foot space and have this vertical element, you know, with residential units above, it's easier to have some type of, you know, systematic spacing of windows and units and then architectural elements. You know, again, possible standards for mixed-use buildings that may be within the BL overlay is you have this a maximum of 75% glazing and then have an opaque requirement for the bottom 42 inches. And I think that might, it may work for some, it may not work for restaurants, but the idea too is that if it's an office use or some uses you don't see all the way to the floor. You know, some other requirements that are considerations require material change between the first floor and upper floors, require a change in roof plane, you know, add projecting canopies between the first and second floor. I mentioned this increase in setback on North Pleasant Street to really get this public open space, add landscaping standards to the back of the property and screening from a butter. So if we are really encouraging development along the street, have some protections from the abutting neighbors, excuse me, you know, have the design review board have a stronger role in permitting review. So this is in the design review district, some of these properties are and you know, it's an advisory board and it might still be, but maybe that, you know, it's something that they do work with a planning board and zoning board, but maybe they can be incorporated into review of in this overlay in a different way. Again, have stronger language about how to access parking and where parking access aisles and drive aisles are located. And then again, have, you know, the permit granting authority help design and program the public open spaces. So, you know, we could state that in the zoning bylaw that we, you know, we're intending to have these open spaces, which, you know, the bylaw right now, for instance, can waive the setbacks, the front setback in the BLNBG. And so, and oftentimes the developer will say, okay, I want to build right up to the property line. And the planning board, you know, hasn't yet said, well, let's, I don't want you to, I want you to be 20 feet back. And, you know, I think we've seen that with Kendrick Place and One East Cuisine. And so the, you know, in this BL overlay, we're proposing actually to have a 10 foot and a 20 foot front setback that cannot be waived. And we'd actually want to then have language that could say the permit granting authority can, you know, we're encouraging them to ask the developer to maintain these open spaces in front of the building. And so, you know, not having that waiver, you know, might just really help keep the buildings back enough to have this, you know, this, the streetscape in front of the building, because the property line and the curb line aren't always parallel and they're not always sufficient to allow, you know, wider sidewalks. The transportation plan said, you know, in downtown Amherst, they recommended at least 12 foot wide sidewalks. That's, you know, exclusive of sitting areas, possibly, you know, landscaping or other elements, bike racks and things. So, you know, to actually have a really nice street area, the space in front of Antonio's I think is 20 feet from I was shown in an earlier slide. So, I mean, you really do need a fair amount of space to have all these activities and amenities taking place. So, I think that's my presentation for now. I can always pull up last week's too, if you want to see anything or jump back to a slide. But thank you, Nate. Kenya, the planning department, Chris, everyone has done so much work here. It's, it's amazing. See if we have any hands. I see Maria and then Doug. Thanks, Nate. That was really amazing. It looks like you had a lot of fun with the model. I think that that front open space idea is great in particular for Triangle because it is so narrow already and we want to encourage more sort of foot traffic from the University. And I think my high school kids used to take that route to town. But anyways, for that to be part of the design guidelines and required, I think should be coupled with actually increasing to four stories because it's kind of a big ask for, it's a sacrifice financially, but it's a give back to the town as far as amenities. So, to balance that, I think having it go from three to four and I think your sketch up model actually kind of convinced me that four would still work along Triangle. The one, the parcels by North Prospect, I think also could go to four, but there's already such a deep setback there in that you may not need to require even more sort of setback for open space for those parcels. But I feel like Triangle, it might be worth building that in there. And I think that last slide you had where you had a lot of criteria, a lot of them start to, I mean, you're almost doing form-based design at that point. There's so many sort of criteria about the streetscape that you might want to couple that with graphics. If you're going that far with it, maybe that could then snowball into other areas of town and we start to build kind of like Northampton does for certain districts like residential districts. They have a lot of graphics tied to their zoning. So, I mean, maybe that's the first step to doing more graphics like a hybrid or zoning. I don't know what Rob's been setting up as far as the zoning overall. But I really liked a lot of ideas. I still feel strong. I think I mentioned