 Oh, actually, maybe leave it on us for now. And then I just wanted to swap around something on agenda. I don't know if you got that email Chris, but I didn't actually do that. Or you don't need to. I just thought during the meeting we could say could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was expecting you to do. Yeah, perfect. Okay. All right. Welcome everybody to the January 19th 2021 Zoning Subcommittee and Amherst Plain Board Joint Meeting. It's 503 pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting while GLC 3818, this meeting of the Zoning Subcommittee and Plain Board is being conducted via remote participation. And oh yeah, so I have to do a roll call and I'm not going to mute people. So if you guys just, you know, either mute yourselves if it's going to be noisier or just leave it on me and don't talk until you know it's your turn or whatever because it was too too unwieldy to keep muting it. So I'll just go down the list. Andrew McDougal. Present. Doug Marshall. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. And Tom Long. Present. And me, Maria Chow, I'm present. And then we have with us Ben Branger and Chris Bershup of the Planning Department. So, Maria, I just noticed that Rob Mora is in the attendees. Okay. Why don't you bring him over as a panelist and then if we have questions, he can respond to them. Perfect. Okay. Thanks for doing that, Ben. All right. First item, announcements in minutes. Andrew graciously volunteered to do the first set of minutes. I volunteered to do them. I still have to do them. Okay. Yeah, I did the template and also thank Ben for shooting over the Zoom too. So should have it for next go round. Okay. And so do we have a volunteer for today's zoning subcommittee meeting minutes as far as a minute speaker? I know Andrew used the transcript. Did that help? Yeah. I mean, to the extent that you need to refresh your memory, it's super handy because it'll identify the person who's talking with their comments. Oh, really? Yeah. You don't need to look at the video if you can just sort of use the audio transcript. Okay. So yeah, any volunteers for that? Well, I'm curious. Was that a yes, Janet, your giggle? I was my nervous. No, Tom's using his hand. Oh, you was? Okay. Yes. Physical hand. Okay. Sorry, Tom. I was watching. Perfect. All right. Nope. I'll give it a stab. See how it goes. Okay. Yeah. Short and sweet. That's all we need for zoning subcommittee. Any announcements? I guess that's from you, Chris. I can't think of anything except that there are going to be bells ringing at 5.30. So if you hear something, I guess I'll mute myself. It's probably an honor of Martin Luther King. That's my guess. I think it's for the COVID for all these people who have fast year in sort of memoriam. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. I'm glad you knew that, Maria. Let's see. Public comment. Anyone in the public attendees who have a comment about items not on the agenda for tonight? I see there are four people. Oh, I have to say who they are. Is that right? You don't have to unless they want to talk. But oh, maybe they wanted to know who the other people are. That's right. Last time they said we want to know who else is out there. Okay. Okay. We are happy to have Kathy Schoen, Hilda Greenbaum, Jack Jemsak, and Laura. I see no hands. And I will try to stop the meeting early to make sure because last meeting, normally a zoning subcommittee were casual about it. And usually we let the public put in their two cents about what they heard. And last meeting, I adjourned before I did that. So a couple of people actually gave really good points at the end. So I'll try to stop early and let that happen. Okay. So something I wanted to do for item number three, zoning priorities, is switch to order of some of the things. I wanted to put C first because I know Chris has been meeting with Laura and Paul Bronkelman trying to get the work plan organized. And so I thought that would be a good thing to have at the beginning. So we can kind of see what our work ahead looks like and then dive into item A, B, and D after that. Does that sound good, Chris? Yeah. Do you want me to go through it? Or just a quick summary or at least give us an idea of what the work plan might look like. All right. If Ben could put up the motion list that the town council voted on, just to remind ourselves of what was on that list. Oh, yeah. I can pull that up in a second. That was, sorry, I didn't have that up immediately, but let me find that. About 50 files that we've been sent. Yeah. Yeah. I have it. I could share it. Oh. Hey, I could. Yeah, this will be a good practice, Chris. All righty. Let's see here. Where is it? Where did it go? I do have it now. Oh, you do have it. All right. I failed in my practice. It is. So yeah, here is the list of motions. Oh no, this is something. Is this it? No, this is it. Yeah. So go down action item two, number two, zoning priorities. So the town manager has been asked by the, or directed by the town council to ask staff and others to present to town council on by May, March 15th, the following items, adding BL district to footnote B, adding footnote A to the maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage, proposing revised supplemental dwelling unit bylaw, similar to the one that was proposed in 2018, submit the demolition delay bylaw revisions, which is essentially rewriting the demolition delay bylaw and then taking it out of zoning and putting it into the general bylaw. Working with the council to begin a conversation on housing types, moving apartments to site plan review in more zoning districts, removing footnote M, which relates to the general residence district and relates to additional lot area that's required for dwelling unit and revising the apartment's definition. So I won't go into the ones that they've asked for by September 1st, but if Ben can bring up the work plan now, that would be helpful. And so this is an in an Excel format here. Yep. So this is a draft work plan. And it's something that the town manager suggested that we put together. And it's a draft because I haven't really met with the town manager this afternoon. And he made some suggestions about adding and moving things around a bit, but this is what we have to date. So the idea is that, well, the zoning subcommittee is very, how can I say this? Thank you, thank you, thank you, very energetic and interested in working on this project. So the plan is that you would meet pretty much every week until mid-March to try to get this work done. So what I've got here is times for the zoning subcommittee to meet. And those are in that top list that Ben is showing now with this cursor. And then I have times for the planning board and the CRC to meet together. And that's on the second tier down, starting with February 3rd. And then I have pure planning board or pure CRC meetings, which is on the third or fourth tier down there. Yeah. So we can go through kind of week by week and what we're expecting. So we're in week three right now. Week one was the week when the town council voted to have this list of zoning priorities. And last week we met and we talked about the priorities. And this week, week three, January 19th, and we're beginning to work on the BL business limited zoning district and adding it to footnote B. Tomorrow night, we'll be presenting this draft work plan to the planning board. So that's what you see down below where it says PB meeting. And then it says one slash 20 present draft work plan. So the next week, which is week four, we would have the planning board and zoning subcommittee meeting on Tuesday, the 26th, and begin work on remove footnote M. And as I said before, footnote M has to do with extra additional lot area per dwelling unit in the general residence district. That same week, actually that same day, I would present the draft work plan to the CRC meeting and they meet during the day they meet around two o'clock in the afternoon. Then we go to February. And we have week one in February. And there's a planning board and zoning subcommittee meeting on February 2nd, Tuesday. And then we would begin work on revising the supplemental dwelling unit bylaw. And we would also ask Ben and Rob Mora to present the draft demo delay bylaw. We're pretty far with that, but we haven't quite finished it. This is something that the historical commission has been working on. And I think that that's how many weeks is that from now? Two weeks? So we should have a pretty good draft of that by week one of February. Then later on that week, we would have the planning board meeting and the planning board is going to hold a joint meeting with the CRC that night. And they're going to have an update and check in on progress on zoning amendments. And I've asked Rob to present his work on the recodification project. Ben has done a lot of work on that with Rob's input to the extent that we have reformatted the zoning bylaw. But we haven't yet really started to put much of substance into it. But he would be able to, Rob will be able to explain to you the reformatting effort and how zoning amendments will be put in there going forward. And we'll also present to the planning board and the CRC that night, the draft demo delay bylaw. And then depending on how