 Um, okay. So, you know, we're live. Okay. Later. Doug, I'm just holding on for a second here to see. Who's coming on over here for attendees and I'm watching for Amherst media. There they are. All right. Okay. We're good to go. Right. Yes. All right. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of October 20, 2021. My name is Doug Marshall. And as the chair of the Amherst planning board, I am calling this meeting to order. That's six 32 PM. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media. And minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be held at the top of the page. The meeting will be held at the top of the page. And the meeting hearings will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing. For this meeting or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. The zoom link is available live stream. The zoom link is available live stream. In real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so. For reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts. We will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record. Of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. On the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, I will answer affirmatively. And then place yourselves back on mute. Maria Chow. Present. Jack gem sec. Tom Long. Andrew McDougal is absent. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Here. And I am here. Board members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please raise your hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item. Is a reserve for public comment regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. If appropriate, public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting. Please be aware. The board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you are, if you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, they will be disconnected from the meeting. All right. So the first item on our agenda this evening is minutes. And we have a number of minutes. That are ready for review and approval. They are for July 7th. July 14th. August 4th. August 25th. September 1st. October 6th. And I would like to again, thank all the board members and the staff that have worked so hard to get us these minutes and to try to get caught up on our minute. Minute taking. All right. So. Let's see. All right. So Chris, would you like us to try to move these as one collection of minutes or do you should, do we need to go through each one individually? I think you should go through each one individually. I only received one set of comments, which is from Janet on the first set of minutes. And I sent them to Pam. So she has those. But I think it would be good to go through them individually. All right. So why don't we start with the July 7th minutes? We'll do them chronologically. Do I have a motion to. To approve those minutes. Do I have a second? I'll second. All right. Any comments on the July 7th minutes. Janet sent in comments, which Pam can show on the screen. If she can be so kind. I think it's page. Page nine. Yeah. I'm done. I'll move to approve the minutes from July 7th. All right. Do we have a second? I'll second. Okay. I'm done. Can you see them there in red? Chris, I see your hand. Would you like Janet to read her. Suggested additions. Sure. Janet, would you mind doing that? So. This is the one we were talking about the Mitchell farm property. And whether. It was a little bit of a hassle to buy the property. Because it was coming out of 61 a. Agricultural use. And so. So it, I guess. Basically the first sentence says that McGowan said, there's no information about the land itself. And they have no basis to make a recommendation. And Jack said something. And then I added. That what we know is that the. It is farmland. It has a river and two or three streams. And it has a river and two or three streams. And wetlands. And as a floodplain, we don't know anything about its ecological importance, agricultural importance. The planning board has no basis to make a decision other than Mr. Reedy statements. And. And then later on, I talked about the master plan. Because. There was a talk about, you know, part of a strategic plan. And I, so. I said master plan is the task of. A strategic plan for protection. Is there a strategic plan? And can we see it? The conservation commission and farm committee should weigh in on this land. And so that's just a correction. Are there other changes you would request? Is there any on the next page or any other pages? No. And I think just change the word streets to streams. And I think we're good. So. Do you want to make a motion to amend the minutes, Janet? I'd like to make a motion to amend the minutes with the corrections I've stated. Do we have anyone that would like to second that? I think that's Jack. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. I didn't see your hand raised. I'm sorry. Okay. Does anybody want to talk about the, the, this edit at all? Any discussion? Or shall we just vote on Janet's amendments? All right. So I'll go through the. The members. Janet. Hi. Hi. Maria. Approve. Jack. Hi. Tom. Hi. Johanna. Hi. All right. The amendments are approved. And then let's have a vote on these July 7th minutes. Okay. Maria. Approve. Janet. Jack. Approve. Tom. Johanna. Approve. And then I, I approve as well. And I also vote in favor of the amendment. All right. So that's the July 7th minutes. Next we have the July 14th amendment. Okay. Thank you. A minute. Do we have any one to move the approval of those? So move. All right. Thank you, Jack. And I saw Tom's hand move a little bit. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Any discussion on the July 14th minutes. Janet. So I read these minutes and I'm. And I didn't read through. I didn't listen to the whole meeting again, but from the start, I, you know, when we're looking at the zoning priorities, we talked to. It says Ms. McGowan was displeased with the process of amendment review and feels rushed. And then there's a long list of Christine Christine, Ms. Brescher up statements. And I went back and listen to that because I remember that there was a lot of discussion about the process of amendment review. And I was in the section really differently. And it's four minutes of me talking about very specific issues I had with the process. And I just felt like it disappeared. And then, and I just, I basically, I think it'd be great to put these to the side and kind of go through them again, because. As I went through it, there was another period of time work. But I'm the department's amendment and Maureen Palak, and I had to do seven minutes back and forth. That was really detailed. With lots of points and Maureen disappeared from it. And so I would, I was hoping we could just put these to the side. And maybe I could look at a transcript of it to get a better sense because I, as I went through it, I just saw, like it was, I think they're too thin and don't really reflect the discussion that had. Part of it is, you know, I know a minority viewpoint on the committee and I'm often asking more detailed questions and I just think it, you know, somebody would read these minutes and not understand what the full discussion was and not to create a transcript but not to remove entire sections. So that would be my request that we just push the movies, move these aside. And I don't know if there's a transcript or you could, if maybe Pam can send me that weird link. I don't know if it's from zoom or YouTube I can't remember, but I just felt like huge sections were out. And then I felt like just saying I'm displeased and I feel rushed with sort of trivializing my concerns. And I'm sure you don't want to do that. Thank you. Thank you, Janet. Chris I see your hand. I wanted to say that it would be helpful if Janet were to take that on and to try to reconstruct what she said and what she, what she feels happened that night because we're already struggling with other minutes and we don't want to get further behind so if she sends us language that she would like inserted in the minutes we'd be happy to bring them back to you next time. All right well we do have a motion on the floor to approve the minutes. Does anybody object to, I don't know what we would do parliamentary wise to delaying these or do people feel they want to proceed and approve them as they are tonight. I see a thumbs up from Jack I see a hand up from your honor why don't you speak. Thank you. Where are we at with the open meetings complaint and is there any potential harm that comes from, you know, delaying these until our next meeting with that regard. Chris, do you want to answer that. I don't think there would be any harm I've answered both open meeting law complaints and I've told the complaint complainants, what the status of the minutes is and, and I said that we would post drafts as they became available and I think the draft of this meeting was posted. And so, I think we're probably good for now we've got a holding pattern. So we can bring these back next time with more. Jennifer wants to add. Okay, we'll put those aside. Moving on to the August fourth minutes. You know how does that a legacy hand or do you want to move the August for four minutes. I'll move the August fourth minutes. Excellent. Anybody want to second. Are you seconding Janet's hand. Are you seconding Janet. Yes, second. Sorry. All right. Thank you. All right. So we have a motion to approve the August four minutes. Any discussion. No discussion. All right, so in that case I'll do a roll call. Maria. Janet. Janet I had muted you. Sorry, approve. Tom. Hi. And Johanna. Hi. And then I'm an eye. Okay. Next August 25 minutes. Somebody want to move to August 25 minutes. Okay. All right. Thanks Tom for raising your hand. Let's let's record that Tom long raised his hand and. Okay, Jack. I'll recognize you as seconding. Second. Yes. All right. Any discussion of the August 25 minutes. Not seeing any hands. All right. Another roll call Maria. Prove. Janet. I think we're fighting the unmute. Approve. Thank you. Jack. I. Tom. And Johanna. And