 CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. February 28th, 2019 Planning Commission meeting. MR. VENTRELL. Welcome, everyone, to the Planning Commission meeting. We have a couple amendments to the agenda I'd like to announce. One is that we have the minutes from 1.2419, and we have, under other business, we have Section 248 Projects. That sounds like a government thing. And the ETC NEXT update. I'd also like to mention that we have a visiting Planning Commissioner with us from the village, Diane Clements. So she's joining us at the table for discussion purposes, no voting rights, but we definitely welcome our adjoining communities, the rest of our communities, commissioners, to chat with us. Before we get going, let's do the swearing-in of anyone, because I tend to forget that. So if anyone's going to say anything at all tonight, please stand, raise your hand, and I'll swear you in. If you're not going to say a word, that's fine, but just be better safe than sorry. And it's only painful for a minute. If you're going to ask any question, this is a good time. Do you swear that any testimony you present this evening will be truthful to the best of your abilities? Thank you. Back online. Okay. So this is different than what was online. Okay. So thank you. October 4th is continued ETC Next discussion. So the first item or second item on our agenda is public comments. Within public comments, we also address any concerns, questions, or commentary about consent agenda items when we have them. And we do have that one tonight. And this is the spot where any members of the Audience Planning Commission or staff can offer commentary on the consent agenda, which is Item 3. That is a boundary line adjustment for Indian Brook properties and Jeffrey and Leslie Springer. This is a proposal to adjust property line .097 acres from 61 Indian Brook, lot 6A to 4 Walden Woods. Do we have any questions or comments on this? Do we have any questions or comments on any item that's not on the agenda? Okay. Closing public comments. Moving on to the consent agenda. I would take a motion to approve the consent agenda. I move we approve the consent agenda. Seconded. Moved by Josh, seconded by Tom. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Consent agenda is approved. So now we have some more discussion on the ETC next. Where are we going with this, guys? I know I'm not being real formal tonight, but am I ever really when you get down to it? Well, we're going to have a discussion about a further discussion, phase two, of our architecture and form, because we decided this was important enough matter to do it in two hearings. So since you should have in your packets some information provided by Sharon and Mark on building types, which is helpful point of reference. And also, we did a summary of the questionnaire that we sent out, but you just got it today. But we'll go over it tonight. And thanks, everyone. We've got some really good information. With that? Yeah. What you guys, Dan and John, you guys slide down a little bit. I think it might be good to start with the survey results, if we could. Sure. One of the things, and obviously staff can jump in on this at their discretion. But one of the things that I think is really helpful to sort of talk about is the general results, which I think is obviously included in the summary. Good. Is this a recent survey or is this the one that was done for the planning commissioner survey? And the biggest points, I think, from us, from a direction perspective is going to be, and I'm glad the questions were framed this way, was how much of the review is going to be administratively focused? How much is going to be more deliberately focused? I mean, that's obviously really important because that will affect how we create the code, what we want to actually say. The other thing is that there are some elements, and you sort of look through this list of the elements that are included for potential, this level of detail analysis. There are some things in there that the planning commission has indicated that they would like to have a high detail level of review that I would caution could become really problematic. And I'm going to use color. I'm going to pick on color as an example, and that's the first one. A fair number of you responded to the survey in several of the districts that you want to have a high detail of color. And I think we talked a little bit last time about the challenges of creating guidance on color that allows for enough variety to let a developer, a developer of a building architect have some visual expression, but also prescriptive enough to give you guys some comfort that you're not going to get some real outlier. So it's a really challenging thing. If you look at a lot of form-based codes, oftentimes color is not regulated at the level of high detail. So if the planning commission wants us to do that, we're going to have to spend a little time thinking, we haven't come up with a solution yet, but come up with some thinking around how we want to approach that and still give you guys the tools to be able to give some wiggle room to the deliberative part of that. Because I think you're going to find yourselves faced with the potentiality of somebody coming in and saying, I don't conform to the guidance specifically, how do we deal with that? And that's what the code's got to tell everybody how to deal with that situation. We need to be clear with everybody about what happens if they aren't going to be able to conform to whatever the code says. So that's one thing I'm just a little, I'm a little concerned about. A lot of these other things, as we'll walk through tonight, that's straight up normal, relates to forms, relates to places like that, all that stuff. So that's one thing. You also talk about, again, I think the issue there is, if you look at the other slide, the black and white one, is building color was sort of a split decision about whether it's deliberative and administrative. So there's another complexity. If color is administrative, that means Dana and Darren get to decide. And I trust these guys, but I think it does create a situation where, again, if there's not clarity as to what the standards are that everybody can buy into, and they're left to interpret the standard and say, that's conforming. I guess it might help to step back just a second to say, one of the things we're hoping to get out of tonight's meeting is the overall approach. We had proposed a hybrid code, but even within that hybrid code, there's design review like you do now under the business overlay district. So that's one option versus going more towards a form-based code, which is much more prescriptive on the other end. So we're looking at where in that meter do you guys want to fall, basically? And wouldn't it track that the less prescriptive something is, shouldn't, in theory, the higher the comfort level be with the planning commission to let it be an administrative approval, or is that not? The more prescriptive it is. The more prescriptive. Yeah. So that's right. Right. So if you can look at the code and say, okay, and the example, the mock-up we did for you guys is kind of, if they go through the box and they match up all those numbers, staff can say yes or no, right? That's how that would work. They either meet the setbacks or they don't, or they meet the stepping in of the building or they don't. They can sort of just, they can summarize that. That's pretty straightforward. So when you guys get it, you can say, okay, we get that. It's where these other sort of less empirical issues become problematic. So I'll pick on, I picked on color, I'll pick on landscaping as another one. You can have code that is very prescriptive on landscaping. It's also can be really onerous to administer. It can be really complicated. Like there's code that actually says you need this much shading on a, and some of that now you've got. Yeah. But it can get really complicated. You can say how much shading is in parking, how much shading is in green space. You can divide it all up. There's a lot of math that goes along with it. And I think it does become, it can become more complicated. And again, that's not a reason not to do it. But I think from, you guys also talked about wanting to have more deliberative discussion around landscaping, I believe is the summation of some of the standards. So if you want to have a more deliberative as a body review of things, then the standard needs to allow for a more variety there. So it'll become less prescriptive. So what I'm trying to figure out is to Sharon's point is if we're going to have a hybrid code, what are the elements that we need to take to a level of prescriptive clarity that you guys feel comfortable enough allowing staff to be administratively reviewing and where are the things that we need to make sure are, you know, guidance, but you guys want to have more deliberative piece. And it seems like, yeah, negotiation, a discussion around those things. It seems like the landscaping was one. The lighting was another one. Signage, I think, was not one, actually. Looking real quickly at this, it appears that the visual representation is what needs to be delivered. Yeah. Right. Yeah, the aesthetics of the building as it relates to. And I'm looking at this, looking at that, you know, what is done, what you guys did, and you're talking color, you're talking landscaping, that's the presentation. Yep. And the impact of the community, which is what, a good example of that is the consistent by-species, by-presentation, both on corporate drive and along, you know, market. And the advice of the tree warden. And it wasn't by-species. Species change based on salt tolerance and so forth. So it's hard to say that it has to be year. You got soil types, you got all that. So that starts becoming, what does it want to look like? And that's kind of a subjective approach. And that doesn't mean there can't be, and I think that's really important, it doesn't mean there's not good regulatory language that describes what your expectations are. It's just a matter of how, you know, the level of prescriptiveness you want to get to. Yeah, that suggests more of a design review process. Which we're not really splitting these out right now. This is, you know, this is kind of the crux of it, though. It really is. I mean, it's like, do we want to have some of these things have a more design review orientation and others? So let's say, hypothetically, you get a project that's done under this code, right? What they, what would happen is they'd go through that, the building types and the lots, just lay out all that. They would check off all those boxes. They'd meet all those requirements, right? And that would be part of the staff review. And they'd get that. They'd say, okay, they've met all those requirements. In addition to that, they'd provide the details that you need to see relative architectural design, color, materials, the landscaping, the lighting plan, all that kind of stuff. You know, that's still going to, you still need to get that. That still needs to be submitted. There's no, it still needs to go through the process. What you would then have is tools that say, okay, let's, let's using, let's using materials as a, as an example. There may be for each, in each district or over in the ETC entirely, there may be a materials palette that is established that says, these are the materials that we would expect you to use in this, for this particular type of building or in this district. There's guidance