much the planning board and CRC talk about these things at their joint meeting, we may have additional discussion at the planning board meeting. So that's what the next box is about. Then in February week two, we would begin to draft moving apartments to site plan review in more districts. Right now, apartments are allowed by site plan review in the general business district, but they're not allowed anywhere else by site plan review. They require a special permit. So that's one of the things that the town council has asked us to work on. That same week, actually that same day, Tuesday, we would present to the CRC what we've come up with so far for the three draft zoning amendments that we worked down for the previous three weeks, the BL to footnote B, removing footnote M and revising the supplementary dwelling bylaw. And that same week, I've been asked to meet with residents of district two, which is actually my district, Pat DeAngelis and Lynn Griezmer have invited me to come and talk about zoning to their district meeting. I haven't been to a district meeting before, so I don't really know how it works. I don't know if they televised it or broadcasted or how they manage it, but I'll find out more about that as time goes on. So that's on the 11th, which is what day is that? That's Thursday, Thursday the 11th of February. And I understand that all of the districts are going to want to have presentations about the zoning amendments that we're working on, but they haven't scheduled them yet. So in week three of February, the planning board and zoning subcommittee will meet on the 16th and work on adding footnote A to maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage. This is one that I have my, what should I say, reservations. That's a good term for it. I have my reservations about this one. And there, I think we're all going to learn a lot about it as we move forward with it. It may end up being a good idea. There may be reasons why we don't want to do that. So anyway, I just wanted to say that up front. It doesn't really say where that would occur. Is that only going to occur in the BL zoning district or is it going to occur all over town? I don't really know. So that's another thing that we'll have to figure out about that one. And then on Wednesday of that week, we would present to the planning board what we've got so far with the new and revised drafts of the zoning bylaw. Week four of February, the zoning subcommittee would work on revising the definition of apartments. We've found that to be fairly troubling. Apartments are limited to 24 dwelling units and only 50% of them can be of any one size of the apartments. So that same week, the zoning subcommittee meets on Tuesday, the CRC meeting will also be Tuesday afternoon and we would present and discuss the new and revised drafts of the zoning bylaw with the CRC that afternoon. And the first week in March, I'm thinking that would be devoted to, for the zoning subcommittee, reviewing and refining what they've come up with, what you have come up with as far as draft zoning amendments. You would probably want to do that two weeks in a row before you actually went to the town council with these things. I've learned today that we may be, there may be some flexibility in that date of March 15th, but I have to kind of work on that a bit. So in other words, we may have more time than we have shown in this draft work plan here. And then we would also be, during those two weeks, week one and week two, we would be presenting what we've been working on to the joint, a joint meeting of the CRC and the planning board. And we'd be discussing how to present it to the town council. At some time along here, we're going to have to submit these documents, these drafts to our town attorney to get a blessing from him that these meet the requirements of the state law. And then right now, we're expected to have these in format to present to town council on March 15th. But as I said, we may have some flexibility in that date, and I will give you more information about that as we move forward. The town manager has also encouraged us to include more about the recodification project in this work plan here. So I've added that in red down below, as you can see. And he's also encouraged us to add some of the planning department priorities for zoning amendments. So I haven't done that yet, but the next time you see this, I'm hoping that I will have had an opportunity to do that. So I guess that's all I have to say right now. Rob, maybe Rob Mora has something to say about this, because he was in the meeting with the town manager this afternoon. Yeah, that'd be great. I just want to get a sense of how set in stone this number of six or seven items we're going to cover before the 15th is. Is that really the plan that we're going to work on this many? I think initially we thought we could take on three, but it looks like it's all of the items. So I think what we're asked to do is to get back to the town manager with a plan about how many things we can actually work on. Yeah. And one thing that he suggested was that there was something on the motion sheet from town council that was called work with town council to begin a conversation on housing types expansion in preparation for other zoning amendments that would be coming along in the fall. And so the town manager suggested that some of these things on apartments might be rolled into that conversation so that we may not actually have drafts of something to present to town council on either moving apartments to the site plan review in more districts or revising the apartment definition. That may be something that we talk about, but it actually comes up later. And then the other thing, as I said, I have reservations about the changes to footnote A. So I'm not sure exactly what that's going to contain. So there is an opportunity to move things around a bit and to perhaps coalesce some things together. And we, me and you can have our input into how much of this we can actually accomplish. So that's probably something that we could talk about today. I mean, in the end, how can I say this? The town manager is asking me to put forth these proposals to town council. I am very pleased to have you and the planning board help me to put these things together and air them out to the public so that we have some sense of what does the public think of this rather than just me going to the town council and saying, here you go. Here are some things that I think need to be done. So this is a good public process. So I think you should be involved in the decision about exactly what we think we can accomplish in this timeframe. The other thing is that, as I said, there may be some flexibility with March 15th and whether we could actually extend the time to sometime in April or May. Yeah, because when I first saw a previous draft of this, I kind of was, you know, almost had a heart attack. I thought, oh my God. But then I think we emailed back and forth the idea is that the planning department would be doing most of the draft reports. The zoning subcommittee would help in whatever capacity as far as research studies and bringing, you know, more questions and ideas. But that, you know, that made me feel a little better because I thought, I don't think this is feasible. But I might be, Rob, if you want to, Rob, more if you want to talk more about what you know as far as what Paul might be thinking as far as the amount of items that we should be shooting for as a goal. Because personally, I don't have a good sense from the planning department how much you can take out. But I think it's too much. But I just, it'd be, yeah, I'd like to hear if Rob, you have anything to add and then we can see if other members want to weigh in on the amount of work ahead and whether it's realistic. Do I have to unmute or I think? Hi. Yeah, so I think Chris covered it pretty well. But, you know, I think we've been having the same conversations as recent as, you know, maybe an hour and a half ago about how much work all of this is. But, you know, my takeaway from the most recent conversations is that, you know, the expectation is that if we were able to focus on BL and M listed in your weeks three and four work, that's really a high priority. Of course, you know, we'll learn as we get into how these other items interact with each other. But I think it's, I think we're all sharing the same opinion that all of these items is a large task in the timeframe and, you know, focusing on BL and M is certainly the priority from what we understood earlier today. That sounds good. Any other member have anything to chime in before we sort of get into the BL as far as this work plan? And well, one item is kind of administrative. Tom, you'd said that you could meet at 530 and not at 5 moving forward on Tuesdays. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. And typically we have faculty meetings, which are going to be every other Tuesday until 530. So I feel like it could be more consistent if we just did it at 530. But I'm happy to join a half hour late every other week, whatever, you know, really works best. I'm, you know, it's not it's not that big of a deal, but should only be about 30 minutes. Well, how do I remember so I just sort of chime in like if you prefer the 5 to 630 or 530 to 7 without this is this is the second week in a row. I have a seven o'clock Zoom meeting also. So I prefer the earlier time. I'm fine either way. I'd like to pick a time everybody could be there so we can have, you know, continuous thinking. Yeah, I agree. Andrew, do you have a I'm generally better for earlier just to try to get get the day done. So I can move forward to making meals for people stuff. But yeah, I mean, we have to pick. Yeah, yeah. Well, Tom, maybe what we can do is on the days you're late, you know, not start with something if you're studying a particular topic, we'll push that to like item three or something like that. Does that sound? Yeah. And there's a pretty good chance that these these can be done by 515 and I'll just I'll just I'll just make it a priority to shift gears as soon as I can. Okay, I appreciate it. Okay, so we'll keep the 5 to 630. All right. Thanks guys. Maria. Kelly, I have a kind of a question about the work plan is and I'm sort of I'm just so is so the goal is for the planning department to present all of these zoning bylaw changes in the first section to the you're going to draft it up and write it up and just present them right is that is that is there any and what are we doing kind of thing are we just doing some analysis because I mean it seems it seems like a task in itself just to draft up the zoning changes they've asked for. It seems like a huge task to to analyze each one and figure out what the best draft would look like or maybe there's a recommendation that it's not a great idea so I don't so I can't I'm trying to think of what we're going to do like I don't think we could talk about the BL you know tonight and then be like talking about a final draft and you know what I mean I just I think this is not a work and I think well the way I saw it you know we've got some data on BL we've discussed tonight and then because of this work plan I saw and how it was moving to other topics I thought that we could break off some people stay on BL we'll start to you know get a foothold on the next topic maybe some of us volunteer to study it and then you know we kind of break like I think you guys just and we start to break into groups as far as who studies what but initially we all sort of dive into one topic together to sort of understand you know what's involved what the implications are why we're studying it but I'm kind of hoping some of these things drop off because I agree by week four there's like six things up in the air and so it sounds like from Chris you were saying you know some of the things will move to later and maybe March 15th will move but but that was my idea is like you know as we talk about each topic Chris will tell us what would be great things to know or study or we can come up with those things and I yeah I don't know if as far as drafting the reports maybe Chris or Rob you can talk about that aspect as far as what the planning department would do but I was really looking to Chris to tell us you know if there are areas we can study or what kind of thing would be useful to study but for like for example this first one Doug and I took it on ourselves to just study the topic in certain ways and Andrew gave us the base information which was great so I mean I think BL footnote B would be a good test of like how far we can get on an item tonight you know just get into it and start discussing it and then see if we start to touch on footnote M and then next week you know some people stay on BL some people focus more on footnote M so may I say something actually can I throw one more thing in the other thing I'm really concerned about is you know you have a list and we're just working our way down but adding BL to footnote B is you know would be really affected by adding footnote A to maximum lot coverage and building coverage and that is in all districts according to Kathy Shane who had asked about it and then removing you know removing footnote M there's like five other changes that would dramatically affect what goes on in the RG so how is that conversation going to go when you know we can only take one item at a time I don't know that we can sort of suddenly you know at first focus on one thing to think that on a topic that's four weeks down I mean sure they influence each other but I think what we're trying to is take it in bites because otherwise yeah don't move forward at all so I guess I'm just very worried about the quickness of the biting and I think we'll have the same concern basically that this is a lot in a too little time we'll see how I think we're going to be circling back you know we'll keep circling back on what we've done previously we don't have to have the final drafts until the last few weeks and if the idea is that the town manager is actually going to present these to town council and then the town council will decide oh well we want to refer this to to CRC and the planning board and we want you to hold a public hearing by ex-date so they're going to give us some guidance as to how this is going to work going forward but it's the town manager who's being asked to present these to town council I'm viewing myself as a person who coordinates all of this probably does all of the drafting of the bylaw amendments themselves looks to my staff in the planning department as well as members of the zoning subcommittee who are willing and skilled to help with graphics or research or comments or whatever and this is also a good vetting mechanism it's a public meeting and we have members of the public listening to this I suspect there are probably some town council members who are going to come in and out of these meetings so they'll get a flavor of what some of the issues are so rather than just me sitting in my room and typing things up and then boom handing them to the town manager to give to town council this is a vetting process and that it's going to take I don't know how many weeks we've got maybe six weeks but I think it's going to be really useful to hear what are the upsides and downsides of a lot of these things that are being proposed because we don't really know yet because we haven't really studied them so that's my view of things yeah I think we're here to help support that study aspect I don't expect we're going to be writing a report so if that sounds good and if anyone else has any issues about the work plan I'd like to actually get right into item A the BL footnote B study that a few of us did may I say one more thing before we get into that which is that there's been some concern about writing reports and the reports won't actually come until after the planning board holds a public hearing on any of these things so between now and March 15th we will not need to write reports we'll just need to come up with text for the zoning amendment and then whatever backup and research and pros and cons we can present to town council along with the text and then later on after the public hearing we'll write the the planning board report to town council okay I lost my participants thing uh yeah does that sound good we'll get right into item A now Ben can you make or I think Doug you would want to like move around some of the diagrams with your mouth so we could just talk through what we did does Doug need to be made a co-host or can you just share a screen I think you can share a screen oh okay um Doug do you want to I have the I think I sent you the email the pdf where it has all of our diagrams um we could just sort of set up what we've studied and then show it diagram by diagram yeah that's it do I need to unmute you Doug or okay I'm on now I'm unmuted yeah now you're good all right and you can see the screen here yep you can see your mouse moving yep all right Maria do you want to start with this or do you want to let's start with the easier one because that one's the weird parcels I feel like let's start with like the one and more in the center like yeah either this one or the next one yeah okay let's see this is mine so um at first I'm just going to go through what Doug's calculations and my calculations what we did was we first took just existing and showed it with existing setbacks um and then write that one and then the next calculation we did to the right of that is if there was no residential what can happen right now as the code says for bl and then the lower left we said right now what can happen residential as is and um and then the lower oh I said sorry I said lower that lower right is um say we do add bl to footnote b what happens and um we did this as max build out we really put on our accountant hat or mathematician hat and our architect hat um just to get the numbers and crunch them and see what was possible so um does everyone know what we're looking at here like do they are they oriented to this location maybe you can say something about where this is sure sure so um this is the bl that's right by Kendrick park um Doug's circling right now um oh I can't remember the names of the roads but um Kendrick is that sort of v shape empty space there and then um what uh Andrew also sent was like a really interesting thing about the owners of the different parcels and it was interesting how um I think it was the ones I marked b c d e f g most of those are owned oh wait it's the one