it last week that a taller streetscape feels appropriate to me. And your model sort of really showed that to me as well. But otherwise, the other thing was, no, I think that's it. Yeah, that's it. Thanks, Nate. It was really great. Thank you. We had Doug? Yeah. Thanks, Nate. I thought that was really great. And it's nice to start to see the massing in 3D. I guess I kind of agree with Maria about the height. But I also wanted to say, I'm thinking of New York City where at one point in their zoning history, they had a zoning provision where if you put a plaza in front of your building, you got extra height. And it produced all these plazas one after the next. And so what might have been an occasional special place just became one of a string of routine places. And that's kind of making me wonder whether it's like how much public space do we really need along the street? And particularly where both of these parcels are front in Kendrick Park, which already is a very generous public space. So that's just one thing going through my head. I guess the other thing is, since we don't have a copy of your presentation yet, and I didn't get a chance to really scrutinize each of your bullet points, I feel like I would need to get a copy and spend some time with it to fully digest it. And I'm hoping we aren't making any decisions tonight and we'll have some more conversation next week. Thank you. Sure, thanks. Yeah, I realize that the presentation wasn't done in time. Yeah, no, the plaza, I think, Doug, it's interesting, you know, staff discussed this today too about what is, how do you design and program the public open space. And so my thought is, we're not actually prescribing what it needs to be, we're saying it has to be there. And so maybe in front of some buildings, it is just a linear strip. It's just a wider space in front of the building with the sidewalk. But if a developer or someone's coming in saying, well, I'd like to have these types of retail uses on the first floor, then the planning board or the zoning board could say, okay, well, let's shape those public spaces within that, you know, within the required, you know, if they need to put in 800 square feet of public open space, let's make some of that more plaza-like, and not just a strip. And so, you know, I guess some of it is how much do you start writing guidelines for programming that? Or do you leave that at the discretion of, you know, between the permacraining authority and the developer and owner? And so I kind of agree. I mean, I don't want to say, I don't want to say like every other building or every other, every 100 feet you need a 20 by 20 square foot plaza, because that, you know, I'm not sure that's what we need. And if we have this, we have the uses to accommodate it, but no taken. Okay. Well, I guess the other, it's sort of related to your decision or this week's version that increases the public space from 10% of the footprint to 20%. You know, I guess I'm a little bit resistant to that. At least that's my initial reaction. Um, just that, you know, depending on the amount of frontage and the depth of the building, you could really be pushing a building back. And, and, you know, last week, I was one of the ones who was not excited about a real jagged street edge. So, you know, having street front street facades, wandering farther forward and back, I think is the opposite direction I'm leaning. Thank you. Thank you. So, Janet, then Johanna. Thank you. I'd like to echo Doug Marshall's inability to digest it all in one viewing. So, I hope you keep working on this. So, I was the advocate of the irregular jagged street edge and keeping the historic look of the downtown and buildings. And so, what I would love to see is option B, which might be just changing the dimensional standards and giving more flexibility that, you know, it's not going to be a linear strip, a lot, you know, pushing everything towards building a linear strip, but actually using the whole lot in maybe a more creative way, or in a way that would build housing that is, you know, kind of more like a garden apartment, like three-story garden apartments with people, you know, playgrounds or a plaza, like Dorothy Pam had talked about earlier, just more flexible use of the space. We know that current zoning doesn't really work very well. So, you know, in terms of this option, I think it's kind of more complicated to add an overlay on part of people's lots. And it doesn't really address what's going on in the back. And so, if you had said, well, in the back, there's going to be a play area and parking, you know, or something, but I just, I think it's kind of an odd answer to a problem that, you know, it's like to really to force zoning on half of somebody's property lot and not deal with the back part. And still, the problematic zoning stays on the entire area if people don't exercise this option. So, to me, it just seems overly complicated. I think it's going to push people towards taking down and changing the whole look of the BL along North Pleasant Street and tearing down buildings and places where people, which has a lot of public space and small gardens and a lot of street life, I don't really quite understand activating a street where lots of people walk on. And, you know, it's like it feels like, you know, it might be a great idea, but let's not force that as the only idea. The design standards, I sort of get in a way that I think you could