 Good evening. My name is Christian Klein. I'm the chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I let the call to order this meeting of the board. Today is Tuesday, August 25th, 2020. We have from joining us with the members of the Board of Appeals. We have Patrick Hanlon, Kevin Mills, Aaron Ford, Steven Redlack and Shawna Rourke. Town officials who are currently on the call, as I understand it, Rick Valarelli, who's our board administrator, Dr. Time, town council, Jennifer Rae, director of planning for the development, and Susan Chapnick, from the chair of the conservation commission, representing our council and consulting engineers, Paul Haverdy will be joining us. He had a conflict he thought would run until about 8 p.m., but he will join us at that time. Jonathan Wittn is here from KP Law, and then there's a team with us from Beta Group, who is our consulting engineers. I want to understand Martin Over, Greg Cohen, Todd Unces, and Julia Stearns are on, and appearing for the applicant for Thurneck Place, Stephanie Kiefer from Small Life of Vaughn. So to open the meeting, I'd like to just give a brief introduction to this evening's meeting. This is an open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. It's conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020. The order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period indicated on the posted agenda. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom webinar app with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it is being broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference, others may be participating by phone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name, or another identifier and take care not to share personal information. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask that you please maintain the corridor in the meeting, including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. As chair, I reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. So with that, I'll bring us up to item two on the agenda, which is approval of the meeting minutes. So these are the draft minutes for the August 11th hearing of the board. I understand throughout you have a correction to item two, specifically the sentence on the, excuse me, on the second page regarding approving the revised plan. You have sent comment, I believe, to the administrator to, with that correction. Yes, and the correction I had suggested was, Mr. Revillac noted that the board should specify which of the two submitted plans it was approving. Perfect. Are there any other comments from the board in regards to the minutes? Yes, Patrick, you're on mute. Yep, I got it off. I have a vague recollection that one of us, I think it might have been Mr. Rourke, did not vote on the previous minutes because he had not been at the hearing. I may be wrong about that. But if so, that would be a four to one nothing vote rather than a five to nothing vote, I think. Is that right? Well, we had, well, no, because the five vote was okay because we had one of the associates vote. One of the associates. In the place of Roger, yeah. Thank you for that. Any other questions in regards to the minutes? With that in mind, I have a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. Thank you, Pat. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. None opposed. Okay. So that brings us up to item number three, which is the comprehensive permit for Thorndike Place. I just want to note at this time, it occurred that I only found it this afternoon in regards to the items under the comprehensive permit. I neglected to include a specific line item for the board to discuss the project, but that will be considered a portion of item number six, the presentation by the applicant, but we will add time for that. Just so others are aware. With that in mind, the public hearing ground rules before opening the comprehensive permit for Thorndike Place. I want to take a minute to review some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. I'll ask the applicants to introduce themselves and make their presentation to the board. I'll then request that the members of the board in consultation with our outside counsel and consultants ask what questions they have on the information that has been presented. After the board's questions have been answered, I will open the meeting to public comment. Public questions and comments will only be taken as they relate to the matter at hand. It should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. Due to previously demonstrated interest in this project and to provide an orderly flow to the meeting, the chair will limit individual public speakers to three minutes each. Please note that there will be multiple hearings for this project and each hearing will have an opportunity for public comment. The chair also encourages the public to provide written comments to be reviewed by the board and included in the record. The chair will first ask members of the public who have previously identified themselves by logging in through Zoom, who wish to speak to digitally raise their hand using the controls in the Zoom application. You'll be called upon by the meeting host, your audio and video will be unmuted and you'll be asked to give your name and address and you will be given three minutes for your questions and comments. All questions to be addressed through the chair, please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. If there are those who are attending via phone, you can dial star nine and that will raise your hand as well. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed or the allocated time has been expended, the public comment period for this evening's hearing will be closed. As noted previously, there are multiple hearings scheduled for this project and each hearing will have an opportunity for public comment. The board and staff will do our best to show documents being discussed. Do you have a specific document to be pulled up during your comment? Please ask us to do so. The board will then discuss topics for the upcoming hearing and proposed continuous to a date certain. So that brings us to item number four, which is a discussion is the status of the 180 day hearing schedule. I can ask John Whitten to, if he has a sense as to where, what that date should be as of today. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Can you hear me okay, Mr. Chairman? I can, thank you. Okay, thank you. Mr. Chairman, the 180 day period begins at the opening of the public hearing. And the question before the board is when did this public hearing open in terms of substantive presentations? The last meeting of this matter was an introduction to the board from the applicant's council of the new, as were the board members, there was no substantive information provided to the board. It was... Mr. Whitten, I'm sorry, we're losing you. Mr. Chairman, is that any better? Yes, it is, thank you. Sure, so where I think I was, Mr. Chairman, when I got lost there was at the last meeting of the board where this matter came up, council for the applicants made a presentation by introducing the team to the board. There were no substantive matters discussed or presented to the board. Okay. There were no plans, there were no details, there was no sense of what the project was rather an introduction. So in my opinion, the public hearing starts this evening and that would start the 180 day clock. Now the board's agenda makes it clear that the board is not necessarily gonna use those 180 days. And I think that should be a good signal to the applicant. But in terms of how the regulatory process works, in my opinion, the 180 day period begins this evening. Okay. No, okay. I'd like to address a question to Ms. Kiefer if she agrees with that assessment. I will promote Ms. Kiefer to panelists so that she can address the matter. And if there's anyone, Ms. Kiefer would like me to promote to panelists along with her letter, state, so state. Ms. Kiefer, can you hear us? I hear you. Can you hear me? We can thank you. Okay. It doesn't have to be behind videos coming through though. If that's okay with you. Let me see you back. Would you like to start video Ms. Kiefer? We don't need to at this time. I think you saw some preliminary information but I will respond to what Attorney Witton stated. And he had stated that his interpretation was that the 180 days would start this evening. That's not correct under the 40 B regulations. So I disagree with that. However, I think it's a disagreement without difference Mr. Chairman because the first public hearing on this actually was back in October of 2016. And under the regulations you're required to start that but then we had the pause and then we came back but I think that with the matter being remanded back to the board and then with the COVID-19, it's our opinion that we are fine with agreeing to start 180 days today or having a 180 day period run from today. I'm not waiting on my right that the hearing did open on this project back in October of 2016. So I'm not agreeing with Mr. Witton on that but as I said for the purposes of scheduling and moving forward on this, we are absolutely fine with if the board wants to start the 180 day clock from today. Thank you for that. Are there any questions on this from the board? Okay, seeing none. I'd like to just have the board vote to accept that today, Tuesday, excuse me, August 25th will be considered day one on the 180 day clock. May I have a second? Second. Okay, then I will go and ask specifically for votes. So Mr. O'Rourke. Aye. Aye. Mr. Mills, you're on mute Mr. Mills, sorry. Aye. Aye, thank you. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Ford. Aye. Chair votes aye. Thank you all for that. That brings the item number five, the discussion is the completeness of the application before the board. So again, I will turn to, excuse me, to Mr. Witton on this. We're trying to sort of ascertain what documentation we would still have to still be expecting to receive and then to confer with counsel for the applicant as to the status of those documents or whether the documents we have to date are the final documents in those regards. So Mr. Witton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So Mr. Chairman, on September 26th, 2016, I prepared a completeness memo for the board. I updated that memo dated July 7th, 2020 and use the same format. So an area of incompleteness from 2016, if it remained incomplete in 2020, I made that note. If it was fixed in terms of the material being provided, I made that note. So if the board has that July 7th, 2020 memo, you'll note that there still is a significant amount of materials missing pursuant to your own regulations. And really Mr. Chairman, at issue is what is the board gonna do about it? The applicant has an obligation under the regs to provide the information required under the regs. But the question that comes up all the time is, well, what happens if they don't or refuse to? And the board unfortunately is even in a sense in a game of chicken with the applicant because the board in my opinion should not suspend its hearing. The board should continue to press the applicant to produce the information that it's required to produce so the board can make a substantive decision. So what I'd recommend, Mr. Chairman, is just as you said, if the applicant would address the memo dated July 7th, 2020 and identify the materials that the board will be receiving to complete the completeness review. And if the applicant refuses to produce that information, it would be a lot easier for everyone if they would identify that now. So that three months from now, the board isn't still pushing them to produce information that they simply refuse to produce. Mr. Kahn, you're muted. Thank you, Mr. Heim. Ms. Kiefer, you're in receipt of the July 7th memorandum. I am in receipt of it. And it appears that the board should also have an exposition, the March 18th, 2020 response to the completeness review. And if you compare Mr. Witton's June 7th memorandum to the March 18th, you will see that there's a number of pieces of information that Mr. Witton, quite frankly, is glossing over. If you want me to walk through this piece by piece, I gladly will with you right now. If you look at his first comments relative to project eligibility requirements, mass housing issued a project eligibility letter on December 4th, 2015. And the definition of a project eligibility means that a determination by the sub-sites and agencies that a project satisfies the jurisdictional requirements of 56.04. That's the definition under 760 CMR 56.02. 56.04 goes on to say that compliance with project eligibility shall be established by the project eligibility letter. So Mr. Witton's first comment there that's incomplete that we haven't established project eligibility is patently in contrast to what the regulations provide. Going on from there. Mr. Chairman, would it be helpful to settle these issues once and for all? Mr. Chairman, if I may, it is an irrebuttable presumption to regulation state. I think that- Mr. Chairman, would it be perhaps helpful just to allow me to respond to Attorney Kiefer's comment and then the board can move on? Yeah, I am trying to keep the pace of this from going too long and to necessarily address each individual point for the purposes of our review and going forward. To my mind, what's most important is sort of the documentation that we're going to need to draw upon to review the merits of the project. And so perhaps right now if we could skip over the issues about eligibility documentation and such and move on to the documentation that we have received to date in regards to the project plans themselves. So going by Mr. Witton's memorandum to his page three, the preliminary site development plans. So we were in receipt of revised plans from April of this year. And are those the final set of plans that are being submitted on behalf of the applicant? If I may, Mr. Chairman, those are the revised plans that were submitted in March of 2020. Oh, thank you, March. Yes, thank you. Right, right. So BSD Heritage Center site plans submitted in March of 2020. To say that are those the final site plans? No, those aren't the final site plans. Obviously within this process, peer review moves forward and comments are made as initial comments have been made by data and things get refined and tweaked and whatnot. So the March 26, 2020 plans are the most current plans, but they're not gonna be the final plans, obviously, because there will be adjustments within the peer review process. And Mr. Witton's comments, vis-a-vis the preliminary site plans is largely, it's unclear, references that number of times it's unclear. And I think that I would position that that is something that is the very role of peer review and what data is doing and will continue to be doing to assist the board is to review the plans that are submitted and point out concerns that they may have or questions about clarity, whatnot. I, does that address your inquiry there? I believe so, yes. And we can, I think you and your clients can address this a little during the presentation this evening, but what I would like to try to get towards is an understanding of what documentation is currently under revision and what documentation we have that's sort of in a more complete format so that as we, when we get to the end of the hearing this evening and we're discussing upcoming dates, that we can set those dates to align with the information we have. And if there's, are some topics that the applicant would like additional time to address some of the submitted comments from the peer review engineers that we can allocate that time. Okay, very good. So just continuing along the July 7th memorandum, the existing site conditions and that we have information on that, the scaled architectural drawings, which I think that we will probably hear more from the applicant specifically to that point. I, this question about additional information the utility plans, the open space and the list of