 Okay, Jack. We have Amherst media with us. We are recording. You are a co-host. So. Okay. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of May 5, 2021. And happy Sanko de Mayo to you all. Our meetings are hitting some of the more festive holidays as we also met on St. Patrick's Day this year. So, fourth of July is on a Sunday so we won't have to worry about that one. Based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. GL chapter 30 a section 20 and sign Thursday chapter, or excuse me Thursday, March 12 2020, the planning board meeting is being held virtually using the zoom plan platform. Mike jumps second as chair of the plan Amherst planning board. I'm calling this meeting to order at 630pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst media live stream minutes are being taken. For members. I will take a roll call when I call your name and mute yourself answer affirmatively and then place yourselves back on mute Maria Chow. Tom Long. Here. Andrew McDougal. Present. Doug Marshall. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Here. And myself. So, for members of technical issues arise. Please let Pam know if technical difficulties occur, we will meet. We may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting discussion, maybe suspended while the technical issues are addressed in the minutes will know if this happened. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see you 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 period and reserve for comments regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Public comment may also be heard at other appropriate times during the meeting. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments. Please be aware during the general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment, join the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing link that is shown. And 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. If you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited 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. I just want to express their views up to three minutes and at the discretion of the planning board chair, if a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds there a lot of time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. I just, I'd like to note that I had some correspondence with the town regarding the format of our zoom meetings and the ability of attendees to view each other, which was a topic of discussion and the editorials, you know, last year, and I was able to confirm that the town of Amherst IT department has set the current zooms settings for security purposes, and to essentially eliminate the possibility of zoom bombing of inappropriate images by an employee without the need for additional monitoring by Amherst staff so that was this little research that was that was made. So with that, we can review the minutes of April 7. Is that correct Pam. Yes. Okay. So, do we have any comment amongst the board on these minutes. Any motion to approve. So move. Okay Janet and a second. Second, Andrew. All right, any further discussion. All right, so I'll do a roll call here. Maria please. Andrew. Proof. Doug. Tom. Janet. Hi, Johanna. Hi, and myself is yes. So that's unanimous approval of these minutes. And we will make a minor modification to the agenda and present item a under old business as the first item of business. In this meeting. I'm sorry. I jumped the gun. Public comment period. And give that a minute. I apologize. So I see one hand raised. Ian. Camara state your name and address. Hi, Ian. Can you unmute yourself. I'm actually not Ian. I'm at Ian's house. This is Jerry Weiss. I'm from middle street in Amherst. I'd just like to speak to my ongoing disappointment. That the planning board will likely give another special permit to an archipelago building project that won't result in a single affordable unit downtown. I may be speaking too soon as archipelago directors could voluntarily offer affordable units and take the tax credit offered. I'm sorry. But I'm especially distressing since a member of the planning department has admitted in public that the interpretation of article 15. Use for the past 12 years was a misinterpretation. A misinterpretation that has cost the town dozens of affordable units in the three previous archipelago buildings are likely in this one as well. Jerry, I'm just saying this, this is on the docket. And the public comment is for. So I'm getting to two. I'm one sentence from. From not on the docket. I'm leading up to the. A misinterpretation that the planning department has an excellent fix for. I'm urging the planning department and the town council to pass a moratorium on new permits. Before another building project like this comes along under this previous missing misinterpretation. I realize that must be repeated over and over until a new law is passed. Adding to the problem are the current woeful design standards downtown. Also being reviewed with excellent suggestions for improvement. It boggles my mind that a permit moratorium is not being supported by the entire planning board and town council. All of the planning department suggestions would result in a far more successful downtown. And the new buildings would be more attractive and the diversity of inhabitants now not present would be a boon for businesses, as well as advancing equity in our town. Thank you. Okay, I see no other further public comment. And so we're going to move the old business item. We are 2020 dash zero seven Kendrick park playground presentations of signage information regarding conditions four and six of the site plan review decision. Properties Matt 11 C, you dashed two for four in the RG zoning district. And Chris I assume you're letting Nate run with this right okay. Thanks everyone for letting me present the Kendrick park signs I'm going to share my screen. Kyle and Dave thanks for your patience. The designer view board looked at the sign yesterday and they said it was fantastic. They had a few comments but overall they did like it so the just a preview again this is the design for the play area and Kendrick park. The yellow area is the playground with equipment and then there's sitting areas and a walking path this, you know, north is to is this way to the right. Here's East Pleasant Street. There's an, you know, a new paved walkway, I can call it an east west walkway. There's a major walkway into the play area and there's a planting area and they'll be that's the location of the welcome sign so the idea is that there's you know just one one sign for this for the play area. Sorry about the different page sizes. So originally when we presented this, you know with the big documents the idea was to have an internet post and a sign that was you know less than 12 square feet so it wouldn't trigger a special permit and it would have, you know something on the front and something on the back and you know staff thought it would be worthwhile to try to integrate a sign design into the way finding system which is going through review right now and so working with a sign designer we've, you know this is the proposed sign so it has the same. The same color and font and you know kind of stylistically the same as the way finding system, still using an eight by eight granite post. There's T brackets mounted into the granite you can see here the the fasteners would be visible so that you know to sign fabricators thought they could be, you know, they could become a decorative element they could be painted or they could be a different material. The sign itself is, you know, five feet long, a little too little over two feet high, the proportion works nicely here. You know there's a little bit of space in between the post and the sign, and it's a two sided sign so the front of the sign has welcome to Kendrick park. And the new town logo, the sponsors for the playground need to be noted you know the town of Amherst the park grant program and community preservation act funds. And you know this so this, you know just to scroll down quickly here's the way finding sign so the font is the same, and you know a lot of the proportions are the same the posts are different you know that it's it's for the recreation area you know for a street side sign but it really does try to use this template as the basis for design for the sign. The back panel. You know so it's two panels mounted to brackets and so you know the idea for that is a panel could be removed if needed if it's vandalized or needs to be fixed as opposed to, you know having the idea showed basically a sign that was integral to the brackets and so essentially the brackets and the panels were all one piece and if any if it was damaged and the whole thing would need to be replaced and so, you know with this type of sign you can take one panel off you can even replace a bracket individually. Anyways on the backside of the sign it would just have the logos were required to have the funding logos for the park grant program and if there's anything the CPA committee, the bike. The idea is to have 12 by 18 areas where the rules and regulations for the park and safety protocols for the playground could be could be listed on a separate vinyl sign that would be you know surface mounted to the panel. Another panel could be a map of downtown showing you know parking restrooms and other you know other shops so it helps orient you know if someone's here where they can go to get. We can you know have restaurants and different establishments listed. And the third panel. We've talked about having environmental education component to the park and we have some rain gardens and on on site stormwater management so there could be that. So basically at the planning board there was a discussion in the designer view board like the idea of having kind of a community Bolton board so where someone could post other things or maybe it would be like a monthly rotation at the town the bit in the chamber could actually have an area where events are posted. And so there's some concern about putting it on a sign like this because then anyone might start posting anything on the sign and so one of the designer view board recommendations was to actually have a separate wooden post with you know a 12 by 18 board that would accommodate this kind of rotational event posting. So it wouldn't be on this welcome sign necessarily but there could be a separate standalone post and so that's something staff is considering but it's a nice idea because you know otherwise there's no other places in Kendrick park to you know there aren't any kiosks right now to post information about community events or what's happening downtown. So in terms of comments from the design review board, you know they, in general they, they, you know, they, they, they thought the design was an improvement, you know they had suggestions about you know possibly raising the top of the sign to be level with a granite post so instead of you know having a three inch step down it's a, it's a level across and that would mimic the design of the way finding signs. So the Kendrick park is title case so it's a capital letter and then lower case and on the way finding sign it's all capital for Amherst. And they thought that was fine as long as you know we're consistent with the application of typeface and font so you know if, you know, for the thought could be this this sign could be a model for other recreation areas and then you know for you know for off park it would follow the same pattern where you know off park wouldn't be fully capitalized it would follow this type of a font pattern. And you know they just and they said also just make make sure you're consistent with our spacing our lettering and overall kind of aesthetic. And they're meant let's do it also their memo say it'll lettering is the same. Right, they prefer to have the logos on the back of the sign so you know I have the funders haven't really indicated that but you know we're acknowledging them here and it works but it'd be you know we thought in terms of the aesthetic of the sign having the funders also have a visual logo or symbol, and if you know it may not work with this with this design so you know we're going to have a space for them on the back. And I think, I think that's probably it for the DRV comments. Tom was there if you wanted to report anything that I've missed, but you can also step comments from the board. Yeah, I think they were also emailed around today. So, they're posted as well. Yeah, you got it, Nate, you covered it. Tom I didn't get a chance to look at those comments or maybe if there's anything that deviates at all. You're welcome to. No, I think me covered pretty much all of it, and then some so yeah I mean there was a lot of discussion. The notion that I was responding to Andrew's comment from the previous time we saw the sign where Andrew preferred the kiosk based sign for Kendrick Park because it would allow more community engagement and postings and you know events and things like that so that's where that comment came for the backside and so there's just a negotiation about whether that information belongs on this sign or whether there's another dedicated location for that. But other than that I think all of the other comments were covered here. Great. So, the way finding signed that that concept is is somewhat new. And I'm wondering if Chris or Nate can say, to what extent we are, you know, in this conversion process for this signage in town. Sure. So, you know, here's, you know, the way finding system really is, you know, kind of, you know, there's a hierarchy of signs right so there's, you know, welcome signs what you see here a larger sign that would help direct vehicular traffic, you know and pedestrians but really it's helping, you know, that's the first level to help people, you know, show them where the town center is or really welcome them to Amherst, and then there's a series of other. And pedestrian kiosks and other way finding signs. You know, this is another example of a directional post that has been presented as how I believe the town council the Community Resource Committee. Chris can correct me if I'm wrong but, you know, again, using the same design template color scheme font and everything to help direct people more specifically just, you know, to certain locations institutions, you know, parking and area communities. So, it is relatively new I think you know the town's been working on it for a number of years we had a technical assistance grant a few years ago to help with kind of way finding and branding. And you know we see it as a way to simplify and then also streamline, you know, a messaging for visitors you know how to navigate Amherst and find places so. I just wanted to add that most of these signs are in the public way. And so the jurisdiction is with the design review board and the town council and planning board doesn't necessarily have a role with the public way because it doesn't it's not covered by zoning. There was one location that is at the corner of triangle street and main street and it's on the Emily Dickinson property. And so Amherst College and the Emily Dickinson museum have given the town permission to put one of these signs in that location in place of the sign that Emily Dickinson museum has there. We're going to add a panel that talks about the Emily Dickinson museum and that sign it's on private property but it had to go through the zoning board of appeals because it's oversized. Actually, all of these signs are oversized. And if they were on private property, they would be limited to four feet. Square feet, unless they got a special permit from the CBA but since they're in the public way. They're not limited, as far as the size of the sign so I think that's, that's about all I have to say but we're going to try to install these probably starting this summer. Ben Breger in the office has been working very closely with the sign designer and this is kind of the pattern of signs that we're going to hope to have throughout town and you'll be seeing these in several locations. Thank you Chris Doug. Yeah, I make. Did I miss the showing us where the exact locations of these are. The way finding or the Kendrick Park sign. So that, you know, we're discussing a Kendrick Park sign there's really this sign there's only one location, only one sign for Kendrick Park if we zoom up a page in the park there's the east west walkway and it's there's a planting area right here you know as if you're approaching from East Pleasant Street walking west the sign will be right here before you kind of enter the playground area in the play area so that's that's location of the Kendrick Park sign. And then the way finding other signs are going to be located in at least four locations. There's one that's going to be down along route nine coming up from University Drive somewhere along there we're working with the state to figure out exactly where that can go. There's one at the Amity Street and University Drive intersection where then. I forget, I forget the name of that play new market new market yep new market center at that location there's a sign it's going to have two panels pointing in two different directions so people coming to that part of town can be directed into the town center. There's one that's going to be probably on the south side of the town common as it is adjacent to College Street, and it's either at the southwest corner, or the southeast corner of that larger portion of the town common. And we may be working with we may try to work with the railroad company to get a sign up on the railroad trestle as people come up College Street. And then we have the sign at the Emily Dickinson Museum at the corner of Main Street and triangle. In addition to that I think we have 11 or 12 of these of those post signs that Nate showed to direct people to various locations throughout town so those are going to be really primarily located in the downtown area. The northern part of Kendrick Park down to the intersection of College Street and self pleasant. And in addition to our way finding signs Amherst College is also embarked on a sign program so they're coordinating with us about locations and we're going to try to keep, you know, the southern clutter down but also make sure that people know how to, how to get around and how to get to the places that they want to go to. So I think that about covers it there are two other types of signs that we are three actually that we may be doing eventually one is a, an arrival kiosk, and we would have at least one arrival kiosk at the boltwood garage and it's, it looks. It's all a version of the sign that Nate showed you, but it would have a map on it that would show people how to get to various places, then there would be some smaller kiosks scattered around town we don't have locations for those yet, but those would also have maps and locations for to direct people. And then we may have interpretive signs which would be a slanted panel on on a footing that would tell people about a certain site it might tell people about the town hall or grace church or we haven't really determined exactly which locations those would be located at and then. Oh, I might as well tell you about the other type of sign we have a writer's walk sign program that was recently approved by the Historical Commission. And I think those signs are also in the town right of way which is why they didn't come to the planning board, but those should be being installed over the summer and those are similar in style to the signs that we're showing you here tonight so we're trying to make them all coordinated as much as possible. Okay, so given given the the status of the rollout which is mostly this summer. Do you want comments on the graphics of the signs. We're here for the comments on the Kendrick Park sign so that if you have comments on those that the. I don't want comments on the graphics of the way finding sign in general because they've already been approved by the DRB and the town council. But if you had comments about the Kendrick Park sign. That's what we're here to talk about. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Doug, Janet please. Quick, quick comment which when I was reading the thanks to the town of Amherst and the park program and the CPAC money. I immediately thought that we should be thanking Mr Kendrick. And then, but then I realized like oh this is really for the playground and so I wonder if the sign should say Kendrick Park playground and showed that the money want that I just sort of felt like, immediately when I read Kendrick Park I thought we, we should acknowledge Mr Kendrick who provided the whole park. So that's just, you know, I don't know if you want to add the word playground or add Mr Kendrick somewhere but I just that was just my reaction. Thank you Janet. Any other comment from the board. I see none. And we can open up to the public. And I don't see any. So many for the discussion Andrew. I was just going to say I think Janet's suggestion was a really good one in terms of the recognition to be a nice touch. So would you prefer recognition for the Kendrick family or say have this say Kendrick Park playground or Kendrick Park play area there. I think the family, I don't know how you, you would be able to fit more words on here without really ruining the effect of the sign. Right. Yeah, no I think, yeah that acknowledgement can could be considered and worked into the right the text, at least acknowledgement the thinking of the family and the gift they left. Thank you Andrew. Anyone. Like to make a motion for approving this with any conditions perhaps. Yoana. I'll move to approve the sign as is. Okay. Is there a second. I'll second but just to clarify with this as is or with the recommendations that were recommended by the. So let's do it. Well, let's see. So the recommendations by the design review board were to move, nudge up the sign a little bit, and then our recommendation was consider acknowledging the family. I guess I'm open to either of those I don't. What is the staff what do you need from us like is that in terms of emotion. Yeah, I think that if you think that the science should be moved up to be flesh with the top of the posts, you should say that. And if you think that it should acknowledge the Kendrick family's gift, you should say that. All right, you want to revise your, your motion for that. I'm going to rescind my motion and see if anybody else is ready to make a motion on this. Okay. May I offer my own opinion. Yes. I agree with the design review board that the top of the sign should be flesh with the top of the granite posts. I think that the granite posts really stand out here as kind of a monumental aspect of the sign and they really stand out more without the sign being flush with the top. That's my personal opinion, but I think it's really nicely designed the way it is. So, just offering that for what it's worth. It feels like we need to have a little bit of discussion on the, on the two proposed modifications. Anyone and Andrew. I would say like, I actually agree with Chris's opinion on that but I, I also would rather defer to the design reviews board opinion on this so I'd be comfortable going with their recommendation just given their efforts to work on the committee. So I would, I would be comfortable with their position. I mean, the design review board also, you know, discuss this, so it was a, it was a suggestion. I don't know how, you know, how strongly they're recommending it. I think it was a recommendation from, I believe it was from one person on the review board and then it was briefly discussed and I don't think there was a universal consensus and so we were putting it forward as a suggestion and something that we looked at. I don't think it was a recommendation that the sign will perform better or look better if it were in that condition I think we haven't seen it. So we were just hoping that the designers would look at it and see how they reacted to it so that would be the recommendation would be to study it as opposed to necessarily do it. Okay, and then, and with regard to the recognition of the family would that be on the, on the front side or on the backside. What were the thoughts on that, Janet. So I would just be happy to, I don't feel like I don't want to put so many cooks in the brood on this sign. And so I think maybe we can just send these ideas to whoever the decider is or the designer is saying, you know, several planning board members and that the Kendrick family should always be acknowledged or it should be acknowledged and, you know, other people felt this way that the sign post was higher, you know, the granite posts were, you know, so just, I don't want to. It just seems like I don't really have us, you know, I want to defer to the people who have spent the most time with it but maybe just offer the offer some of our suggestions without it like a vote and having us discuss and kind of, you know, spending so much time on this. Can we just do suggestions and have them pass the long do we need to vote on what we really think as a group. I guess that's my question. You need to vote to approve the sign. And then you could offer suggestions going to consider this. I think I, I, I'm going to move, you know, as chair with regard to the proposal proposal as presented by Nate. And is there a second. All right, Janet. Any discussion. I see none. So we can do a recall Maria. Andrew. Hi, Doug. Hi, Tom. Hi, Janet. Hi, Johanna. Hi, and myself I great. Thank you so much, Nate for that presentation. Chris. And I'm going to get the preamble here together for the next item, which will be a joint. Wait a minute. Joint public hearing. It's just joint because it's the site plan review and the special permit. Oh, okay. Okay. Can I give a little introduction here? Sure. So the applicants came to us with an application for a site plan review for this building. And as we looked at their application, we became aware that they needed dimensional modifications for certain things. So we thought they needed a dimensional modification for the side setback on the north side and the side setback on the east side. And that they also needed a dimensional modification for the height. When we looked at it more carefully, we realized that the side setback for the east side is really not something that's available to them at this time. The bylaw has been rewritten in that aspect since when East Pleasant Street was designed and approved. So what the applicant is going to do and hasn't done yet, but I expect, you know, in the next day or two is going to submit an application for to have the side setback on the east side, which is supposed to be 20 feet. Because it's adjacent to a residential zoning district reduced to five feet. The residential zoning district in this case is the cemetery. What they're going to do is be asking for a special permit under section 9.22 of the zoning bylaw. There's an existing building on the site, which is very close to the cemetery. I think it's within five feet of the cemetery. So it does not conform to that side setback requirement. So the building commissioners suggested to the applicants that they could apply for this special permit under section 9.22 to reconstruct essentially an existing non conforming building. And then the town that planning board will need to make a finding that what is being proposed is not more detrimental. I forget the exact language. But once we do receive the application will do an addition to your development application report and explain this a little bit more and explain to you what finding you need to make. But those are the three special permits that are needed a special permit for modification of the north setback, which is supposed to be 10 feet and it's being proposed to be five feet. A modification of the height requirement the height is supposed to be 55 feet and the applicants are asking for 56 feet nine inches. And then the third thing which isn't a dimensional modification it's a non conformity that they're asking to be recognized and that would be a reduction of the setback from 20 feet to five feet. So I just wanted to put those things into play. And I think that Jack could open up the public hearing for the. Oh, and then there's another part to this, which is that the property immediately to the north of where the building is going to go is a separate property. And it's going to be used as a staging area for construction of the proposed building, and the applicant has had a conversation with the building commissioner about the wisdom of separating out these two parcels and these two projects. The applicant has also submitted a site plan review application for use of that adjacent parcel for construction staging and access area. So as he goes through his application presentation, he can explain that to you but so you're looking at two site plan review applications one for the building site one for the staging area. A special permit application that you have right now for side setback on the north side and height. And, as I said in a day or two we'll be receiving another special permit application which you can consider at a future time for the, the non conformity issue on the east side. I just wanted to kind of put all that in place. I think we wrote about this in the design in the development application report, but it's a little complicated so I just wanted to share those, those facts and those thoughts with you. Thank you. Thanks Chris. So with that, I will do the preamble for this. And again, it's 708. There's a schedule for 635 so we're good there. So in accordance with the provisions of MGL chapter 40 a this joint public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested to be heard regarding SPR 2021-07 and SPP 2021-02 archipelago investments LLC 11 East Pleasant Street. They request a site plan review approval for construction of a mixed use building containing dwelling units in combination with a ground floor retail commercial space including approximately 1300 square feet of retail space lobby leasing fitness trash area mechanical space elevator parking and 55 apartments under section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw. And they also requesting a special permit as Chris discussed to modify dimensional requirement requirements for height side and reset back under a footnote a of table three section six of the zoning bylaw. And this is map 11 C parcels 276 277 309 and 310 of the BG zoning district again. Chris just mentioned some of the nuances of the special permit for this so are there any board member disclosures. Chris your hand is up. Yeah, Jack, you can go ahead and open the public hearing for the public hearing for the 640 public hearing which is the site plan review for the Jason do that at the same time that at the same time and then just lump them all together I have to be close separately but it'd be a good idea if you just put them all together for now. Alrighty, so that one. This is I think it's 202 109. Right. Oh, nine. Oops. Okay, might be on the back of the sheet that you have. Sorry. There it is. I got it. All right, and then we have this public hearing for SPR 2021 dash zero nine archipelago investments LLC 15 East Pleasant Street, requesting a site plan review approval under section 5.0 zero the zoning bylaw for an accessory and incidental use to a permitted principal use on an adjacent lot for construction staging and management of 11 East Pleasant Street project post construction. It's going to be stabilized with as asphalt surface and fenced. And this is map 11 C parcel to 75 and it's in the BG zoning district. Again, lumping these two together and then he or member disclosures. And I see none. And the applicant is welcome to present your proposal. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Kyle Wilson and David Williams. Thank you very much. Kyle Wilson from archipelago investments. Dave Williams is here as well. Mark Bobrowski, our attorney is called in on one of the calling numbers. If I could. Can I get control of the. Somehow the screen here. You should be able to. Kyle. You're a panelist. I think it's a good way to move that phone number into panelist and. I don't see it. So it. You have to let me know if you want him. Okay. If Mark Mark, I believe he's a 617 number. So I'll have him. If need be. Let me share my screen here. Before I do, we're here to talk about our 11 East pleasant project and adjacent 15 East pleasant. As we'll see on the survey and the civil and the site and everything it's a, it is immediately north of our one East pleasant project in downtown. It is. It reaches from pleasant street back to the cemetery. And the pub property reaches up to prey street. So it's obviously a very important parcel in town as any of our limited BG district parcels are. So it's a, it's a piece of land that is very important to the future of Amherst. So I'm going to put together as a couple quick slides just as an intro, and then I will get into the Then I will get into the documents that we have submitted and forwarded please hold a second. I'm being asked to, let's see. I'm not able to share here. This is all the documents. She can show them. I don't have an introduction, an introductory one though. How do you think it's a problem on your end. It could be. What me. Please hold one. Can you hold one second please. I can see your screen. Beautiful mountain scene. Yeah, that's. Okay, so here we are. At the top. So, There's just nine slides so it's very quick. And it's the context within which we are doing the projects we're doing in Amherst and within which housing in Amherst will be affected so this is from the us census 2020 came out a couple weeks ago. And it shows that Massachusetts is growing at it almost half a million new Massachusetts residents in between 2010 and 2020 to just over 7 million. The growth rate of Massachusetts at 7.4 is far and away the largest growth rate in all of New England, and is close to states like Virginia. And I see that Massachusetts is of all 50 states number one in education, number one in innovation, and number one in life science. So the growth that we've experienced in the past 10 years is based on on on being one number one in education innovation and life science, and especially following the last 15 months we obviously expect that to continue going forward. With that. Massachusetts has a housing crisis. And over the past 30 years housing production has been cut in half across the Commonwealth. So that 900,000 units were built between 1960 and 1990, and under 435,000 were built between 1990 and 2017. As a result, Massachusetts home prices have grown faster than any other state in the country, and you can imagine what it's done with rents. So, early this year. A legislature passed a new economic development law that is targeted at housing production and housing production lying behind the housing crisis that Massachusetts currently finds itself in. This housing choice initiative, as the housing portion of the bill was was known as had broad support across the political spectrum. The Citizens Housing and Planning Association was one of the big supporters of this, because people across the state understand that housing production is the number one tool to use to combat the housing crisis that we have. So, Rachel Heller, the CEO of Chapa said more homes in town centers and walkable locations are critical to grow our economy preserve our environment, promote public health, and meet the needs of our residents across income levels. Appreciate the initiative shows real support for communities to create opportunities for much needed housing production. We've seen this in Amherst, obviously 2015 housing market study that came out, analyzed where we are in Amherst what what the opportunities are to catch up with the lack of production that we've seen. And the number one opera the number one recommendation was unlock multifamily development. Obviously the consultants were well aware of our zoning bylaw were well aware of how much land was was given over to single family homes and how much, how little land was allowed for multifamily so also a housing study that was a forum that was done more recently in 2019 here in Amherst. There are a lot of opportunities for growth and affordable housing in Amherst. Two quotes from that presentation. This town suffers from a severe housing shortage and high land prices, restrictive zoning, unpredictable often lengthy permit process and neighborhood opposition to new multifamily development makes