build ugly under them, you could fulfill the requirement and still have a kind of unpleasant looking building. And so, I'd like to see that strengthen to have more design and architecture. Like when we look at the cook block, we all feel like harmonious feelings and we love that building, but those buildings, but they all have sort of very interesting architectural details to them. And there's no requirement for that. And it's probably, you know, people think of it as too expensive, but that's actually what we like best about those buildings. I do like the fact that the density would be lower in the back and protect the neighborhoods. I think that the other thing I kind of, I think the BLs are tough nuts to crack. And we know they're all really different. There's five of them and the three downtown are all really different. I'd like to bring small business owners in those buildings into the conversation. I think there'd be a way you could require that the street, the commercial buildings, you know, have small, you know, some percentage of small storefronts that kind of keep, it'd be kind of placeholders for small businesses that couldn't afford rents. They might have very different views of what they need and we have never heard from them. And this also, you know, because it's March and the last time, you know, pre COVID, Rob Mora had come to us and said, you know, to talk us about, to talk about, to talk to us, excuse me, about the zoning bylaw overhaul. And he said, for the harder issues, we're going to need a consultant and a community process. And we're going to need to talk to our community a lot about building heights and, you know, like the bigger issues, how big should buildings be, the heights of them. And, you know, I know this has been a strange year behind us, but I feel like that piece is going to be missing. And I think, you know, I understand the path that the planning department is going down. I don't, to me, it doesn't, I'd like to see some other options on the table. I don't think we can go to four stories without talking to people. People, I mean, you know, we might have a community planning process for the downtown that also people don't want five stories anymore. Maybe it'll be four stories on both sides of the street. Or this board last August recommended that we focus on downtown planning when the Community Resources Committee said, what do you want to focus on? We basically said small housing, kind of a housing, housing issues that Maria identifies. We wanted to work on downtown. We were talking about downtown planning. And then also we wanted to work with the Planning Department on recodification. And so I think, I think we're not going to fix the BL until we kind of look at those larger issues. And I think it will be better. I think we'll come up with some good solutions. And I just, this, this is not my, I wouldn't, I don't, I don't, it doesn't appeal to me, but I, I think it'd be better to change, like I'd like to see option two, which would be changing the dimensional requirements, making more flexibility and kind of bringing more life to the master plan that talks about historic streetscapes, you know, a vibrant downtown, you know, walkable streets and somehow pulling everything into a linear front doesn't strike me as being super walkable on streets of it. People really enjoy. It's kind of a long thing. I'm also really tired. And I wouldn't, I'd love to like look at this more, but I'd like to see a second option that allows more residential development without dictating it has to all be in one spot in one very long building. Thank you, Jenna. Johanna, please. Thanks so much, Nate. Really interesting presentation and it was helpful to see the kind of concepts and try to imagine what it would look like. I know that those are just kind of theoretical and mock ups, but you know, still interesting to see the design standards put in place and it helped me imagine it. I am also curious about how you're thinking about four stories versus three stories, both on the Triangle Street and the East Pleasant. So I'd love to just hear your thoughts on that and your process. Secondly, I think you're like one of the things that I love most about this is the idea of moving the eliminating the curb cuts for cars. As somebody who has often walked downtown with small children and almost had heart attacks in front of CBS and some of the other driveways, it's just, it's harrowing and the idea of moving that away from the pedestrian area, I think is really commendable. I was also hoping you, you talked about corner plazas as like this little teaser and as somebody who's not a planner, I'd love to hear more from you about like what's the appeal of corner plazas and how are you thinking about that. And then lastly, I think back to our work on the 40R and how much of that work talked about stormwater management and kind of green design principles and I couldn't help but look at these buildings and think, you know, it's still a lot of impervious surfaces what can and what should we be doing to promote green roofs or rain barrels or, you know, just better management of stormwater. That's a lot. Thank you. Do you want me to respond? Is that? If you, if Jack allows it, I would love it. Well, you know, it is getting late and but I think we've got, you've got a lot of good comments. So I'm sure I can't not let you respond, Nate. So we'll just, if I go back in order for four floors, I