requested exemptions. And then I do have a question about the traffic impact report. So we did not receive an updated traffic impact report that report we have us from 2014. Will that be revised? Yes, you are correct that the traffic report you have right now is the original 2014 report. And we will be revising it. And I don't want to, you know, mistake anything that Scott Thornton, who is our traffic engineer is gonna speak to this evening, but you know, there's some unique circumstances if you will right now in terms of doing the traffic report during COVID. And so he, you know, he's gonna be working with Theta and he will, again, Scott will probably better explain this presentation, but working with Theta to determine what is the, you know, the most appropriate methodology to move forward on this. And so, and it will be updated, yes. Okay. And then there are other documents specifically to the application. So, Mr. Whitten, are there specific items that you have noted in your completeness review that we should pay special attention to? Well, I think Mr. Chairman, you know, the purpose of the board's regulations are to ensure compliance with the regulations. The board spent a lot of time adopting those regs via public hearing. They have the force of law. And unless the board is requested to waive those regulations, they are a requirement for filing with the board of appeals. So, you know, again, at this point, the board is faced with this game of chicken problem. For example, a 2014 traffic study in 2020 really makes no sense. So the question is, when will the applicant produce the updated traffic study? Attorney Kiefer said it's coming, but the board doesn't have it. And that means the public doesn't have it. And that means the board's peer reviewers don't have it. So I think they're all important, some things more than others, Mr. Chairman, but I think the board, it's up to the board to determine which ones you should push back on. I think the traffic study and the site plans are the most important. Attorney Kiefer's statement that the site plans are up to date relative to where we are in the process. So that means the board can send those out for peer review and have a substantive discussion about it. But you can't do that with material you don't have. So I think the architectural issues, site design, open space preservation, and the substantive issues related to the traffic study are things that the applicant really needs to submit to the board promptly. Mr. Kiefer, if during the presentation, if your client can sort of help to clarify when these documents could be forthcoming, that would be helpful. Yes, and actually Chairman Klein, this dovetails into what we presumed would probably be a discussion point near the end of the evening. And that would be talking about topical hearings and scheduling out future topical hearings, because generally the way a smooth 40B works is that hearings are dedicated to a specific topic. And so all of the supplemental materials and response documents on that topic are submitted to the board in advance of that topical hearing. And that's what Chairman Quinn had previously proposed that back in December, and that schedule with COVID kind of blew apart, obviously. But we would like to work with you and the board to get those scheduling back on and then what would be relevant to the upcoming topical hearing would be submitted in advance. And again, I had discussed this briefly with Attorney Heim earlier this week, but back in December Chairman Klein had asked for a 30 day advance filing. And to keep us on a tighter schedule, 30 day advance filing really kind of makes a hearing process longer, if you will, because you need the lead of time to do it and then that 30 days. And we would ask the board to consider something shorter, perhaps the lines of like 50 days, two weeks or whatnot. Again, I don't want to jump ahead of myself, but that was part of what we wanted to get out of this evening's hearing with the board is to arrange for future topical hearings. And then make a determination when that timing would be. My suggestion, and I'll let my team weigh in when we do our full presentation, but my suggestion would be probably the next hearing continued site design slash wetlands from there and move on to traffic and so forth. We'll come back to that at the conclusion of the hearing this evening. Mr. Chairman? Yes. Let me just add if I could, Mr. Chairman. So the board's agenda does outline those substantive hearings as attorney keeper has suggested of the board can move those around as you see fit. But I think there's an important difference between submitting materials 15 days or 30 days in advance of a hearing and compliance with the board's regulations. Those are very different things. The regulations require compliance by the submission of materials at the time of application. That is different than submitting iterative material during the course of these public hearings, which happens all the time, sufficiently in advance so the board can digest it and have the public have a chance to look at it. The two are not the same. This applicant has not complied with the board's regulations. And that is the issue that the chairman has raised. That is different than the applicant providing material to the board in advance of these substantive public hearings in a timely manner. And I don't think anyone's disputing that the applicant's gonna try to do that. But that is a different conversation than the one that the chair has opened with. And if I may, Mr. Chairman. The applicant's application did comport with the 40B regulations and what an application should be. And it also did seek a waiver of certain additional requirements that are in your local regulations. And within our submission, as well as within our response from March, we've indicated that we're willing to and we intend to update information. So I think for attorney Witt into paint this as a picture is that we've just ignored your regulations. That's not the case. We've submitted an application that includes the requirements as required under the 40B regulations. And to the extent that your regulations may require additional information, we have said that we will provide that within a timely process. I mean, in certain of the information, but frankly, it's at a level of detail that you don't get until you're further into a 40B process because it would just, you would have to keep redoing the same thing, which doesn't serve frankly, the board or the applicant. And just the one point, probably that we've taken issue, with direct issue with the board's regulations is to ask for a pro forma. The regulations under 40B state that local boards can enact local filing requirements so long as they're not inconsistent with the 40B and 40U regulations. And 40B regulations are very clear as to when and at one point in the hearing a board can seek to review pro forma review. And that's just a matter of state law. So it's not the applicant trying to be cute by any means, but it's just a matter of that's what the regulations say, that's what the case law under the regulations state. Mr. Chairman, I'll just respond very quickly. That's completely incorrect and inappropriate. And then the board, the board needs to hear the truth, which is the board can require the pro forma. The board has the right to require the pro forma. The board's review of the pro forma will be toward the very end of this process. That's what the regs say. That's what the regulations say and that's what the board's agenda tonight makes quite clear. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I would just refer the boards, the regulations themselves. I think that you're all very competent and capable of human beings. So you can read them and draw your own conclusions. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Chris and I can- Mr. Chairman, your audio is working at the moment. Looks like Mr. Hammond wants to make a point. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to sort of make two related points. One is this whole proceeding is going to be an iterative process of getting more and more information. And the back and forth that we've had for the past five or 10 minutes is exactly what I think the chairman was trying to avoid earlier on. We could take up our whole time tonight with that sort of thing. And I don't think it will be particularly helpful. On the other hand, we do have some peer review reports already and focusing just on the site plan. One, the theme that runs through it is that the peer review people who have had a chance to review the filing in March have said over and over again that they don't have the information that they need to do the review that they want. And at this point to be put in a position where we are not to worry that we'll have all of this updated 15 days before the hearing is not very comforting. So there is a reason for getting a little bit more front loading of information because otherwise we always put our peer review people in a situation where the time was excessively short for them and they're always trying to catch up. And at the end of the day, they're going to say, well, something wasn't clear. We didn't have this information and we didn't have that information and the answer will end up being too bad. So I think that we need to concentrate more than Ms. Kiefer has suggested on getting this information in a timely way. I think that if we were to do the wetlands impact in stormwater management in September as I think that she suggested that the ability of Ms. Kiefer's people to provide the information that VEDA has asked for even 15 days, much less 30 days before that, before September 22nd is almost impossible task. So I'd like it without worrying too much about whether we are going to stand on compliance with regulations. I'd like to have a useful discussion of how we are going to get the information that the peer group that VEDA has asked for in sufficient time for them to respond to it and for us to have a productive hearing. Mr. Klein, your audio is just a little weak. I could hear you but just barely. I don't know if other folks are having the same experience. Seems they are. Did any better? Much better, sir. Much better, okay. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. So I'd like to pick that up as we discussed the schedule for the subsequent and substantive hearings. We can proceed. So at this time I would like to ask the applicant if they're prepared to make their presentation. We are, Mr. Chairman. At this time, could we have Attorney Hyde promote the project team as panelists? So that would be Gwen Noyes, Arthur Klipfowl, John Hessean, Scott Thornton, and Bob Angler. I will do that. And as folks are promoted, you'll be given the option to turn on your video so that folks can see you. And if you're gonna engage in any screen sharing so that they can also have a better picture of your screen. One at one moment. Sir Angler, Miss Noyes. Miss Kiefer, I'm sorry. What's the, I'm trying to find Arthur. What's the last name associated with the account? It's, it would be Klipfowl. Thank you. Not seeing Mr. Klipfowl on this list. He might be using a... He may be with Miss Noyes. So they may, I don't know if you have audio up on them yet. Check on that. There is one that's labeled and Arthur Klipfowl that says up on the screen at the moment. Okay. Gwen, I'm trying to unmute you there. Let me try to get your video started as well. And Miss Kiefer, you said that there's someone here from BSC. Yes, John Hessean. John, you're on. Mr. Angler is there. Gwen and Art, it looks like you're on the same account. Are you on the phone? Because I don't see the option to provide video for you. We are on the same phone, yes. You're on the telephone? Yeah. The audio of the Zoom. Okay. Is that everybody? Miss Kiefer, am I missing anybody from the team? Should I have Mr. Angler, Mr. Hessean, Gwen and Art on a mutual account? Okay, you're missing Scott Thornton then. Okay. All right, Mr. Thornton, there you are. So, Gwen and Art, just to hand up your video is, it doesn't appear to be working. It's turned on, but it's not working. And Miss Kiefer, do you want your video on? You can turn my video on. That's fine. Thank you. I'm not sure why this is, I've done everything I can. We'll go to step video. There you go. Sharon, it looks like everybody's present. Mr. Chairman, you're muted. Here you go. Is there, Miss Kiefer, who would like to take control of the screen for the presentation? In terms of the presentation, I think that John Hessean will have the visual. Okay, proceed. Okay, very good. Again, good evening, Chairman Klein and members of the board. One moment, please. Everybody's seeing the introductory slide? Yes. Yes. Again, so good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. My name is Stephanie Kiefer, and I am an attorney with the law firm of Smolack and Vaughan in North Vandover. Our firm has worked on a number of 40 B projects throughout the Commonwealth for both limited dividend entities, nonprofits, and also some consulting with municipalities. This evening, we're here before you on behalf of Arlington Land Realty, and we are pleased to continue with the public hearing process on the comprehensive permit application for Thornbite Place. This evening, we have with us that you will hear from shortly Gwen Noyes and Arthur Clipfell from Oak Tree, Green Stacks, as well as our project engineer, John Hessean from the BSC Group. Scott Thornton of Vanessa and Associates, our traffic engineer, and last but not least, Robert Angler from SEB, our 40 B housing consultant. And as we previously in the introductory discussions on this, we recognize that this project proposal has been previously presented to the ZVA initially back in October 2016 at that time for the members of the board that weren't members of the board back in 2016. The hearing opened, and the zoning board sought to invoke the general land area minimum safe harbor at that time. In response to the board's notification of its efforts to invoke the safe harbor, we had asked for review by the Department of Housing and Community Development in accordance with the 40 B regulations. The DHCD reviewed the safe harbor claim and determined that it had not been established. From there, the board then filed the Housing Appeals Committee, which lasted for quite an extensive amount of time. But by late last fall, the Housing Appeals Committee issued its determination that the town had not established that it was able to assume a safe harbor under the general land area minimum, and it remanded that back to the board, which basically brought us to last December as Attorney Wittenhead referenced, we had a cursory introductory. We introduced the new members of the project team now that the Housing Appeals Committee had definitively decided that we had a viable project to present for the board that there was no safe harbor available to Arlington. And the new members of the team that we introduced are here tonight as well. And they were John Hessian from the BSC group, and Scott Thornton from the Nessan Associates, our traffic engineer. Likewise, within that December 2019 public hearing, we gave an overview of the project and also explained that we were going to BSC wanted to go back, update the survey of the property and the wetlands, and that we would be submitting updated our civil plans and then corresponding architectural plans. And it was agreed at that point that the hearing would be continued until April, and so the submission date would be March. So in March of 2020, the applicant submitted updated BSC plans, updated architectural plans, a response to the completeness review, an updated waiver list. I don't think I'm missing anything else. And then, of course, we were in April with COVID and basically no public hearings were going forward. The board and the applicant agreed to continue the public hearing until June. But at June, the town had not had enough time for its peer review consultants, the beta group, to review the updated site plans. We