below it the the block down most of those are owned by one property owner was that right Andrew I think that was right yeah yeah that's right and then on the upper block I think three lots were owned by one owner and he's like b d and f maybe but they weren't as you know together but um what was revealing about this study and Doug can talk about what he studied but I did it by parcel and um put all the setbacks on and what bl allows is only 35 percent lock coverage so actually bl is pretty well known for exactly for these size lots with the 35 percent coverage it's kind of a like everyone calls bl transitional it's not suburban and that there's not a lot of pavement everywhere and um so this square foot is lot um seem like what bl was designed for um unfortunately as far as residential you can see in the lower left it does not allow any residential right now only really parcel k allows one unit j i'm not sure because the square footage on the assessor's page does not match what is drawn but j seemed like he could have one so clearly that's the flaw in the bl zoning but as far as sort of um density and urban planning the numbers seem to work maybe Doug found out something different but the lower right shows well I guess I'd comment on this yeah first of all in the upper left it's interesting to me how many existing structures are non-compliant with the setbacks I think all of them are non-compliant yeah so you know the sort of urban pattern that maybe people like is to have the structures out closer to the street because so many of these houses are in fact quite close to the street and don't have the setback and then I guess in the lower right um or even the upper right um you know the side yard setbacks of 20 feet from the lot line creates 40 feet between structures and uh that to me is is uh you know the buildings are objects in the landscape as opposed to creating a uniform street edge and so I you know I could kind of see how that might be a good transitional approach but I think I think that's worth talking about I guess uh and whether you know whether if if we really want uh or if the town really needs to to build more housing should the housing it builds continue to be in this kind of quasi suburban setback uh regimen or should it be a little more urban with a stronger street edge and less and less distance between buildings so that back to me is a question that was raised by by what Maria did here right all right and it was interesting also when we studied the different areas of BL the triangle street parcels are really different than the parcels here that are more central so yeah you can see in the lower right um if we do move to BL and it's kind of hard to tell from the calculations but um basically the bottom row of that chart shows um if you have a three-story building which is allowed in BL um you can have you know for example parcel A can have 12 units um B and C could still have they still are too small to build any residential but the the highest number shows as if there are three stories for each of those structures so clearly um that does loosen up the ability to bring residential as far as that aspect and um so what size what size units were you using do you remember Doug yeah yeah what I drew it when I think you continued to use was Chris we used the same 1000 square foot distance uh area that you used in your memo from 2016 uh and the box that I drew was 25 by 40 and um you know I think I think that's really big for you know an apartment um kind of as a typical but but I just thought that's where I'd start with the same numbers you used um I I guess I I also kind of question whether whether the number of units in an apartment building is really relevant to what we're doing um I may have said this last week but you know like when I look at an apartment building I just look at whether it's well maintained and whether the size and scale of it is appropriate um I'm not sure I really care how many units are in it um and although you know I can imagine that the the primary implication for units is does it how much parking might it generate in terms of demand if you figure you know there's so many spaces one or more per unit of per apartment unit so should we um make a decision about what size apartments we're going to be uh using I believe that you know some people are saying well um you know the apartments that um what's his name Amir's place I think they're like 600 square feet and some of the apartments on Spring Street are 350 square feet so do we want to come down from the thousand square feet and be more um more in keeping with what the average size apartment is in town um or do we want to stick with a thousand square feet just to be uniform and then have people you know kind of bring up this point again and again what would be a thousand to account for common area as well though that's right yeah when Doug drew his designs we just figured um we're not designing we're just trying to crunch the numbers and that counts for like elevators circulation stairs that we did in drawing um but I actually I have to uh say something I actually did reduce these to 800 for this uh this diagram so that's a little confusing because for the others I kept it at a thousand but for this one I actually couldn't fit that um diagram rectangle that you started with Doug so I actually made them smaller so I could even get any so I think that's right as long as we're consistent then we can compare but I I couldn't fit the thousand square foot and have a corridor you know for these parcels so um I guess what what what we wanted to show with the diagrams though was just sort of numbers right now and not think too deeply about um you know streetscape and design we're just trying to see what the bl allows now and what it could allow and um so we um because in terms of what it it would allow it seems to me that if um one land owner owns four parcels and combine them then that's what Doug's gonna get into next okay yeah why don't then why don't we go to the second one for this area so so my assumption I I started with assuming that in every case all of the parcels were combined because I wanted to sort of see what the maximum buildout could be uh whether you call that worst case or just maximum uh probably depends on your perspective um so for this area you know this is quite similar to what is probably identical in the upper left to what Maria showed I did add uh one east pleasant and the block that has Xana and the toy box uh to my diagrams just for scale comparison all right and then uh I uh my diagrams use the uh have the same have the square footage that's the same calculation over here for the 35 percent buildable area but I drew the kind of existing non-residential scenario as a deeper footprint because it's probably offices or retail so those are the blocks that would be available conceptually if you just combined all the lots in each block now then in the lower left um with the calculations we did um lot c is not buildable it's too small lot d could have um a maximum of 11 units so what I drew was a third of that on one floor assuming it was a three-story structure you know obviously if so there's a total of 11 units they could be 11 units on one story or six units and five five units on two stories or 11 units you know or four units on three stories why was it 11 instead of 12 well because you start with 20 000 square feet you remove from 62 000 that leaves you 42 000 you divide that by 4 000 per unit gives you another 10 you add that to the initial one and you get 11 thank you and then I assumed that the footprint would be the I'd round up and then you know the odd unit would would drop out on the third floor so that's how you know a lot d and a lot e here are labeled and shown and then if you took footnote b away it's sort of a reverse calculation because um let's see okay with with footnote b added to bl basically you have the same square footage allowed in footprint as as uh if it were non-residential but if you have a shallower building that is a double loaded corridor with apartments it could be something like I've shown here just I made the assumption you'd want to hug the street edge rather than set it back from the street and then I just uh saw how many of those thousand square foot blocks I could fit into that footprint and so obviously if we made them 600 square foot unit sizes the number of units would go up significantly uh in this case all right so what you showed Doug tells me if this scenario ever happened you know where all the parcels turned to one lot is is what you show in the lower right consider transitional or is it considered more you know I know everyone says Amherst is not urban but I'm just saying as an additive it's this is a more urban response to the street what you've shown in the lower right yeah well and the other thing that you know kind of parallel with what Maria said that we had our accountant hats on rather than our architects hats um you know that's a really that's a lot e that's a really long street that's a long face of a building I don't think any architect would really do that you would either you would you'd set back somewhere once or twice in the in the uh facade and break down the mass of the building so I hope this doesn't get construed as gee