I'm going to prove as well. All right. Next we have the September 1st minutes. Why don't I move those just for. For fun. Do we have any seconds. I see Tom's hand raised as a second to the September, September, September 1st minutes. Any discussion of those minutes. See no hands. All right. Roll call Maria. Janet. Tonight, you're second at least based on where the Hollywood squares are on my. Second. Thank you. Jack. Good. Tom. And Johanna. And I'm going to prove as well of the September 1st minutes. Finally we have, I believe the October 6th minutes. All right, somebody else needs to move these tonight. All right. Thanks, Tom. Tom long. All right, I see a thumbs up from Jack. As a second. Yes. Thank you. Any discussion. No discussion. Roll call. Maria. Janet. Approve. Jack. Yeah. Approve. Tom. And your honor. And I'm an approve as well. So we have moved five sets of minutes. All of them. With the exception of July 14th. All right. So we'll now move on to the second item in the, in the agenda, which is the public comment period. The time is 6 50 PM. I'll remind the public that. Comments that you can make during this period. Cannot be related. To the items on our agenda. So they cannot be related to. 11 and 13 East pleasant street. They cannot be related to the podic and coal conservation area. Nor to the zoning bylaw change related to. Mixed use buildings. Or the. Rezoning of map 14A parcel 33. And so do we have other. Public comment that relates to topics. I have not just root named. All right. It looks like we have 18, maybe 13 attendees. Okay. J. Silver Silverstein. Why don't we let him speak? He's got his hand raised. Pam. Hello, Jay. Can you unmute. Certainly can. Basically, I don't understand how you could vote. To change the zoning. For parking structure in the J. We're not talking about that topic now. This is public comment about things that are not on the agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And Ronnie Parker. Okay. Hi. I was also talking about the same thing that Jay was going to talk about because it is not on the agenda as far as I can see. But if it is on the agenda, then I'll wait. Thank you. Yes. It's item five. Okay. Thank you. Certainly. And then Dorothy Pam. Please state your name and your address. I don't see it on the agenda. I didn't see it. I don't see it on the agenda. It is on the agenda. Okay. 29 Amity street just for clarification. When these items are discussed on the agenda, will there be a public comment period after that? I believe. Yes. I don't see it. I don't see it on the agenda. I'm looking at the agenda. And I don't, I see one right now. And I don't see another. So I think it's a good idea to make a comment on those items will in fact be allowed to speak. Yes, they will be allowed to speak. Okay. And then my other question to you has given the rush of zoning things of what items were you anticipating that the public might comment on. Beside these items. Because maybe this is a, this is an open forum that we have every week. It could be about the master plan. It could be. You know, it could be about a sign for all I know. So it's, it's pretty much open. Okay. Thank you. Certainly. Okay. So we'll. I guess that'll be it for the public comment period. All right. So now we'll go to the third item on the agenda. And this is a public hearing. For the preliminary sub division plan. The time is 6. 54. And this item was on the agenda as item number three. And expected to start at 6. 35. This is S. U. B. 2022. This is S. U. B. 2022 dash zero one. 11 dash 13 East pleasant street archipelago investments LLC continued from August 25th. September 29th and October 20th. And. Tonight is the 20th. So. So we have a request approval for a two lot preliminary subdivision plan on their mass general law chapter 41 sections 81 L and 81 S. Chris, do you want to introduce this? Yeah, this has been on the agenda of the planning board since August 25th. That's when the public hearing was opened, and then it was continued to September 29th. So we have a letter from archipelago investments. Dear planning board members, I'm writing to request that the planning board further extend the 45 day review period. For preliminary subdivision plan, S U B 2022 dash 01. And continue the public hearing on this application from October 20th to December 1st, 2021. So I do we need to vote to continue this again? Yes. Okay. So first I see Janet's hand, Janet. I just have a quick question is. Are they proceeding with building 11 East pleasant street? Can they, can we have this hearing open and they can. Start construction. Is there's any relationship between those two? I'm a little. Are they going to start building this? I think, I think Chris can answer that question. Chris. I think they're a long way from starting to build this. They need to get their decisions from the planning board, which I wrote to you about this afternoon. There are four, at least four decisions that need to get signed and filed with the town clerk. And then they probably need to, you know, solidify their