think that, you know, again, I think it's, you know, what's allowed now is three floors and, you know, it is four floors really that much of a difference from BG. And so some of it is how much, you know, what is the right height to balance the transitional zone from, you know, BG down to residential behind it. And so I'm sure, you know, there'll be different opinions, but, you know, we're increasing the floor heights so that a three-story building is actually, you know, taller than what is allowed now. So it is, it can be a pretty tall building. So, you know, for me, three floors, you know, maybe Triangle Street is four. I just think I don't want to look at it some more. You know, I think just, you know, four floors with a mechanical equipment on top is actually a pretty big, pretty high, high mass. Yeah, the curb cuts, I'd like to see how we can eliminate more, you know, how we can strengthen the language around the curb cuts in the parking. And I, you know, again, it's, you know, it's like I didn't really want to work on the parking standards or regulations, but, you know, if you're allowing different development, and all of a sudden it involves parking. So, you know, corner plazas, I think, you know, in 40R, the architect mentioned those and Rob Morris likes those. The, I think some of it is if you can step back a corner on a building, especially if it's a four-story building and you have the corner recessed a little bit, it can reduce the appearance of the building. So you're not having a sharp angle on the corner. So it kind of softens the corner and the massing. And it also can allow for, I think, especially if you don't have the setbacks, you know, just like a tight corner where you have, you know, a 90-degree, you know, turn, you have a wider radius, right? So to go around the building, you just, the sight lines are bigger. It just kind of opens up the view and the feeling of the streetscape. So, you know, we're not saying it as a requirement in the 40R. I think, I don't know if it was a requirement, but it was encouraged or maybe, you know, it was mentioned. I think, you know, with 40R, you know, that was a standalone zoning element. So in terms of certain design standards, and especially with, like, green buildings, you know, we could write that in. Granted, it was voluntary for an owner or developer to use 40R, but if they did, it would have to comply with it. So, you know, we could be somewhat prescriptive in terms of what we wanted. Not that we can't be with this overlay, but, you know, we already have, you know, the stretch code. We have some things, I mean, we could write in the by-law that we'd like to encourage the use of some of these, you know, sustainable principles and design principles. I don't know how much we can require them, but, you know, we can, you know, we could, we could at least acknowledge it, right? So even if we can't require parking and we want to guide it, we can still guide the development of buildings and have some, just, you know, some plain language saying that and see what takes. Thank you, Nate. So, and again, I wish I had a little bit more comment, but I'm a little worn out as well, but we're not, you know, deciding anything tonight. You look like you got a great base to present to the CRC next Tuesday. So I'm wondering if we can, we have to touch upon some additional items tonight. I know we have Amherst Hills. Those folks have been waiting for a long time. We have, we should have a public comment here, but I really want to limit the public comment. So we're not here all night. To 10 minutes as listed in the agenda. So that's just a few speakers. Chris, are you on board with that? Okay. So let's, any other comments from the board at this time on Nate's presentation? Okay. All right. So let's, I see three hands up. You could remind them they have three minutes each. Yeah, three minutes each. And we got Pam, Rooney, Dorothy, Pam, if she can get through and Richard Bentley. Okay. Hi, Pam. Hi, everybody. Pam, Rooney, 42, Conn, Israel, popularly fast. I would think about also as we think about the big picture that the footnote A is also in the mix that again, all these pieces are incremental and all of them are cumulative. I was interested in hearing Miss Chow's interest in the design guidelines and or form-based design. I think that's a really smart thing to do first. Nate, a great presentation, lots and lots of material. When we talk about that section of North Pleasant Street between Coles and Hallock, I would love to challenge you to actually think about it as that single owner or very likely as that single owner and what would it look like to build out not just taking them as four into four or five individual parcels because it's one owner essentially. Same with Triangle. It is one owner and the whole thing. Let's see what it looks like built out. Could you in your thinking do the math for what is remaining? You keep talking about the 100-foot strip and then behind that could be BL as usual. I'm very curious to know if that's what you mean that that remaining space is built out at 35% coverage, 85% hardscape. The green space, you've talked about the 20% landscape or open space green space. I would suggest that not all of it has to be in the front of the building because oh by the way those people will be living there and would appreciate more green space probably at the back entrances to all of those buildings. It doesn't have to get