we're gonna create inhumane buildings right right I'm sorry so is this also 800 square foot dwelling units or is it thousand no I use thousands consistently throughout so if the units were like 450 each you could just multiply by three for each of those if they were no you'd multiply by two but if you just if you shrink I'm sorry thank you but if you shrink them you could you can say multiply by two or you shrink them more it could be multiplied by three so there's a lot of flexibility in there and then yeah and there would be no okay and so yeah and if they were if they were micro units you know with uh essentially studios you could probably triple it yeah which is spring spring is like spring street has a lot of very small units but though could you go back up to that previous sheet so looking at um we should have put them side to side make it up so open up uh down to um the same so see how the lower right diagram I showed that is with the BL moving into footnote B and so that's what we're sort of trying to uh vet right now is like you know this is probably what would happen for the block A through G but then what Doug showed might happen for block H through L with the exception that yeah no architect would build a 500 foot long building but you know we're we're trying to figure out is this shift from BL to be a first step out of way to fix BL um maybe we can look at the other areas of downtown before we serve but but I just want to make sure we're focusing on like that's that's what we're here trying to figure out and um to just sort of keep the lower right diagram in mind as we study okay I also wanted to make a point which is that as the units get smaller there are fewer people who can live in them so even though our bylaw says that four people could live in a studio apartment that's not realistic so if you have a studio apartment you're probably going to have one person if you have a thousand square foot apartment you may have two just keep those things in mind right if we if we're interested in having families if we're you know the larger unit size is much more conducive to that all right Maria you want to go south from here sure okay the uh the second area was south of amity street this is amity street here town I think that's town hall there um so amherst college starts right in here this is a parcel owned by amherst college but only the northern half of it is in the BL district and uh this is Hitchcock hall here so the Maria you want to talk about this one yeah well I mean it's the same idea upper left is existing conditions with existing setbacks and like Doug said the lowest parcel T is half in BL and half out and then the one um Doug's highlighting okay yeah that one uh is if we only put um we put buildings with no residential at all current bylaw allows that much coverage as far as uh 35 coverage and um no residential in the lower left shows that only parcels R and T um can put any residential and the number is I mean with one unit for R and six for T if it were three stories and then um yeah yeah yes Janet I just I need to be oriented so could we um one of those buildings is the people's bank right like one's a parking lot that's not on this study it's in the corner okay I'm lost then no always people's bank or is the P and R the the parking lots for the bank of america and the town parking lot sorry I said bank of america I no no no yes so okay so we're okay so the that includes this is people's bank here yeah this is part of the amherst cinema okay and this is Hitchcock hall of amherst college and where's that gray building that sits on the high hill that's it there okay that big one yeah okay all right um and so the lower right diagram is the one that shows if BL went into footnote B um you let's see what did my calculator say you could basically have three units on parcel O 15 on P and these I think are the thousands square foot units it was just that middle block I think that I couldn't fit but um yeah I I should I should I should have kept it consistent rather than trying to cram more units in but I think these are the thousands I'll have to check my general um but again yeah it does relax the you know like I don't think T would ever happen but you can get 24 units on three floors um S you can get 18 R you can get 18 and P you can get 15 so it does you know open it up to more residential however it has that issue that brought up about it's a little more suburban there's 40 feet between buildings but maybe that is appropriate for transitional so it's it's um maybe it's a massing study we needed to do next um realistically speaking though really only S would be developed in my opinion because T is owned by Emmer's College R is the parking lot for the bank and the two O's are the people's bank and P is owned by the town so that's not going to be developed to apartments in the near future and R even includes part of the part of the cinema I think yeah so then I did you know I did kind of the same thing I did before what if what if all the parcels got combined including the half that's owned by Emmer's College that's kind of the big footprint you could put on the combined parcel as a as a commercial building that is the footprint of a three-story building with the what is it maybe 21 units that would be allowed currently on a parcel of that size and then this is kind of the maximum build out you could do and that was 29 units at a thousand square feet each on each of three floors which would yield 87 units obviously you would never Emmer's College probably would never sell that parcel and they certainly wouldn't let you get so close to Hitchcock Hall but so that was sort of the worst case should we go to the third one sure yeah this is fascinating it was for me too thank you um so again same thing upper left oh sorry I'll orient everybody uh this is the um you can see Kendrick on that map it's that big open white space um U is where Bank of America's little kiosk is V is where um I forget it's like a liquor store a pizza joint I can't remember reading insurance yeah and a bank couple a couple of banks oh really okay there's two drive-throughs right here oh yeah yeah yeah and what's W is that uh I really can't remember that's a medical kind of medical and skin doctor and uh the boys and girls club there is there at the north end okay and then this is the dentist's office okay all right and the high school is just beyond yeah right okay so again yeah upper left shows existing setbacks um and then the weird thing about these three parcels is uh there are only two of them well three of them are partially in VL and not so um yeah that's the actual VL zone but the parcel goes beyond yeah um upper right is if there is no residential what's the max build out and that's what it would probably be about um X I forgot to fill in but you can imagine a really odd shape working with those setbacks maybe if I did or something um and then lower left um let's see I wrote the number of units so under current zoning you could have two units V 19 and W five and X again you could if you made a building that shape you could please do there so um oh actually no you probably can't because you don't have the four thousand additional per unit so maybe that's why I left it out so the lower right is the one that's the one if we brought VL into footnote B um taking a more urban uh stance about yeah like what Dave was saying dressing the street putting parking behind and then the numbers ended up you could have 72 units on you oh sorry 7 72 on V which is the center large parcel 18 on you and 30 on W and that's assuming three floors and those are the thousand script but okay that's my question yeah and um so you can see you know with these larger size parcels and with the studies dug dead it's a much more urban sort of response as far as if we move BL and to be for this area versus you know the more central parcels which are a lot smaller um you know it seems like what was the 35 percent coverage was really meant for smaller smaller parcels if it was meant to be like a transition zone this feels not like a transition zone zoning so um yeah maybe after we go through Doug's people can speak up as far as what their opinions are about that but that was what I found revealed to me doing these studies um and yeah Doug if you want to show that you okay again um you know the existing deeper footprints with the parcels all combined smaller footprints assuming three stories with the number of units available so there were approximately there were 26 units available on this parcel and eight units available on this parcel and then if you remove or you add footnote B um you know this gets again to be really large scale you wouldn't do that but uh the number of units kind of gets gets up to you know pretty substantial and those are a thousand square feet apartments right so yeah if they were 500 that would be 290 yeah yeah that's a lot of people or a lot of places yeah yeah you might even be able to support a grocery store downtown or you know find a place to park so so I understand Maria's point and I have to like add um the dull and legal legalistic cautionary tale about how well footnoted the BL is so the height could be an extra story um you know if we're waving maximum lot coverage it can get a lot bigger um I