it very hard to build the housing that we need. The map is the town of Amherst zoning bylaw. So on the left is the bylaw per the website. In the middle, we have highlighted and read all of the land that is single family residential use by right. We've also in gray shown institutional or non residential land so land that is unable to be built with any multifamily. As you can see from this, you know 97% of the land is beyond that is taken up is is is either single family which is by far the most exclusive and land intense type of development that that that you can do, or institutional or non residential development that you're going to see any housing growth for the future. So, you can see that there are very few areas in the town of Amherst that are forced to do all of the housing growth work that Amherst needs going forward. Today, 53% of the housing in Amherst is already rental demand continues to increase. And the question that we need to understand and be prepared for is where will renters live in 2025, because they're going to live somewhere. These are the projects that we have been a part of here in Amherst, but would place in 2012 Kendrick place in 2015 Olympia place in 2016 and when he's pleasant in 2018. Our spring streets project is in construction. And these projects are all lead gold. They've all met those environmental objectives and been certified. These projects together pay over $1 million annually in Amherst property taxes. That's every year forever. We've begun our own property management company Amherst innovative living that started in late 2017. We have a wonderful partner in that with in Alex Ligera Sierra, who has done an amazing job, building that company. All of our projects have social media. All of our projects are available for folks to see how we handle that how we manage the properties. And in 2019 Alex, no, no, not Dave or I Alex was awarded the leader in innovation award by the Chamber of Commerce for the work that she had done with the Amherst innovative living providing the property management for these projects. And the last slide is from three days ago. And from the, the horror of 2020 from the extremely difficult time in November and January and thank God for Georgia. We are in a situation we've been whipsawed from that to this. And what this is is GDP growth that is projected to be as high as the height of the post World War two economic boom. And so we're in a situation now where where the strains that are currently being felt in Amherst housing promise to to continue and and become potentially more so. So that is the initial intro. And from there I wanted to jump directly into the project. And here is the site survey done by Harold Eaton Associates. As you can see, our one East pleasant project is here. North is to the left. East pleasant is on the bottom here, pray street is here. And the site is has a very unique shape. It is made up of five parcels. And those, as I mentioned those five parcels have been in the summerland family for since the 60s. And we are developing four of those parcels the four southern most parcels these over here is lot one. And a lot to is for the construction staging and for future use. And these four parcels here consist of the summerland building and the Piper building. This is the pub building. The, the, there is an easement that connects all of these parcels and at one point in the past, the bank property was also a part of this. So when it was split off there were all of the parcels to pray street and pleasant street were preserved. And this easement here serves all of the parcels so it serves this one is this one serves this one it serves the bank. So the intent is to keep obviously keep that open to serve the bank as much as we can. And, and, and look to redevelop this portion of the site and preserve this portion. This is a great plan for 11 East Pleasant. This is showing the footprint of the building and the, the approach to the property. As I mentioned to start this site has frontage on East Pleasant Street, and goes all the way back to the cemetery. Currently the Piper building resides in this location. And the intent of the design of the building is to allow for a view, which you'll see in some renderings little later on. So we have Kendrick Park from this intersection through the site back to the cemetery. It's currently blocked by the Piper building. The intent is to create a little more space. Open that up and be in a position where the view through one East Pleasant and 11 East Pleasant is available on the south side. On the, on the street side we have a retail that faces the street. We have a residential lobby with the stair and elevator they go up which I'll get into in the architecturals. We've got a leasing area and a fitness area. And then this is drive under parking which is very similar to the drive under parking on the building next door at one East Pleasant. So this drive aisle. This would this drive out would come in over the easement vehicles would turn in and come in here to access the parking that's covered and enclosed. This is a trash room, and this landscape area along the south is planted with mature Armstrong columnar Armstrong maples, which, which build a sense of scale looking back towards cemetery. The civil plans are produced by Sve. I won't bore you with the with too much of it but you know this is the existing conditions plan which shows the parking out front, which shows the easement which shows the parking for the bank. The property line is at ziggs and zags up to pray street. And the existing building which is almost on the property line on the back on the cemetery and and ziggs and zags itself on the East property line. This is our site plan, which I think will be a little easier to review architecturally. This is our grading plan, which is one of the more difficult things to reconcile here for us on the design side and for the design team. We have an existing building here where we can't change the grade here. We have an existing conditional on the street we can't change the grade and existing conditional on the entire north side which we can't change the grade. So the management of the surface stormwater on this site was tricky to execute. I think we've been able to come up with something that that works very well. It allows for all the grades to work the water to flow where it needs to flow and then allows for some pedestrian access here through this opening in the building which is which is open to the public. We can come back to the utility plan a little bit this is the erosion control plan. This is the architectural packet that we submitted to the town. This first rendering is from Kendrick Park across the street from Kendrick Park. It shows looking back towards one East Pleasant and 11 East Pleasant. It shows how the site is very narrow as it projects to East Pleasant Street and then shoots back feet back to the cemetery. The intent of the building is to finish the courtyard in in one East Pleasant. As you'll see in further renderings we've got a pedestrian access that cuts through the building that allows for that the pedestrian experience to extend into the middle of the site because it's such a deep site and the materiality of the building is the same Alaskan Yellow Cedar as has been used at Kendrick Place and one East Pleasant in the past. This is the site plan that shows the roof plan of 11 East Pleasant shows the building adjacent to the sidewalk to the north property line the east property line and the south property line shows the pavers and the site wall as as the pedestrians. This front section of the building aligns with one East Pleasant and allows folks if they so choose to be able to walk through and under the building and extend that pedestrian experience. These are the building coverages and lock coverages which we can go into further but breakout diagrams to quantify each of those. This is our first floor plan and this first floor plan shows very well all the things that we were trying to balance on this project as I said it's 276 feet long, very long site. This area here is all pavers that are identical to the pavers used at one East Pleasant would create a continuity of experience amongst from downtown once you're off the public way. The access the purple on the street is the retail. The building above holds tight to the property line. The first floor below pulls back to create a larger public space, give a water more room and imply that the act entrance to this. The residential entrance to the building is on the south side undercover under the overhang of the building up above which brings you back here into the lobby or into the leasing area and fitness beyond. Again, this is all like grade working with the civil that grade gets you through here and you can extend to the north and the drive. Vehicular access would come in along the easement would turn in underneath and would go back to this covered parking in the back on the ground for a met again we've got retail with two bathrooms associated with it. We've got a lobby that will have mail rooms and sitting areas we've got an elevator and stair, a package room, which obviously has new meaning now. And a storage area and beyond it we've got a leasing office and a leasing lobby, a bathroom fitness mechanical electrical bike storage along the east wall management in the back storage management in the back trash room here. We've got the lighting shown where we've got the identical downlights to one East pleasant shown on the exterior. We've got baller lighting that is shown on this south side number two here as as folks come down along this entrance way there will be also some recessed site wall lighting in the site walls and baller lighting to lead the procession back to the entry. We've got LED lights that are above this column here and this column here so these are brick columns that are teardrop shape that go up to the the the wood ceiling in this case and the zinc ceiling in this case, and around that that column would be an LED light downlight the brick column itself and highlight the materials. We've got four is two, three, four and five here. Where we've got Oliver elevator, fire stair, fire stair, janitor's closet trash room with a trash shoot and an electrical room. So we the form of the building has there's kind of a head and a tail here and this is where the the form is broken in the middle. And we have a open corridor on the east side. So when you step off the elevator, you'll be able to look down out through and into the the cemetery. We've got a double loaded corridor, which is just about 60 feet wide perpendicular 63 feet wide on the angle. And you can see that that remains the same for four is two three and four are identical for five there's a community room on the fifth floor looking to the west over the park. That will be available to all the residents along with a bathroom. The roof plan shows the approach to mechanical the stair elevator and penthouses here. We each of our buildings have fresh air that is on the house meter that runs 24 seven. That is an energy recovery ventilator we've got two of them here. These are the condensers that run the all electric high efficiency hyper heat electric air source heat pumps that are on the roof. We've got a propane generator that is on the roof. And then on the south side we have photovoltaic panels that run the entire length of the south and are on the 45 degree angle which is optimal and are integrated with the structural requirements of the roof screen, which, which can, which add up quite a bit. We've got elevations, all four elevations this first elevation on the top is the elevation from Pleasant Street. You can see the first floor is set back. Here's that the column that I mentioned that supports that and force 234 and five step up here. We've got the elevator over on integrated with the roof screen to to hide the energy recovery ventilators and the electric air source heat pumps and the solar photovoltaics facing south. On the north side, you can see the gash as we've called it through the design process, but this opening that is where the vehicular access and the pedestrian access overlap. You can see that Alaskan yellow cedar siding as that wraps on force 234 and five it drops down to a couple feet above grade, and then raises back up as it gets back to the cemetery. We have a number of sliders in in the facade and those sliders have Juliet balconies, similar to the Julia balconies we've installed in other projects. This is a gray brick that is on the ground floor for the bathrooms and the back of the lobby. This gray brick continues underneath the cedar as it raises the ground floor parking up above here on this other elevation again you can start to see the site walls again and then this is the entrance to the building. The residential portion of the building so anybody coming underneath this over here would turn the corner and go underneath here back to this section of the lobby to enter the building. The south side facing one is pleasant. You can also see the opening where that the form of the building changes. This is the entrance along the south side that would bring you along the retail and then along the lobby. This lobby is obviously part of our means of egress for the building so that lobby is lit 24 seven. That lobby would pull people back here and then you'd have this ability to see through walk through and and process through to the properties on the north. These are the site walls and this shows that we've shown a stair that would connect this lower grade at 11 he's pleasant to the high grade at one he's pleasant through the site wall. To the leasing area these windows are to the leasing area these windows are to fitness. Again the brick on the ground for that pops up and the Alaskan yellow cedar above the zinc accents that are on each of these individual vertical elements in the facade become a zinc become more pronounced in the middle of this building. So this zinc that is horizontal here wraps under and is the ceiling of that space below. We've got a couple renderings that will help this is a view an aerial view of the south. Again the Alaskan yellow cedar siding, the zinc cladding and the gray Danish brick on the ground floor, the glass storefront that pushes back to give the public space out front and then this is the circulation that brings you underneath the cover the building back to the residential entrance to the building itself. This is the space between one he's pleasant and 11 he's pleasant, which is planted with the columnar Armstrong maples at scale that that highlight this view back to cemetery. This is the curb cut that would remain we'd redo it obviously, but this is the curb cut for the existing easement that the vehicular traffic would follow up and and be able to turn in and get under the building. So this is a view from Halleck. Again, the intent here was to show that without the Piper building here pedestrians are going to be able to look through and see the trees on the backside of the cemetery. So while this is a, you know, this is a section of the BG district that does a but a residential district. There are 300 feet from houses, there are no houses here it's a cemetery obviously so the setback from houses is beyond the trees in in the distance. This is a close up rendering of the Southwest corner to show some of the detailing. This building will have Rockwell insulation outboard of the sheathing as the other buildings have had. We are increasing it on this building to four inches beyond three inches. This is to give depth to the facade, create a rain screen enclosure, give some detailing above the windows where the the cedar turns and creates a shadow line, and then allow for the zinc accents to to highlight elements of the side. There's a brick below on the first floor where it's turned vertically on the columns, again to highlight the verticality of the columns we've gotten overhang. This is the overhang that you would walk under to enter the residential portion of the building and a wood ceiling that will continue from the outside into the retail and into the lobby. So that whole first floor has has a wood ceiling. We're going to do the south portion of the building where where the form changes to accommodate the pedestrian path down down below, where you do see the zinc, the zinc accents becoming more prominent. And again that zinc becomes the ceiling on the ground for below and you've got a wood ceiling up above here. We see the materials come together again. We've got the gray brick, Danish brick on the first floor we've got the Alaskan yellow cedar and then we've got the zinc accents between the windows. This is the retail space on the ground floor with a wood floor and a wood ceiling. You can see those columns inside the space here, and then that one column that pops out of the space and is kind of the central feature for that, that that pause out front as people circle around. This little hallway here is back to bathrooms and then these are the ballards along the north side of the building. These are materials. We've got the Peterson Tegel brick. We've got a zinc cladding, and we've got the cedar wood rain screen. So we've kept the material very simple. The form somewhat simple and then have really tried to push the environmental performance of the enclosure such that we've gone with four inches of rock wall insulation out for the sheathing. So, with that, I think that is as much of the drawings as I intended to go through. I can, this is my first zoom meeting with the town here so I could. I'll defer to how well you know however else folks want to take it from here. Thank you Kyle. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you. Yeah. Very nice looking project. No doubt. Very impressive. So at this point, we'd like to summarize the site visit report that the planning board conducted last Friday. Would one of the planning board members like to volunteer that representation summary of what we saw. Where's the hands. You want me to summarize it. Yes, yes. I'd be happy to summarize and then people can add in. I was going to recommend you Johanna because you asked a lot of questions and you seem like like locked in so this is great. Thank you. Sure. So, a bunch of us met at the site on Friday. Initially, we, we started at the East pleasant side and just got ourselves kind of anchored on the site figured out, you know, where the pop property boundaries where would the overhang be. And then we walked. Essentially the entire perimeter of the site. And I'd say we spent most of the time near the cemetery side and looked at what trees would need to be taken out and what the facade on the back would look like and feel like and discussed, you know, moving the fence and just like what that interface on the back end would be like. And then we came back around to the front and talked about just the public right of way and how the site would interact with the sidewalk there. So that's what I recall. Others can feel free to chime in. Any other additions to that? The site visit report that Johanna provided. Okay, I see none. So we can just have a general discussion from the board members at this time. I, I have some but I think, I mean, I'd like to hear from our, you know, the several architects on our board, because they'll probably cover anything that I would have to say much better. Maria, please. Thanks for that presentation. I had time to look through the set a little more thoroughly after a few other comments and they kind of touched on the similar issues I had but first I just want to sing some praises. I really like the attention to detail the materials to sort of care about wrapping materials and the carving of the facade because like you said it's a really long building that's tough to make long buildings like look good and interesting and I think you really achieve that. Particularly on the north side I love that what you call the gash. I love that the fact that you're putting pvs on, you know, just thinking about the future you've got to do that and also the exterior. Roxal preventing the thermal bridging that's something that yeah every project really should take advantage of it's a pretty minimal add to do that goes a long way. I also liked how you worked with the site and try to open it up to get a view of the cemetery and I wonder if that area with the trees is occupiable at all if it's just visual or if it's helping with rain catchment. That was one question I had and the other question was. I was a little confused about when you said, you're going to preserve lot to know what that meant exactly I know that you're using for staging and taking the building down but what does that word preserve mean exactly when you were saying. I don't know if you have plans for it or if it's I mean it's obviously you're the part of the projects property but I just wonder if you could share anything about future steps for that. And I think the last question was if this was also going to be lead gold. But I think a lot of other people have mentioned things about you know the parking and retail space and maybe I'll leave that to other people to bring up but I, I have concerns about that and I don't have any solutions but I. I imagine this will be a multi meeting process and that will hopefully we can work with you to hone those pieces and get those optimized but I, I feel like this project really listened to a lot of the things that was said by town members as far as, you know, making it feel like it's not right up against the street, having a more of a public space and giving more breathing room at the sidewalk so. Yeah, I think that hopefully with you know working with the planning department and the planning board and hearing constructive criticism will help make this project better and better and. Yeah, thank you for bringing it. Thank you Maria. Thank you. Please. Did, did Maria want answers to a couple of those questions or not. For me, that would be great if Kyle wants to jump in or David and sure. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll hop in. The question about lead gold. Yes, the intent is that this would be legal as well. Through the lead for homes. Program regarding the site to the north the pub site. The intent was to it's obviously a very awkward site, some terms of shape in terms of the survey. The intent was to try to, because there are so few downtown BG parcels to make sure that there's future opportunity in BG. I think that that site. It's the goal through, you know, through the construction period of this of this project would be that it serves the construction. It keeps it off the street. There's a construction trailer there's a lay down area. There's mock ups there's some limited parking and the whole area is fenced in. Beyond that, I think the future of that site because it is the, the future of that site will have something to do with one of the adjacent sites. I think that there, we don't, we have no plan for it. We don't own any of those properties. I don't, I don't have a timeline on any of that stuff, just thinking long term, when you look at that zoning map, and you see that how much of that area in the town of Amherst is single family only, and knowing that we have housing needs that are going to continue in the future that we have to, you know, we have to be, we have to think about that. Regarding the, and you had one more question about rain catchment Maria. The, oh, the, can you occupy the space underneath the trees underneath the trees would be red twig dogwoods which are similar to the red twig dogwoods that are at one he's pleasant. I didn't walk through there but it's not intended to be occupiable. It has a red twig during the winter and it leaves out, and it's pretty robust during the summer. Very good. Maria, do you have any other follow up to that. Okay, Doug, please. So I'll echo Maria's kind of intro. I think it's, it's a very attractive project, and you put a lot of attention into breaking down a pretty large building. I guess my, my biggest question has to do with the retail, the small size of it and I kind of question how viable it really is. You know, I think I would be very supportive of your thinking about the upper floors and whether you can pull that elevator core back and or rearrange the west end of the building to give you more room for a more larger retail area. And I, I, I guess I'm a little bit torn about the, the setback of the retail and the overhang on the west end. You know, because I kind of like to give that square footage to the retail but I understand that you're trying to give a little bit of relief to the sidewalk. And I think if, if I'd have a hard time deciding which way to go, if I were making the decision, but I think that's probably the biggest question I'm going to have. And the second, this sort of related to that the leasing office, given that you own two other buildings in the vicinity. I'm wondering whether you could just lease all three from some other building. And, and so, you know, maybe you part of reconfiguring the first floor would be to allow the retail to expand back and then you don't have the leasing office in the way. Third, third comment has to do with the vehicular access to the parking under the building. Sort of S turn you're asking people to do to get in looks tortuous. You know, and it's hard to really believe if you put it the vehicle turning radio on your floor plan. You know, it's hard to believe that works to be blunt. So maybe maybe it'd be nice to see a diagram just so you can prove it to me that it works. Let's see next. I guess I'm a little bit surprised to see so much wood on the exterior. I know that you've had several other projects with a little bit of wood. I think it's relatively unfinished. And I know, at least the one. I think it's behind Judy's. You know, I've started to see a little bit of the gray weathering, or some people might call discoloration on those on those boards and so I guess I'm just surprised in terms of your durability and the longevity of that material. In our climate. I don't know, I guess this is my chance to just go through my list here. Sure. The separation between the West end of the building and when one East pleasant street. Is it in excess of the, I think it's 30 feet that the code requires in order to not have to put any fire separation rating on your exterior walls. Next, I guess I'm curious to hear about your target customer base for this for this building. When I did a breakdown of the of the bedrooms and the units. You know you've got 834 bedrooms. 80 of them are for bedroom units. And so 60%. And when I look at those four bedroom units those are those appear to me to be a definite student oriented unit. It doesn't look like a family unit. So, you know, one of the one of the conversations we've had in town and you know a lot of the comments we get about some of your other projects. Is that we're building too many too many beds for students and I know I'm it's clear you would disagree with that and I think there are others on both on the board and off who wouldn't have a problem with that. But I guess if you could just talk a little bit about kind of what your target client group is. You know, the number of parking since I wanted to expand the retail. That could impact the number of parking spaces underneath there. And obviously you don't you're not required to do any parking so I wondered if you could talk a little bit about your experience with your other tenants at your other two buildings. You know how many, if you know, and maybe Chris might have some information. How many of them are ending up getting permits from the town for parking. You know, versus just not having a car. In the packet that we received the shadow studies were basically eligible. So, I'm hoping you can give us a little better information they were just photocopies and the shadows were not showing up. And then the last question had to do with the sewer capacity that the town has from for the project and whether I wasn't I didn't really see that on Jason skills as report. So that's a question more for Chris to confirm that there is sewer capacity for this project. Thank you. Great comments Doug thank you. And Kyle, you want to take. Make me to go I see a hand up. Do you want me to respond. I think I think we're, you know, looking at some efficiency efficiency here in terms of, you know, one on one response. Gotcha. Okay. So, the first one question about the retail Doug, we did look at it a number of different ways. Obviously retail in the past 15 months has been very difficult to gauge and manage there's a lot of available space right now. We have a space next door immediately next door and one he's pleasant that is just under 4000 square feet, which we have found is too big. This is a very is a is a large size. And so managing that walkway through the space and working with that vertical core, as you, you and a couple others have pointed out is something that we looked at and the trade off is larger retail with no back for and fewer parking spaces, or what we think is the retail and we think the 13 to 14 square feet gives us a lot of flexibility and and more parking in the back. So I think that was the balancing act that we were, we were trying to pull off and and we ended up by push it you know keeping that that lobby in the front we also want to keep the residential piece not too far back, because that's the, you know the majority of the people are coming up and down residentially. And so that was, and by doing so obviously be able to provide as many parking spaces as we could, we thought was important. On the leasing office, obviously as we've started our management company we've, we've done some things wrong and a few things right and we're trying to learn and get better as we go. So we've talked with our team about this being a space that could least from all of the buildings that could lease all the buildings and it gives us a little bit of a walkway gives us some presence. It's not just tucked away in the middle of the lobby like when he's pleasant is. And we could right size it because you really don't need that much space. You just need access you need people to be able to see you and find you and come able come over and ask questions as needed. So we vehicular access we do have a diagram showing turn radius is, and it does work. It is working with the ballards working with the height of the gash as it comes in. We've, we worked on that a lot to make that work. If you've got a, you know, four door long bed truck, you know, it could be a little dicey, but for most vehicles, it works just fine. So this is wood cladding. These projects are framed in wood. You know, we're, we're looking at mass timber for future projects, because especially a hybrid model where the walls are panelized and the, and the decks are clt or nlt or one of the other lts. And in this case we, we want to, we think it's a very viable cladding product. The wood at boltwood place was red cedar. We learned from that. The wood at Kendrick place is Alaskan yellow cedar. When we installed that had a oil based cabinet bleach on it. That oil based bleach leached the oils from the wood and led to some discoloration at Kendrick. When we did one East pleasant we use the same Alaskan yellow cedar because it's much better in our climate, and we use the water based cabinet bleaching oil. And that works that doesn't leach the so it doesn't leach the oil from the Alaskan yellow cedar. It gives it a slight gray and allows it to gray gracefully. Once we found that cabinet no longer sells the oil based they only sell the water based, we went back and redid all of the wood at Kendrick place to do that, we do not have the product yet for boltwood place but we look forward to redo that one here shortly. The fire separation yes we looked at that so we don't end up with sprinkler heads sticking out the side of the building. I appreciate the architectural questions. The came read my writing here the, oh the, the question oh the target customer. So, we have a, and that's, that's one of the reasons we, we have this this opening piece here is that's a conversation that Amherst needs to have is. The majority of our housing is rental. The majority of that rental is directly affiliated with the, whether they're 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years old that rental housing is not going to. That rental demand is not going to subside anytime soon. So, it has to go somewhere. And we're in the process of determining where that goes. So, I think that one of the, one of the wonderful things about having built these buildings and operate these buildings is we've had to prove ourselves. We've had to show that that that management is the right thing that that we could manage it and that, and that the folks that are coming through our buildings are wonderful folks that you want to have downtown supporting local businesses on a daily basis. The parking is, is always tricky, I think with this long site we've, we've, we've got that opportunity in the back. And it is a, it is, it's, we've got the width to do so double loaded corridor, we've got the ability to come in and come out. And so I think from a parking standpoint I don't know the number of permits that have been pulled from the town. But I think as we struggle with the housing crisis, we're going to struggle with housing units or parking units. And that's a, that's a conversation that is being had in Berkeley, California, and Durham, North Carolina and Ann Arbor, Michigan, in a lot of places where, where the housing demands are so high that that people are asking those, those, those questions. So the studies we can obviously those are PDFs so we can get you, you know, clean solar studies, the sewer, actually the town replaced the sewer from the roundabout up to just past one East pleasant back in 2017. So it does have the capacity, the pipes that come out of these buildings are as big as the line in the street, which serves the entire downtown. So, the codes extend. Well be, you know, we have the ability to tie in out in the street into new infrastructure. And I think that was it. Thank you. Doug, you're good. So at this time it's eight o'clock usually take a little five minute break and then we can get back to more board questions and just for everyone's information. This looks like this will, you know, take more than, than, you know, one night. But we would like to, you know, wrap up tonight, you know, 9, 930 and not, not go to midnight as which no one would would like. So just keep that in mind but let's take a five minute break, and we can get to Andrew. He has his hand up next. Okay. How are we doing Pam. Pam you're on mute myself. I know. I'm always ready to jump in there. Let's see I think we are all back, although I don't see Maria. Can anybody else see Maria. Yes, she's there. There's Maria. Okay. I think we're all back and good to go I see Kyle, and I see David. And I see Andrew's hand is raised and then Tom. All right. So we're back online. We are back. All right. We're good to go. Andrew please. Thank you Jack. Thanks Kyle that really, it was a very comprehensive presentation and I'm impressed by your recall of all the materials and that attention to detail. It really is. It is a beautiful design. Actually, some of my questions overlapped with some that were already asked. So, maybe maybe a couple tweaks to my original thoughts would be, I had, I had similar concerns around the retail. And how that might be reconfigured actually I hadn't even thought about Doug's suggestion or it sounds like you thought about it as well as the retail office. But the, could you just make the whole head be retail, right, and then shift over and I lost my version of the plan here but you know could you move some of the building amenities like the gym to the second floor like take up some space but then have an area which is dedicated purely to retail and, and you know as you're saying the 4000 maybe too big but maybe you can get multiple 1300 square foot retailers in there if you think that that's more of an optimal size. But I wondering if that that's something that you might consider is is just playing with some of that configuration and, and putting the lobby for the package kind of back into the tail, the tail half. My list is my list is pretty short so that's that's one thought. I was, it's like one of the first things I thought when I saw this is like, wow it's a lot of impervious surface but then kind of reading through it actually sounds like like there's a reduction in impervious surface because of the materials are using the I think so kudos to that. I'm not an architect I don't know enough about sort of the mechanics, the mechanicals that you have in the roof but is there any opportunity to put any type of water reclamation on the roof like or you know rooftop garden or something to that effect just green it up. And then maybe tweaking a little bit on one of one of Doug's questions around the target customer and maybe is maybe I'll drill a little bit deeper. Have you determined what your rental rates would be like that might give us also a sense of of who those target customers might might be. And yeah, I think that's the only kind of new stuff I would ask so I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on that call. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, with the retail and where to put it and is it all in the head or is it partially in the tail. Driving into the parking is kind of the thing that sets all of that. And so you're left with this space on the south side which works very well for the leasing office and the retail. I'm sorry the leasing office and the fitness. And pushing the vertical circulation the lobby and everything back into that was just never worked out for us it ended up pushing the drive aisle way back and ended up changing the, you know, the circulation through the middle and created a retail space that had no back, which was not what we were looking for we wanted that. And then in order to bring a back to the retail whichever retail needs, we had to kind of brick up that walk through because that would then be the back of the retail. And so we, we again we we looked at a bunch of different ways and and settled on what we have because I think it, it gives us, you know, the best location for all the stuff that has to run vertical next to the elevator from a mechanical standpoint and everything else and then really allowed that ground for to work out and I understand the desire for potentially addition you know making that 1500 into 2500 square feet, which I think would be about the max. But I don't think that 1000 square feet is. I think the benefits of the plan outweigh a slightly larger retail space and that's kind of, you know we started shift moving around that that even that wall between the retail and the lobby to try to get to get a right fit. For the stormwater yep it's a it's an existing site that has a lot of payment on it already. And we obviously try to improve that we've we've looked at, you know, green rooftops, a bit a whole bunch. But it's tough to pull off unless you're really occupying that and making that part of your, your floor effectively for a space that's being occupied like the design building at UMass. Where you have this occupiable space that you go to and none of our roofs are are are occupiable. And then the target customer. And the rental rates again we're. We, we believe that the people we have living in Kendrick place and the people we have living in one East pleasant are our absolute benefits to our downtown are absolute benefits to businesses in downtown or absolute benefits to the street life in downtown and are are the are the folks that will likely occupy this building. Thank you, Kyle. Tom. Sure, thanks. Thanks, Jack. Thanks Kyle. Kyle I really as an architect appreciate your project. You know the walkthrough on the site help me really kind of understand what you're trying to accomplish. I think Doug and Maria pretty much asked all of my architectural questions that I might have about how certain things function. I think, you know, as a zoning board I'm also on the design review board so I might have more questions and comments when I see you on that board in a week or so. But one of the things that I think as a developer who's doing work in this area at the scale that you are and the impact that you're having as an organization individually on this community. I'm interested in your awareness of the conversation in our current climate of developing inclusionary zoning and or affordable housing within our downtown, as well as in other areas. And the need for it and the demand for it and so we speak about the demand for your clientele that you want to bring in your impact on the community is also important in terms of your ability to bring affordable housing to this community. And that hasn't happened and it may or may not happen with this particular project so I guess my my my question is really two parts and I think once for Kyle and once for Chris. And Kyle, I'm just I'm interested in what you see your responsibility to the community in terms of affordable housing in terms of bringing a more diverse community to Amherst and what role you can play in doing that. And then Chris what I guess what options and procedures are in our toolkit to encourage affordable housing in a project like this given that we have to give special permits and make negotiations around certain things that we have to give back so I'm curious about procedure on that so Kyle, I'm sure you've heard this conversation in town I'm interested in your, your perspective and how you see this project fitting into that matrix. So I'm going to call on Chris because you broach the subject that was on my mind as well with regard to the inclusionary zoning. So Chris. So the planning board and the CRC the Community Resources Committee and planning staff have been working with the building commissioner on a number of zoning amendments. Which were brought to us by town council and some of which the planning department and the building commissioner have put forward. And, you know, certainly there are some zoning amendments that may have an impact on this project and I'm sure Kyle is aware of those. So we have an inclusionary zoning so we have an inclusionary zoning bylaw that to date has been not very not very. I shouldn't say not very successful it has been successful in bringing some affordable units to town and in the last couple of years it's brought 20 affordable units. It was very weak and we've also made efforts with regard to working with developers to develop a comprehensive permit projects where a certain percentage of the project is is provided as affordable units usually it's 25% in exchange for certain modifications of zoning requirements in any event. The town is now considering making its inclusionary zoning bylaw more robust and there is a public hearing scheduled with the planning board and the CRC for May 19. We're hoping that there's a successful outcome of that that there are recommendations from the planning board and the CRC to town council to adopt the new bylaw. At the same time, there are mechanisms that developers can use to not comply with that bylaw there are mechanisms that are built into state law that I'm sure Kyle and Dave are aware of. So, how can I make this simple. The first publication of the legal ad for the planning board's public hearing was Tuesday in the Gazette. So that's kind of a milestone that means something in terms of whether zoning bylaws new zoning bylaws affect a project or not, but you know Kyle and Dave are working with their attorney and I'm sure he is aware of different mechanisms that can be brought to bear by developers to avoid complying with zoning bylaws that are being considered so so in any that that is in the work so we're planning department planning board etc are working on that and see what comes to pass the other thing that we're working on is mixed use building zoning amendments. Either of those may or may not affect this project, I can't say, and I haven't had a conversation with the developers about this, and certainly if they want to talk to me about it I'm happy to talk to them but that's kind of the status of things right right now. We're moving along with an inclusionary zoning bylaw it's all on. There's a link to it on engage amourst. There's a little box that you can click or maybe it's not a box it's a link that you can click to get to the zoning amendments page on the planning department web page that will tell anybody who wants to know the planning board and the planning department and the CRC are working on with regard to zoning amendments and that is one of them. So, does that answer your question. Sort of sort of yeah. I mean I'm interested in hearing from Kyle on that and maybe having a discussion after. Yeah I mean I guess is one of my comments at this point time. Yes, the town is at this point where we're reviewing so many zoning bylaws, they're all in play with this building moratorium that we're going to you know here, you know, in a couple weeks so there's all these things circling around the town that concerned planning board decisions. And, you know, I would, I would hope that you have some, you know, provisions to knowing that these, these, you know, some of these changes maybe, you know, you know, imminent and so with that Kyle, do you want to respond to to Tom's. Sure, sure. Obviously this project, we've been working on for years. We've been talking with where about it. We've had, there have been a number of leases that have been in place. And obviously the existing buildings on site are not long term highest and best used for the property so when we get involved in a project and we don't own the land and we have to procure the land, we have to go by what the bylaw states and that's how we have designed this building per the bylaw. So, there is a section of the inclusionary there's a section of the bylaw that's inclusionary zoning. There are height limitations there are setback limitations. That is all we have to go by as developers who are looking to obviously invest a great deal of money in town and pay a great deal of money in real estate taxes to try to put together a project to the detail that we've been able to put together. So, we have designed this project per the existing bylaw. The existing inclusionary zoning portion has dimensional special permits that trigger inclusionary zoning. This project does not trigger any of those. So, the, the, the, the number of units that Chris referenced in terms of adding 20 affordable units is obviously very important. We've spent a great deal of money to ensure that they are, you know, above 10% for 40 b purposes and to try to bring as much affordable housing as as possible. The affordable units is, you know, 10% the 40 b process is 10% right and so we obviously have to focus a lot on that 10% but we also have to focus on the 90%, which is the market. And that is the market that is consuming Amherst that's the, that 90% is the reason you have a 10% problem, and the 90% is about producing housing. So any zoning amendment that makes it harder to produce housing in any way shape or form is going to work against the long term goal of housing production. And I think that that's where Amherst finds itself right now is in a situation where each decision has to be viewed that way is it going to be, is this decision going to make it easier to make to produce housing or more difficult to produce housing. And that's the basis for a lot of the stuff that's that has changed at the state level, because that's when that gets applied at a municipality municipality municipality across an entire Commonwealth, then the number of housing units that you build over 30 year period cuts gets cut in half. So, in terms of our responsibility time, I think, you know, Dave and I have always approached this from a responsibility to improve the downtown. Right. I mean when we bought Kendrick Park it was paying $3,000 a year in real estate taxes, Kendrick place. It was a vacant parcel. And when we bought and worked with the folks who own the carriage shafts to redevelop that was paying $1718,000 a year. The fraternity up an Olympia Drive was also paying $15,000 a year. Those three projects now pay a million dollars a year annually to the town of Amherst. So I, we take that as a very serious responsibility. And that additional tax tax dollars do a lot of things that we, you know, trust the town to do the best they can with, but that's a million dollars that the town has now through our improvements in town that they did not have before we got started working. So, I think that it's a, I think that Amherst needs to stay focused on the 90% the market because that is the by far the biggest elephant in the room, the 10% obviously is extremely important we have to decrease our diversity. I think if you see the tenants that are in our buildings you can see it's a very diverse tenant base. It is, you know, well represents the people that come through our wonderful town on an annual basis. And I think it's, and I think if we if we lose track of making sure that we, we, we produce housing in the next five to 10 years. That's going to serve Amherst well. Thank you, Kyle. And Janet please. So, just a few things to say, just to kind of keep the record straight is that there is no residential zoning district in Amherst that doesn't allow multiple units on it so we don't have single family zoning. And that's the only thing you can build on the lot we have the supplemental dwelling units and as we've learned through footnote M. A lot of our, you can and through converted dwellings there's, you know, you can build multiple units on most residential lots, probably not in the community. And so I just want to put that to the side and then we do have a lot of institutional zoning. And that is called UMass Amherst College and Hampshire College and they're very capable of building housing for their students, and we would wildly encourage them to build more so that land isn't locked up and kept away from more housing so I just thought that presentation was a little, a little bit, not quite what I think is the real the facts on the ground. Amherst has met its housing production plan goals that we had for five years and then we kept going and we kept on handing out more permits. The issue we have now is we met the housing production plan goals for a number of units but we didn't meet it for middle and low income people and affordable. Actually probably, you know, blue collar and affordable low income housing meets and that's the problem we keep on facing. And so I think the question that Tom is asking is, do you feel like you have a commitment to also provide some of those units as you're also making money and benefiting from are actually very liberal multi mix use building things. You're also asking for a lot more space that's that you're asking us to waive setback requirements. And I'm wondering is, is there something you want to give an exchange for that but one thing I'm really wondering is how tall is this building because when you showed the map. Which was called PR 20.01 the elevations map. It showed a 57 foot building, which would trigger our for our current affordable housing requirement because you're asking for two feet. But then when I saw the development report. It seems like maybe you've lowered that to one foot, nine inches to to kind of get away from that so I didn't really understand how tall do you want this building to do I know you get 55 feet. Do you want that extra two feet that would trigger the 10% requirement. So I have, you know, if you could just answer those specifically. Sure. I think that first the point on the, the initial drawing Janet and the single family is Dave and I are of the opinion that the scale of the housing issue is is much larger than the housing production plan. And I think that's that's going to be more apparent in in 18 months than it was 18 months ago. I think you see that with the average home price. I think you see that with rents. I think you see that with people looking to continue to develop in and around Amherst. And I think that the, the issue is if we don't build the housing. We're obviously not going to get any affordable units but that 90% of the market will continue to rise. So the $290,000 average home price in plans from 2013 is now closer to $400,000 average home price in 2020. So those things will continue to happen. If, as, as this place continues to have a very high quality of life continues to be two hours from Boston continues to be three hours from New York City, especially post COVID with people being able to zoom and work from wherever they want and I think if you talk to any of the realtors who are selling single family homes right now. There's obviously a demand issue and a supply issue and I think that's going to get worse regarding the height of the. I can't I can't you're on mute. I can't hear you. You're helping us build housing it's not a question of like we're not going to build anything or we're going to build all everything but you know I understand there's a bigger framework, and that's actually something that the planning board in the town council and planning are grappling with and you're grappling with, and you're also benefiting it from it right and so my you know the question is, as the town. Yeah, and so has this. I mean the other question I'm very, you know, like Tom is asking, would you be willing to do some affordable housing, because you're getting kind of extra, you know you're asking for a setback, but I'm just wondering, is this building going to be 57 feet high because then you're just triggering our current requirements, and then we can just move on to talking about retail and other issues. I mean, or did you lower it or you know I have two different numbers in front of me I have a stack of paper so. Are you asking for one foot nine inches. I believe that it should be clear in the documents that we've submitted so I don't know if there's, if there's some different documents that went out. We are not intending to go beyond the, the two feet that is allowed as discretionary within inclusionary zoning. So it's beyond two feet as is written in 15.1. Okay, so it's not one foot nine inches so it's, it's okay. All right. And so, okay, so that was one of my questions or I was trying to get some clarification from, you know, I do have a lot of questions and one of them is about the retail space so your buildings have increased our tax taxes, you know, produce businesses and your produce units, and people are shopping from those. The tenants are, and yet there's fewer and fewer retail spaces because your buildings have replaced them and so I think the idea of