shoved up front therefore you don't have to provide more height. Let's see a question for you in terms of the if you were to look at build out of these different sites is the first floor quote-unquote commercial portion of these buildings equivalent to what is today available in the businesses. The retail that currently is now like the professional building, all the office space in all along the west side of Kendrick Park. That's a fair amount of office and retail and space and I'm just wondering if your first floor is the equivalent of that. So we don't have a net loss of small business space to begin with. I like the idea of getting business owners in or business, yeah business owners in to talk about that. So lots lots of things to think about. Nice job and thanks for letting me talk. Thank you. Thanks Pam. Next. Oh go ahead. The third time to charm with Dorothy Pam maybe. I'm hopeful. All right hi Dorothy. Before I was on one computer and a phone but now I'm on a different computer. Oh good we hear you. So I really appreciate the models. It really helps me see what I like and what I don't like and on the North Pleasant Street I looked at the buildings and I said where are the windows. I saw windows on the front. I saw no windows on the side and then I saw a middle apartment that I thought they don't can have any windows on the right or left and you know I did live in a couple of interesting New York City walk-ups through the years and I can tell you windows are just not just necessary psychologically but they're also necessary for health today. So I think we need to have windows and balconies because it began to look that long frontage kind of like a barrack or like a warehouse. So I think it's really important to be friendly looking and interesting looking. I do think we need to have a shadow study that means erecting some narrow thing the height of whatever you propose to see which which throws shadows that are going to really mess up Kendrick Park because I don't think I have any idea whether the area you're talking about will actually throw one diagonally across it or maybe it'll just do it across the street. I don't know and the same thing with Triangle Street because sometimes I think just add a floor you know to make it more worth your while and then add a few more amenities to make it look nice. But my thought for Triangle Street and is what about if that was a great place for townhouses and again this is a New York idea of the row houses, separate entrances, steps which is because that's flexible housing. It's good for families particularly if you have a kind of fenced off community area in the back for small part of the back. But it's also good for students, for graduate students, responsible undergrads. Some of the other new construction is not really, it'll never be set for families unless they you know redo the whole thing. So that could look quite nice and you know you've had a lot of great comments as to if you had some of the green space in the back maybe you don't need to have quite as much setback on the front as long as this is a good safe sidewalk. So I think you've got a lot of good ideas going there and I think there's a lot of good possibilities. I did have a other comments on the RG that was really to talk about words. I was really happy when Sandy Muspratt instead of saying the character of the neighborhood talked about community character of the neighborhood. I think the word community is one that we have to keep remembering if a group of people have learned how to live together, diverse people, different sizes, houses, lots, incomes, nationalities and whatever, then that's a good neighborhood. And you're thinking of adding a lot more housing in the BL and you want to have some of that community feeling there. So I can see that many of your changes Nate are really towards trying to create more of a sense of community and a sense that the whole town also can share a sense of community. So I applaud all of those efforts. So thank you. Dorothy, we would be interested since you were trying to say something during the public comment period if you have a couple of minutes that you wanted to address on the topics that we've not talked about. If not, that's fine too. On the RG, I do agree with the many people who said that they're actually, and it wasn't surprised me until this study, I had no idea what we could do by right already in the RG. I agree also that owner occupied has been the key to preserving the neighborhood. Houses that are not owner occupied have deteriorated very fast. And I'm sure I've mentioned this. When I deliver flyers in my district, I can tell even before I'm to the front porch, whether it's owner occupied or not, just because the ones that aren't owner occupied tend to be run down. Just, you know, the sidewalks not good, the steps are unsafe, the doors haven't been painted, the doorbells are hanging off. So it's really important to keep owner occupancy, which is why I'm not I'm not for removing footnote M because that kind of developments and they could be very nice ones that could come in there would not be owner occupied. They would be, you know, absentee landlords. And, you know, you really have to come we have had our monthly community brunch through COVID in the snow in this, we've done bonfires, we get together, we walk, we do things we meet remotely masked. This is a real neighborhood. And it's really you can hear the people