forgot I could kind of go through all the BL footnotes um we could add stories we could add height we can I've forgotten let's see can I ask one question of Chris that that uh when I started looking at this and I look at table three under the BL I already see a footnote B under basic minimum lot area and basic minimum lot frontage and Maria and I assumed that was sort of a mistake because does it mean when you go to the footnote it doesn't mention BL at all but uh Chris do you know why that's there and has persisted um I think it's because the BL used to be combined with COM and it's possible that the footnote was never removed but I think there's a more subtle reason and it's not coming to my mind right now maybe Rob Mora can explain that if he's still here he's got everything turned off so I don't know Rob is not here he's here Rob's here yeah well I mean he's he's here so let's ask him to let's ask him to answer that question Rob maybe he's having his dinner well I'm just wondering so um it's six o'clock we haven't touched footnote M uh what are members thoughts on you know should we should we continue to study the BL and be like just Doug and I continue to study this or does anyone else understand this well enough that they see a question you would like to study and then we've done Maria we also I think Janet had agreed to look at alternatives to yes all right right right yes so it seems to me that um um this is a big change from the existing zoning and um I think it'd be important to study the impacts and so you know yes maybe people it will support a grocery store but what are the impacts on people next door to you know so many more units or parking which obviously is a hot topic um and things like that so I think that I agree with Maria that we're sort of losing the idea of it as a transitional zone and at the same time the original zoning seems very constricting and so you know the the you know like what are the options and the options are we could keep the BL and change that 20 000 square feet for one unit or and then change the 4 000 square feet for additional units so we could shrink that and so maybe we get more units but not so many more units or you know this this might be pushing the BL really into a residential zone and away from a commercial zone we might want those buildings for you know for for professional buildings and things like that and so I think that one question that was can we you know we could play with those numbers I'm not I mean you guys have a you know so you know that would be an interesting thing I'd ask you to look at is what if you just reduce the 20 000 square foot requirement for the first unit and shrank it down and just didn't get quite the intensity but I did ask Pam Rooney to look at changing the BL to Business Village Center or Village Center Business I always get confused and it did have a more it had an increase in because it's a more flexible zoning so it did have it did produce a lot more units but not quite so many and then also she looked at turning it into BN neighborhood business which also the numbers work for that because I didn't have time to read that but what yeah so um she did just the cottage street thing and then she used she combines because there's only like two people I think who own the property there and so she combined them and Chris can you pull that up or I don't know if you've done it you can just read it because uh oh you mean pull up pull up Pam Rooney's um right up okay I think Ben has it oh okay or if you have one of you just read it out loud yeah well I'm trying to I'm flailing through this oh here we go for cottage street and she didn't she used I think the full part the full lot area rather than just the area of the lot that's in the BL okay Doug you're muted no I'm not no his lips were moving but I couldn't hear him that's because of the the lag oh okay so I should probably just turn off my video so one thing you could consider is um and this we did in the B when we created the BN which is right in the vicinity of where the embers media building is um that was actually created by the planning board and then or by the zoning subcommittee and then the planning board and then town meeting agreed with it you came up with a new zoning district that fit that situation exactly um I would be reluctant to recommend rezoning the areas around the general business district as business village center because they're not a village center they're a village center is something else it's something away from downtown these areas are near the downtown so we should come up with something that makes sense for areas that are near the downtown and I understand what janet is getting at that bvc may have um dimensional requirements that make sense here but maybe you want to come up with another zone that makes sense and uses the same dimensional requirements as bvc so that's that's another option to consider so I you know the question I have always you know you know I was deep in the weeds on all these charts and I just thought what do we want to have there you know we want to you know we want to have a transition zone we don't want to go five stories next to a you know a single family house or you know a two-story house with you know three rental units so I think what we need to do is say what do we want there and then build the zoning around that and also you know being the the effect of the footnotes I you know I would love to you know if we're going to go with this bl thing I think we need to sort of strip off some footnotes so people will be reassured that it's not going to be a four or five-story building and they aren't design standards there's no control of what the building will look like you know except for us on a given day or a given panel and so I think if we knew what we were trying to achieve then we can just we can just write the code to meet that so well janet I'd like to come back to something you said last week which was that students are not a protected class and therefore we could we could zone an area of town exclusively for students is kind of what I take from that so I guess since you know since uh it seems like a lot of the issues that we have in town or because there's such high student demand one approach we could take would be to pick an area of town and zone it for students and you know you could you know obviously the students are mostly coming going to school at UMass so you you could pick an area near UMass to do that or you could you know or you could say well some of those areas are near existing neighborhoods so gee we'll do it down in South Amherst people have suggested University Drive as sort of a student village and in the in the housing production the market study they talk about having a student overlay district and where you're really just planning around the people that are going to be there so that has that University Drive thing has been batted around for years um you know if you if you did well if you think about the Amherst you could say yeah then we'd have to have great busing and try to figure out the impacts on you know surrounding neighborhoods and stuff like that University Drive has the advantage of not really having that many neighbors except for the Center for Extended Care and the Arbor which obviously would have to be thought about I'd like to try to keep it back on what we're studying about the BL and whether footnote B is a right fix or if there's a different fix I wonder if anyone has ideas on next studies for this so that I don't I don't want to volunteer you Doug but I mean maybe we keep sentences in our head we studied a different whether it's square footage for a minimum lot or if it's setbacks or if it's additional lot per unit or maybe should we do it offline and move on to uh sorry six eleven I was hoping we got we don't know so you know get that started with some other members as far as doing some you know gathering information about that but it might be a little too it in to get too far in the next 15 minutes what do you think Chris I think it's better to stick with the BL and just try to go farther with that and then maybe at the very end someone will say I'm willing to research um footnote M whoever that might be and then I could work with them yeah okay because that's why I thought the work plan was a little ambitious having you know just one meeting per topic I feel like yeah if we can sort of go through this maybe a two to three meetings that'd be great so um one quick comment I think is that I think I heard both Doug and Janet talk about this kind of reverse engineering um and then there's somewhat of a problematic state of these these island buildings being generated in the center of these smaller lots creating these 40 foot gaps between buildings and all kinds of what's called them maybe not wanted consequences of some of the scaling and some of the proportions of these so I'm wondering if there is a way in which if you know as Janet's saying there's an in between um what does that in between look like and is it possible that there are other implications to that in terms of frontage versus you know side lots or an adjustment of zoning to accommodate that so that the side lot setback is smaller than the frontage or that anyway just thinking about other variations