there. It tells them. It says, this is the material, but it gives some, it gives you guys a deliberative process to say, okay, there's that one exception. The architect comes in and said, I'm not going to use, and I think we talked a little bit about this last time. I'm not going to use this material. I'm going to use a substitute for this material that has the look and feel and character of that, but is not explicitly articulated in the standard. That's the process that gives you the flexibility to say, that's okay. If it's doesn't say, if it's more administrative and more prescriptive, it won't necessarily give you that level of wiggle room. So I think you're right that, that is the, I think the long and short of the survey was that it's the, it's the visual expression of the building as it relates to the setting that's really the kind of the key thing that you guys want to have some continued opportunity to deliberate. There's just a 10,000 foot question. I hate to know we're trying to do specificity here with the architectural piece, but so have, have we included and decided that we're definitely for this three areas, the ETC areas, we're definitely going to a hybrid form based code. No. Okay. Now that is again to share as we can, this, this could all be done as. It's similar to what we had now. Yeah. Design review. It could be, it could be design review with a lot more guidance that staff could still review and say, you still have to, you require them to do design review. So right now that's, that's, you know, that's, that's required. They'd have to do design review in the ETC. And in the, in the, in the new segment describing the design review process, it would have all the same stuff. Presumably. It's just, it's just the, it's a different mechanism. So it's, it could become, it's, it can achieve the same outcome, I think without having to go through a, to a hybrid code. And it's more similar to the model you've got. So there, that is a viable option here. And I think given the fact that you are interested in sort of a combination of deliberative and administrative, that may be Right. reasonably appropriate. I mean, we did send around the Santa Ana example. I thought that was a good example of a hybrid code that reflected both your current, because you do everything by table for, by district and things like that. But it introduced some of the form-based code and design things too. And then what Mark sent around were the specifics about the types of uses that we've been talking about in the master plan. Things we'd actually regularly do. So the code could be just a series of those district tables again, but they'd include a lot more graphics. Or it could be a, you know, as Mark said, a whole separate, here's the design guide for the, the VTC. And then we'd have to create the overlay district to cover that, similar to what you have now. So we haven't, you know, one of the, we have a meeting tomorrow with staff to kind of walk through from their perspective, I think how, how to organize it. Yeah. But, and I don't think we, we don't need to decide that today. That's not a decision point. That does need to be decided at some point for sure. But what I really want to make sure that I understand from the planning commission's perspective is, it seems like you still want, there are certain things that you still want to be able to have some conversation with a developer and applicant about that gives you the chance to listen to their pitch and adjust the thinking if it's appropriate. Is that a fair? I think that's a fair summary. I mean, that's an accurate, accurate statement. I don't think we're looking, I would say we're not looking to, to just say walk away and just, you know, if it hits all 17 marks, you're approved. I don't think that's what we're looking for. And that was one of the things when we originally started working on this, with the town, that was actually one of the things that we talked, I think it would be the very beginning of this process that we've seen in our, my work, certainly I've seen a lot of communities that have struggled with trying to go more administrative and having challenges because they feel like the process is out of their control. And for a lot of communities, that's a tough, that's a tough ask. It's like they've been used to having developer commit, present the building, have a deliberative conversation around that, make changes, adjust things as they feel is appropriate and come to a consensus and that's what gets approved. Right? My fear with that is, I think the knee-jerk reaction for me personally is, is what you just said, but if you put in front of me a set of guidelines and codes that I could, that met my value system and I got, then I would be all for just going like this. I think it's the going from where we are today, which is that extremely high level of detail to what could be, and there's this huge gap in between. It's a huge spectrum in between. But if you were to throw down something and go, all right, this is it. And I went through and I went, yeah, then I would be all for being, all right, staff, have a good time. No reason to be here on Thursday. Yeah, 30 minute meetings, great. Yeah, you know, I think that the key, the key thing is, we talked about a little bit last time is that, you know, what the master plan really kind of hit on was, going back to the issues that the ETC faced, one of the fundamental problems that the ETC has faced, has, you know, you can argue about the architecture, and I know there's obviously a lot of concern about that. But the site planning and the relationship between buildings and the relationship between buildings and streets and all of that is probably the most problematic in the ETC. That's the, that's, if there's a failure, that's probably where the failure is in terms of achieving the identity and the place making that you wanted that's been articulated. It's, you know, you can argue, you know, the quality of this building or the form this building has taken, and those are legitimate concerns, and those things were raised in the public process as the master plan was being put together, the draft was being put together. But I would argue that the fundamental relationship between buildings, the mass and scale and form of the, you know, the basic, the building blocks of those buildings wasn't well or explored and the resulting has been some things that are not ideal. So if you go back, if you look at some of the things we're talking about in the mock-up, those are getting to those things first and foremost. Materials, colors, the window dressings of place are also very important, but if you mess up on these, those aren't going to save you in terms of place making. They really don't. Excuse me, can I ask for clarity? Yeah. Okay, you said, if you mess up on which things? If you mess up on the relationship between buildings and the public realm, the relationship between buildings and the, and other buildings. So that's one of the master, that's right. The big picture piece. Yeah, they're actually getting smaller picture, but it's, yeah. But it's not the individual deep specific details. No. It's the, it's the mega piece. It's the big, yeah, and maybe just to pull up the mock-up that we did, I think it's helpful to show. Yeah, sorry, I realized I didn't quite pull up yet. Let me get there. Yeah, so it's really kind of about, you know, again, if you look at the, if you look at how the master plan is constructed and some of the things we heard during that process, those things, the guidance around those things about how the developer comes in and puts a building down on the lot and how that relates to sidewalks around it and the street types that need to be established around it and all of those things. So let's just go look at this as a, maybe just zoom in on the graphics for now. We won't worry about all the numbers if you can. Okay. So on the left is the basics. This is the relationship between the lot and the street. So there's a lot. There's a primary street. There's a secondary street. We need to define what those mean because they have meaning as it relates to form and all the things that go along with it. And we have an open space requirement. That's C that's just shown graphically as a thing within the, in the lot. Then you have the placement of the building. That's the second side. That's the placement of the building within that lot. So there are dimensions related to where that building should ideally go. It should be this close to the street. So it's not set too far back. The parking should go behind the building. The building should have a setbacks related to its surroundings. So whether they're another adjacent use or it's a, if it's a conservation area and they have a different setback, there's a frontage requirement. These are basic lot. This is basic stuff. There's a frontage requirement, not just of the lot, but of the building. You want that building to not just be, you know, the entirety of the building on the other, the front or too small. It just starts to create the, it creates less. And there's a proportionality, E and F are basically the proportionality of that building related to that lot. So you would rather have somebody come in and make a smaller lot with a building that's got an appropriate amount of frontage on it so that the building has presence on the street. That's the premise behind that. So it's basically just expanding on the dimensional standards that you already have. Exactly. This is math. This is, this is prescriptive. This is prescriptive, right. Staff should be checking this out. Staff can go through this and go, they filled out A, they put six and B, they put 12, and those conform to the standards? No. That's a problem. We need to talk about that. And they'll, they'll intercept all those problems before they get to the planning commission. Which, which often they do now. So I mean, this is, this is where I think the hybrid comes in. Some of this is already done. It just may not be done in, in this style. Sure. As we get into this, it feels more and more to me, like we're, we're staging, we need to, we need to enable maybe future direction by, by, by putting some structure and putting some expectation of additional staff work or different, you know, different work done by staff. Erin's getting better every day, so he's just, but I'm not, I mean, I'm, to me, the hybrid is, I don't, I don't see a need to be completely prescriptive. I don't want to go too far. I don't think they need to go that far yet. Getting back to the Santa Ana example, it's got all the dimensional stuff by zoning district or by building types and maybe it. Combined up here, yeah. But it also, instead of having a design review overlay district, it has some design standards that could be more design review, kind of, that are specific to that district. And that's one of the reasons we had to survey by district to see if there were variations on themes of that. Well, one of the things that's really, I think really critical though, is that this kind of guidance like eliminates the problem of the parking lot coming to you in the front of the building on a primary street. That's just not what the vision has. It's just not. And so if that comes to the planning commission, again, under this sort of structure, that would be no. No. Fix it. Come back with the plan, you know. And so that's why it's really important. I think that, again, foundationally, these are the things that actually really and then the next two if we go to the next page, I'll