they're desperate to keep it one. So thank you. Thank you. Alrighty, so I think, you know, we're going to limit it, but we only have two. So I think we can probably get through these two would be Richard Bentley than Myra Ross. Three minutes each, please. You can bring Richard. Richard. Oh, hi. I never know what I'm supposed to unmute. And you're good. I think I really agree with Janet McGowan. I think the whole we need to look at other options for the downtown and look at the historic districts and owner occupancy and all that when I looked at the models that were shown earlier, they looked an awful lot like Kendrick Park and one East Pleasant, which I think everyone agrees is sort of a disaster, you know, large, ugly buildings that that we've got to avoid in the future. And I think, well, I think there's a lot of work to be done as Janet McGowan pointed out. And also the point about owner occupancy, that is so important, absolutely important. And I agree that you go down the streets of the downtown, and that's what you see. You see buildings that are not owner occupied are falling apart. They really are. Take a look. Go out there yourself. You'll see it. And with that, I will conclude my comments. Thank you. Myra, please. Hi, Myra. Hi. It'll be quick. I'm not going to make any visual comments about what it looks like. I can see a lot of people. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I'm not going to make any visual comments. It sounds like you've done a lot of thinking. My only concern, and it's because it's happened already, is what about Henian Bakery? What about burgers? What about knolls? I mean, the flowers. What about share? What about hair by Harlow? What about some of those doctor's offices? What about Primo 2 and those banks? I mean, if this were empty space, I would think what you were doing would be absolutely fabulous. But we've already lost so many businesses that have not come back and won't come back. I just can't imagine what's going to be done with all of those other ones. It's sort of like their collateral damage for gentrification. And it's not meant to be that way. But it's, it distresses me to think that a lot of those businesses that I mentioned are businesses that Amherst cares about. And just to say, oh, well, we're going to knock them down. And if some developer will come and put in a nice building, I bet they will. And I bet that people will want to live there. But that's really not the question for me. And I would really appreciate it if somebody would enlighten me about what happens when we. Oops. Looks like she's dropped off. She just disappeared. Okay. Well, I think she had, you know, she had some good points. So I think that can conclude the public comment period. And we'll just move on to the next item, which is update on the zoning priorities and work plan, if any, Chris. Like I said before, we are going to be presenting to the CRC on Tuesday afternoon between three and five. We're presenting these two proposals that we spoke about tonight. And we're presenting the proposal about accessory dwelling units. We're also going to propose some changes to the mixed use buildings and the inclusionary zoning, which excuse me, someone is making a comment while I'm talking. So we're going to make some additional proposals to the CRC when we meet with them on Tuesday. And if you're interested, you can tune into that meeting. You can, you know, join it as an attendee or you can watch the video later on. Other than that, I don't think I have any other updates on the work plan. Do you, Rob? Okay. Great. So stop. Moving on to old business. We have the Amherst Hills subdivision update on the status of completion of the subdivision infrastructure and consideration of a request from the developer for release from notice to building commission requesting that you refrain from issuing building permits for certain lots, which was attached, you know, to the deeds for the undeveloped lots. And, Chris, you. I just have a quick update. So as everybody knows, the attorney for the developer to Fino has requested release of the lots that were put under notice about two years ago in May of 29. Was that right? No, it was in the fall of 2019. But anyway, he's requested release of those lots. And the last time we talked about this was January 6th, I believe. And then we spoke briefly again on January 20th. So I finally had a chance to talk to our town attorney, Joel Bard, and he is going to look into the matter, review all the documentation that I've sent him. I think he also said that he would call the attorney for the residents and as well as the attorney for the developer and gather more information and come back to us with his recommendations for what you should do, how you should deal with this request. So I expect to hear from him in the near future. And other than that, I don't really have any updates about this. I did have a conversation with Janet McGowan this afternoon because Janet, you know, expressed a lot of interest and concern about the three-party agreement, et cetera. And I essentially told Janet the same thing I'm telling you tonight. So that's really all I have to report for now. But as soon as I get more recommendations from or a recommendation from the town attorney, I'll be back to you to give you another update. Okay. So yeah, we cannot respond to the developer or Mike Pill at this time and we'll don't need to have any discussion. I don't think