having a bigger rate, a retail thing in the store front, and maybe having a couple of small spaces would a be places that your tenants can shop and could help keep small businesses in town that were lost but I think that's a great idea. That's one thing. In terms of parking, I think this is an issue that we're going to have to talk a lot about because this is a no parking district but there's parts of this. Both the special permit requirements and the requirements for site plan review that they're adequate facilities for the people for the building its use and the people who use it. And then you're not creating a nuisance for you know people, the buildings around you or the town. And we all know that the number of spaces provided by the buildings that you guys have built is hasn't people like many of your tenants have gone out and gotten permits from the town 40 or 45 of them seem to be parking in that parking lot that will be where 15 East Pleasant is and so my you know the question I think we should need to do is gather information is how many permits have people from Kendrick place and what East Pleasant Street been asking for the town I have some information here. In addition, you know, and so, you know how much parking are your tenants going to need. And I think we're kind of circling around the question of who you're renting to so I think three of us have asked you. Are you renting to undergraduates, graduates, university professors, families, you know, working people plumbers, do can you give us a sense in very specific terms, like, is it mostly undergraduates is it 30% is it 20% I'm sure they're all fine people, but we keep on asking this question over and over again. And I think we just want an answer. Who do you expect these tenants to be who are your tenants in the other buildings. You know what percentage of undergrads versus grads. Well, what we build market rate housing, and we don't exclude anybody. And, and that's, that's, that's the, you know, the tenants in our building are the same mix as the 53% of the houses of the housing units and Amherst that are rentals. Obviously there are undergraduates. Obviously there are graduates. Obviously, it's, it's a, the need that we satisfy in our units is the same need that satisfied on the other 5000 units that are rented in Amherst. So your, your tenants are and will be students then. Is that where you just will absolutely be students. I just want to know the information. Well, and that's why I've shown the pictures of our social media, you know that is very that is available to anybody I mean our social media our property management that the need that Amherst has is being satisfied by all 53 all 5000 rental units in this town. And that need is going to continue for as long as any of us are here in Amherst. Okay, so it's mostly, okay. I think that's all I wanted to know. So, um, I wanted to also talk about setbacks and public space did you want to talk about parking as well, Janet. Oh yeah, you want to. I mean the municipal parking district that was, I think first Institute in the 50s had a purpose. To ensure that with these unique awkward lots that the town was able to redevelop and was able to bring housing downtown. And I think that the that can that that continues to be the issue. As I said earlier, there are a number of municipalities around the country that are eliminating parking, because they realize it adds cost to buildings it increases the number of housing units that you can provide. And so that is a struggle that is across the country and a lot of high quality of life places where a lot of people want to live, and there's a large rental market. And I think that that is something that Amherst we obviously have to manage here in Amherst. We've tried to provide as much parking as we can on site, and still be able to afford the buildings that provide the housing and pay the taxes, and provide the retail that they do in terms of the size of the retail spaces. Obviously, when we worked with the folks at the carer shops to redevelop that property, there were a number of retail spaces, a number of them were no longer viable. We've got a number of retail spaces that are no longer viable through Kobe. The retail environment has completely shifted as everybody orders everything online right now and we have a, we have a fantastic strip. As far as strips go that is three minutes from downtown Amherst with all a sea of parking as far as you can see in front of it. So the competition, you know the retail future of Amherst is definitely going to be different than it has been in the past. And I think that we have tried to right size the retail needs in each of our buildings relative to what we see as as the larger housing needs. And I think that that is, again, that's that's what our downtown needs to be and the way that the retail survives and thrives is by having people living there by people walk in walking distance by people who don't have to park. They don't have to get a bagel or to get a coffee or go out to eat. Good, I think. I keep my computer keeps muting me. So, okay, so, so, anyway, so that was, I mean, you know, I have a question for you, Jack, because I know that I'm sure there's a lot of people want to make public comment and, you know, I'm an attorney and so I, you know, I look at all the special documents and all the site plan review language. And, you know, and, you know, deep into the heart of non conformity. And so I wonder how we can organize this, you know, because we can just all run through our list but I do have more things like do we want to in the future say let's talk about parking and retail. Let's talk about setbacks or public space. Do you want to organize that more. I just throw that out to you. Well, no, I feel like this is very, you know, an initial sort of presentation of initial feedback to Archive Belligo with regard to their, their design. Hopefully Kyle and David you found the comments thus far helpful. There definitely will be more because we haven't taken public comment. We were waiting what the design review board. Chris what else are is out in the wings there. The other group that you'd want to hear from is, you'd want to hear from the tree warden about the trees that are supposed to be taken down along the cemetery property line. I also want to hear from the historical commission about any potential impacts that the project may have to the cemetery. So the historical commission is going to be hearing about this project, I think sometime in mid May, and the design review board is going to be reviewing it, I believe on Monday, May 10 at five o'clock. So hopefully by the next time you meet with the developers, the applicants you will have heard from them. And my suggestion would be to allow public comment tonight and continue the public hearing to June 2. And then, you know, Kyle and Dave can come back with answers to the things that they've heard, and you'll have more opportunity to talk among yourselves and the public will have more opportunity to make comments. So, Jack, could I just, if I'm going to, can I just take a two seconds more just to talk about setbacks and public space just to alert the applicants. So, I think, you know, I was walking down around one East Pleasant, I walked all the way from, you know, one end of East Pleasant to up to Antonio's. And in a lot of ways one East Pleasant is an anomaly in the center center and on that road. The sidewalk gets super tiny, I didn't actually realize that there was public space like that kind of area that where the restaurant tables were and it's kind of dark and overhung I never thought about that as public space. Our sidewalks are much wider and the buildings are set back and there's gardens and you know there's benches and so it all gets really narrow at East Pleasant Street so I would love to see this building open the sidewalk up again and and have the building set back before so there is more public space there's more plantings and trees, and we get that look of our downtown put together in a more inviting way. There's you know I was walking along one East Pleasant, and like people were trying to pass me and couldn't you know and so it's so narrow and so I think, you know when I saw 15 East Pleasant I was like we need to make this much bigger. So I think I'd like to maybe the planning department could do like a study of the setbacks of buildings and the sizes of sidewalks throughout the center so we can you know have a coherent kind of street experience and kind of fix the problems we have with one East Pleasant and we can't fix that one but we don't have to continue it and make it hard to for people to walk and I didn't really have any sense of public space and the overhanging thing I don't think people would actually think it was public space. Just, just real quickly on that that there are the vast majority of buildings around the common I have zero lot line. That is the bylaw how it's written that the that the building itself sits on on on the property line facing the public way. The only difference with one East Pleasant is how close the town put the curb on the street relative to that property line, so that there is no space to put a sidewalk in front of it there's not that same space that you have in front of Hastings, or in front of Judy's or in front of high horse that that space is not there. Because when they redid the south end of Kendrick Park and made the little park lit across the way that got reconfigured, and it became close to imposing on private property so it's not. You know, the intent of the bylaws to put buildings on the on the property line, the, the issue that that you're complaining about at one East Pleasant is relative to how narrow the town's curb is to those property lines. So that's something the board might want to think about is having the building kind of go back more and creating that, you know, because there's much more space. If you look at the property line, if you look at the site plans for 11 East Pleasant, there is much more space between the property line and the curb line at 11 is pleasant than there is at one East Pleasant, it gets much wider there. So that space is available in the public way. Anyway, that was just anyway, okay. Obviously, you know, the one East Pleasant Street was was properly, you know, consistent with the bylaws there and it's just, it was just a unfortunate circumstance where I think, you know, visually, if we would have, you know, taken everything together that, you know, perhaps the setback would have been suggested there but it was compliant. You know, one East Pleasant Street is compliant but I think everyone recognizes that it's a pinch point and probably, you know, hopefully the town will kind of will fix it. You know, down the road in terms of making a little bit wider there but it's it's certainly not incumbent on archipelago because it was. But Jack, that's a condition that the planning board could could impose is that we could we can we can require greater setbacks then. Right, but I'm just going I'm just reviewing the one East Pleasant, you know, how that was, you know, it's it's compliant with the bylaws, but probably if we had looked at it again, you know, might have asked, you know, for for a setback there but hopefully the town at some point can reconfigure and make the sidewalks a little bit wider there and come up with effects so I'm just saying is that the planning if I was in the planning board I would have said hey under section 10.4 we can impose a larger setback and so we do have that power here to kind of move the building around a little bit. It's not like a Ouija board, but we do have that power. So, and I think there is a setback, you know, there's, there's, there's open space there on the first floor which is, which is nice and definitely needed there so that's, that's a positive Maria. Chris, Chris has her hands up maybe she's speaking to something. I'm sorry Chris. I just wanted to remind everybody that we really need to raise our hands when we want to speak and not just have a dialogue back and forth. I think it kind of gets out of hand so you know jack is in charge of recognizing people and people really should respect that raising hands. Thank you. Thank you Chris. Maria. Thanks Kyle for all your sort of responses and and I do agree that the way to solve this housing crisis as far as not having enough affordable housing because they do create more housing just not going to get there without that basic fact. But I do ask if you could just reconsider the retail because like you said you know it's a changing market, it's changed a lot already and we're doing a lot more online shopping but you know 510 20 years from now we don't know what's going to happen so this is making it more flexible by providing something a little more have a little more ability to be like multi function multi purpose because you know it's retail. It probably would never be a cafe or restaurant just not enough sort of back of house space but you know just thinking about the future and having that flexibility. It just does seem a little tight just like a lot of members have said and moving forward if there's just maybe you could show us the options that you've already you know studied and this is the best way and just to help us know like yeah you've covered a lot of other ways to look at it but that's absolutely is the right one and just because it does seem on the small side so but otherwise. Yeah, look forward to the next iteration. Yeah, just gonna kind of go off what Maria said my and my very, you know, humble experience with regard to retail is that, you know, people, small businesses have a problem affording the rental rates downtown. I was just wondering if you increase that open air space in front, and you have like, you know, like three seasons sort of, you know, businesses out in front where where it's affordable for, you know, some of the, the, and capture some of the family business sort of vibe that, you know, some of the former buildings there that again they weren't really thriving businesses but that's might be what you know folks might be looking for to see when they go downtown, it just to see, you know, people in the streets and, and, you know, vendors and, and, and, and, you know, kind of culture kind of coming at you as you're walking down the sidewalk but that's just my two cents. Any other comments. Doug. If you reminded me of something I had thought about and forgot to say earlier and that Kyle, when I think about the buildings that are down on the common that are all zero lot line buildings. There's a pretty strong horizontal, what I'll call a sign band between the first floor and the rest of the building that's up above it. And that combined with the way the first floors are are detailed. You don't really think a lot about the building that's up above. When you're walking along the street. Your, your attention is pretty fully focused on the street and, and the sort of architecture of the building doesn't really look like it's not very present at the street. You know it's mostly glass. But I think the buildings that you've done have pretty strong or vertical columns. And when they come down to the street. They're sort of. It's almost like they're too present. It's like, and, and I'm not articulating this well but, but, and I'm not sure it's really even appropriate to the building you've got because you've got such setback at the first floor on this building. But I think it's part of the reason people have reacted negatively to some of the other buildings is that they're sort of too imposing at the street level and you know maybe I don't know Maria if any of this resonates with you but just trying to think about how to say it better but that's just a comment but but in particular the sign band to go back to that. And having sort of a flexible place for for your businesses for your tenants in the buildings to to advertise themselves. I think that would help the buildings feel more urban. And I'll stop there. Thank you Doug. And I don't see any other hands. Amongst the board. So it's approaching nine o'clock. And I, you know, depending on the number of attendees, the public comment, I'm not sure. I see some hands coming up I would like to give. I'm going to wait here a minute. I'd like the public entities attendees to raise your hand just so we have an idea of what we're looking like for, you know, timeline for tonight anyway. There's a comments I got I see seven. So that's a, you know, 20 minutes. And, okay. That seems doable. All right, so I think we'll just start taking public comment with without any other public, or excuse me, playing board comment members comments at this time okay. All right so first let's let's call on Pam Rooney, Pam, state your name and address please. Hi Pam Rooney 42 cottage street thanks for letting me speak. I'm going to start by hearing the background and the sort of the coverage of the pro of the project. There are I've got about 30 points which I don't have time to do in my three minute allotment. So I'm going to just focus on a couple of things that weren't really talked about in Mr Wilson's presentation that safety. I'm working primarily on safety of praise street which is a major pedestrian walkway and also a very narrow parking lot with perpendicular parking. And I'm going to ask if, if one of the conditions from the planning board can be that construction entrance beef from East pleasant street only, thus avoiding the, the sort of the pedestrian and, and parking portion of pray street I think that's an extremely dangerous street already having construction vehicles is going to add to that. Secondly, safety during construction on East pleasant street. I know we had to walk around onto the street for one East pleasant street, and I would like to at least see some description and documentation of how they plan to handle pedestrian on East pleasant street during construction again. All of this is a major pedestrian route from north of north of triangle from the high school and down trickling down into the center of town. Safety. One of the things that one East pleasant street was was required to do was to create a more appropriate pedestrian crossing to Kendrick Park. And according to the Jason skills report that that improvement