show you where this goes. So we're going to skip over. So now we introduced the build. So that little building pad that's been defined in the, spatially, now has to go, as you can see on the left, it's a height, mass. So it's not getting into the details of that building necessarily, but it's starting to articulate how much should the building move around? You know, can it set back? What is the relationship between height and the building? How big is the first story versus the second one? Things like that. Those are things that, again, this is not picking out the window dressing for this building. It's not picking out materials or anything. It's really getting to, can they construct a box that actually does some things that actually have value to the pedestrians in front of it? Had you looking like you wanted to say something to? No, I'm following it. What I feel where we're going with this, I may be way outlipped, we are going to focus more on land use planning and not what goes on there. We're going to deal with how the blocks move around, what goes where, and then through the other stuff we do, we're going to deal with color and input. We're not going to try to regulate totally the architecture. Well, that's a suggestion. And again, the planning community can do what you want. I mean, it's your talent. You can decide what you guys want to regulate. That's not our job. But I think what I've heard through the planning, through process thus far has been, you know, that if we don't get this stuff right first and foremost, then that's a problem. Doesn't mean this cone's not going to be, it's always going to be open for additional process too. That's the way they work. So you can decide over the course of time on architecture as you see fit. That's suddenly doable. I think the big point is, is that from what I've heard, what I've seen in the process thus far, it's been, if we can't establish these basic things really prescriptively and very clearly, then some of those other things will be less important because we just won't be able to get them right. So again, if you have a box that looks good, has great materials or colors and stuff, but doesn't do anything related to the lot, doesn't have good relationship to the pedestrian space, then it's not achieved the objective. That's the problem. If I can chime in and say, I think part of the challenge with regulating colors and architectural detail and stuff like that is that, especially when it comes to historic design districts, we don't have a whole lot to go on in terms of what's already there or what we know looks good. There's a lot of uncertainty as to what the community actually wants, but to Mark's point, what we do want is that clear activation and the site design. So that might be as time goes on, you know, we do get more prescriptive, but for now, you want to keep at your table of the deliberative to say, yeah, we do like the feel like that. We don't know why, but we know we do. Another thing to not forget is using picking mixed-juice north or mixed-juice southeast, west as an example. If those develop as plan unit developments, it is entirely possible within the approval of the plan unit development that you do provide much more guidance on the architectural expression. That's doable within a PUD. You could negotiate that conversation with the developer and say, I want you to submit architectural plans that take consideration of all this requirement and give us some more details about the colors, you know, the details that you're providing. And that would be codified within the PUD. So that doesn't matter what your zoning is or doesn't matter what the land-development regulations are. That's in the PUD. It does all the things it needs to do. So I think there's, you know, well, it doesn't necessarily follow the land, but it follows the developer. So if we, and those are the areas where that's going to probably be the most valuable, right? But to your point, I think it's also important, you know, we're not ignoring those other things entirely. So the activation one, this is where how a building relates to those places around it, right? That does get into things like glazing. And I think we do want to have some standards or some guidance on glazing because that's another one of those areas where, again, you don't have to pick out the windows for them, but if there's no, if there's not a good proportion of open transparency on a ground floor, mixed-juice building that relates to the pedestrian space, it's going to look weird. It's just, it's going to look, yeah, it's just not going to have that relationship to the pedestrian that's there. So if there's like a building as it relates to a street, that's a problem. If it's more like sixty-seventy percent, then it's starting to make more, it looks like a store. So let's, let's, let's hold first in that. Go ahead. No, I agree, you know, the challenge is how do you make the building facade or the exterior encourage what you want for the overall area, you know, yeah, such as windows doors entries, you know, that has to mix with, you know, the rest of the land to use the open spaces, what goes where, you know, what we do with parking. So if you go, if you can scroll down for a little bit on the left also, so some of the things that go into activation, this is, this is built largely on Malta, but there's a few adjustments we made. Transparency, that's the, that's the opaqueness of the facade as it relates to the primary, secondary street. You know, the ground floor could have one number and the second floor could have a different number, which they should, because you know, it's very unlikely that you're going to have, yeah, yeah. And it depends on the building type. This is also variable by building type. This is one type of building, but you only mocked up mixed use, small, I think is the one we did. Upper story, street-facing facade, you know, so whether or not the upper story has glaze, you know, if a minimum you can say that, so on the primary street, you could say, no more than 20% of that facade can be unfinished rated wall. That doesn't get into how they accomplish that. So, but it's prescriptive in terms of like, when they come in with their architectural elevations and they say, you said 20%. We've achieved that by doing a bank of windows here and a bank of windows here and you'll see those all out of 20%, but we did this type and we felt it was appropriate for our building. That's good. So, I'm going to play thick for a few minutes here and ask, you know, a couple of things. Number one, if we were to say a percentage, do we know enough at this point to offer a percentage? I'm not asking for answer just yet, but I mean, is that something, do we have enough information to, in this phase, put in a percentage? Or do we just want to say, hang on a second, Paula, or do we just want to say, we need to have, you know, we can't have a, you know, a huge blank wall? Are we at a point where we can do that? Number two, what's broken that we're really trying to fix? Instead of, I'm looking at this and I'm not opposed to this. It's just, are we trying to gather too much on this pass? And I'm going backwards maybe. So, bear with me. But, what is it that we're really trying to, and I hear, I key off from things that you said on this pass. Are we trying to put a structure in place that we can then fine-tune as we go forward? Or are we trying to put in a lot of granularity now, that we're going to have to try to fix it? So, I'm just, I'm not necessarily approaching this from the idea that we're broken now. I know we've had difficulties because we haven't had clear, or we haven't oversight over the whole area, to be able to do the integrated, you know, approach to a building on one parcel, integrating with a building on one parcel. I mean, I think that's kind of what you mentioned earlier. That's like the big thing that was missing for the whole area. It hasn't been, hasn't been done as an integrated unit. It's been done by parcel, by parcel, by parcel. So, to me, that's kind of like the piece that we're trying to fix first without necessarily going to a real finite level of detail. I don't know that we know enough to do. You guys might, but having this gives you the ability to do development incrementally that still matches. So, a building on one lot is going to match a building on one. And that's, but I'm like keying off from the blank wall, primary side, street max. Do we pick a percentage out of the air and say, you know, 50% this year and if we don't like it, we'll adjust it or do we just say you need to minimize the blank wall or something at this stage. Dana, well, it just occurred to me that when you said that it's not broken now, it actually is. Okay. What's broken? I mean, that's sort of like specifically what's broken. What are we trying to fix? The design review business design review district is not detailed enough to be able to deny projects and stay out of environmental court. And that's, that was one of the main motivations of this project. Two things, people don't like the general appearance of it up there and we need more details so that we don't get caught up in that vague and ambiguous regulatory language that will ding us. Yeah. That or more regulation in general? Well, more specificity in the regulation and that's, to Dusty's what element it is that you need to fix in order to get the design outcome you want and be prescriptive enough to stay. We won't do this in one pass. I mean, anything like this is going to have to be done, adjusted, continually modeled just like the regulations are now. So what's going to put us in a bind or not put it, what's going to be the enabling language or enabling approach for this first round? I mean, something like this we could dig into this for years to get the level of granularity to make it perfect to begin with. But what would be, for example, on the blank wall, let's keep picking on that. If we needed to take something, we've never done it before, we've never discussed it, we have, everybody feels you should have X amount. How do we get, how do we enable that without necessarily coming down to a square footage or do we just offer a square footage? You can offer, I think, and that there is, there are standards relative to building types. Right. So I mean, there is some guidance that we have, we can use. And pedestrian scale. And pedestrian scale. So like, if we have 150 feet of frontage of a building, you know, there is a proportionality to that, but it makes some sense. So in the, cut me off whenever, guys. In the case of like our regulation or master plan, instead of necessarily including specific details, we include, could we reference standards? Hang on Paula, I'm not, I'm not engaging everybody right now. Just, I understand, you got to let's say, we'll get to. You mean like national standards? Yeah, I mean, you said there are standards for, for the X, Y, I mean, there's guidance, I should have said, probably more. It becomes standards when communities adopt them. But like, if you're talking about a certain size of building, what are the standards for that makes it accessible? It's not something that I would feel, like, it's on an ASTO standard or an NC standard or something like that. No. It's a, it's sort of an architectural guideline that, that, that communities have looked at and said, okay, this, this mimics the vision that we've got for our community. And so, if you add that all up, it's about a 70% glazing or 65%. And there's a range. Yeah, yeah. So if you have your concerns, if