at this point because we're just waiting information. Okay. So we'll be hearing from Joel Bard. Sooner than later, I hope. Topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting for old business? Nothing. Okay. So a new business. We have a review of the housing policy. We've got a few hours, don't we? Left. What housing policy in your packet? I think that the CRC is looking for some input by early April if I'm not mistaken. So you don't really need to tackle it tonight. But if you read it carefully and you have, you know, comments that you want to send me individually, that's fine. And I can incorporate them into a document or if you'd like to have this topic put on a future agenda, I can do that as well. Yeah. I'd like for it to be for us to see who did the red line or comments on the version that was in our packet? That was Mandy Jo and she was creating comments from other members of the CRC and town council. Yeah. If we could put this as, you know, old business during our next meeting, I think that would be great. Okay. Because I'd like to, I know we're going to provide individual comments and then Chris is going to combine all our comments and provide them to CRC. But I would like to hear other people's thoughts and have a discussion amongst the board before we all submit our final comments. Anything more on that, Chris? Nothing more on the housing policy. Okay. So topics not reasonably anticipated for eight hours prior to the meeting for new business? I guess I would like to talk about whether you want to have a meeting next week or not. Planning board staff are going to be meeting with the CRC on Tuesday and presenting these, the three topics that we've talked about as well as the other two that I mentioned tonight. So we could meet with you again next Wednesday, or our next regular meeting is the, what is it, the 17th of March. On the 17th of March, you're going to be dealing with the scenic roads hearing, the North Amherst Library. You'll be having your first public hearing session on that. And I'm guessing that that's going to continue to another night as well. And then if we have something to talk to you about the Hummerry Village intersection, we might talk about that because the TSO, Town Services and Outreach Committee is looking for input on that. And so anyway, there may not be a lot of time on the 17th to talk about zoning. If you really want to keep talking about it, we can talk about it next Wednesday. Otherwise, there would possibly be a fifth meeting in March. There's a meeting scheduled for the 31st. And then there's also the week before that, the 24th. So we have a lot of opportunities for future meetings. But my question tonight is, do you want to meet next Wednesday? Yeah, I think we were chatting briefly, but you're just going to be processing your getting feedback from the CRC on Tuesday afternoon and then meeting with us Wednesday. I'm not sure you can process and make it productive with regard to the zoning aspect of that would be the focus of that in between meeting anyway. So Janet. So, Chris, you have like the planning department sort of has a check-in with the Town Council the following week? Like, where are you working on the zoning priorities and the work plan? So I think we could probably all conclude that we're all a work in progress. So I can see why we would take next week off, but I'm wondering like, are you going to meet with the Town Council in another week or so? Or is it just kind of like, hey, this is where we are. You know, this is what we're coming up with and we're just going to keep surging on. I mean, I think we're all a little exhausted. I'm tired and I can't imagine how the planning department feels at this point, you know, with all these meetings and things. So is there something due to present to Town Council? What date are you specifically mentioning? I thought it like I kind of felt like March 15th was a date that I remember way back when. That date has sort of been superseded by March 9th, going to the CRC on March 9th, and then the CRC will determine what to do with these zoning amendments, what kind of public outreach they want to have, and then how they might want to change them. And of course, you're all welcome to attend CRC meetings if you have time or inclination. My suggestion would be not to meet next Wednesday. I think we are all, you know, super saturated with zoning. We time to step back from it and think about it a bit. And so my preference would be not to meet again with the planning board until the 17th, and then possibly we would have some zoning issues to bring you on the 17th along with the other things that we know we have to do with you. Plus our St. Patrick's Day celebration. Our annual party. Yeah. Decorate your backgrounds. So can we agree not to meet next week? I think everybody raise a hand. They're good. Okay, thumbs up. Okay. All right. Good. Take that off. The old calendar. And X form A&R subdivision applications. We have two A&Rs. Yeah, I'm going to share my screen, Chris. Pam has them in a certain order. We really stressed our town engineer to get these back to us in time for tonight. We had a special plea from Tom Reedy about one of them. So anyway, can you see it? I know. Yeah. Hey, Pam, we could see your PowerPoint, but you weren't on the right slide. Yeah. Good. Yes. What do you see now? Your title slide. Or no, this is a break slide. Okay. Here it is. So the first one, Chris, is the