never got done by archipelago and that really should be done prior to any SPR or SPP in this in this round. And I want to reiterate one of the things that is that we're sorely lacking the public way. We have a very, very strong set of. We have a very strong sidewalk language that starts way back by Antonio's continues on the east side of North pleasant street and then East pleasant street past Zana's to the toy box. The street completely truncates that that language. And I would hope that the board will condition that 11 East pleasant street reinstate the street language that was developed by Dodson associates some years back, and that we see the same materials that we see actually go back and do an improvement of the one East pleasant sidewalk which is absolutely subpar and one of the worst examples of urban hardscape I've ever seen, and I hope that maybe this, this project can rectify that. Another public way issue is that I see absolutely no street tree plantings shown on the street side of the project. Why is that stretch not handled similarly to the Zana toy box stretch where you have 20 feet from face of curb to back of sidewalk. So public space that the that the project wants to create beyond that would be very, very welcome and in fact would really enhance their building, but at least reinstate the proper public way. I'm going to stop at that. I've got a lot more comments, but I think these are some sort of major considerations that would make this project a whole lot better if you sort of address the public presence of this building, rather than the architectural details. Thank you. Thank you Pam. Next we have Dorothy Pam. Dorothy, state your name and address. Thank you. I just have a few questions at this time. One of the things that is in terms of Kendrick Park that is missing is that we, there's no public bathroom there, and people used to use the loose goose, which is now gone. There are no shops or places that I know of which have a bathroom which can be used by the public. And I think I heard you may say something about a bathroom on the first floor in a kind of public lobby area, near the pedestrian walkway. So I was interested to know if in fact that was a bathroom that could be used as the loose goose's bathroom had been used in the past for people in Kendrick Park. The second question is, I don't totally understand the design I know there's a pedestrian walkway there's also an entrance to first floor parking. Is there any space where the pedestrians and the cars share the same path, or are they totally separate paths. And the last one is, I do like the see through path to the cemetery. I think that is very nice. I wasn't sure why you would try to reduce setback from the cemetery, which is, you know, it's a very special place the mural was just redone rededicated. And just don't don't crowd it in so I mean there may be some reason that you have no choice but I just wondered about that. So those are my questions thank you very much. Thank you Dorothy. Next would be Kathy shown. State your name and address please. Hi Kathy. Hi. It's Kathy Shane, I live at. I'm so sorry, I should know that. I apologize. I apologize. I just accidentally. Hi Kathy. I accidentally disabled your speaking. Okay. You don't have to apologize. One of my nephews changed the spelling of the last name so that it would. I'm going to try not to repeat the comments but just stand on a few on how far back from the street. I'm going to start and Pam's point about it's not consistent coming through town what is the public way and my sense of what's happened over time historically in Amherst because I asked Chris on the street I live on Montague Road. I said what does it look like if I went up Montague Road, my house the house next to me she said, Oh, you can get on the GIS map and it varies all the way up the street. So a lot of other places have done is measured it from the edge of the street to make a consistent how far back so the, the setback is not from the existing sidewalks so I think this is something we don't have on our books but we could as was pointed out we could adjust it. So if the it's the current sidewalk that's there it's going to be narrow and what happened when the carrot shops were there is you never noticed how narrow it was because you had big wide driveways into a shopping area. So the other question I so it's it's on setbacks the second is on height on 1.9 inches is less than two feet. I'm sure that was chosen carefully. I'm not on I don't understand why we don't count the total height of the building. It's going to have condensers on the roof it's going to solar arrays on the roof. And this has become a big issue in New York City, not it is an urban area where the mechanicals. There was an argument mechanicals just don't count in some way but they do add to the height of the building. So I, I'm just looking for ways that the planning board can negotiate around some of this because the actual building will be higher and I think it will be important to look at those shadows. I have one picture. I think it's going to be the most pleasant from the fall and I want to get one from the spring. And this building is going to be directly across from Kendrick Park, where there be a new playground so I think it's important to think about what happens to the street side and that will be very by how close to the street it is. My totally unrelated question is on Spring Street, there's another building being built that seems to have stopped construction altogether, and it, the town council granted a temporary 15 months to obstruct the sidewalk and build out and that ended in I don't remember coming back, but the building was supposed to be finished. So I'm just wondering whether there were some financial difficulty and why start a new building before you finish the old one that's an unrelated but related to the financial capacity. And I think I will just stop on that but for rents. There was a question about what kind of rents you're looking at. If you look at what's posted on Spring Street, the building that hasn't opened yet, I think you get a good sense as a planning board. So it's a little kind of rents, and it's in the $2,000 for studio range so it's not dissimilar to what was that one is his pleasant, and I have information if you want it and I can just send it in there was a question on how many parking permits, the buildings took out. So one of 2019 57 East Pleasant Street took out 59 permits and one East Pleasant took out 68 permits. So the people are living those buildings do have cars, and they are seeking to buy a permit now we sell them really cheap in town. But, but they are buying a permit so I assume they have a car. And I think I'll just stop there because I just wanted to expand on a few of the points both to question the height, the setback. And then is this really ready to go wouldn't we want to get the other building finished. First, thank you. Thank you counselor Shane. All right. Hey, I would, I think, can we circle back to spring street because I think that that requires, I think it'd be good to have an update in terms of that development. Sure. Spring Street is on 26 spring street it's behind, it's obviously behind Grace Church and police station so on, we shut 26 spring street down the day before the mayor Boston shut down all construction in Boston, a mark in March of 2020 for covert. And we shut that because of its very sensitive location and we obviously sense that something very difficult was was occurring, which obviously turned out to be the case. So we turned it off. We did not turn it back on. We tried to turn it back on with a new contractor this spring, which we intend to do. So when we did so rock wool is six months out right now from any of their three North American manufacturing facilities in between like 150 and 180 days or something like that. So the building has been framed up to the first floor. The framing remaining is two and a half months. So rock will be in six months out if we started right now, we would be staring at a framed building for three and a half months while we waited for the rock wall to arrive. So we shut spring street down for covert. And I've tried to turn it back on and now caught in the supply chain issues, not not mentioning the lumber prices but just the ability to procure and get enough rock wool for the building, which is is the limiting factor and rock will is the best insulation, you can use it's outboard the sheeting on that building like it's been on these others. And it's obviously very popular right now. I know a lot of the construction materials have increased by. I don't know if it's 50 100 200% but hopefully the rock will has not gone that rock will rock will is more of just being able to get it with all the stuff, including the ice storms in Texas and all this other stuff is really upset the lumber. The construction supply chain lumber futures are if you look at any other graphs are, you know, multiples of what they normally are. So, we thought that that was going to be three months coming up, you know, four months ago we didn't know what was going on five months ago we didn't know if there were vaccines we didn't know if we were getting a new president we didn't know anything. So, now that we know it just turned all back on and, and, and prices have gone up and and availability has gone down. So, you know we thought that those hiccups would be three months it turns out those are more likely nine months 12 months. And you're seeing that across the economy I think when people try to get rental cars and you can't get on this one. That'll be most apparent. Thank you very much Kyle for for the update on, you know, you know, not this, not the subject of this hearing but just it's just a good it's valid for all of us. So, thank you. Chris Brestrup has her hand raised. Okay, Chris. So I just wanted to note something that if this project gets its permits, you know, in this summer, I'm not sure when it would get them but the next few months. That doesn't mean that the project is going to start under construction. There's a lot of work that needs to be done by the applicants to get their building design finished. They're showing you, you know, a design that's in the formative stage but they have to go back to their architects and mechanical people and plumbing and all of those people and get the building designed to the point where they can get a building permit. It's not like, well, you might ask, well, if they can't work on Spring Street, how come they're pushing this ahead. Well, it just takes a very long time to move these projects forward. And so, who knows what the, you know, situation is going to be like in six months or nine months. But, you know, this is one of the steps they need to take to move this building along. So I just wanted to offer that explanation. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. All right, let's give back to the public comment. Dorothy is your hand up. Probably not because you just spoke. No, it just went down. Okay. All right, so we have Ira Brick, please. Ira, you know, state your name and address, please. I am Ira Brick to 55 Strong Street. I just want to make a few points. One is that I understand that the three projects being built by Archipelago are bringing in a million dollars of tax revenue and of course that's important. But the town budget is $82 million. So we basically are making drastic changes downtown to get the revenues of 1.2% of the town budget. If you look at how to get that million dollars from houses like mine, my tax bill times 143 houses would create that same million dollars but there are 9700 houses in Amherst so it's a pretty similar statistic 1.47%. I would just say, you would be my hero Archipelago if you were building these as dorms on campus and then raise the pilot the payment lieu of taxes on campus and not make such drastic changes downtown there are clearly many people in town, many who have signed the petition that just find, you know, whether you call them dorms or not but you're saying in this phone call tonight that they are definitively meant for students and I just also want to say I appreciate the comments of some of the planning board members supporting more retail when I see the tiny storefront on the narrowest part of that building it kind of reminds me when you say you buy lemonade and it says 5% real lemon juice. When you're talking about the definition of a mixed use building and how little public facing building public facing business a building needs to be considered a mixed use building. It's really kind of a joke to give that tiny little space towards retail and then even create public space by denting that in. And I really feel like Archipelago who has made their living in Amherst is really not paying serious enough attention to the displeasure that a lot of people feel and that they're downtown that they want to live and use in is basically being eradicated by what functionally are private dorms. So thank you so much. Thank you, iron. Um, and Jennifer Tom. Jennifer. Hi, I'm Jennifer tab at 259 Lincoln Avenue. So I just other people have spoken about the buildings and I just wanted to respond to some of the context that Mr Wilson set up in terms of the need for more housing. I know I sound like a broken record, but just so it's kind of part of the record for the meeting. So, Mr Wilson that stated that there's huge growth in Massachusetts. And I think it's, you know, fair to say that growth is in Boston metropolitan area and not in Amherst. And actually the Donahue Institute at UMass, which is headed for while it was headed by our town council president said that growth in the Pioneer Valley and the 25 year period from 2010 to 2035 is a total of 6.5%. That's not a year, but that is the total for the 25 year period and the population director at Donahue called this quote, okay growth unquote so we're not having a population surge in Amherst. And then in last year in 2020 in an interview with Boston.com Marty Mehan, who's president of the entire UMass system discussed the Democrat demographic cliff that's coming and he said quote the number of college age students will drop almost 15% 15% in five years unquote, and he taught of the need for right sizing in the future, because there will be much fewer students that and just today in the New York Times they actually said 2020 had the lowest birth rate of any year since 1970. So I don't think Amherst may be in need of a certain kind of housing, but I don't think it's in dire need of more of these dormitory style student complexes. And in terms of parking. Mr. Wilson mentioned compared Amherst to Durham, North Carolina and Berkeley and said you know they all struggle with parking, but Durham as a population of 270,000. So I'm sure it has a much more robust public transportation system than Amherst Berkeley as a population of 121,000 and part of the San Francisco metropolitan area with its extensive Bart and you know, extensive public transportation system. And I would, you know, think it's probably fair to say that dorm and Berkeley probably have more essential services downtown to serve the population that lives there like grocery stores just for starters. So, and I'm also concerned because archipelago I don't believe any longer owns one East pleasant and Kendrick place. So I feel like when we fall off the demographic cliff archipelago will probably not be left holding the bag but Amherst will. And I guess one other point of clarification is in a newsletter to his district three constituents this past weekend George Marshall wrote down what each of six buildings were contributing in tax dollars and six buildings not three contribute $1.2 million a year in tax revenue. And that's from George Ryan. Okay, so that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. Kyle, I, I think I'd like to hear from you on on some of that because I know we were chatting during the site visit with regard to the, what the need is and I, you know, I know, like you mass provides 60% of housing for its student population. The average state university across the country only provides 30%. So, you know, UMass is doing a lot, but UMass is growing, you know, and to UMass is credit and, and, and I would think you know that that's, that's good for Amherst to right and and you mentioned the graduate student population being much higher than I had realized so maybe you go over that one more time and, and, and, you know, from what you know some of the comments you've heard. Sure. Well obviously David I don't believe there's a cliff. Otherwise we wouldn't be taking all the risks that we're taking. I think the folks have misrepresented what we've said on here so far. I think that as we said that the tenants that will come through our buildings are the same tenants that go through the other 5000 rental properties in Amherst so 53% of all the housing stock in Amherst is rental. Because here will remain here will grow over time. And does that number become 60%. I, we don't know. And where does that, you know, where does that demographic live, and I think that's what we're, that's what we're discussing. I think that they're obviously UMass does house a lot of people on campus. I think that the, the ability for the university to build more housing is obviously limited. As we've seen with the p3 that's taken a number of years to get where it's going to be and we'll provide 600 beds I think total. I think that for as long as people say there's no issue no issue no issue. It just provides for cover for no action. And I think no action is the worst thing that we could take right now. I think that, as people have said, you know, have, have, have said we don't have a housing issue. Well then, you know, the percentage, the number of housing rental units has has not gone down. So I think that obviously people can have different opinions on whether and they think that the flagship campus in the, the state of the United States that's number one in education, number one in innovation, number one in life science if there are some people that think that entity is going to atrophy, then we can have a difference of opinion we obviously don't think that's going to be the case. I think the university is is doing an incredible job on all fronts. It's top 