you have a fairly wide range, then you get the opportunity to, and that gives the developer some wiggle work. It gives them some guidelines that we're going to be looking at that. I think you have to. You have to have the variety. Otherwise, you just get a whole bunch of buildings all look the same. Exactly the same. And yet, the other thing is, we don't want to so limit what we do with building heights, story, heights and all, that we can't stop to something. Say someone comes in and he's got four floors, okay? And, you know, plain vanilla, whatever apartments. And he's got minimal affordability. You know, we don't want to be boxed in and say, we can increase your density if you can increase the number of affordable units. You know, we don't want to get ourselves into that box, I think, because I think we have to look forward and, you know, serve everyone because otherwise we're going to end up with a bunch of cookie cutter. So, yeah, I agree. That is one of the complaints that some people levy around form-based code that it again, it can be very administrative, so they just run through the numbers and they get to their box and that box matches up with the design review. I mean, I say that because, you know, bringing in the externalities of, like, are they providing affordable housing? You know, you don't handle that with a form. That's an externality that's got to be factored in that sort of transcends that. And that's a difficult thing to sort of address. But the developer is just going to take the easy way out. And instead of do any of that, you know, he's just going to go check off the boxes and say, here you go, I meet all the other rules. And I'm building a... I think it's important to recognize, though, that, you know, it kind of works both ways, right? The value of actually having greater clarity as to what your expectations of the outcome are, like, not all these different types are available in every district. So, you know, you know, one of the inherent things in this is they got to include ground floor retail. That's, or ground floor, ground floor something, right? Whether it's retail or commercial or whatever, right? So there's a presumption in the form that that's going to happen. So you're, you've already locked the developer into adjusting their program to relate to that form. They've got to, they've got to have a ground floor residential. So that does create that in and of itself, that decision in and of itself will start to change some of the dynamic. The problem, though, I think that I'm hearing is that if you want to continue to, if you're not comfortable yet of allowing, because that is, that is, you know, the value of the prescriptiveness of that is that if you're clear with what you want that the outcome that results from that will be more in line with what you want. That's what the logic is, right? So if you tell people what you want and they do what you want, the outcome is what you want. If you feel like you're going to find yourselves battling at every turn with the development community or if you don't feel like these outcomes, these prescriptions are going to give you the outcome, then they're not right. If what's being prescribed is not going to give you the vision you want, then there's something wrong with the things that are being articulated. Well, I think it's like a first draft on something. Do we know that those prescriptions are what we want? I mean, if we see it, obviously I haven't done it and tried it. So let's try it. Does it work? They're consistent with the vision and the purposes of the neighborhoods that are described in the master plan and the whole of that. Paula, I'd cut you off earlier. It's okay. It's just that it's hard to remember everything until the end when you open it up. Yeah, it's just it's okay. I think that, you know, the more mega pieces of the relationship of the buildings to the site, those things, I think we can be, we can probably be pretty specific about and be, you know, more predictive, more prescriptive about and less, have less leeway for people that those things need to be a part of it. But that's not getting into maybe the glazing. That's more specific to a particular area and what the purpose of the buildings in that area are. So that would, that's a different level. That's the, it's an important level, but it's the next level down. So what I'm saying is that there are ranges and there may be a fairly narrow range in, in the big plan. And then as you get down to the general look and articulation that you want of buildings that has a little bit more to do with the actual architecture, that can have maybe a slightly broader range. And then as you're getting down into, you know, some places that might be even more specific, then you can get even broader ranges. And the same thing with colors. I mean you can, you can have a range that is compatible so that there's there's variety, but within that variety there's compatibility. So that nothing selected from the range for that area is going to stick out like a sore thumb and it's going to blend nicely and be integrated. But there's still, there's still option for individual, individuality. So going back to the, if you go back to the first page here and sort of flip around a little bit, but one and two are nothing, it's the same thing you're doing now. I mean that's essentially it's basically, you know, with some variations, but it's pretty similar. One of the big things that does introduce the thing more, with more clarity around is the primary secondary street thing, which is really kind of critical. But that, so that's the basics. And there should be a lot less, wait, well, these are the absolute basics, right? You go to the next one, the three, number three, that also has, there could be some variety, like these, the stepping back of buildings, right? There's variety there. That doesn't necessarily, everything's got to be 10 foot, you know, it could be 10 foot minimum, or 5 foot minimum. So that we can come up with the metrics that still allow for their articulation, but allow for some variety of that. But a very small range. Yeah, or somebody just, if somebody just 12 feet, that's fine, the standard was 10. I don't really want to put in a four-quarter. A four, yeah, right. Yeah, I mean just, yeah. Right. It's when you get to the activation and what's not shown is the next level is the things that other sort of, you know, related to the building itself. That's the next, that's the absolute highest level of sort of digging in. So if we, if we accept it from Paul's perspective as a premise that, you know, if we can get more prescriptive on all of these four dimensions, and the last one has much greater deliberative discussion around. That you're going to get to colors, you're going to get to materials, you're going to get to landscaping and lighting and things like that. There may be, there will be guidance, but there needs to be more of a deliberative process around those things because they are. With a greater range. Well, yeah. Yes, let's, let's, let's, let's. But I think that's, that's kind of, I think that's to me what I've heard from that discussion. There's some value in that consideration of that. Tom. It seems like it would be good to have something sort of form-based for the first two or three, four. But to Ned's point, how, what are real goals? Are goals, affordability, energy efficiency, right sizing, parking, you know, what, you know, if those are our goals, as opposed to pretty buildings, then we want to leave a lot more deliberative leeway in some dimensions. I think going back to the master plan, our primary goal is place-making. Yeah. To go back to defining what, you know, as Mark said, the public realm and how the buildings relate to that. It doesn't exclude all that. I think, I think that's what we've heard over the years. That's been one of the biggest things. But not, not to, to eliminate that, but that, that first primary thing is the, you know, putting the, the, the bucket around the whole parcel or the whole parcels and being able to look at everything together is, is, we haven't been able to do that. Okay. And which of these steps do we think are the necessary for place-making? Oh. Oh. Those first, those first four. Yeah. Well, and if you go back to the master plan, I think it outlines, you know, for each neighborhood or district, it outlines the elements that contribute to place-making and make those. But those, this captures that. But in terms of buildings, yeah, these are the key, key things. Yeah. Personally, I'm afraid of color. I don't think I have any right to tell anybody what color should be. You know, so, I think people will come with interesting ideas and might look really nice, so we never doubt it. Well, should that be, I mean, that should that be prescriptive or deliberative? And that's where I think it should be deliberative. Deliberative. And let it come, let it come back to us. And if somebody thinks they've got an interesting enough, let them state their case. Well, just can ask the plan about how, I mean, does it, does it, has it been a big source of contention? Couple times. Couple times it has been. And, and, you know, we've, we've stood on integration into the community. CVS was one. CVS, Dunkin' Donuts. Dunkin' Donuts. Because of Color Palette. Color Palette. But not over, not for the CVS. No, we did it on the building for CVS was outside of that. Business design control. It's in the business design control, but the Color Palette, the Town Center, which is both. Right. So, I mean, at CVS, we stood in the fact that their, the schema they originally presented wasn't community-friendly, period. And, and, I mean, so we, we used, we stood on, I mean, could somebody have challenged us? Maybe. But they didn't. They wanted the approval and, and, you know, we got a, we got a toned down that works. Now, we don't have, we, in previous, previous iterations of this commission, we started talking about Kevin Tevincher's of, of colors and, and schema and color gradings and, where is it, is it the chroma scale? What's a color palette scale? I don't know. Pantone. Pantone. Pantone. I mean, we started getting into that. And that's, that's way more detailed than, that might not be something that we fix yet. Leave it, leave it more of a deliberative dialogue with the, with the developer. We state something that, that color integration, you know, it will be, it will be a consideration of the deliberative process. We call it out, but not specify, I don't know if we can specify it yet. Do we know? You don't know it. You can't describe it, but you'll know when you see it. Well, it's a little careful, because if you don't provide guidance, then you have no basis to write it. But the guidance could might, might be at this stage as simple as it needs to be integrated, and they state their case. It'll be a little trial and error. You know, you might get something that you don't really feel great about because you didn't know how to say you don't like that, but as you'll go along eventually, we'd have a list and say it can be this color, but it can't be an argument that if you look at the current palette of buildings out there, it doesn't have enough color expression. Yeah. I mean, I was going to say that's a complaint about Act 250 when they, you know, regulated it. Earth tones. They came out with earth tones and grays. Yeah. Shades of gray. Shades of gray. Yeah. So I, I mean, I think from a from a challenge point of view, I'd rather have somebody challenge me on color than on, you know, be