thought that that was going to come in in July. And as of early August, we were provided a data's peer review of the site engineer, the site plans, and probably a week earlier of its review of the 2014 traffic survey. So under that history, if you will, procedurally, there was significant time lapse. And as I said, the board's composition has changed. We have a new chairman. And our goal for this evening is to reintroduce the project with an overview of the type of development, the design concepts, the amenities, including the benefits of the community as a whole, and to then, and from there, as we suggested, take any questions that the board or the may have, or its peer review, allow for a public comment and then to work forward on scheduling the topical hearings. And probably within the individual professional review or presentations this evening, BSC, Vanessa, they're going to probably weigh in on how they see the topical hearings and what they would want for additional timing and for scheduling. And so with that somewhat of a housekeeping matter, I'm going to give a brief overview of the project for the board and for the community. And then I'm going to turn it over to Gwen Noyes to discuss the planning and design, who will then give a brief presentation and turn it over to BSC, John Hessian, for the Civil Review, and then from traffic. And then, as I said, we'll have to answer any questions that the board or the peer review may have. Just as a quick overview of the project, the property itself is off of Route 2 and it consists of 17 plus acres and is located between Dorothy and Berkshire and Route 2 to the south. And the abutting neighborhood off Dorothy Street, it's a primarily residential neighborhood featuring single-family homes, modest size plants. And ALR's presentation, as you've seen on the plans and we'll revisit this evening, we propose a development where the portion of the site closest to Dorothy Road would consist of six townhouses, two dwelling units in each one, two-storey. And so the intent there is that that serves as a transition from the residential neighborhood to the multi-family apartment building that's going to be behind these six townhouses. And that multi-family structure is broken out. So it's not just one monolithic building, but it has a west wing, which is L-shaped. And then an east wing that has a jog in it. And that will be four stories. But again, it's set back farther from the road. So the view from the road is you see these townhouses and then behind it, you see the apartment building. And as I stated, the majority of the site is not going to be developed. It is the development, I believe, is somewhere between five and six acres of the 17.7 acre site, which allows for the balance of the property to remain in open space. And in part of our design considerations, in terms of how to get the project on the site and to keep open space, there's also parking that's going to be provided. There's some surface parking, but there's also parking that's underneath the buildings, which we've provided, I believe, the total count of parking space is 304 parking spaces. And that was specifically to make certain that there's no risk of parking on the neighborhood streets. And we can work with the board at the peer review if they want to talk about less parking or whatnot. But again, I think that's a topic for another hearing. And so without further ado, I'm going to pass over the presentation now to Gwen Noyes to give you the planning and design overview of the project. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your service to the community and being members of the ZVA board. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. So Stephanie has given a certain amount of the overview. If you want to switch to the site plan, please, John. Thank you. This is the original site plan that we proposed. And because the architectural scale of it was not something that was problematic with the housing court, we have largely brought back the same architectural plan, site plan, that we originally proposed. And we've made some site modifications to it to reflect the further investigations that were done by our engineer, John Hesch and his company, BSC. But to a very large extent, this is still the same plan. We really would like to emphasize how much open land is saved of the property. We think it's between 10 and 11 by the time we're done, 10 and 11 acres, which is considerably larger than the Thorndike Park, which is right beside it, and would be a big addition. The plan would also have paths running through it. And not the configuration shown here, but John's plan forthcoming will show some adjustments that we've made. But basically, the paths would be allowing easy access to the ALY station as well as pleasure walks through a conservation land that would be considerably different from the way it is right now. It would be open to the public clearly and a safe place to go, as well as being a good connection to the ALY station. So we imagine it would be a community asset for the whole neighborhood as well as the town. And this plan does indicate you can see the six townhouses at the top of the plan that are basically the same scale as the existing homes along the street on Dorothy Road. And this is meant to be, as Stephanie mentioned, a transition from what the streetscape is now to the plan where there would be higher buildings in the back. And you can see in this very accurately constructed rendering, perspective rendering, it shows how the townhouses along Dorothy Road really do screen larger building behind it. The four story building behind it would be barely visible. And of course, we're showing small trees here. So that is one of the major aspects of the site plan that we have planned from the beginning. So as mentioned by Stephanie Kiefer, the parking, we can go to the next slide. It would be under the buildings. They're not shown here, obviously, but there's four stories above what we, OK, there's the parking. And so the required number of parking, which may be adjusted according to more recent studies that the town and perhaps beta have done in terms of what is needed. But we provided, I think, 304 spaces for the zoning requirement here. And most of it was under the building, some of it on the site. So the entire project would be built with modules. That is a very big piece of the work that we do. And we believe it does a number of things for the community, besides being very high quality construction and energy efficient and so on. It means that the length of time that a construction site is causing neighborhood disruption is much diminished. So this is something that we would like to make clear to the community that would be a real asset in terms of the construction. Miss Noyes, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I've got a request for some folks to make this a little bit bigger. Mr. Hessian, is there any way that it can just focus on a single slide? If we're going to focus on the slide, maybe we should go back to the site plan. Sure. Are you seeing more than one slide? No, we're just seeing the parking slide right now. So I'm seeing the sort of slide as well as something that says next slide. I've got some folks asking to change the display setting so that it's in the get rid of the presenter view. Does that make sense, John? Don't cry. Maybe the magnifying glass. High presenter view. There we go. That's bigger. If I do from beginning. OK. Try that out. Just has a wrong date on that. So we go back to. Go back to. Let's see. I think the next slide after that. Do you see in the perspective? We've talked about that a little bit. The next slide after that. Well, this is showing the four-story buildings that are actually, you'd never see them this way because they'd be screened by the townhouses and trees and so on. But it does give a little bit of a scale. And of course, this was designed five years ago. And as I say, we're doing module and we're always improving. So this is something that might look a little different. But let's go to the next slide. This is showing, again, the scale of the townhouses. There'll be a module as well. And these would be modular also with parking below. And the street would be clear. And the parking with the off street. And they could have a different colors and look to them. But this is just to indicate what we were presuming would be a pleasant way for Dorothy Road to end rather than with a larger scale building. So next slide. And this was showing, again, the parking underneath. And, John, I believe there was one slide that had the section through the whole site showing both the townhouses and the four-story buildings. Do you still have that in your deck? We move that to the reference trines, but I can call it up here. Me too, OK. This is illustrating the same point that on the left are the existing and then the new townhouses. And then you can see there's some planting in between and the four-story building that then goes off to the right. And that would go up to Route 2. So this is an overview of how we would accomplish the 219 apartments, 12 of them being townhouses, but most of them being two bedrooms and ones and two bedrooms and three bedrooms and apartments. And 75% of them would be market rate, 25% affordable. And we have heard over and over again that there's a crime need for senior housing. And this is housing that is a short walk to a ill wife and a fresh pond. So I think this is an overview. And I would like to say that as the housing court has basically said that this plan conforms to what they see as a good place to continue working. The major issue that we had with the community had to do with the concerns for the wetlands and the civil engineering aspects. And we brought in the SC Group, highly esteemed Boston Civil Engineering operation. And John Hessian is going to continue the presentation and we're very grateful for his expertise. He's a senior partner of BSC and has a lot of good experience to bring to this effort. So John, you're on. Thank you, Gwen. Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. My name is John Hessian. I'm a civil engineer with the BSC Group, located at 803 Summer Street in Boston. And before I get going here, I want to try to get the presentation back. I don't know if I messed up the view that everyone's seen. Are you seeing the Civil and Wetland Resources title slide? No. There you are. Right now, yes. OK. Are you seeing the whole deck on the left or just the title? You are. So let me see if I can. We're seeing five slides, isn't it? Absolutely. Enjoy. For some reason, switching it from presenter view, I can't get. It seems like I can't get it back to a. It's a big picture that I think is full screen. OK, so it's good to be back the last time I was before this board or the last version of this board was back on December 10th. And at that time, I identified what my charge was from the applicant here. Many of the comments from the original application were questions about the accuracy of the survey, the floodplain, the wetlands delineation at that time was about six years old. It was done and completed in 2009. A lot of the plans were comments where that they were illegible, not scalable, missing information. So my charge was to create good, accurate, complete data to kind of restart this project. So since that December 10th hearing, we've completed an updated survey for the property, including the boundary existing topography at one foot contour intervals. And that survey was completed in December 2019 and January 2020 over that two month period. As I mentioned, one of the concerns with the original survey was that it was done on a different vertical datum than the FEMA flood insurance rate maps. So our updated survey has been completed on the NAVD-88 vertical datum, which is consistent with the FEMA flood insurance rate maps. The 100 year floodplain elevation for this site is elevation 6.8. It's shown as the very kind of squiggly orange line that the more towards the Dorothy Road end of the site, the northern end of the site. We've also shown the FEMA floodway, which is the orange dash line that is closer to the southern end of the property. Both of those are taken directly from the FEMA documents. So I believe that was one of the big comments or questions originally was to have accurate floodplain information and accurate survey. I think we've accomplished that in that time frame. Also during that time frame, BSC wetland scientists conducted a wetland delineation. And as you may recall, we had had an early winter snowstorm just prior to that December 10th hearing. And clearly we had to wait. Our wetland scientists had to wait for a winter thaw to conduct the wetland delineation. And that thaw actually occurred on January 15th. And that's the date that the delineation was completed. But given the time of year, January is not ideal for wetland delineation. But given the timing of the remand back from the Housing Appeals Committee, that's kind of the hand that we were dealt. But because of that, we sent two of our most highly regarded wetland scientists as a team to do this delineation. Julian Davies is a senior ecological and soil scientist and Marley Sullivan, who has specific experience or expertise in field identification of both upland and wetland plants. On the exhibit that's on the screen before you, you'll see two dashed blue lines or various dashed blue lines. Those represent the 2020 and the 2009 wetland delineations. And we provided that information on our updated environmental resources plan for comparison because we found it interesting, I guess, that the 2020 delineation was very consistent with the 2009 delineation. However, due to the winter conditions for completing the 2020 updated delineation and for the planning and design purposes for these revised plans, we used the more upgrading or conservative of the two 2009 or 2020 delineations for establishing the buffers and setbacks that you see in white. And the closer line is the town's local bylaw, 25-foot no disturbed zone. And the outer line is the 100-foot wetland buffer consistent with the Wetlands Protection Act, but also consistent with the town's local bylaw aura limits. So with what we believe is very good and accurate, updated survey, floodplain, and wetland information, we went forward and essentially recreated, as Gwen mentioned, we recreated the original design from 2016 with some site plan revisions. In particular, based on the updated survey and building setbacks on the west, we eliminated a walkway that ran down the west side of the west wing building. And actually, it went behind the building through the 25-foot no disturbed zone. So we removed that to eliminate impacts, obviously, on adjacent properties and to minimize impacts within the 25-foot no disturbed zone. Additionally, with Oak Tree, we modified the building. We modified both the west and east wings of the building just a bit previously. They had protruded into the 25-foot no disturbed zone. And on the east wing, essentially, right on the bordering vegetative wetland limit. So Oak Tree worked with us. And we modified those building corners a little bit to move them out of that resource area. Other revisions to the plans, I don't have them highlighted here, but that were completed primarily in response to previous comments that were compiled back in 2016, many of which were from public works. We've eliminated the previous pavement over the sewer easement near the Dorothy Road entrance, that little isolated parking lot, which is at the extreme west end of the project. We have modified the proposed waterline loop. It entered the main site drive from Dorothy Road and originally looped back out through the emergency access to Parker Street. But there was a previous comment requesting that it be looped through to the Burritch Eated Street intersection. We've incorporated that change. We've connected, or we've corrected, the proposed sewer connections from the townhomes to the sanitary sewer in Dorothy Road. We've modified the sewer connection for