on that that give us a more desirable results um and also like you know you know the 35% lot coverage requirement is you know they obviously you could say that could be parking or green space but it could be you know a good you know it could those things serve purposes that it will help the tenants and help the town or the look of it too so I agree that somehow we have to figure out what we want there and play with that in a nice way um is this all are all these fields in the no parking district Chris I can't remember these three are I believe yeah Chris uh is are would you be allowed by zoning to put a maximum size on a building for a footprint you'd have to do it via a lot via building coverage in other words okay how much of the lot are you covering with the building all right so you can't just make a specific dictate that the you know the building footprint shall not exceed 25 000 square feet I don't think so but that may be a question to ask Rob you know I mean it seems to me that if we wanted to try to prevent any of these mega blocks from getting developed in that way but still have smaller setbacks you know in some dimensions that some way of limiting the size of the building might be useful I think that the apartment thing where you're limited to like you know 24 units I always forget the number and per building and then the lot coverage the building coverage is maybe a another way of trying to get at that in a weird way but I see what you're saying it's like if you just thought let's just not make the building too big and we're not so concerned about what's in it kind of thing well I was I mean I guess I'm not sharing I'm not sharing my screen anymore but I was a little I was pretty surprised to see that some of the footprints that I ended up drawing were bigger than one East Pleasant yeah and and one East Pleasant seemed to me to be about as big as you'd want to get you know with the with the town kind of the way it's headed and are you saying you'd be more comfortable on the same lot with smaller a few smaller buildings I guess I was also looking for potentially how would you induce owners not to combine into mega mega sites you know in one way is to say you know there's no payoff you can probably do it with design guidelines but we haven't gotten there yet yeah well I did wonder also you know I mentioned you know you wouldn't build a 500 foot front facade you'd just set it back here and there and break down the mass which made me think well maybe it's time to start with just a few pages of a design guideline tailored to the bl and then we add to it over the years yeah I've always I've always thought that the bl was really sort of an incongruous beast because it's in odd locations like at the corner of Dickinson street and route nine which is emmer's college property that's being used as a parking lot and you know kind of a like a facilities building so it's there and it's a long university drive and it doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with the downtown it's really a highway strip type of zoning where you can have a big building with a lot of parking and it doesn't really allow for much well in residential use unless you have a really big parcel so I I kind of like the idea of looking at what do we want there and then creating a zoning district that would do what we want and I think that you know based on previous experience with creation of the bn zoning district I think that it's possible to do that so why don't we think of that as opposed to just accepting the bl lock stuck in barrel and trying to make it fit so maybe Maria maybe we should we should look at that yeah yeah because we would just leave bl as is for those two other areas of town but then do a special one just for those three areas of downtown yeah I love that idea because um yeah these studies kind of show it's not ideal but what we have now obviously is not working so there's a somewhere in between so I guess offline Doug and I can work on that we don't need to discuss at this meeting and we'll bring something back that sounds good okay do we want to ask the audience if they have questions or comments well I was gonna um try to do that at the very end um let's see if um so we didn't get the footnote m maybe for next week that's our first item on the agenda Chris um that way we don't spend too much time on the bl diagrams again well Maria yeah wouldn't it be worth taking three minutes to see if anybody wants to volunteer to start looking at it and give us an introduction next time or something or not uh yeah if anyone's that brave I mean it was hard enough to get a minute taker so um I have to even remind myself what footnote m was uh I did send you a draft of um of a change I sent you the table three and I sent you the footnotes with m crossed out and the m's in the table crossed out but that's as far as I got but it only relates to the RG the general residence zoning district and I say only you know not really meaning that because RG is huge so it has to apply to that whole area RG is mostly around the downtown if you look at the zoning map it's a big area of yellow that goes you know from like I don't know Sunset Avenue all the way to the railroad tracks it's really huge so um we have to think of it in in that way but footnote m requires an extra 4 000 square feet of lot area um for each dwelling unit which is which is a lot for next week maybe someone could just bring a summary of it and ideas not necessarily as much you know obviously Doug and I were architects we can draw so I mean maybe if someone's here is just to give the rest of the group um you know a little bit more information about it so that they have it in their head and maybe can take it and hit the ground running with it could I could I pick a suggestion of maybe a site visit to the bls and to um I can never the the where the the um Christine what was it the the development that the building that led to the footnote m on high street is it on high street spruce spruce ridge spruce ridge like what if we just went and met and walked around the bl three bls and then spruce ridge and just looked at that because I think I'm I'm I'm kind of I think that would really that would help me so we could do that except that if we did it as a normal site visit we wouldn't be able to have any conversation if we did it as um a public meeting we'd have to stick to um public infrastructure we couldn't go on private property because the public would have to be invited and they can only come on public property so we can do that it's a little complicated but um we couldn't make it frankly I don't have the time to do that I have like a one day like Doug and I worked on this like on like Friday night and Sunday afternoon I don't think I can uh manage it but um Janet if you want to go with one other person I think that's a loud right you can have two you can have two people go yeah so yeah or you know everybody could just go on their own I mean I I know those parcels all of these parcels quite well I live just near near them all so well I don't want to just be seen to have a lot of zilling some committee ahead of us but I thought it would be a fruitful thing to sit there and talk and I would love to pick your guy's brains the architect's brains and the planner's brains about like what would what would what would suit you mean if we were doing a site visit there yeah so we would have to say that as a public meeting and we'd have to have you know members of the public invited and then stick to the and sidewalks sidewalks and and I'm thinking this is problematic in terms of like COVID because we'll be out there it would be problematic if we were just there ourselves yeah six feet apart but if we have the public there they're going to be there with us and and um I think it's probably a better idea to each go there on your own and then come back and talk about it in this arena okay maybe Tom could be my architect or something I'll ask one of you guys to go because I would love to get some good ideas so um so anyone volunteer for a footnote m and if not maybe Chris you can give a brief summary to introduce us to it and we can start a dialogue yes I can do that yeah well I'll do a quick uh spreadsheet with using some parcel sizes because it's it's purely a mathematical footnote oh is it okay you know all you do is you take the the lot size and divide by 4 000 and you know you're pretty much you're pretty much there okay well maybe Doug if you want to do that we can talk about what to study next and I'll do the the grant work of you know footnote bbl stuff whatever you know as far as the drafting if you want to take on that footnote m okay I can give examples of um where footnote m has been problematic such as the spruce bridge project which was the generator of footnote m and then there was another property in the rg district and I think it was in the vicinity of fearing street um where someone proposed something and it was actually a pretty nice development but it couldn't be built because of footnote m so yeah spruce ridge spruce ridge is on high street it's um if he's go to the go to the railroad tracks on main street and you look up and you see a new building that's going up right right along the railroad tracks then the next property over in other