more prescriptive as we're, we're leaning and let that be because that's, that's kind of hard to change. Color can be changed with a spray gun. So mass we've had a lot of trouble with before. But we've never, we've never, we've never really clarified it. So I'm just saying we gotta be careful about the numbers we plug in to make sure we get the output. And you gotta remember too, the other thing that, you know, this is obviously one building type, right? So when a developer is building types, so the idea is that they can look at that pallet of building types and say, okay, this best fits the uses I'm anticipating doing, right? So they pick the building that's got the best pallet or relationship to the uses they're looking to do. And he's building type that has max dimensions. Yeah. Yes. I mean, that basically defines the mass, right? That defends the mass, yeah. And that's, that's, that's, you know, that's why we have a small mixed use of the relationship to the surroundings because of the scale of those buildings. But the issue would be, if somebody's trying to do, if somebody looks at the building types and they pick the wrong one, right? And they put it on the site and it doesn't seem to work. Staff's gonna see that at the administrative review process and go, I think you should be doing a mixed use small here because the relationship between this building and the, you know, the building types and the size requirements, they can't make it work. They're not, they're not able to meet the size requirements. That's the conversation that would happen before the planning commission gets involved presumably. That's the hope would be that the developer would be able to go back and say, you know what, that this building does not fit. The form I was trying to get does not work here. Josh, you've been quiet. Yeah. What I would say is I'm definitely hanging my hat on the first four things being very prescriptive that place making is what we really want. And I think you have to lock a lot of things in with that objective because this kind of code, what we want is to say here's our objective, now do it to a developer as opposed to other areas of the town where it's, here's what you can do and whatever it looks like doesn't really concern us a whole lot. Like when we're out in like an R2 or R3, like who, who really cares what it looks like. So inside maybe the owners and neighbors but here, like how it relates to what it looks like broadly so conceived is really important. So I'm fine with a lot of things being maxed out administratively. Definitely the first four of the whole relational piece. That's really vital for me. So I was, I was on administrative on all the surveys here. One point, one point on that you raise a good point is that these can vary by district. Right. So we may decide, you guys may decide that mixed years north and mixed years south are where you want this to apply entirely. The, you know, neighborhood commercial doesn't, we don't have to apply this to neighborhood commercial and that could result, that could result, it would be devolved back to its current zoning for all intents and purposes. I'm not suggesting that's the case but again, back to your point about the place making being really important where it's probably the most important are in the mixed use districts where you have the greatest potentiality for new development and for infill and redevelopment. Right. So we know from there is going to be if the, these first four things aren't done well there, it really would affect those materials where if you look at them at the neighborhood commercial it's different because there's a lot of established built environment, a lot of the new stuff would be in the back of Route 15, the frontage. So, yeah, but yeah, for a price job redevelopment but, you know, there's not a lot that's kind of expected in the short term or even long term that's going to be visible in the short term. So, there's a lot of variety there. And there's a lot of variety there already, so it's not intact, they're not dealing with those sort of things. So, you know, again, if you're really worried about, if you really want to make, if you really want to focus in on this place making part as the primary goal, which I think is definitely consistent with what we heard during the master planning process, that's where the biggest bang for the buck would happen would be in the mixed use districts. John. I would say too that in the historic district it's actually more prescriptive. Yeah. Because you are, you do have a pattern you're trying to, or a building type you're trying to maintain. Right. So, in that case, it might be more detailed than this. I mean, that's still for discussion, but right now it is under the guidance that you have. John. I, I say, you know, a lot of what Tom said and Josh said on the one and the same page, you know, it's more prescriptive with this particular part of the layout of the streets and primary, secondary streets just spot on. And then we'll worry about the other things in the morning. That's good. I think back to one of the, the, was it building G and H? Buildings G and H. And if we had this in place, we would have not, we would have been able to bypass, resolve, shorten the review process by a lot of information. So, you know, you know, the review process by a lot because it would have come in and this is what that building has to do. Not, not debate with an architect or debate with the developer or debate with the planning commission. It would have been this is it. So, I think that's where the, that's where that value comes into play less on the aesthetic interpretation more on the physical play. I'm not saying less on the aesthetic meaning it's less important, but I think the deliberation would want to give that up for, for deliberation here yet. I think the deliberation because that's where we get the opportunity for members of the community to chime in as far as what they think about as far as, you know, what the aesthetic impact is. And if it, if it becomes completely deliberative then, you know, then there's no opportunity for public comment during the process really. They're taken, they're usually done by Pantone, but one, you know, there are color perception tests and they're really interesting and really good and if you can't get at least 80% on it, you shouldn't be given advice to anybody else. That can be written in the code. Color blind. Quality, quality, the developer must be qualified by this test and otherwise before you can submit a plan. One of the things you might want to talk about too is franchise color because, again, you may not want to allow that. Yeah. So John, how about you? What are your thoughts? Pretty much the same and, you know, I echo Tom's comments on color too and, you know, franchise color is a good point as well. Those things are going to be really hard I think for us to really, this would be the first clear build I've ever seen. Yes. But like, it's always going to be hard for us to consider things like, if we had a requirement that it must fit in with the neighboring buildings, but you're not realizing that through the trees you can see that building in the next neighborhood and it totally stands out from that and that's the kind of thing that, you know, a public might come in and comment on that we didn't consider, you know, but the code allowed it or the requirement like that. So would you interpret that being that being a deliberative item that we review? So again, I think we're still sitting on a lot of the aesthetic stuff at this phase. We don't necessarily have the tools or trust the tools yet. There are probably tools out there to evaluate color and so forth, but. Yeah, and again, you know, four activation, five, you know, building materials. I mean there's other ones that can be applied. It's all about the comfort level you are and you have and the clarity you want to communicate. If you don't have the comfort level of understanding what you want, then you got to be very careful about providing the standard to it. That's the issue, right? I mean, so if you look at how some of the form-based code have been applied in a lot of like new development areas, they're, they essentially are easier because there's been a process that around that says the look and feel they can design the buildings, they can design the materials they're going to use, the pallet they're going to use, all that stuff and be very prescriptive about that. So when the development comes in, it's very easy to do. You know, when we did the building survey for the town, that big survey for the town, there was not a lot, there was not a lot of consensus. There was a lot of variety about which types of building people liked and so that's one of the things that's not in a single-minded voice about what they want. I don't agree with the alignment. Well, that's what the results said. Well, that's, I think it's a valid point. I mean everybody has different, we hear a lot of different presentations. There wasn't consensus, there was some consensus around certain types of buildings. Yes. But there wasn't as much, the questions also raised things about materials and things like that. There's questions about the buildings that they looked at in the survey. They tend to like the buildings that actually had a better presence on the pedestrian street. They looked better from the road. Some more traditional forms were certainly desirable. But those additional forms have in common is they actually really are well related to the pedestrian street. They look good from the street. There's a lot of glazing, there's a lot of porches, there's a defined primary entrance that's what this does. And they look interesting. And they were interesting, right? And so there was articulation in those buildings and things like that. This would cover those types of things. If this is a football field, this will get us to the 50-yard line. They could get a little further than that. Honestly. Diane, do you have any thoughts to add in? The experience that we've had with design review in the villages was scripted downtown in New England's center that everyone has the perception that we will continue to have through eternity. And there is no allowance for change from that. And I think change has to happen. It's sort of like stow, not allowing the Golden Arches to go in. They had to conform to a New England fashion up there. They couldn't put the 1960s models of McDonald's there. And I don't think we as a community would want that at this point in our lives. But I agree with you that sometimes color makes it interesting. Although neon something through the woods, I'm not too thrilled about that personally. But it depends on where you are. And unfortunately what happens over time is the trees they get older and taller. And they don't do screening anymore. So it's so what was good now isn't necessarily good 20 years from now. But I like the direction that you're going in and the discussion that you're having. Thank you. What was the time when Harvest Gold was popular? Avocado? John, any other thoughts? Christian? Last time we met you were talking about the slider between how prescriptive it might be or how deliberative it might be. So you're saying in the example that you're getting past the 50-yard line just with this stuff here. And now we're trying to figure out at what level are we on that slider with all these other things. Did that survey give you enough information to say here's here's something that's like 50%, deliberative 50% administrative