the multifamily building, run the cross country easement sewer main to the line in Dorothy Road, again, based on a previous comment. And we've shown the accessible parking spaces on the site, which are located by the main entrance to the east wing. One change that we have not represented on the revised plans are we did along the west and south of the west wing, where we eliminated the walkway. But the recreational trail, it came up in one of data's peer review comments. But it's clearly not the intention of this project to create additional wetland impacts with the creation of the trail network. This is envisioned to be an amenity for the future residents and for the neighbors. And as people are aware, there is currently a significant homeless encampment on the property with an established network of paths. And our idea, or our proposal actually, which we thought of after we submitted the revised plans, would be to walk the existing pathway network with representatives from the town and the neighborhood and identify appropriate paths to be retained into the future. And the others could be restored to their natural condition. So clearly, we would eliminate the wetland crossing. There was originally a boardwalk wetland crossing proposed. But that would minimize or eliminate any potential wetland impacts, wetland resource area impacts related to the recreational trail network and providing connections to the Minuteman bike path and to our wife and to the park. So I guess I was going to hop into Beta's peer review. We are in receipt of Beta's peer review, which was dated August 5th. We are very happy that many of the 2015 Nova Armstrong comments have been addressed with these revised plans and this revised submission. But with the current peer review letter, Beta's review is broken down into six general areas. The site plans, floodplain, stormwater management, utilities, construction, and environmental. And we clearly, as it's been mentioned earlier in this presentation, we look forward to the opportunity to work with that Beta to provide responses to all of their comments today. And just in general, the site plan comments mostly relate to requests for additional information on the plans. And as has been discussed, we fully expect that we didn't see anything in those requests that we see as a problem, but we just see it as that iterative process of 40B application where additional information is provided, additional details. But the information at the outset is maybe a little more preliminary so that the applicant is an expending huge costs on full engineering design on something that may change through this public hearing process. Second comments related to floodplain primarily relate to compensatory flood storage for the proposed fill in the floodplain. We have, as part of our revised submission, we completed preliminary calculations for that compensatory storage. And we will be able to update and provide that to Beta. I will mention that with our requests of waivers from the local wetlands bylaw, we will be proposing that compensatory storage at a one to one ratio and not the Carlington local wetland bylaw two to one compensatory storage ratio. The third focus on Beta's comments was stormwater management. And again, I think similar to the site plans, their comments are looking for additional details and calculations showing compliance with the Massachusetts DEP stormwater management regulations. And we see that as a next phase of working towards addressing those comments. Their utility comments were, I think, pretty minor in this peer review letter. And as I mentioned earlier with some of the plan revisions, several of the previous utility comments were addressed with this revised submission. But we completely agree with Beta's recommendation that we should coordinate with DPW on the proper utility connection locations and sizes to support this proposed development. As far as the construction, as Gwen mentioned, the proposed construction method using modules will greatly minimize construction period impacts and significantly reduce the duration of construction activities. And we can provide additional information on that type of construction and document how that will reduce those impacts in the duration. But in addition, this project will adhere to other town construction requirements, such as hours of operations. And we'll provide that in our response to Beta's comments. Their final category of comments relates to environmental. The comments identify the differences between the Wetlands Protection Act, Massachusetts Wetland Protection Act, and the Arlington Wetlands Bylaw, including regulated areas and performance standards. As was identified in our list of requested waivers, the applicant has requested an exemption from the local Wetlands Bylaw. I think that has a pretty significant overarching influence on our proposed responses or how we will respond or work with Beta on their environmental comments. So in that vein, it is important that we are able to work with Beta, first and foremost, to confirm the wetland boundaries on the site. Our updated delineation from January, once the boundaries are confirmed, we can quantify the impacts of the proposed work within the various Wetlands Protection Act and local bylaw regulated areas. By doing this, it will help us identify, I believe this is my interpretation of what Beta was looking for in several of their comments, was to identify the extent of relief that would be granted with the waiver of some of the local Wetland Bylaws. With that, we look forward to working with Beta to provide the additional environmental information in addition to the other five comments. But I believe the environmental comments are maybe the most critical to address closely with Beta. A lot of other things are dependent on where those shake out. And based on the tentative schedule that was outlined in tonight's agenda, the October 13th and 27th dates for wetland stormwater and civil engineering matters, there should be adequate time to provide the additional information and work with Beta to respond to those comments and questions. But with that said, it sounds like we may be revisiting some of those proposed dates and topical hearings at the conclusion of tonight's meeting. But if those dates were to stick, I think those are good dates for addressing those comments. With that, I'm obviously open for questions at the conclusion, but would like to now turn it over to Scott Thornton to discuss traffic. Just a brief note, Ms. Kiefer, we're over the 30-minute time slot, so if you could encourage the team to try to keep it tight so we can get this completed. OK, very good. Scott, if you're ready to comment, I think his presentation will probably last just a few moments, for a few minutes. Yes, excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. My name's Scott Thornton. I'm with Vanessa Associates, and we're preparing the traffic assessment for the project. Given that we're short on time, I just want to go over some aspects of the assessment. We intend on doing a thorough and complete analysis of the appropriate traffic conditions, both with and without the project, to make sure that we accurately identify the project's impacts on traffic flow in the area. There was a traffic assessment prepared for the project by another consultant in 2014. This study looked at the six locations that are shown on this slide, which range from Route 2 and Route 16 intersection, Valway Parkway, the location number one. Mr. Thornton, I'm sorry, this is Doug Hime. Mr. Hesson, can you stop your screen share or, alternatively, bring the slide up? Again, I don't know if Mr. Thornton plans to refer to it, but the only thing the folks can see on the screen right now is Mr. Thornton. Oh, OK. I could see the slide. Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe that was my setting. I apologize, Mr. Thornton. That's fine. John, you want to try to pull up the slide again? Yeah. OK. That's the whole thing. That's even better. So we extend the study area out, included ramp intersections for Lake Street with Route 2 and extended along Lake Street, looking up Little John Street, Birch Street, and then went out to the intersection with Mass Avenue. So we're going to be updating this study. There are, obviously, 2014 was a long time ago, and there have been comments that were received on the 2014 study that we would be addressing in an update. We were anticipating collecting traffic counts in April of this year, and, obviously, now is not an appropriate time to collect that data. We wanted to get counts when the weather was better, so we would get good pedestrian and bicycle volumes. But then the pandemic hit. We couldn't really do traffic counts in summer, because in general, that's not appropriate. And we were hopeful that schools would be in session in person after Labor Day, but it seems like an Arlington distance learning will be in effect. So there remains to be a bit of discussion to be had with both the town's peer consultant for traffic and with the Arlington Traffic Advisory Committee regarding the base traffic conditions that we'll use for the study. John, if you could go to the next slide. No, it doesn't want to move. So I'll just move along. We received comments from BEDA earlier this month. They recommended a number of additional locations, including Blake Avenue intersections with Brooks Ave and with the Minuteman Bikeway, which we think are totally appropriate. Brooks Ave, in particular, that traffic signal we noticed when I was down in December prior to the previous hearing. There seemed to be a lot of queuing that occurred between Brooks Ave and Lake Street and no queuing between Brooks Ave and Mass Ave. So we thought that there might be some miscommunication going on with the signal equipment. That is something we want to look at with DPW and with the TAC. We received some comments from the TAC both in regards to this year and also they had some comments from the 2014 study. The TAC had also indicated that they have traffic counts or more recent traffic data than what was used, obviously, in the 2014 study. So we plan to be in contact with them, coordinate with BEDA and with the TAC and with DPW on updated information. John, are we able to get to the next slide? Or is that? Have you seen the recommendations and considerations? Yes. OK. So I think in terms of recommendations for the updated TIA, we plan to coordinate with BEDA on the study area and the methodology for the baseline traffic development. They had indicated looking at Man Bikeway and the future proposed signalized control that's proposed for that intersection with Lake Ave. We're going to look at connections with the area multimodal facilities, with the Minuteman Bikeway right in our backyard. We will also review the parking considerations. Seems like the parking supply is sort of a fluid number, but we can absolutely look at that in conjunction with the town's consultant. And we have worked on other residential developments in the area, so we have a good idea for what the modal split characteristics are of those developments. And we just expect to continue to work with the towns, departments, and the peer consultant moving forward. In terms of timing and the topical hearings and the schedule for those, we're hopeful that we can get a revised and updated traffic study to BEDA sometime next month. Then there's probably going to be some back and forth that will be necessary. But we expect that to the extent that we can try to address all of the concerns, we have a good base of information and comments to work with to shape the scope of the traffic study. And we're hopeful that we can start to meet either the middle of October or possibly the end of October hearings for the project. And that's all I have. I'll turn it over to, I think, Bob Engler at this point. And thank you for your time. Bob Engler, I wasn't planning on any presentation, but only respond to questions. With that said, I think that we would like to open it up if the board has any specific questions that they wanted to ask. And you have the project team. And I don't know if, likewise, if BEDA has any specific questions. Mr. Klein, I'm sorry, that's my fault. Folks are still having a little trouble hearing you, Mr. Klein. But I'll go ahead and promote the BEDA team if you like. Thank you, I appreciate that. I did have one question on the traffic study. I don't know if this is a possibility, but do traffic studies look at all now in the realm of Grubhub, Uber Eats, and Uber in general? Are there any methodologies for determining expected trips from those type of activities that would be worked into a model? Yes, so in terms of modal choice like that and the transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft, we do have some data that shows percentages of vehicle trips made through those types of traffic choices. There are generally two types of the modes. There's traveling by yourself with an Uber or traveling in a carpool arrangement with Uber, so we have some of that data and we expect that to be wrapped into the traffic study. So we'll have that information. We'll also have expected users for transit, for pedestrian, for bicycle modes as well. Are there more questions from the board before I ask BEDA for comments? Mr. Hunt, would you switch it back to the other mode so I can see hands? I can see Patrick, there you are. Mr. Hanlon. Sorry, this is a transportation question. I think it's been asked in a lot of the chats as well, but maybe BEDA can weigh in on this. I don't really understand and would like some education on how it is that anything, any studies that are being done in the next few weeks or even few months in the middle of the pandemic when both transit and automobile traffic is completely atypical of the past and of what we would expect in normal times and when we have only the vaguest conception of what the new normal will be like. I don't see how you get from here to there and I'm wondering what thinking you and I guess BEDA have done to figure out how to make what you can do in the short term and in 2020 generally relevant to the decision that's before us. Right, and it's a great question. And we're not proposing to collect data now because as you mentioned, it's not appropriate. Traffic conditions are not the norm and likely will not be for some time. But we're hopeful that we can use some historic traffic data using the policies and directives that Mass DOT has issued. In fact, for May of this year, where they indicated that typically there's a one to two year window on using traffic data for analysis and the directive has indicated that that window can be expanded within reason as long as the traffic count data meets their DOT's protocols. So we haven't yet had the discussion with the Traffic Advisory Committee. But again, they had indicated that they have some other traffic data that is of a more recent date than what was used in the 2014 study. And so what we're hopeful of is that we can use that data. Maybe it's a couple of years old for locations along Lake Ave and correct if it's, say, 2018 data, 2017 data, we could take that, correct it upwards to 2020 conditions, assuming there was no pandemic, and then project that into the seven year horizon as we would do with a standard traffic study. And if beta has any additional comments, I'm sure you'd want to hear from them. Does beta have any specific comments on the traffic study? I can reiterate what Mr. Thornton is saying that as an industry, we're looking at guidance. Typically, we would look at data for data to be relevant. We would expect it to be within about a two year window. Now we're expanding that window because we can't collect new data. It wouldn't be meaningful. Data collected during the pandemic, certainly data collected now would not be valid. And so I'm pleased to hear that there might be some data that the TAC has and that that would be more recent than the 2014 data from the previous study for the site, but something that can be extrapolated using guidance that the state has issued to adjust that based on known factors. And so that would be useful in an updated study. So it'll be a question of what other data exists. So that's something that we recommended in our letter to look at sources for newer data that could be extrapolated using those state guidelines. Perfect, thank you. Are there other questions from the board that relate to traffic? Mr. Heim, I was wanting to ask if you could bring up Susan Chapnick. Thank you. So Ms. Chapnick is the chair of the town of Arlington Conservation Commission and she asked to address this meeting and so I asked her if she could address this during this time. Ms. Chapnick, you're promoted to panelist. I'm just gonna try to find your screen and give you the option to hear by video. Susan, can you hear us? Should be unmuted, oh, nope, you're muted. Hold on one moment. Let me check to see if Susan's got a separate phone line because it doesn't appear that it's coming through here. Hold on one moment. Are there other specific questions from beta group that they would like to address to the applicant? Hi, Mr. Chair, I'm already over with the beta group. I don't have any questions for the applicant at this time. Susan, if you can hear me, can you just put in the chat whether you're calling in separately under a different line? I do have one phone call-in listener. I can certainly allow that person to talk but I wanna make sure it's used so I'm not cutting off or giving somebody the opportunity to jump in while I'm sure folks wanna be. Susan, Mr. Klein, I'll try this telephone call-in listener and see if that's Susan on the screen. Susan, is that you on the phone? Susan, is that? Hi, this is just a citizen neighbor. So I have a lot of things but I'll wait for my turn so it's not Susan. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. I don't have my camera, I mean on my computer. Okay, thank you so much. All right, I'm gonna try Susan for just one more minute here. But I don't see a separate phone line and I'm not seemingly able to unmute her or see her video. Looks like she may have left a meeting and is trying to re-enter. Bear with me for one second, folks. I've also got a separate Susan here that could be a different Susan since she had the username identified as the chair of the ConCon. Gonna allow this Susan to talk to see if it's her, hold on a second. All right. Hi, do we have our right Susan? Trying to unmute her. Rick, can you try to unmute Susan who's been promoted to a panelist? So I've got the wrong Susan, I'm not trying to force her to talk. How's that? So I can, yeah. Susan, is that you or a different Susan? I think I'm a different Susan. Thank you very much. Sorry to disappoint. No, you never. Hold on a second. Let me see if Ms. Chapnick is redialed in. All right, I'm gonna try one more option here. We've got a new telephone listening. Rick, can you try to unmute that phone number, please? Not doing it, Doug. No, I'm hitting the unmute button but doesn't seem to be working. All right, well, Mr. Chair, we don't... Hi, can you hear me now? Oh, can you hear me now? Oh my, I'm so sorry. Everything was set up fine and then it just threw me out at the end of the presentation. Very sorry. Very sorry for that delay. Do you still have time for my comments? Okay, great. Can I, can I just... Oh, thank you, sorry, go ahead. Sure. Good job, sorry. You are gonna go identify yourself, thank you. I was, yes. I'm Susan Chapnick. I'm the chair of the Arlington Conservation Commission. The Conservation Commission in the town of Arlington usually administers the State Wetlands Protection Act as well as the town of Arlington Wetlands bylaw. And the implementing regulations. These laws regulate work proposed in and near wetlands as we all know. Additionally, the Conservation Commission has broader duties under the Massachusetts law to promote and protect the town's natural resources and the watershed. The reason I'm stating that is because it's a little confusing in the 40B arena where the issues of wetlands are discussed and decided and evaluated. So pursuant to the Comprehensive Permit Law, or 40B as we call it, the Zoning Board will be administering the town's bylaw when reviewing the Thorndyke Place application, which is important, especially in light of the recent information very clearly stated by the applicant that they will be seeking waivers for our local bylaw. The Conservation Commission is providing background information and comments to assist the Zoning Board in this role. The Conservation Commission will still administer the State Wetlands law so that the applicant will have to file an application with it to review the project under the Wetlands Protection Act. And at that point, we also do have the authority to review the wetland boundaries, the wetland delineation. To preserve the wetland resource area functions and mitigate potential harm to those functions, as well as to meet the standards in the town's wetland bylaw and implementing regulations. The Arlington Conservation Commission respectfully requests that the ZBA consider comments and recommendations as we detailed in our July 9th, 2020 letter. And that letter is on the ZBA website with key points that I'm gonna summarize here within the next few minutes. I'm gonna keep it very brief. Summary of our comments. The wetlands delineation as we heard was performed in the winter and supporting documentation for this delineation was missing from the application. A winter delineation is not compliant with our town bylaw regulations which require that it's performed during the growing season. So that the vegetation is leafed out and can be clearly identified. And so the soils can be clearly characterized. There are four wetland areas identified so far on the site which Beta identified in their comment letter. One of these, which I'd like to point out called isolated wetland. We're not shown on the project plan but they were previously identified and approved by the conservation commission. Back in 2001, by a then peer reviewed evaluation and the peer reviewer with the SD group. Two of the isolated wetlands at that time that were identified are located where current development is planned. Wildlife habitat evaluation was not presented in that application at all. An alternative analysis to building structures within resource areas was not provided as required by the town's wetland regulation for work within the adjacent upland resource area which is the hundred foot buffer to resource areas. Justifications for tree and vegetation removal and details of proposed vegetation mitigation including tree replacements as required to protect resource area values in the town's bylaw were not provided. Stormwater management calculations as we've discussed were missing and they were indicated that they would be submitted later. Flood storage calculations were missing information including flood storage volumes that will be lost under the proposed project, alternative considerations and calculations of compensatory flood storage. And again, it was mentioned that the town bylaw requires a two to one compensatory flood storage which is two times as stringent as the state law and this is by design in the town of Arlington to be protective of our resource area. The applicant did not explain how the proposed project meets what is called the limited environmental impact review criteria. This is specified in the ZBA comprehensive permit regulation section 6.2 and 6.3. Specifically how the development demonstrates that it will and I quote from that section 6.3, how will it improve water quality, control flooding, maintain ecological diversity and promote adaptation to climate changes. The applicant has requested numerous waivers, most significantly as was discussed, waivers to the local bylaw. However, insufficient information is presented to justify them. We urge the ZBA not to grant any waivers of the bylaw or town wetland regulations because of the important functions provided by the wetland resource areas on the property. Additionally, there is a history of major flood events in this part of Arlington that cause extensive property damage and contaminate resource areas with sewage from sanitary sewer overflow dischargers. Prevention of additional flooding is a valid local concern and local concern is defined in 760 CMR 56.02 as Massachusetts regulation that warrants denying waivers of the bylaw and town wetland regulations. And in conclusion, we have many more details we'd like to discuss. Obviously, we'll hold them until the October 13th meeting or whatever meeting we decide is going to discuss this area of the project. And we look forward to assisting the ZBA and data in further evaluation and discussion of the wetland resource area. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Are there questions from either the board or from a major group in regards to the president Yes, Mr. Riverlack. Yes, I'd, I would like to thank Ms. Chapnick for her remarks. One of the, and earlier in the presentation, I saw a slide that mentioned the 100 year base flood elevation being, I think 6.8 feet. That was a piece of information I was actually looking for in the plans and I thank the SC for providing it. One of the things I'm personally curious about, I know I'm aware that Cambridge has invested a significant amount of resources in studying climate change vulnerability and the Alewife Brook area in particular. Their CCVA impacted or had an impact on shaping their, you know, the Alewife District Handbook, the Alewife District Plan, and it's also, to the best of my knowledge, influenced some of the recent permitting decisions there. What I wonder if there's any possibility of us doing is finding the, you know, Cambridge's projections from the, they're projected 100 year base flood elevation for 2070, which I believe is what they are actually using for permitting these dates. So I'd be curious to know what that elevation is and where these broad, where these structures sit in relation to that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Is that something that Beta Group can try to track down? Mr. Chair, maybe Todd Undis from Beta Group can chime in on that. Sure, Todd Undis from Beta. I can, or Beta can certainly look into finding out specifically what Cambridge is looking at for 2070 projection. I know that I was just involved with projects over in Braintree where they also had a 2070 projection so we can certainly see if there's any correlation between the two and see if it's appropriate to apply to this site as well. Question for Mr. Hessian. The, in the original presentation back in 2016, there was a question raised about culverts, existing culverts under route two and their impact on water translation throughout the area. And I was curious if in your research you have determined anything in regards to those existing culverts running under route two? Nothing specific about the culverts themselves but we did look very closely at the FEMA flood elevations and both upstream and downstream of this site, the flood elevation is 6.8. So it shows that doesn't speak directly to your question about the culverts but what I believe it demonstrates is that it's not a dramatic restriction or conveyance. If it were, you'd likely see a difference in the flood elevations either on the upstream or downstream and it really, this area is very flat in the entire area per the FEMA flood study has the same flood elevation. And there are specific FEMA cross sections immediately upstream and downstream of this property. Is it known whether those culverts are even open? We have not gone and done a detailed observation or inspection of the condition of those culverts. Okay. Any other questions from the board this time? Mr. Chair, I just want to note that Mr. Attorney Haverty has joined the meeting, the HCD consultant. Mr. Hanlon. I just, I wanted to zero in on something that Ms. Chapnick said and that I think needs to be underscored often in the application it seems almost as though the applicant is unwilling or unable maybe to provide information and therefore is asking for a waiver. But to me at least a waiver has to be justified and information has to be provided for the waiver to be justified. So just to take for example, the difference between a 1.1 compensatory storage and two to one ratio if we're going to undertake and I'm not saying that we should but if we are going to undertake to waive that it wouldn't necessarily be an all or nothing situation and you'd have to have facts that would enable you to assess what the consequences are of what you're doing and to weigh those against whatever other considerations at the end of the line are important. And so to me that means that you sort of need to put the waiver idea after the getting the facts rather than use that as a substitute for getting facts. And I think that Ms. Chapnick is right on that as long as we're in a situation where we don't know what the conservation commission would want to know if it had to consider these issues we can't really responsibly go about waiving anything because we don't know what the consequences are of what we're doing. So it's obviously not a time right now to go into that in any great detail we'll have that opportunity in October or some other time down the road but I just wanna stress how important it is to think of the waiver as something that you earn by making a showing rather than something that can obviate the necessity for making a showing. Thank you. Mr. Harmon, are you aware of any other town boards or commissions who are looking to address this evening? I had only heard from the conservation commission. I can ask, I'm not personally aware I can see if Ms. Ray heard from anybody if Ms. Ray could let me know over chat if she heard from anybody that wanted to be heard as a member of the commission. We obviously have a number of folks from the public who are, have their hands raised but I don't believe they're raised in the capacity as a member of a town or a bond. Okay. I'm seeing representative Dave Rogers has his hand up if you want to move when you're ready to move to public comment. Okay. Well, as Brian Rary joined Preston and Clarissa Rowe at present. Okay. Let me know when you're ready to open to public comment if you'd like to hear from Mr. Rogers first. I represented Roger Sorry or any of the other members of the public. Okay. All right. So at this point I appreciate all the patients from the members of the public who have joined us for this meeting. I'd like to open the meeting up for public comment. I'd just like to reiterate we would like to try to keep comments to three minutes per person. There will be plenty of other opportunities to make comments and we strongly encourage people to submit written comments. They can be submitted either in right in, you know, you can send a letter to the town or you can send it via email to zba.town.arlington.ma.us. Those are all options. So Mr. Heim, if you wouldn't mind Mr. Rogers to speak. Representative Rogers, you've been promoted. Unless there's an objection, by the way, I will take the beta group off of the panelists for the time being. Unless there's an objection. Let me just get representative Rogers. All right. There he is. Thank you. Good evening everyone. And I wanna thank the Sony Board of Appeals for your service and thank the public for their due attention. I wanna keep this to within the three minute requirements that everyone gets a chance to speak. Just a few things. First off, this project is universally opposed to reiterate what everyone knows, the town meeting, the select board, the entire state delegation and most importantly, the overwhelming majority of neighbors who live in this neighborhood for countless reasons. First off, traffic. We've heard talk of traffic. I mean, Lake Street is a parking lot. It is literally a gridlocked parking lot prior to the pandemic. Now obviously there's been a decline in traffic now but it is egregiously bad. And this project with hundreds of cars making thousands of trips will only make it dramatically worse. Increasing