East Leverett Road. So East Leverett Road, you've seen this before. This gentleman, Mr. Dykes came before you. That slide is disappeared now. I know it. It's okay. He came before you back in, I think it was last year, 2020. And he had a configuration of this property that is pretty much the same as what Pam is showing you here. But I think Pam actually has the version of, here is the property as you signed it, or Christine Gray-Mullen signed it. So there's Lot 1 and Lot 2. Lot 1 is quite large and has a very elongated frontage along East Leverett Road. Lot 2 is kind of truncated and shaped kind of like a rectangle. But if you go to the ANR plan that they're currently proposing, which is that one. So they're making Lot 1 smaller by quite a bit. It still has that elongated frontage. And then Lot 2 becomes larger and kind of moves over towards the north. Yeah, I'm seeing what the north arrow is doing. So Lot 2 is larger and Lot 1 is smaller. The cross-hatched orange area that you see up near the road is an area that Jason Skeels, the town engineer, asked for. He reviewed this plan and he asked for that because the town is going to be putting in a sanitary sewer along East Leverett Road. And Jason wanted to have an easement across Lot 2 to serve Lot 1. So that's what that orange area is there. And of course, when the property changes hands, there will be also a document describing that easement. But this is the pictorial version of the easement. So those are the changes that are being made on this lot. And I wonder if you would authorize Jack to sign this plan tomorrow. Doug. So moved. Alrighty. You don't really might say, does anyone oppose? Yeah, just like I'm looking at no objections. Anybody here? I'm trying to get a picture of everybody here. Thumbs up everybody. Okay. Yeah, I think we're good. All right. That's good. So the next one is on Pam, remind me of where the next one is. Wildflower Lane. 26 Wildflower Drive. All right. So these two lots are side by side and owned by the same family. And these lots were created at a time when the building circle was not required. So you can see they're kind of thin. They meet the frontage requirement, they meet the lot area requirement, but they don't meet the building circle requirement. So the people who live in the house would like to sell the turquoise lot. People who live in the yellow lot want to sell the turquoise lot. And now Pam can show us the A&R plan for this property. So what they're doing is the lot to the north, I guess, is the new lot that was created. And that is now going to have a building circle that's up near the road. And you can see that and the building circle fits nicely in that area. And then, oh, and this is the RO zoning district, by the way. And if you move back to the house lot, you can see where the building circle is being placed there. So they're changing the property line that separates the two lots in order to fit in these building circles. So if you would be so kind as to authorize Jack to sign this plan, that would be great. Okay, Doug. Can we wave the building circles? This looks really stupid. No, you can't wave it unless the owner of the property asks for a special permit. No, actually a variance. A variance from the ZBA is to move the building circle or wave the building circle. No objection. Okay. Everybody else good? I don't object, but somebody has to really explain the building circle to me someday, but not tonight. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I know that area is Seward within the last couple of years. Usually when you have those circles, it's because of septic or, you know, water well concerns. In this case, it's just an effort to keep lots from being really strange shapes. There was a developer a few years ago who was creating really strange shaped slots. So they put in this building circle requirement just to make sure that there was one place on the lot where you could actually put a house. Okay. Good. Okay. So I think are we good with that, everyone? Looks like it. Okay. And then next, I think we're good with the A&R stuff. We are good with the A&R stuff. All right. So next would be upcoming ZBA applications. Nothing new to report. Okay. And upcoming SBP, SPR, SBB applications. I have one to report on. The developers of One East Pleasant and Kendrick Place have submitted an application to develop a new building just to the north of One East Pleasant. And they've submitted the application, but it hasn't actually been entered into our system yet because we don't have a check for the fee. But that should be getting long in the next few days. So you'll probably see that as something that's going to be talked about in the newspaper, et cetera. So it's a five-story mixed-use building. That'll be fun. I've been in our discussion about zoning, I'm sure. Great. And the committee in liaison reports, I have nothing for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. Andrew's not here. Doug, Ag, commission? No. No, we meet next week. Okay. Design review board. Tom's not here. CRC. You're meeting with them next Tuesday. Zoning subcommittee. We're doing that. Report of the chair. I have nothing other than we canceled next week's meeting. Report of staff. We have nothing in addition. Nope. Okay. So we're going to adjourn. 10-04. Good night, everyone. And we'll see you on St. Patrick's Day. Alrighty, y'all. We're green. All right. Where are you green? Bye-bye. Stuff recording.