so we can give you some guidelines that's prescriptive and give you some room to play with. Is it clear enough or do we have to really work on this? And honestly that's why I sent around the Santa Ana and we sent around this example too because that's based on reading the survey results that's kind of where I landed and Mark I think landed too it's just this creates enough for the form-based code elements to give some clear place-making emphasis. But it also can fit in with your current regulations in terms of how it's organized and structured and we can include the standards that allow for more deliberative discussion. So to Dana's point if somebody comes back they deviate from the standards that are presented and obviously the ranges are made sure we allow for some variety in the types of buildings and such but if they come back and they're outside the ranges for a number of that's a basis for saying no and it's defensible and you've got backup. You're not going to be finding yourself in the meet-core without any backup there. And I think that's the kind of the key the way it works the standards don't give you that the but not for some of these other criteria and that's important. Do you guys have a bunch of examples with the numbers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a number. Look at the I think the Malta one New York one that's a good one to look at. I like that one a lot. They both do both the examples that we're sent out have numbers and those are pretty common numbers. I mean they're not unusual. That's the Santa Ana Yeah, that's wait, no Yeah. So yeah, there are I mean there's a lot of the codes have those the ranges are pretty similar because these building types are you know, they're archetypes. They're not designs. They're not meant to be definitive site plans or search definitive architectural plans that they use their guidance. So Dave any thoughts from your point of view? I mean I agree with everything that's been kind of said by by one that kind of chimed in more and more toward administrative the more we can define and add specificity to it. That's my two sons. So one thing that was mentioned earlier there was a discussion around one of the goals for this was placemaking. I think some one of you guys said that, right? Yeah. But another goal that we heard to the master plan process, the drafting of the master plan was to increase the density in the ETC. That is an absolute byproduct of the process that we've been thus far. So that's another reason why giving guidance to developers about the types of buildings that are allowable and giving some clarity around that is really important because you're going to want to again, if they don't if they're not achieving the density that is desired there there needs to be a discussion around that and that gives staff a chance to look at that and say, well, what are you doing here? You know you're not going to get a single family home in the mixed use north. So that's a point that's a real guidance that says that's not loud and we're going to have you're going to have to do a mixed use building there. So I think that's a really important distinction between the current situation with design review and what we're proposing is that it's not just the clarity of the outcome of the physicality of the outcome it's also that you're limiting you're guiding those choices that they have and those are related to those locations that's really important to bring us to tonight to refocus what we're looking to accomplish tonight wasn't 100% clear but it feels like we've come around and circled circled the wagons pretty solidly around being very administrative and prescriptive around those first four items and it looks like the survey reflects that and I would say that especially in this first first pass at doing some major overview like this there are still going to be some ambiguities that could be challengeable but many of them are going to be locked in and you know we can have discussions with developers about color and you know we can deal with that but I mean what do you guys feel do you need more from us this evening on this is this or staff do you guys have thoughts there was one one thought just sort of structurally the way we approach this Mark I think you mentioned an enhanced design review in a overlay district is that what feels right to you like what is your guts so when we talk about this and form base form base hybrid enhanced design review and an overlay so what what do you what are you sort of referring to with that and I know it was mentioned but I'm not really sure I'm not sure where how that applies I'm looking at this right now as being the base structure of having more or less form base code up to a certain level for the placement masks so forth and then still having a descriptive or interpretive regulations like we have now it's going to change I would say that my thought was getting away from the overlay district because there is variation by neighborhood or district in this even on some of the other stuff and then building it into the district standards and we can always re-reference back to the master plan I mean that's part of the we would we would reference back to the master plan anyway right it will be referenced back so so I think what we're talking would just be clear the value of doing that it's not again it turns an outcome it's really it's maybe more expedient it doesn't change I don't think it changes the materials we're putting together the coding that's going on it's just the mechanism by which it gets put into place would we would we modify the business control over them I would say we would try to get rid of them I think that's one question we haven't figured out yet it's like do we I mean that was my that was my thought would we need it would we need it if we needed if we did what we were aiming because it would this would do that on a wider scale because the specific district would just download the standards from the business them up so Dana what can you can you does this circle I mean go back a little more about what you were talking about with the enhanced well I just want for going forward purposes to establish the structure and I got a clear message that maybe we should just get rid of the design control district not enhance it or anything like that and I think that's really important feedback for staff and Mark and Sharon I don't think it's going to be necessary because this does I mean we've already identified that the the administrative prescriptive elements are more more defined but across more area and we've clearly stated that per per neighborhood there are going to be more deliberative items so we just need to clarify what businesses design control is a neighborhood sort of process so we'll be looking at whatever does that sound I mean is this where we need it to be tonight because I don't want to I mean this definitely this is really good and that's tomorrow's discussion I think is how are we going to frame the regulations I give a go to Rome to come out I said that Mark you had another question on one of these well there was one that stood out to me that I thought was interesting building use function and this is a segue to the next conversation so building use function was deliberative and that's a problem not completely but I think what we talked about this before is one of the things that we're trying to do is associate uses with building types of the table of uses and they say okay if you're proposing acts this is the building type we are going to be looking for right so if we're looking at the the mix you shop front traditional shop right yeah that would be one of them right retail establishment that's got to go into a traditional shop makes you small building or a traditional store and those kinds of things that's the form it takes it's not a again it wouldn't be a good example would be a retail establishment in the mixed use north district shouldn't be a single story box that's not what the vision talks about that doesn't say that's not your standalone CVS as an example that would be incompatible with the way that neighborhoods are described yeah and we presented and it's in the master plan a use table that's by use category I think you have ties to the building types at some point right now those uses are still listed as permitted or conditional right and one of the recommendations in the master plan was to take at least some of them out of conditional and to permit it if you're doing by building type but there are still uses you may want to run through why would we care well you want to create impacts impacts people their options as they get to make right so that's one of the things in terms of the way this changes that we're proposing would on the ground affect things some uses we talked about this a little bit last time and I definitely wanted to put a pin in this tonight if it could is the drive through is a good example you know if drive through uses are allowed then we need to have a building type a real gaping hole that we have to deal with so it's really important to through this process to go and make sure we have clarity on the uses that are going to be allowed permitted say and to make sure those permitted uses have a building type that we can associate to them that makes some sense I smell another survey so that would be we had recommended a few new uses within that context so we'd also suggest eliminating most of the drive through auto dependent uses in those areas so if we again and this is not necessarily this is district by district so drive through within the mixed use north drive through the mixed use south you know there's some there now and we get that but do we want to encourage another pick up McDonald's but another Burger King down the street or another drive through use down the street is that appropriate you know the guidance from the master planning process was no people didn't want to see those things so that's the that is probably one of the big questions in terms of the uses that we need to come to terms with yeah that might be good for another survey we could definitely do a survey around that with working with staff about so you guys understand that more do you think that survey was helpful kind of the same thing is it administrative in that context but site plan review you might have for for some of them so or we could just put up this table and say is it permitted conditional or like I said maybe site plan versus it almost sounds like regardless of whether it's permitted or conditional or allowed you need a building type associated with it yeah definitely so whether if it's conditional and the building type is X and X doesn't fit on a lot that they've got so if the family's not allowed that's not going to be a type of so I don't know that we'll do permitted conditional or not allowed or something like that or site plan like I said I kind of marks court on that that I'm not sure you need conditional use I don't know how often you do conditional use review now sorry yeah you're right it's more of a deliberative at the planning commission table versus to deal with some of the more deliberative things that are more of a zoning situation today so we're not eliminating the zoning board so pretty much would be this would be I would actually recommend not not doing anything with the with the use types right now and just making sure that anything we've got has a associated building type and then just not worry about that yet because I think it's going to there potentially would be