financing and do construction drawings and get. All right. So I'm going to start with the building permits from the building commissioner. And so they're in my opinion, a long way from. Constructing anything there. But in any event, I don't think that the preliminary subdivision plan application. Necessarily relates to that topic. Or it doesn't directly relate to that topic. Other than to say that if they. If they don't have a plan, they may get some protection from zoning amendments that have been passed. And I think that. So that's probably in the back of their minds right now. But it certainly is something that can kind of go parallel with whatever's going on with the planning board right now. And I don't imagine they're going to be building anything anytime soon. All right. Are there any other. Questions or comments about this? Otherwise we will do a roll call for continuing. This public hearing. We will need a date certain, I believe Chris. And what date did they request again? They have requested December 1st, and that is a regular planning board night. So that's a good night to continue to. And you could say. 635 on December 1st. All right. So we need a. Motion to continue this. Public hearing to December 1st at 635. I'm seeing Janet's hand. Is that you are making that motion? I so move. Thank you. Anybody want to second Johanna. Johanna, I see your hand. I'll second. Thank you. All right. Any discussion. All right, we'll do a roll call again. Thank you. Maria. Approve. Thank you. Janet. Jack. Hi. Tom. Hi. Johanna. Hi. And I'm an I as well. So that's six in favor and one absent. All right. That's the end of that. Item on the agenda. We'll move to the fourth item on the agenda. We have a new public hearing. All right. I think believe I have a preamble to read for that. Yes. Okay. So the time is 6. 59. And in accordance with the provisions of mass general law, chapter 40, a, this public hearing has been duly advertised. And notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the public hearing. So the public hearing is being duly advertised. And notice thereof has been posted and is being heard. Regarding SPR 2022. 0 4. Town of Amherst. POTIC and coal conservation areas. Route 1 16. Request site plan review approval. Under section 3.335. Our sections. 3.335. 7.9. 8.9. We have talked a new 13 space parking area, including two accessible spaces and adjacent loading zones. And to install appropriate signage for access to the POTIC and coal conservation areas. Map to see parcel one. Our dash. Oh. Zoning district. Is there any board disclosure for this hearing? I see none. All right. I see Rob's hand. Rob, maybe you'll do the presentation. Yes. Rob more building commissioner. Pam, please, if you can go ahead and put up the slides, that'd be great. This is another project by the conservation department. Continue effort to improve both visibility and safety at the. Parking for parking at conservation areas and trail access points. If you can go to the, there we go. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Here's a locust plan. This, this particular location in North Amherst is. Right around the intersection of San Juan road. 116. There's approximately 120 acres of town land. Abiding and cadly conservation. Hold on one second. All right. So the recording resumed. I clicked. I suppose it's possible. I clicked. Recording pause, but. I'm glad that you caught it. Okay. So I'm going to go back to sharing my screen. Okay. Thank you. And Rob, I'm sorry to have interrupted you. No problem. Hold on. Here we are. Okay. So here's, here's the property again. About 120 acres of town conservation land. It's a wild land. A wild land. Butting. Hadley conservation land. Including both the Podick and coal conservation areas and trails. Next slide. Please. Yeah. Here on the left top corner. Zoom in location plan. The red is where we are going to propose the parking area. that that goes into the property turns to the south where the red block is and continues into the property in a very informal gravel road path that is seen better on the lower image. I'm not sure if you're able to zoom in a little bit on that, but that's the existing conditions down on the bottom left corner. Just a paved apron that ends and turns into a sandy gravel 12 foot wide driveway access straight ahead to the right there where the field where you can see the field and these those wooden plants. That's where the parking is is going to be proposed for anyone who was on a site visit. So moving right into the center proposed parking plan. The hatched area down the middle is the existing sandy gravel driveway. We're looking to widen that to about 18 feet wide and install 13 parking spaces with two accessible marked spaces and the associated loading zone to the side of those spaces, space one and space 13. This is a shared parking for to conservation area so they will be, you know, the ideas that you either go on or the other direction or perhaps both but that's why we separated the accessible spaces. And you'll see, there's a kiosk