words um I think it's still on the same side of the railroad tracks yeah that's rich yep it backs up it's to the east of that new building under construction yeah so what I would be interested in knowing is you can look at spruce ridge and I can't remember it sits on an acre parcel but when if I pictured the r any rg lot of that size turning into spruce ridge throughout you know that that is startling to me and so I'd be interested in knowing you know what can if you took it away the like what is what does footnote m stop from being built and you know if we had a bunch of spruce ridges all throughout the rg you know in 40 or 50 years time that obviously would be a huge change in the neighborhood I also know that you can increase density in the rg in many different ways so I kind of like would like to see what that looks like or understand what else can be built in the rg it's also like the district with you know a billion historic houses and you know our traditional architecture there's not that much open space there that can be developed it's mostly side lots so I don't think that the effect of taking away footnote m is going to be huge so it will be true in certain areas but I can I can try to study that yeah figure out how many lots and things like that because I think on high street or one of those side streets there are a lot of big lots but anyway so item D I feel like we talked about a little bit through having the work plan shown to us so I want to just make sure we let the attendees speak this time with everyone present because last time I said see you later and then we didn't get to hear the public so I it's not on our agenda but normally we sort of open to the public and if I see one hand but I'll limit it to three minutes because after that pretty much just wrapping up oh there's now a free hand so I'll keep time but if yeah I can keep it um two to less than a couple minutes um that would be great we all have a family and hungry snacks so um Kathy I think your hand was up first thank you can you hear me yeah okay I will speak quickly I had a few thoughts first of all I thought it was an excellent conversation um and Chris bringing my attention to BN BN is a really interesting zone when you compare it to BL um for what it allows so a couple comments one there was a question about the three areas you talked is that in the parking overlay so and the answer I think was yes so one thing to think about is should it be so if you did anything that allowed more density should you just redraw the parking overlay so that you have to have parking and if you didn't do that because we're talking about potentially a lot of cars if you didn't do that there are some areas and it's coming a little bit in Massachusetts impact fees because if you remove that big parking lot where the ATM machine is you might lose parking space so could you do something if you're removing parking space you pay into a kitty that you're getting money back to build a garage someplace so that we actually get money from it um secondly um the drawings were really I thought really useful and it would be helpful as you start looking at this to think about how wide are these roads and are there sidewalks now and how wide is the sidewalk you know so if we're talking about walkable you know we don't have any streetscapes in our zoning code but we could so in some codes I've seen as they move the building new buildings clearly old ones wherever they are they stay but the new buildings are adjusted to allow for a sidewalk if there isn't one particularly on a narrow street um to allow people to walk like cotton street right now people walk in the street that's and it's easy because there aren't a lot of cars then um the other there was a question about mass and we don't have it in our code but I saw in some codes there was a Florida area ratio so you took the square footage of whatever the the bottom floor was then if it was three more floors you added all of those up and you could say how much mass we are willing to allow in this particular area as a way of limiting the mass so you could you could do three three skinnier floors or three or two wider floors but it was a ratio and the towns I've seen that have that is where they want a little bit more dense it's one ratio and where they want it to be less dense it's another ratio to stop the building and Chris I saw one reference in our zoning code but it seemed to be not in much of our code um it just isn't there um then the last thought is on the the areas you've circled there is quite a bit of commercial um and we we're losing most of it downtown um and one of the reasons people want to come to a downtown urban area is there's um an eatery there's a bank there's uh small things so the BL looks like it's got more commercial in it with a scattering of residential and do we want to protect some of the small commercial in some way um so building on top of it rather than completely displacing it and I think residential can be more of a financial gain so I think we want to worry that we lose what little we have um and so just keeping that into the weighing the plows and the minuses and I think that's it you know when I looked at BN it was interesting for use also so looking across our zones on what can be in a BN versus a BL it's just a useful um instead of trying to fit just to the list that was given to you to think to think what do we want is I think a good approach thanks okay thanks Kathy um Dorothy you're next you get two minutes I'm timing you I'll start when the you're on you so you're still I don't hear anything yet yes okay can you hear me now yes good I think you know that somebody watching this and doesn't see names and doesn't have any um way to unmute themselves I'm gonna be very brief this was fascinating and really complicated and I'm just hoping that I could get copies of those charts because I know it'll take me a long time just to read through them to catch the codes to compare them and to think about them I think it's a really good start and trying to understand the kind of choices that we're being presented with or maybe presented with I did have a question for Doug when you drew and I can't tell you which chart it was but it was like a u-shaped building that was open the hollow place of the u was open to the back you did that and I think a lower right hand drawing so it'd be like the fourth one in one of your sheets um if you reverse that and had a u-shaped kind of like um like you know I think of the building in the in the Bronx with which had a lot of apartments and it was maybe three or four stories tall but yeah it's it's the the used one here and but that would that was open from the front if there were a building of that type where the the whole of the u is facing the street and you could have small shops on the lower floor of that u and then maybe some green space or common space there I could see that could be something that might be inviting and keep some of the um interaction between people in town and still provide increased housing I don't know if that's what you meant with that design or whether it was just to be parking back there well I I guess should I answer that or not um oh that's quick for going well I I you could certainly do that I think the other the implication of that would be that the mass of the housing would be up against the adjacent rg district and uh you know then the neighbors would be more in the shadow of whatever's been built that's all okay more let's see you're muted now so click the button one more time still muted there you go yep um I I think what what I wanted to say was mostly been said at all but I was wondering if you could just change the portion of the bl that's near the downtown that we've been talking about to be in zoning instead of all the bl that's number one and number two there's a limit in how many apartments can be in a building but if it's a mixed use building that limit doesn't apply right yeah so you could fit the 75 units or whatever in there if you just put some kind of business on the first floor third of all all the businesses that I use downtown practically are in those buildings that would be demolished and made into apartment buildings if if this all went into effect and you know what happened with the other big buildings is all the small businesses never came back what we have our mass mutual and vacant space and another in a noodle restaurant so I I really think it you know we should think carefully before we um just do something like that wholesale sure definitely yeah no we're basically crunching numbers we were not for wearing our architects hat like we said so thank you so much for um joining in oh did some more hands go up nope those are the same thing thank you so much for coming and speaking of this really great to hear the public um and I hope you come to the next one um item four topics not reasonably anticipated anything Chris I don't have any topics no thank you okay so next week um we'll do five to six thirty and tom yeah just show up when you can and if we have a thing for you we'll make sure it's not the beginning of the meeting that you have to be late to um and we're adjourned thank you very much this was thank you yeah great work thank you I'll be in touch dog all right bye bye