ripple effects onto other commissions and boards addressed yet is sort of a thought could very well be but it would also be very easy in the future to you know slide things into one column if need be I've got a comment but Tom has been waiting Tom sorry yeah so back to use by form type I'm a little concerned about that because I'm thinking to like a restaurant you know a restaurant could be like an ultra modern fancy thing or it could be so why would we want to restrict what a restaurant looks like going to multiple types yeah it doesn't necessarily have to it's not one for one but there are certain things that you would like the like you use a retail a retail can go in a mixed use small mixed use medium mixed use large fits in all those categories it fits in but it doesn't fit into a single story you know commercial building for example say you had that type and here we may not want that you know like that would be the big box retail right so the way to think about that is if you look at this table instead of the top row being district that would be use and you'd say alright this use mixed use storefront would work for retail you know that's in process but we don't have it completed yet that's one of the things we're talking about we do have a start of that table but that's one of the next piece of work and I like they have a general building which I always thought was great because I think of general steel actually we do have some of that in the master plan so what do you what else do you I mean this sounds like this needs to a little more prep first whether it's a survey whether it's just staff working on it and you guys working on it or I think that's our next piece of discussion is to get with you in the uses these are the uses that we think are allowed we want to make sure are clearly fit within each district and also vertically which within multi-story buildings yes multi-story buildings there's that issue and then these are the ones like again you know I kind of heard mixed messages around drive through last time and you know if we're going to accommodate them we need to make sure we accommodate them but we need to understand the consequences of that like the you look at the that one two three four if you have a building type that's got a drive through there there are differences in terms of setbacks and relationships that you need to establish because you now have potential crosswalks or walking pass across the drive aisle you see all the time a bank's got a big curb cut you know go across that so there's things that need to be done in terms of how you address that on all those dimensions all tip to a drive through the other piece of that is with the drive potentially you don't need as much on-site parking because the traffic isn't stopping well this day and age no because everybody's banking on my phone on your phone yeah everybody's banking on my phone no but I think that is right but also where does that drive through go it should go on the back of the building you know and that's all oftentimes on the side so there's guidance that needs to be provided we give the guidance so they know what to do and I think the next meeting we're going to talk a lot more about densities right so we'll have that for you next so is there anything else we need on this tonight from your point of view or from your point of view see anybody have anything they want to throw at these guys before we yeah I want to ask my question go ahead listen closely but at some point I'd like to see some examples like if you scroll down just a little bit step three the building mass numbers there yep keep going down to sorry there yep F through I those numbers and pictures of what it looks like yep the model will actually show the representation will be proportional on the on this 3D model that's there that's proportional to the numbers that I guess what I'm saying is you know yep how ugly can it be you have to reach this bar of goodness basically if we have some ranges here how ugly can we get now the other may be related to that and somebody else had asked this earlier on if we put something if we take that standard and we say that's going to be on the whatever neighborhood can we take an existing building and say how it would fit or how it doesn't fit with proposal that'll give us a real example of how something you know we're talking wall mass you know or open space on a wall or that's fine yeah I think we can do that I think let's work with staff to find the right building and you know pick one I don't even pick an example of one I think a real life example they mostly won't well it would be good to see that because that'll see what we're trying to get to where they would mostly fail based upon where we're moving is in the articulation and the height too but actually some of them probably do are close articulation for sure if we use one that'll make it a real example for us and not a line drawing is a great but having something that we all see know we know what the mass is to us well let's read as I warm the buildings I'd throw like I'd throw the glazing question up against railroad and main I mean I have a personal I am like I can't I struggle with that building with no glass in the front I think that's a very interesting building so that one would be the one that's railroad and main railroad and main so the glazing on that one I would love to see how our testing would go against that because that has no street-faced glazing it has a transom window and two man doors so that one personally I struggle with person doors Dave I apologize I apologize to the chickens and the men no I you know I think we can definitely get some examples of this facade represents 60% glazing this facade just you can sort of see just to put a real-life example on it I mean you can't be the first one to ask no no no no that's out there we got access to that we have access to that the question though I think is I want to be a little bit sensitive about redesigning the buildings being procedures obviously because you know this isn't to redesign we're going forward man we're going forward this isn't to redesign but we need to see what this means and I think to Tom's point of what does 70% mean what does 60% mean what does that mean right yep that's just because that did come up when the the proposed Starbucks building by Lowe's we started talking about the visual front I don't know who brought up the visual ad did ad so I mean we got a mural put in I mean we got them to agree to do murals now whether that's an acceptable alternative glazing when we did it on the ace you know we had the foe windows put on the ace to the street SX way wasn't going to be just a wall see that would be coming when we have a primary street SX way would be a primary street as well as so it would be different standards would have applied so that would be a good example that is a good well then Carmichael is that what you're talking about GNH SX way no ace building the windows put on the street side to break up that I mean we I think the commission recognized that it was a primary yep it would be helpful to have visual glazing ranges for different stories yep yep so the other thing I think we can include in there and get some examples of the articulations right so you can see this is a relationship of articulation 5 feet 10 feet regs were great for they do provide a lot of guidance there that was great for that so let's let's pull together that as a package so we'll have that for your next meeting so you guys can have that in advance but I think the survey idea would be helpful too on the uses as well so there's two two little homework things that you can okay and you might get better compliance with the next one god everyone but one yeah I know any name shaming no shaming involved I started glazing through that thing because I just it started to not I don't know but don't take my answers with a grain assault one other just for I think we're getting wrapped up but one big thing before I forget I think it's important to recognize that when we're talking about the standards that are going to be created so the buildings are one part of that but there's also the street we've talked about that before there's the open space we've talked about the community as it relates to this administrative deliberative piece so in addition to figuring out that you know again we're talking about the relationship of the building to the street there's going to be guidance and standards around the street and there's going to be guidance and standards around the open space types that get built so you have way more tools in terms of the inability of the current design review to give guidance this is going to give way more prescriptive direction about how things get built yeah yeah good for tonight excellent thank you this was good let's see we have minutes good luck the two only two are coming out so Darren you might want to wait for a little bit before you go in if you guys we're going to talk about a section 248 project so there's going to be telecommunications towers on one of the buildings in the ETC so I am looking for a motion for the minutes from January 24th moved by Tom seconded by Shu does anyone want to offer any corrections all those in favor of the minutes as moved I pose to minutes past 7-0 is this a me or is this an everybody that's everybody I'm going to start this over to John and then we can pass it down through other business section 248 projects so we have an update on two section 248 projects that are happening in town one is that Raina and Power got their certificate of public good to do the solar project on River Road so that would be moving forward to state permits and all of that and the other one we just got advance notice for wireless telecommunications towers on 7 Carmichael Street which is where Timberlain Dental is so let me this is the this is route 15 this is Carmichael Street and Commonwealth Avenue this is the building that we're talking about so I will show you an elevation of what it will what's going to look like they're basically just big panels that will go on the top of the building and I say big but I mean six and a half feet off the roof of the building so comparable to the existing rooftop mechanical but I just wanted to make you aware and it's important to bring it up tonight since this comes into design review even though we don't have any jurisdiction on this project and they don't even care if we have design review standards but if we do want to comment on this that would now would be a good time needs a tower out in the middle of the field yeah do you want to have any heartache over that okay okay one other thing I want to point out with the design just want to find it here they are proposing a utility box into the one of the one of the proposed landscape islands this whole area isn't built yet but the plans show they're going to take up one of the landscape islands with the utility box I don't know that there's a way to tell them not to but I think it is let's see yeah I think it's a backup generator backup power supply the utility has been painting all the utility boxes what was that I saw it I was driving through a town the other day I noticed all the utility boxes were all painted they had like designs painted on flowers and birds and stuff no comments? we should free our consultants and you can comment as a community and request is that is that on a street what's that on it's on an alley really what it would be so so this is Carmichael street I think Commonwealth Ave comes down