25 in the country now it's got excellent leadership it's got the Institute for advanced life sciences that has helped us through coven here locally. The majority of people here in town are directly affiliated with it. And we're very fortunate that's here so we look forward to the university continuing to thrive and get better as it has done. And I think that the sooner we could stop imagining that the housing demand and Amherst is going down the sooner we could start coming up with solutions. So is it true that archipelago is has divested of the Kendrick plays archipelago has never owned these projects archipelago is the development entity, each one of these entered projects is a special purpose entity as it remains today. That makes sense. Do you have, do you have a handle like on under vacancy rate of your existing buildings do you. Is it, is it something 510% or well obviously coven changed that for anybody who owns rental property in Amherst. But it is, it is. The entity is not an issue. If you can ask anybody who owns a rental property in Amherst right now. Vacancy is is not a concern that that we have. Yeah, I sense that just from very well, Jack. Yeah, so I sense that from just the real estate market with, you know, the housing sale prices whatever it just it's it. Shouts historically every, every, every study that has been done in Amherst has talked about vacancy. And that's always been, it's always been extremely low. Yeah. Thank you. Um, Next we have Kitty, state your name and address, please. Hi, kitty. Hi. Janet, I love the way you greet people. It's very nice. My name is kitty axelson, Barry. And I live at 89 Stony Hill Road. In Echo Hill South, which is a planned urban residential development. So, first of all, I'm kind of cautiously happy to see several of you members of the planning board. Supporting what I see as more of a concern about public space more safe more of a concern about safety for pedestrians on sidewalks all the things that I'm concerned about so I just want to acknowledge that and thank you. Um, less architecture. That's so massive. So, okay, I might repeat myself or repeat other people and I'm, and I don't know so much about planning, but it seems to me that the area along the cemetery. The cemetery must be some kind of a historic treasure. I mean, it should be if it isn't. But couldn't it be possible to instead of narrowing the street there and I guess keeping it like five feet wide, something like that, which seems to me to be a fire hazard. But couldn't the walk along the cemetery be promoted as something of interest of value of aesthetic. Attraction. So I'm just, I'm just wondering about whether it would be possible for the design to include making the cemetery walk a feature. Instead of something that's like you can only see from the fourth floor where the community room is or something like that. Because also that little view corridor looks pretty narrow and it's helpful, but not enough in my opinion. And also I'm wondering whether that little corridor, the view corridor to the cemetery is public space and how the public would be invited to walk down it if it is public space. I mean, I don't even know what public space means at this point. Because if the public doesn't feel welcome to it, how is it really public. That's a question. Okay, moving on housing crisis. I think that the housing crisis here is much more for family housing for workforce housing for low and moderate income housing. And not so much for students. I wish there was more, there were more duplexes, more owner occupied rentals, more triplexes, I guess it's called, and more, you know, small inexpensive not so expensive condos for a variety of ages or even more apartments that would be suitable for a variety of ages, including older people who there was an article that economist Jerry Friedman wrote in the Amherst Indy last week about how students and old people like me are a good bet for a town because we don't cost so much because we don't have kids in the schools. And we pay pay property taxes or rent, which creates property taxes of course. So, I really think it would be really nice if places like if archipelago didn't only cater to students and because I looked up their websites and it says student housing for every one of these developments it's like student housing. And it's right there in the publicity, or maybe it was for Harrison the owner, innovative living the rental whatever. I think that we whether it's the town or the planning board has the right to insist upon bigger setbacks on all sides, every side, and that I don't understand why the town wouldn't do that. I don't understand. I mean I hope the town would insist on bigger setbacks not reducing the setbacks from 10 feet to five feet from 20 feet to five feet. It's like why not insist on like more setbacks not less where you can't even walk. And finally, well, not finally but they quit. So stop me if I'm over my time, please. I didn't put my time around but I'm sure you're over but go ahead with your last point there. Okay, I completely disagree with Kyle Wilson sentiment that essentially people should go to the mall or order on the internet and not bother coming into Amherst unless they can walk. And I know so many people because I lived for over 40 years and North Leverett I know so many people from Leverett Palom shoots very who used to come to Amherst. And when I talked to them they say they're you know, they just don't come here anymore but they would, they would like to come here to do shopping not just go to restaurants and coffee shops. Now they go to Greenfield or they go all the way out of their way to North Hampton. Okay, that's it thank you very much. All right, thank you. And from that comment I think just Chris, I think the cemetery should be clarified. There's nothing. There's no walkway or driveway back there I just maybe you can clean that up with the interaction the cemetery. Do you want me to answer that. Yes. So, the cemetery is a public space and people are invited to come into the cemetery from two places one is next to the toy box and the other one is on triangle street. So there's plenty of opportunity for people to walk around the cemetery. The space between the cemetery and this building is going to be a slope. And at the bottom of the slope, you know, it's going to be grassy and it's going to be. And it's currently a slope is not it's not right. That's not even a walkway. Currently, it's probably going to be wet and grassy. And it doesn't seem like an inviting place to go. It seems much more inviting to be up on top in the cemetery, where you can see everything that's to be seen instead of being kind of down in a hole. That's what that's, you know, right next to a building. Yeah, I don't think that it's realistic to promote public access along that strip, when people could go and walk in the cemetery. Yeah, that's my comment. Yeah, but there is the point is like there is no public access back there anyway, right now, and actually to view the mural on one East Pleasant Street. You can't see it if you're right next to the building. It's meant to be viewed from the cemetery to be viewed from the cemetery. All right, so we have one more. And then, and then obviously there's a lot more. And, but I think we have some other little small projects to clean up so we'll continue the sharing but Janet. Keller said, state your name and address please. Hi, Janet. Janet. Hi, everybody. There you go. I would like. Janet Keller pulpit Hill Road 120 pulpit Hill Road. And I would like to appreciate the fullness and thoughtfulness of the planning board for so many aspects of this project that you discussed tonight. And then I would like to make an ask. The next meeting for the details of the stormwater plans for this development, if you could request that those be discussed in detail, enough to ensure us that 100 year storm would be handled properly and and not cause any danger to outside of the site. And then I would like that triggered also an idea for me about that 20 feet of slope behind the building between the building and the cemetery. And that be retained as part of the storm water storm storm water handling system. So, thank you for this opportunity. Appreciate it. Oh, thank you, Janet. Yeah, so I know you have a stormwater report prepared that we can catch, you know, the next meeting. At this point. Chris, do we need to vote for the continuation or. Chris, you're muted. One of the planning board members needs to make a motion to continue this public hearing for all three of the of the cases, the two site plan review cases and the special permit case. And I would recommend continuing it to June 2 at 730. Okay. So, who wants to make Andrew moves as Chris is. Okay, so we're talking about SPR 2021-07 SPP 2021-02 and then SPR 2021-09 continued to June. What. Second. In second at 730. Okay. And there's a second somewhere. Second. Okay, Janet and any discussion. Do roll call here. Maria. Andrew. Hi, Doug. Hi, Tom. Hi, Janet. Hi, Johanna. Hi, and myself as a, as an eye. So that's a unanimous. And we'll see you. Thank you, Kyle. And thank you. And we look forward to seeing you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. And so next, you know, this is, we're kind of like 930. We would like to wrap up. Fortunately, we did the Kendrick part playground. Old business. Topics not reasonably anticipated 40 hours. Part of the meeting. Is there anything? Great. All right. And new business. No new business. Not anticipate. Okay. Great. Form. Form a. Subdivision applications. Okay. I have one and Pam can show the plan. I think she's got two plans. Oh, look at that. That's wonderful. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, you've got. You've got more in the wrong thing. Hold on. So I'll just start off and tell you that it's an A&R that you've seen before. It's property at the corner of Harkness road and Belcher town road. It. The configuration of the property as a result of the previous. A&R was two lots at the corner, which Pam can show you. They have that one in that one. Yep. So those aren't changing at all. And then there was one large lot, which I think was called lot one. And it was a big, big lot with that red line. Yep. And then there was a lot here. So now the landowner. And just to let you know, the areas closer to the. Closer to Harkness road, those two lots that are closer to the corner are in the RN zoning district. The other three lots are a lot of them. A lot of their lot areas in the RLD district. And that's a lot of them. And that's a lot of those two acres or 80,000 square feet of. Of lot area. And a building circle of 200 feet. Now the house, there's an existing house that's close to Belcher town road. That is. Pam, if. If Pam moves her cursor over to. Which lot did you say? That lot that you're pointing to right now, there's an existing house there. And that's a lot of them. And that's a lot of them. And that's a lot of them are in zone. So it's allowed to have a building circle of 120 feet. Whereas the lots where the buildings will go in the RLD. Are required to have a building circle of 200 feet, which they do. So these lots are. Configured. The new version of these lots are configured properly. Each one has over 80,000 square feet. Each one has. Each one has a building circle of 200. Except for that one that has the house in it already. So we're asking you to, and I should say. The new lot lines are the. See the north. I'll have to orient myself here. North is to the right. So. On the western side of lot five. There's a new lot line that's being drawn. Maybe Pam can show that. Yes, that's the new lot line. And if she can drag her cursor over, yeah, that's the new lot line too. So those are the new lot lines. Essentially what they're doing is they're creating a new lot five. They're making a lot for a little smaller. And they're making lot one smaller from the previous iteration that you saw a few months ago. So what you are being asked to do is to. Authorize the chair of the planning board to sign this plan. Making a statement that. This plan, this configuration of lots does not require. Going through the subdivision process. In other words, there's no road here. You're not creating a new road with lots off the road. You're creating lots that are on an existing road. So the statement is that this is approval not required. Subdivision approval is not required. So if you would authorize Jack to sign that plan, that would be, that would be helpful. Thank you. Chris, could I ask a question? Jack. So I'm a little. So I was beginning to wonder like, why isn't this a subdivision? But that explains it. So, did you say that in the RO, it has to be two, two acres? Yes. And so I can barely read this, but it looks like a lot five and four are not. Well, it has to be two, it has to be 80,000 square feet, which is almost two acres. An acre is 43,560. So if you multiply that by two, you get 86 something. But the zoning bylaw actually requires 80,000 square feet per acre. So that's the, that's the, that's the, the, the, the, the zoning. The zoning. The zoning. The zoning district. So these slots do meet that 80,000 square feet. Sorry. Sorry, I wasn't clear about that. Yeah, I can hardly see that, but I, okay. That makes sense to me. Okay. Thank you. Doug, you have a question. No, I'd like to move that we. Allow the chair to. Declare that this is not required subdivision approval. Second. Thank you, Janet. Any discussion? I see no hands raised. I'll do roll call. Maria. I don't think we have to vote on it. You don't really need to vote. You can just sort of do it by consensus unless someone objects. Might be quicker to do. No, all right. We started so we should finish. Okay. I see no objections. Let's, let's roll. Upcoming ZBA applications. Oh, I'm very sorry. No, I have nothing new to report tonight. And upcoming SPP SPR. I don't know if you've heard of this one before, but the Emily Dickinson museum is putting in a. Generator and some other mechanical equipment. And so they're doing some work behind the existing garage. And I'll be bringing that to you on. June 2nd. Very good. Plenty board committee and liaison reports. I think I'm just going to. I'm just going to go back to the. I'm just going to go back to the. With regard to the planning. Pioneer Valley planning commission. I did forward you, Chris. There's a housing. Some post in tomorrow. Midday. If you could distribute that email looks interesting. Oh, yep. You remember that. Okay. And. I don't. I'll let other people go. Maybe I'll remember. What was discussed in the last meeting. So it was executive. Meeting. So it was just more. Logistical, but. So the CPA committee, Andrew. Thanks, Jack. Yeah. We met last week. And we finalize the language for the. I think we're going to have the Emerson community preservation plan. So this basically has information, kind of an intro to what CPA is as well as providing some detailed information on how you can apply. That's hopefully going to be loaded this week, but you know, maybe next week. And that essentially wraps up. I think we may still have one other. Not technically meeting, but some opportunity to get together, but I think it's going to be a great opportunity for. For for this year. Very good. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks. Doug. And commission. Nothing to report. We have not met. Okay. And design review board. Tom, you spoke a little bit earlier. Yeah, we had a conversation, obviously about the sign. We also had a conversation to approve. Signage for Aspen Heights, which is in the storefront near Bueno across from town hall. It's a new storefront. There's their kind of retail or their apartment. Sales. Location. And that's 40, 40 main street. So it's right down town. And they just have some vinyl graphics in the, in the storefront that haven't, that needed to be approved. So those were approved. And then we have a meeting on Monday, May 10th. Five to seven. With the archipelago group regarding the materials we just reviewed here. Great. Thank you. And then. The CRC. Chris, I remember there's some. So the CRC reviewed. A number of things with planning staff and Rob Mora. We went over. The mixed use building definition and standards. And I think we're going to be bringing that to the planning board. On Wednesday, this coming Wednesday. We also talked about. Apartments and Maureen Pollock is working on. Definition and some standards for apartments. So we'll be bringing that to you as well. We talked to them about the BL zoning district. And that still needs a lot of work. So Nate is continuing to work on that. And I think ADUs, accessory dwelling units is moving on to be presented to. The town council for a referral to back to the planning board and the CRC. So that's moving ahead. We didn't really talk to CRC about that. So next week. This coming week, the CRC is going to be meeting about the housing policy that's being proposed. They're also going to be looking at. They're going to be looking at some of the work that Maureen has done on apartments. And they're going to be looking at. The demo delay by law, which is pretty far. Pretty far on its way to being done. And then we'll be bringing zoning amendments to you all on Wednesday. So we're working pretty hard on those and hoping to move them ahead. And as I said before, the inclusionary zoning by law and the moratorium are going to, I didn't mention the moratorium, but we're going to be working on that. So we're going to be bringing zoning and the moratorium. We're going to have public hearings on. May 19th. On the planning board and the CRC. So we're getting an opportunity to talk about that. At that time. Very good. Uh, report of the chair. I think I don't really have anything. And report of staff. I don't have anything either. None of this time. Okay. So we are meeting next. Next Wednesday. At six 30. To talk about zoning. Okay. And I think everybody said they could come. Okay. Oh, that's right. Yeah. That's, we kind of fit that in. Um, Recently anyway. So, Hey, uh, happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone. Thank you. We, we, we survived another festive planning board. Day. So. We are adjourned. It's nine 45. Just want you to know. Alrighty. All right. Thank you. All right. We'll get that margarita, Jack.