air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and just the diminution to the quality life will be unreal. Most of the property is in the FEMA floodplainment. And so we know with climate change and with worsening data, yes, there's been a drought this summer but we've seen rainfall events. We know that it will lead to greater flooding and that those who live in the neighborhood will experience greater flooding and the Thorndike Field will experience greater flooding which is obviously a place for lacrosse and soccer and that so many people and that will have a decline in how often it can be used. We know that the town will bear costs not just water and sewer but other costs and as you've heard from the concom and others counsel to the town, Mr. Whitten. There's a lot of information that hasn't even been provided yet. So I work in the legislature with other state representatives and state senators and I've never seen a 40 B project either in the district I represent or in talking to all my colleagues who are state senators and state representatives that is so universally opposed. And so I urge the Zoning Board of Appeals to keep that in mind and that we, I hope that Oak Tree and the Moogar family will continue to enter into a dialogue with the town to see how we can avoid this very misbegotten misadventure of a project from ever taking place and whatever I can do at the state level maybe through an environmental bond bill or otherwise to help perhaps raise money to enter into a deal or a transaction with the Moogar family in Oak Tree, I will do because this project is wrong for Arlington on so many levels. And finally, Arlington has made great strides on affordable housing and has a housing production plan. And so it is manifestly unfair for a town that has done so much to try to improve its affordable housing stock with a plan to continue to do that to bear the brunt of this project. So thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak. I appreciate it. And I look forward to continuing to work with the town and the residents to prevent this from going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Mr. Klein, I have four hands raised. I have Brian Rarick, Joanne Preston, I believe Clarissa Rowe, Patricia Brown, and Jennifer Griffith. So if you'd like, I can promote them in the order that I believe I saw them. Folks, I apologize to do my best to try. The list that I'm seeing does appear to be populating an order. So I think if you take them from the top that will be appropriate. Terrific. So starting with Mr. Rarick. Mr. Rarick, you should be on. And let me know if you want to share. If anybody wants to start their video, please just go ahead and ask. Thank you. Doug, are you hearing me? We can hear you. Yes. Great, great. Well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity. Thanks to the board for entering into this process, which I know is going to consume much of their lives for many months to come. And I want to thank Mr. Hamlin and Mrs. Chapnick for their comments about the importance of giving very, very serious consideration before considering any waivers of local bylaws, and in particular, the local wetlands bylaw. It would be a travesty of public policy to waive Arlington's local wetlands bylaw in the case of the development of this site. There is no more sensitive site in the town of Arlington. And there's no better example of why a well-crafted local wetlands bylaw like Arlington's helps address issues of local concern in flooding and public safety. So, secondly, I want to just observe that there's a provision in the Arlington zoning bylaw that I think may be missing in the conversation that would affect at least the boardwalk that is part of the proposal, which is that the zoning bylaw prohibits any construction in the FEMA floodway. And I would suggest the proponent take a look at that provision. And lastly, with respect to the wetlands delineation, it was discussed that the delineation was done in the wintertime, which is unproductive. But there's another broader issue here that's peculiar to this site, which is that the site has been abused for at least 70 years under this ownership. The Nova Armstrong report commented on what is widely observed public knowledge that there has been extraordinary amounts of dumping of solid waste, landfill and other debris on the site over the decades. Now, whether or not that dumping is an attempt to fill wetlands, it may have the effect of filling wetlands. And a wetland doesn't cease to be a regulatory wetland just because it's dumped on. There's a provision in the town of Arlington's wetland regulations is 21B3 that observes that where an area has been disturbed that it is still to be counted as a wetland if it would support under undisturbed conditions a predominance of wetland indicator plants. So I think that on this site, more than any other ever in the town of Arlington, it's imperative that the zoning board in enforcing the local wetlands bylaw and the concom enforcing the state wetlands bylaw thoroughly require that the issue of the impact of dumping on the wetlands be thoroughly investigated and that what would be wetlands other than for that illegal dumping. Be taken into account now. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Ray. Next would be Ms. Preston. Can you hear me? We can. Oh, good. As someone who drives down Lake Street regularly, I have a particular concern about taking older data and extrapolating it to stand for the flow of traffic in the next few years. In particular, the Hardy School has added, which is on Lake Street, six more classrooms. So that is a dramatic change in that if you have only 10 students or faculty members per classroom, that's 60 cars a day, twice a day, five days a week, 10 months of the year. So I think any extrapolation should be done very, very carefully given this consideration. Thank you. Ms. Preston, why are there... Are those classrooms, obviously school's not in session at the moment, but are those classrooms constructed and do you know when they were opened? Yes. No, I don't, very recently though. And the other thing it said, there's a, what do they call it? A flex situation with the Thompson School so that students can be assigned to either school depending on enrollment, which means a good number of students come from the other side of Mass Ave. So they would need to go down Lake Street to get there, to get to school. Thank you very much. You're welcome. The next person on the list is Ms. Rowe. Ms. Rowe, let me know if you want to have your video on. Clarissa, are you, Ms. Rowe, are you muted? Oh, there you go. Go ahead. Here I am. Thank you so much for listening to me and you can put me on video if you want. I want to thank the zoning board of appeals and I want to reiterate everything that Brian Raring said about the environmental conditions. As most of you know, I'm a registered landscape architect. I'm a town meeting member from precinct four. And as has been mentioned before, town meeting has voted three times in the last 15 years to be against this project. This is a very environmentally sensitive area of Arlington. And because of climate change, and although I'm glad to hear that the city of Cambridge has done a lot of work on the environmental aspects of what's going on in the airwifed watershed, they've also built right up to our town line. And so all the water is coming over to Arlington. This is a terribly sensitive environmental site. And one of the things the land trust has done that is we have a movie of the four last flood events in the last 10 years. And we can send that to the zoning board of appeals. So you can really see the flooding and how it affects the neighborhood. This neighborhood, and by the way, the Hardy School is open. It's right around the corner from my house. You will get to hear a lot of abutting neighbors talk about the problems of traffic and flooding. But I think this is a time in 2020 to really think about climate change. And there is in Arlington another 40B in the center of town without the environmental challenges. It's brand new, so I am just reviewing it. So I don't know exactly if there are problems with it, but none of the problems could possibly meet the kind of problem we have with this project. I'm very glad that John Hessian has finally put the correct FEMA designations on a plan that we would see from Oak Tree. It warms my soul. And I thank you very much because that is just looking at the FEMA designation is something that's tremendously important in the neighborhood. And I would just urge you to work with the neighbors, to work with the coalition to save the MuGar wetlands and the Arlington Land Trust. We're here to help you. We really, really hope that you will be open-minded and listen to these tremendously important environmental concerns. And thank you for your time. Thank you. The next name on the list is Patricia Brown. Ms. Brown, just let me know if you'd like to be shown on video. Let me try to unmute you here. Patricia, can you hear us? Looks like we might have lost her. Oh, no, there she is. Ms. Brown, can you hear us? We can't hear your audio. Mr. Chair, if you'd like, I can print them out. The next person on the list, and if Ms. Brown, when Ms. Brown, if she can get her audio working, we can move back to her after this comment. Absolutely. So I'll bring up Jennifer Griffith. Griffith, excuse me. Ms. Griffith, can you hear us? Say what? I'm going to try to... Here we go, I'm back. Okay, go ahead, Ms. Brown. Okay. Sorry, Mr. Chair, that's your bracket, not mine. No, please. Hi, am I on? Please. Yes, hi. Patricia Brown, I'm on Mary Street. One thing that I really haven't heard talked about is I don't know if any of the people who are proposing this project have any idea how many houses are actually in our neighborhood that's bounded by the bike path, Lake Street and Route 2? I did a quick count, it's 234. So you guys are proposing to essentially double the size of our neighborhood. And where the neighborhood is, we have nowhere, there's nowhere for else for traffic to go because we're bounded on two sides by Route 2 and the bike path. So Lake Street's it. So I'm concerned, obviously, about having an accurate traffic count. I'm also concerned about flooding, but I'll let people that are smarter than me debate that issue. But two questions that I have. On one of the plans earlier, they showed an exit entrance ramp to Route 2. Has that disappeared? Ms. Kiefer, do you know the status of the negotiations with regards to Route 2? I do not believe that there has been progress made with a potential access on Route 2. And I don't know if Scott or John want to jump in on that. I would just add that I didn't mention that in one of the, as one of the changes in the revised plans, but the original exhibit that was presented showed that that is not included in the current application materials. So it's off the table. At this point, yes. Okay, well, that concerns me. The other thing that concerns me is based on the number of units that you have. Overnight parking is not allowed on the streets of Arlington. So what happens when your parking lot fills up and where do the cars go? The question for Mr. Hessian. Ms. Kiefer, do you have a person you'd like to address that? We've provided 304 parking spaces for the project. And I believe I'm gonna have to go back to check on our waiver list, but I believe that we're satisfying the parking requirements in Arlington. And as I suggested previously, and then when we're showing the plans, we have both surface parking and then underground parking. So if you just look at the plans, it's important to recognize that, not just to look at the surface parking, that's not the limit of the parking that we're also proposing, parking underneath the multi-family building. Sure, I get that. I understand, but my question still stands. Parking lot fills up because people have guests, whatever, where do those other cars go? That hasn't been addressed. Cause I think there is not gonna be adequate parking, but that's beside the point, you guys can figure that out. The third question that I have is the streets in our neighborhood, I'm on Mary Street, so I'm part of this, are very narrow. And when we have people parked in both sides of the street, which is pretty common during the day, I'm very concerned about the ability of a traffic to get through and the emergency vehicles to get through. Birch Street, which you've noted as an emergency access point, is no wider than any of the other streets. Okay, I think you noted that. Thank you very much for your comments, appreciate that. Mr. Klein, I believe Ms. Griffith is on now and she's on the phone at 001. Oh, okay, great, thank you. Ms. Griffith. Oh, great, hi, my name is Jennifer Griffith. I live at Fort Edis Street, which is right near and a butter to the property. And I have several quick comments and then some questions about, so flooding is definitely a huge problem in this neighborhood. Nothing is gonna make it better and a project is only gonna make it worse. When we have had flooding in the past, the sewer line has overflowed out on the street. So I don't think the sewer lines have the capacity to add a whole bunch more sewage from a huge development. So that's another issue. My other questions, and I don't wanna overgo my three minutes, so I'll just ask them. And then if people can answer them at some point or the ZVA, I really appreciate all your great work and if you can get to the bottom of these. One is construction that you're gonna do is probably gonna involve pounding pilings in when they were doing all that construction on the other side of route two and the houses in this neighborhood all shook. Now you're gonna do something just several feet away from us. And so I'm wondering what you're gonna do for our homes and our foundations and our, because we are on land that is not solid here. Two, I'm wondering about the total height of the buildings because I know you developers, you're always very deceptive and sorry, but in terms of the total height, because you're gonna put HVAC and other utilities on the roof and it's gonna end up being even taller and more unsightly. So I wanna make sure that that's all considered, especially when the parking is gonna be partially above ground. So you're not really just proposing a four story building. It's gonna be quite a bit bigger than that. And the last thing is about traffic and the prior person did comment about that is that this neighborhood is pretty quiet. There's a lot of foot traffic in normal times. There's so many people parked here just commute and walk to ale life. The streets are narrow and then you put the cars in there and now you're gonna add, so it's quiet for the most part, we don't have a lot of traffic here. Now you're gonna add hundreds and hundreds of cars going in and out. And I just, I'm very concerned about safety and access and about, yeah, what you're gonna do to calm traffic and make sure that these people aren't zooming in and out on these small, narrow streets that we have. So I think there's just a multitude of problems with this project, mainly because of the scale of it. I think, I just wish you could make enough money. I mean, I think you could by just building those townhouses and forgetting the giant apartment building. This is just really a disaster. And I think that's the end. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Gervis. We just, this is a note, Ms. Kiefer, if you could, when we come back around to the discussion about the architectural features, if we could discuss the footings and the foundations if just that they could put that on the agenda for that too. I'll do it. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Hulman, I believe is next. Hulman, hold on one second, let me unmute you, sir. Here's the, I'll give you the opportunity to start video if you like. Hulman, I can't hear you, sorry, go ahead. Hulman, we can see you, if you can go ahead and proceed. Oh, thank you. My screen was just switched. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, thank you. Arum, Hulman, 12 Whittemore Street. I have a couple of comments, predictably on flooding and traffic, but I would like to thank Board for being as receptive as it is to public comment. That's a notable contrast to the redevelopment board. Couple of comments on zoning, flooding and traffic. One purpose is zoning is to guide a town's development. Another is to balance the rights of property owners to enjoy their property, including by building on it, against the rights of other property, other property owners nearby to enjoy their property. And that includes protection from flooding. I think you'll agree that the history of flooding in this area, in particular, the five major floods that began in 1996 and show every sign of getting worse and the damage that they have caused, puts a very high burden on the proponent to prove that their project will not worsen the flooding burden on the surrounding neighborhood. So far they have completely failed to do so. In my opinion, they are incapable of doing so. With your permission, may I share my screen? Mr. Klein, he's all set to share a screen if you're okay with that. That is fine by me. Go ahead, Mr. Holman. Okay, hold on one moment. Can you still hear me? We can hear you. Okay. Thank you for your screen. I have three pictures to show of the Mugar site. I hope this is- Mr. Holman, we do not see your screen. You what? We do not see your screen. If you're sharing photos, we do not see them. Okay. How about now? No? No. Okay. That is okay. Thank you. That's okay. That's not gonna work. I will suggest that people go to www.arfrorg. And I will submit this as written comments, directions where to find these photos. One is of it in 1951. The other is now, and the other is an artist's rendering of what a 100 year flood would do, not to this area, but to the proposed Vox project on the other side of route two in Cambridge. I think one could easily extrapolate from that what it would look like to a proposal here. So I cannot show those pictures. So I'll skip over that. Another comment related to flooding. At the 2016 hearing, Ms. Noyes and Mr. Clipfell explained that if allowed to build, they would quote solve and quote, the flooding problem on their site with a significant caveat that groundwater is not our purview. However, they refused to explain what they would do. So I'm wondering if perhaps Ms. Noyes and Mr. Clipfell could answer these three questions. Why the landowner as a good neighbor has never done this in the past? Two, precisely what they do since they never described it. And three, since they made that little caveat, how would they distinguish between flooding from stormwater and flooding from groundwater? In my opinion, it's impossible to build on this site and not worsen the flooding problem. I can ask you to wrap up. Similarly, it is impossible to place housing here and not the traffic problem. I'm done. I urge the ZBA not to grant any permits to this project. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holder. Believe Mr. Seltzer's next. Sorry, Mr. Seltzer, hold on one second. Mr. Seltzer, you should be promoted to panelist. Let me see if I can help you get your video going. That's okay. I don't need the video. I'll just stick to audio. Okay. Don Seltzer Irving Street. I've looked over the plans that were submitted and I'm surprised to see that there doesn't seem to be any discussion of the major terrain transformation that is to take place. It looks like from the submitted plans that the entire Northeast quadrant, two and a half acres is to be raised around three to five feet above what it is now. That's a lot of dirt. My back of the envelope computation suggests that somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 large dump trucks coming through the neighborhood. I hope that in future discussions, the developer will discuss this in more detail, specifically how much soil they're bringing in or whether they're dredging it from other parts of the property and what the logistics are going to be. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. Mr. Hyme, I see Ms. Emma Murphy. Ms. Murphy, you've been promoted to a panelist. Let me know if you'd like to have your video shown. Try to get you unmuted here. Hi there, can you hear me okay? We can, thank you. Great. Thank you, members of the board, for being so open to public comments. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my concerns. My name is Emma Murphy. I live on Ponview Road, which is right off of Lake Street. And my primary concern with this development is the traffic. During non-COVID times, during rush hour, Lake Street is a parking lot. It's bumper to bumper. And as another resident who spoke previously pointed out, we have about 200 homes in the neighborhood. Some of those are two family homes. So I imagine the actual number is even larger. But if the development is accounting for approximately 300 parking spaces, we're effectively doubling the number of vehicles in the area. And I'm very concerned about the impact that that's gonna have on an already overburdened artery. And looking at the plans, it appears to me that Lake Street is the only main artery in or out of the development. So I am curious, I'm especially concerned about a traffic study being conducted under circumstances that will reflect traffic during normal non-pandemic circumstances. And I wanna address that on the co-urbanized community website, there was some discussion posted by Oak Tree Development referring to a traffic survey of the Vox development across route two. And I wanna express my concern that I don't think that those survey results can be applied to our neighborhood because I think the demographic of the Vox development is very different from our East Arlington community. So just wanna advocate for a traffic study to be done under normal circumstances, not rushed and done in these times and not to take survey findings out of context and apply them to our community. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public who wish to address the board? If so, if you are online, if you could digitally raise your hand or if you are on the phone, I believe it's star nine. I don't see any hands right now, Mr. Chair. I agree with you. I did not see any either. One more moment here. All right, seeing no further public comments, I'm gonna close public comment for this evening. I thank all members of the public for their attendance and for their participation. The next section is a discussion of a tentative schedule for subsequent substantive hearings. So the schedule, so the board is currently scheduled to meet on the second Tuesday in September to deal with local issues, just standard business that is September 8th. And so the next available slot to discuss this project would be on September 22nd. We had tentatively thought about having traffic law and safety as a topic for that hearing, but it sounds like that may not be at a point where it's ready for more thorough discussion. So just a question for Ms. Kiefer, what would you like to recommend for the next topic we pick up and should we consider reshifting some of these dates? Well, when John Hessian made his presentation, I know that he has suggested that the 13th and the 27th hearings for a wetlands impact stormwater than general civil seemed appropriate. I don't want to suggest without John weighing in on this if that could be moved up to September 22nd. I recognize that there's additional work that the BSE is gonna be doing and consulting obviously with the peer review. And so John, do you have any thoughts on whether it's the 13th and the 27th hearings of October could be moved up to the 22nd and 13th? John, if I could just ask you to pause for one second. Mr. Heim, if you could put the beta team back into the panelists. Already done. Already done, thank you so much. Mr. Hessian, please continue. Sure, there is a fair amount of work to thoroughly respond to the beta comments. And as I mentioned, especially with the wetlands scheduling time that works for our two wetland scientists and with beta to go out if the board was supportive of that confirmation of the wetlands elineation you know, coordinating that time and then actually doing the work that needs to be done after that field work is done. I don't think Stephanie that we would really be in a position to move any of that up to the September 22nd, especially trying to give some time to submit in advance, you know, of a September 22nd hearing. It really gives us two, maybe three weeks at the most or probably not even two and a half weeks. And we have, you know, Labor Day end of summer schedules to try to juggle and balance. Trying to be realistic. I think that would be too aggressive. And, you know, they all are kind of interconnected. You know, the wetlands is connected to the, you know, stormwater management is connected to the general civil engineering matters. You know, one is going to drive, you know, the next. So with that being said, Mr. Chair, could I suggest that perhaps what we do is take that traffic flow and safety for September 22nd and take off a September 22nd date of the next hearing October 13th with wetland impact stormwater. The following hearing civil engineering on the 27th and then insert traffic flow and safety on November 10. And then move the architecture down to the November 24th. And it may be, I know that's Thanksgiving week, it may be that the architecture landscape and then density over overall design could be all within one hearing. And then otherwise just getting down to what your item number six is pro forma review. This again relates back to my comments from earlier this evening that if you look at the regulations and maybe Mr. Haffnerty is on the phone right now, he wants to weigh in on this, but the regulations provide that under 56.056 when review of financials may be appropriate. And under your schedule, it wouldn't be then because a board can only request to review a pro forma only after the following preconditions under the regulations and then there are set up for specific preconditions. And the board's not gonna be there on December 8th. So we can talk about that later, but I think that if there's anything you would have to flip your proposed six and sevens and have your condition review and decision because at that point, the board is suggesting what it would view to condition of the project. And if the applicant says, we object to that because it's gonna render uneconomic at that point, you can ask to review. No, absolutely. I think part of the reason for having on the date we were suggesting is that we may have a preliminary list of conditions at that point that would then get, after review with pro forma, we could come up with a final decision. But I do agree that the detail of pro forma review would not come about until we have a better decision about what waivers are being requested or being considered, I guess the property is with that. Turning to beta group, would that work for you if we were to strike the hearing on September 22nd, we would continue with the wetland impact and general civil engineering for the two October hearing and then move traffic to the beginning of November with that schedule work with your team? Mr. Chair, the October 13th would work. We would just need the information at least three weeks in advance of that. Mr. Hessian, would you be able to get some information on around the September 29th for final review? I guess part of the question too is reviewing the wetlands delineation is something that would need to be coordinated between both teams. Right, and with the assumption that we're gonna be in communication between now and September 29th and clarifying comments and providing information that September 29th wouldn't be the first time that beta saw anything from BSC, I think that's an achievable date. Okay, Mr. Vellarelli, I think you have a question. Mr. Chairman, so I notice they are isolating a lot of dates and they're one after the other it seems not withstanding the 22nd. So we have other requests for variances and special permits. I think it would all be hard press to incorporate residential request at a meeting that we're having regarding Thondike Place. So much going on, it just don't know how we can do anything other than focus on Thondike Place that night. So I have to make a suggestion that we save one of those dates at least three weeks from now for what I already have submitted to the ZBA. This has nothing to do with the four that we have teed up for September 8th. These are two additional requests for special permits. That being said, we can't take all the dates. I need at least one or two going forward, one right off the bat say three or four weeks from now. And I know you're talking about October 13th and 27th. Right. If we can, I'm gonna need one of those days. Could you use the date of September 22nd? Or is it too late to advertise for that day? Hold on, it's too late by a week. Ah, crap, okay. Is it too late for September 29th? So for members of the board, we typically try to meet the second and keep meetings the second and fourth Tuesdays. The 29th would be a fifth Tuesday in September. So just wanted to check with you guys if that date would be available in your calendars. Works for me, Christian. Mr. Chair, I am available on the 29th. Okay. So am I. Oh, perfect. Bill gives us a thumbs up as well. Okay. So Rick, if we could do that, if we could schedule the September, so September 8th, we already have scheduled. If we could also schedule September 29th. Ah, correct. So we have a busy night September 8th. I will go for September 29th. It gives me just enough time to get these ads in. And it looks like on the 29th right now we have two requests for special permits and maybe some administrative business, but other than that, shouldn't be too bad. Okay. And then is that all we have in front of us the moment? Are there other ones that you're aware of that are in the pipeline? No. The ones I'm talking about that we're gonna hear on the 29th, we just submitted. So providing that package is in good order. And I think it is, we'll schedule that. We'll go forward with that on the 29th. We will take care of our business on September 8th. And then we'll be free and clear. Okay. All right. So then we would have on the two September meetings would be for routine business. The two October meetings would be for Thorndike Place in regards to wetlands impact and civil engineering. And for the moment the two November dates would be for traffic and sort of built environment. And we can obviously we can review as we move forward if we need to adjust those further. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other questions in regards to that schedule? Or are we good to proceed along those lines for now? All right. Seeing none. Sounds like we are. So we will proceed with along those lines. Just a general question, Mr. Heim. Is it possible to download the contents of the chat? I've gone ahead and saved that. I do want to caution folks that, you know I made it clear that the chat is not really the ideal format for folks to, for the ZBA to process public comment. You've asked me to save it and I've saved it. Okay. So that is, so then at this point we will be looking to continue this hearing until 7 30 PM on Tuesday, October 13th, 2020. And at this point, I believe we will most likely still be on Zoom. We'll see what the recommendations are coming from the governor. Mr. Heim, is there anything else I need to do in terms of? Mr. Klein. If I turn client, I would just check in with attorney Whitton and attorney Havarty. But unless they have anything else, I think after then setting the next date, or resume the hearing, I don't have anything further. And Mr. Klein, I have one thing I wanted to ask Mr. Whitton about in the board before we conclude. May I do that? Please. In terms of attorney Whitton's point in the completeness review that in his memorandum of July 7th, 2020, that the application, apart from sharing information that we're going to be looking at, that the application does not comply with Arlington's comprehensive permit regulations. And he had given in his memo that suggests that we take a vote tonight to inform the applicant that the application does not comply with the regulations. And to ask that they make it comply. I think it's important that we as a board, as a board, as a committee, ask that they make it comply. I think it's important that we as a board, follow the recommendation, at least to preserve any rights we might have, that the application is not complete as submitted, as required by the comprehensive regulations. So if attorney Whitton has any comment on that, but I would ask the board to strongly consider that, they have any comment. And if not, I'd like to vote that the applicant be instructed that the permit as filed and as updated to date does not comply with the Arlington comprehensive permit regulations. And that they'd be asked to make, make it in compliance consistent with attorney Whitton's memo within 30 days. At least so that we can preserve our rights. And then hopefully maybe get some more information. Thank you, Mr. Whitton. Do you want to address that question by Mr. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, the application is complete in complete. I think the applicant has admitted that this evening. So I think member O'Rourke's comment is appropriate. And I think a vote is memorialized and part of the record. And I think that's always helpful. Mr. Whitton, we lost your audio there. Is that any better, Mr. Chairman? That is better. Thank you. So Mr. Chairman, I'm agreeing with the member O'Rourke suggestion and request for emotion, because the application is incomplete as we discussed earlier this evening. Thank you. If I may provide some comments. Just one second. I was just going to ask Mr. Havardy, because we've not heard from him this evening. So at the beginning of the hearing, we're discussing the completeness reviews that have been submitted both by Mr. Whitton and by Ms. Kiefer as to whether or not the application and the documentation we have in front of us is meeting with the requirements of the comprehensive rules as established by the zoning board of appeals. I wanted to ask you if you had looked into this at all and whether you had any opinion in that regard. Mr. Chairman, I did look at this a while back. And I don't think it's probably the best time to rehash whatever discussion you've had earlier tonight. All I will say is that to the extent the applicant has not complied with all of the requirements of your comprehensive permit rules and regulations, they're either going to have to comply with them or they're going to have to request waivers. Your comprehensive permit rules and regulations are local rules and requirements, just like any other bylaw or regulation adopted in the town of Arlington. Under Chapter 40, the applicant has the right to request waivers. So if they don't believe that they should be providing you that information, then they should be requesting it. Thank you. Ms. Kiefer. Hi, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, as I had, again, not to rehash what I had stated at the beginning of the hearing, but in March we provided responses to Mr. Whitten's preliminary completeness review. And within that, we indicated those areas, those requests within the board application submittals that we had said that we attended to submit, but we've submitted within the hearing process. And as we talked about many times this evening, it's an iterative process. And so some pieces of information just do not make sense to be included at the very beginning. And we had requested a waiver from the local 40B application requirements. And for those, and I think it was probably very limited only to the request for our pro forma, we objected to that based on the regulations that I just mentioned previously. So I think that the, there has been a good faith response from the applicant. If you, if you go back and you look at our March, 2020 response that, that we have not objectively refused to provide certain pieces of information. What we've said is that we will provide this, you know, as the hearing goes on and we actually haven't, unfortunately we haven't had yet feedback from the board as to just our layout. So, you know, it's a back and forth. Then as someone from our team has said earlier tonight, you don't want to fully engineer a project at the beginning. And then it's going to be tweaked and so you keep fully engineering it. It's just, it's a waste of resources for presenting to the board and for the applicant, frankly. So I don't think that there's any refusal right now. And I would urge the board to go back and carefully our responses. Mr. Chairman. Yes, please. I fully hear attorney keeper. I think she's making an argument that it's not that they won't comply. It's just that they haven't complied. But Mr. O'Rourke suggested motion and one that we've discussed before, at least I've provided writing before is not a legal argument. It's whether or not the application before the board is complete. That's yes or no. And if the board determines it's incomplete. What member O'Rourke is suggesting is the board takes a vote. So there's a part of the record that reflects that as of this date, the application is incomplete. It's not making a subjective determination. It's not making an argument as to what might be waived. It's a fact that the application as of tonight is not complete. And attorney keeper can, can reserve all rights to request waiver. She has every right to do that. That's not what the discussion is. It's a binary decision. Is the application complete? Yes or no. If the answer is no, what Mr. O'Rourke is suggesting is that the board have a motion that is reflected in the record that makes that clear. So we can conclude tonight. Mr. Chairman, my fellow members of the board, if you've read the comprehensive permit regulations, they were enacted for a reason. And they have specific requirements that the applications must meet in order to be submitted. And attorney Witten has taken the time to go through that and give us his opinion on where it is incomplete. So I would respectfully call for a motion. I respectfully move that the applicant be advised that the application is incomplete in the areas identified by attorney Witten's memo dated July 7, 2020. And it does not meet Arlington's comprehensive permit regulations and that it be advised to bring their application into compliance consistent with attorney Witten's memo within 30 days. I think this is something we need to do as a board to preserve our rights for the future. And I would so move. Mr. Chairman, if I may comment. Just one second. Do I have a second on that? Sorry, Mr. Mills, was that a second? Second. Thank you. Yes. First of all, I would request that the board read the materials that we spent the time to submit and prepare rather than just rely upon what Mr. Witten has stated and to actively think about whether or not there's compliance and what hasn't been complied with a number of Mr. Witten's comments state that it's unclear. And what is it? What does that mean exactly? Further, we'd ask for a waiver from the local 40 B application requirements. And, you know, the presumption is that the need for affordable housing outweighs local concerns when you haven't met your 10%, which Arlington is around the 5.6%. And so by by effectively requesting that we submit the materials in 30 days, I think one is not good faith considering that request for a waiver that we that we've sought. Secondly, there's information or there's, if you look at our March response, we stated that we'll provide information. But again, this is the whole asking for information at the correct time in the hearing when it's useful to everyone, rather than just arbitrarily saying, we want this immediately within 30 days. And I, we're happy to work with the board, but I think that the imposing a 30 day, you need to provide all this. And then Mr. Witten becomes the arbiter of whether or not it's been complete without the board, even in, you know, telling me that they've looked at what our response has asked for is a bit much. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Witten, yes. So, you know, it's approaching 1030, but I have to strenuously object to attorney keepers that I am making any decisions here. That memo has been in the public domain since July. The board is presumed to have read it. Attorney Kiefer now insults the board and me by suggesting that the board is going to simply rubber stamp what I provide as a memo. That's just insulting and offensive. So Mr. Chairman, the issue of the incompleteness is a matter of comparing what was filed with your regulations. And attorney Kiefer and her client this evening has freely admitted the application is incomplete. Everybody on this call knows what a complete application means. Whether you're applying for a driver's license or a comprehensive permit, a complete application requires the filing of the required information. The boards, the suggested motion is to confirm that as of tonight, the application is incomplete. That is a fact. Attorney Kiefer can argue as she sees fit, but it is a fact that the application before the board is incomplete. Mr. Chairman. Yes. I don't feel very comfortable supporting the motion because although I have read the response and I'm sure we all have done that. I'm not equally certain that in every single particular, I'm convinced that there's an incompleteness, even though in general, I don't think that you could miss Kiefer herself is suggesting that it's a question of timing for much of the information rather than whether she'll provide it at all. And I do not want to begin every hearing with the same unproductive discussion that we started this hearing with. What do we do when the applicant doesn't provide all the information in 30 days? Do we dismiss the application? What would be the consequences of that? So we won't do that. And we'll continue going on and reserving our rights and starting off on the wrong foot each time. It seems to me at the very least, if we want to clarify this, we might ask the applicant to either provide the information or to list what information that they will not provide at this time. And if they need to request a waiver of the time limit in our, in our, in our regulations or any other specific provision, they could make that request at that time. That means that we don't have to make any findings now. We can listen to them again and we can actually take the waiver request into consideration. Not as a general thing that we want you to wave everything, which too often appears, but as a way of sort of saying, these are the things we will provide, but this isn't the time for it yet. These are the things that we won't provide. And we request waivers to allow us the extension of time to provide them or whatever other waivers that they want to have. And that way we can take it back when we, when we take this up again and at least have some way forward and not just have a continual coral, which, which I think is wasting our time and it's not, it's wasting everyone's time. And it ultimately doesn't mean, we're not, you know, we're, we're sort of like the dog that chases the car. What are we going to do when we catch it? And the answer is we're not going to do anything when we catch it. So we might as well do the best we can to create a process that will at least be resolved the next time. So I would encourage Mr. to request instead of request a provision of all the information to request either the information to be provided or a specific waiver request to be made with the representation of, of when very specific information will be provided. I have a question for Mr. So the, at what point is the discussion typically in regards to whether the board will be accepting or granting waivers from specific local ordinances, because it seems difficult where the comprehensive permit rules really are the, the entry gate to the process. But we're being, but it, it feels like the, there are waiver requests that come before that as to whether, you know, as to whether certain information is going to be provided as a part of the application. I'm just curious with your, with your experience where that, how that is usually determined. Mr. Chairman, in most instances, the town really doesn't have quite as detailed comprehensive permit rules and regulations. Listing what submittals are required. So it's a little unusual to be getting into this sort of back and forth and with regard to submittals, because the DHCD regulations do have a list of what is required for a comprehensive permit submittal. And they're, you know, a lot less stringent than what Arlington is requiring. Generally, you're going to talk about the waivers more at the end of the process because they become much more relevant. As attorney keeper has noted earlier, it's usually an iterative process with regard to the plans and the specific waiver requests become much more relevant when you get closer to what that final design is going to be. So usually you wouldn't be dealing with this until the end, but I think that in this instance, you do need to deal with these questions now. And I think that for a member Hanlon suggestion, very, very good one, which is that the applicant really should either produce the materials within the next 30 days, and then provide the board with the timeframe of when they would be submitted, or specify which requirements they're seeking a waiver. Thank you. It's our work. Do we really accept that as an alternative? Yes. So does the. So the motion in front of us is a. Is there a request to. Is that the finding that to date we are. The application is not complete for the. Written rules of the comprehensive turtle to the. The board of appeal. And we request that the applicant. Either. Provide the required information within 30 days. Or. Provide a schedule for delivery of materials. Or specifically indicate that they're requesting a waiver from that requirement. That essentially it, Mr. Yes, that is the motion. And it has been seconded by Mr. Mills. Second. Okay. I should probably take a roll call vote on this. So start Mr. Or work. I. Mr. Mills. Hi. Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Mr. Revillack. Mr. Ford. Hi. And the chair vote. Yes. And Mr. Heim, do we need a vote on the continuance? I think it would be wise to do it. Just to set the. Just to set it forward. Okay. So I moved at the. The board of appeal. It's with continuance on Thornback place hearing until. Tuesday. October 13th at 730 p.m. Second. Okay. Okay. So I guess I should take a roll call vote again. Mr. Or work. I. Mr. Hanlon. Hi. The mills. Hi. Revillack. Hi. Mr. Ford. Hi. The client looks as well. Thank you all. Okay. So I believe that is the. End of all of these items that are on our agenda for this evening. So I wish to thank everyone for their participation in tonight's meeting of the online condoning board of appeals. Appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting. I especially would like to thank. Mr. Valerelli and Mr. Heim for all their assistance in the. In the production of this meeting this evening and. Special thanks to the applicant and. Planning. Excuse me, the department of planning. And the. In beta group for their participation. I would like to thank everyone for their participation in the meeting. Thank you. I have. Note again, the board has this. Has been recording this and it will be available on demand through ACMI dot TV. In the coming days. If anyone has comments or recommendations, you can send them via email. To ZBA at town. Arlington. M.A. U.S. The email address is also listed on the website. So in conclusion. I would. Ask for a motion to adjourn. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For a second. Second. All those in favor will take a voice vote. I. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. We are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you, Christian. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you. Best of all. Great. You