here so this would really be you know access between these two sites so what would come what would eventually be a back alley yeah but it could eventually get to a redevelopment I mean it could be redevelopment adjacent to this right yeah and then the idea is that this sorry it's not showing up very well but this area I can't show you on there Mark but come on this area is get to be developed and in theory we'll have a building going like so yeah yeah ok so you know just playing devil's advocate I would rather have this here yeah in the back of the building not to be affected by adjacent development right that shouldn't be a heavy lift for that is there a sidewalk back to the back yeah there's a this is a yeah there is a sidewalk there I'm not sure what the utility of that we can go back to the existing aerial sort of see what this will look like the option is to also address this with them directly yeah outside of the public service board process so if you zoom up on this island here oop oop sorry touched it that one's fine oh ok that is one of those dangest dreams that's the one over here yeah but this island has a green belt on it and a sidewalk I'm not sure the dimensional requirements for that little box thing but again just again not to not to create challenges for this property related to that backup generator other equipment like if it went here it would be the back of the house it wouldn't affect anything that happened on this site it seems to me from my perspective it would be better in terms of it's in again I don't think that's a major lift it'd be tearing up more existing pavement but not that much not that much and Hannaford just right below there Hannaford is yeah sort of here-ish this is the back access road behind the outlets in Hannaford there's a drainage ditch right there like where that yeah there's like a little path that goes from this parking lot down to that access road that's that right there it's that kind of thing because my experience has been the utility cabs for those things that always get put in the wrong spot and always regret it it's like yeah why is that in the middle of the site so staff can reach out to the developer and the applicant see if they can move that if the planning commission would like us to do that the irony is it's the same landowner on both both sides for now for now so it's in this okay does anybody have any I mean that sounds reasonable if we would recommendation better like see if they're amenable to it pour it back to you I'm not going to we're not going to put in murals on utility boxes no it's there we don't get we don't get stuff on utility boxes okay well I'm just saying the kind gentleman who's sitting next to me was talking about through trees we can give his kids some cans of paint let them go at it I'll tell you what the kid the freak that's sitting down there down the hill there you give them the paint if you'd like but my career those are kind of works and I I look through that on a regular basis when I pick her up so you know some purification of it would be pretty good okay because it's pretty scrub like as it is now so depending on how life changes I'm assuming it won't be scrub it's probably beautified at some point because things will develop okay because even though that seems like it's a back alley it's not really a back alley it's not a back alley for that business because that's their front door because they are in the back of the building so something's relative is what I'm trying to put it is that same thing of moving that utility box into their current parking lot than somebody else just because they think of the parking lot now it may not necessarily be a parking lot in three or five years from now they may change their minds fair enough let's see how amenable they are to relocating and booking it I had one thing I wanted to bring up and that was essentially we I met with the select board and the trustee a while back a few weeks ago I don't remember how long ago now and talked about the collaborative efforts between our commissions and they are they both bodies endorsed us being more collaborative they didn't specify how they basically said collaborate there are some concerns from the from the trustee side about about how so without getting too you know too caught up in what we're gonna you know how we do this and what we're doing and so forth I'd like to just get everybody's agreement hopefully to participate in workshops and you know try to attend some village PC sessions even if we're sitting in the audience listening just so we have awareness of what's going on we are hoping to get a joint session soon ish we're talking about that today timelines are tight in March and April but we'll I talked to I was at the last village meeting and I think they were talking about offering one or on something on the 21st of March 21st of March okay so so one of the things as far as like if we have joint sessions workshops whatever you know we haven't really figured out how yet I'd like to just you know say we go whichever commission has the least workload on a particular night and just do it in that house you know not really get too hung up on which room we use unless everybody wants to be here or everyone wants to be there we just deal with it the trustees did sort of suggest multiple times that we do a retreat I in my opinion a retreat should be a joint workshop with pizza on an evening when that is a regularly scheduled night for one of our commissions and maybe we do it at a neutral place for a pizza session but the ultimate goal is to be a little more familiar with the goings on in each of the commission you know rooms and to that effect I would encourage folks to you know sit in on a village session once in a while and just hear what's going on and be a little more familiar with the workflow they follow and hear what they're talking about and so forth and keep your eyes open or ears open and when we have opportunity for a joint workshop please attend that fit pretty much what we've been saying okay I got a couple things a couple weeks ago John and I sat through Dennis Lutz's presentation to the select board thanks guys thank you good luck tomorrow about about what we have and what his plans are he touched a little bit because it was in conjunction with Dana talking about the ETC project we then met with Dennis about three days later and got got a much better understanding of what he's proposing one of which is to extend the waterline further than his plan to Long Route 15 which will serve the mixed youth north development area without a word without any worries then for water flow and it is another proposal that he made to upgrade was it one or two of the sewage pump stations and he has since presented both of those as proposals for funding to the select board and my thought is do we want to as a planning commission write a letter to the select board endorsing the adoption of those proposals to move those projects forward given the other things we're looking at that will be served more easily by what he's proposing Dana do you feel I mean if this was presented as part of your community development presentation to the select board do you feel that's that they recognize their endorsement of this or do they know that it fits with our plan typically what you guys do I'm just wondering if that would be a little premature I mean we haven't even as a you guys haven't even discussed any of the denislet stuff among yourselves so first of all we don't know if you endorse what he's saying so we would need to have a chat about it anyway I mean do they care sure but we want to make sure it's done right it will just look silly so it sounds like maybe we need to broaden the presentation with the idea of getting a full endorsement or full recognition that this is the direction that supports the ETC NEXT all that presentation and stuff would seem pretty agreeable once they heard that why not they actually I think are going to get recommendations from denis as to you know we're actually moving forward with this project if they haven't already they're going to get it soon I think one of the things when we first started talking about all this town center development how will it affect public works will we have denis lots on our side or the other side I think he is on our side so I think anything we can do either now or in the future to support what he needs to get this stuff done will be helpful I have more important too no last one it's a simple request that maybe denis or denis could find out some information for us as you go down into monoski you have to go under the highway they're building an apartment building on the left there totally mixed affordability I understand that almost half of that project is going to be below market subsidized apartments in a prime location I'd like to get a little more information about how they put the financing and all together to do that and I think Dana might be the best one to go to your counterpart in monoski and say hey how did developers put that together it's a pretty nice site I mean some of those places have a beautiful view out over the river and everything and I just I think those are the kind of things we need to need to look at and if you could get any information again I'd be interested in monoski controls that so three feet off the road I have one more little dinky thing way met Ned yes you got anything else? I said two things you know don't encourage him it's kind of fun sometimes when you get in there I've got more but I'm not going to do anything else so we're starting a planning process for the Saxon Hill management plan for the over 200 acres that the town now owns I nominate Dustin okay I nominate Tom anyway we're looking to form a steering committee we just wanted you to know that the the RFP which I think we sent you to your packet has gone out so things are going to start moving along and we will keep you posted on it but there will be some involvement hopefully with the PC yeah let's bring it back I that's something that's worth keeping everybody in the loop on and making Tom do extra work if we need to I mean I think we're looking for two mattress corners I think here there's some good deer food in that area let's just okay anything else? I'm just going to say for Diane and for the folks at home we have an RFP is to have a facilitator or public outreach person help get input on what the public wants to have happen on that property what types of recreation or forest uses we want to see there so with that information staff will eventually draft a management plan that says here's what we're doing here's similar to Indian Brook will that include the 200 foot buffer or is that going to maintain the existing management plan for the acres that is actually owned by the town because we don't own the 200 foot buffer it's privately owned but zone very specifically so I think this will be pretty specific to the 250 acres but maybe that will be a part of the discussion too is how trails connect through those but I just want to make sure we don't lose that because that's been a pretty hot topic over the years the whole thing has been okay anything else? don't forget that the town meetings next week we must like to sit together planning commissioners oh that's so cute we have to be there well we'd like to support staff it's free food thank you that's not why I go but thank you stop by our table always does anything take a motion I move we adjourn second seconded by Josh moved by Tom all those in favor aye we are adjourned 818