located at each of the north and south points of the parking lot. So we're going to provide some information about the conservation area and directional materials for the trail access. This is for anyone that remembers the last application out on Bay Road or I've seen that project. This is a gravel parking area. It'll be completed with trap rock gravel TRG. There's an image of the completed sweet house parking on Bay Road. The trap rock material gets rolled compacted tightly, and then the finer materials used for the parking area and access to the kiosks if necessary. We did some experimenting with striping, although I asked for the waiver again, as I did on this this lot on Bay Road. We did some experimenting with painting. It worked okay. It lasts about three weeks before it needs to be redone. It was, it was well received I'd say so I you know we ended up going out and painting again. So I think we're going to, you know, try to make that part of our regular program or routine to every three four weeks go around and spray the lines again, because it seemed to be worth that effort. You know this parking lot and another parking lot on Stanley Street that we improved. You know I've seen the parking work really well and, you know, in the in the layout and design that we were hoping for. So we can go back to the plan pan place. Okay. So there's a couple of signs. There's a kiosk. You know that's various typical kiosk conservation department uses it all the conservation areas. So there'll be two of those that's in the top right corner. To those of you installed and then lower down beneath that is a image of a typical would sell it posts and that'll support a hanging sign, which will be more like the image on the very bottom. They're still finalizing the, the size and color of these signs but you know we're pretty sure there'd be something like this by image, although none of them have been installed yet. So this is gravel parking lot 13 spaces. We are hoping to get this installed this this late this fall before the weather changes and I'd be happy to answer any questions. All right. Thank you Rob. Next item would be do we have a site visit report. And Chris, do you want to say something. We don't have a written site visit report so maybe one of the planning board members who was at the site visit could report. And there's only one here. So since I'm the only one that was present. I did meet Chris and and Andrew McDougal at the site yesterday about 515. We look at that photo in the lower left that's shown at the moment. We parked behind that photo, you know behind the photographer of that photo. But then we walked down that road and the light colored area that's kind of to the right of the gravel road is a an area of wooden mats. And that, at least Chris described that as being kind of where the parking would start. And so we were able to proceed a little farther into the distance. You know, we didn't have a long site visit. We did talk about how bright the sunlight was because it was pretty late in the afternoon and we were all, none of us could really look to the west. Without being blinded. We did, we did note that the road continues farther on to private property. So we were off off of this conservation land. And there was a walking path at the end of that road that headed south. Chris, do you think I missed anything from our conversation. I do not think so. Okay, yeah, it was a pretty, pretty short conversation. All right, so. Questions from the board. Tom. So I just wanted to comment that the design review board had looked at this and approved it with the same. As long as it matched the existing conditions or the planned conditions for sweet Alice in terms of the road sign, which is not currently there yet, which we heard was under construction. But as long as it met those criteria that this was approved by the design report unanimously. Great. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the board. Janet. This isn't, this is somewhat related. How often do trails in our conservation area get cut because my sons during the pandemic went down the product side and it was really nice but they came back with like, and the dogs came back with like 6 million ticks and I just wondered is there like, is it once a year is it more often? I just never, I've always wondered this. Are they on a regular schedule? Thank you, Rob. Do you have an answer to that? I don't know the intervals. I do know we have, you know, one to full time staff that are dedicated to maintenance of all the conservation areas, not just the trails. But I'm not sure if it's more than once a year. I'd be surprised if it was. Okay. All right. Any other questions from the board? All right, Rob, I had one question, which was if you, what are you using for doing the striping that you might be doing once a month or years to come? And would we have an accumulation of vinyl latex on the property because of the, you know, the white paint that's getting applied up repeatedly? Yeah, it's an aerosol spray, upright spray can that runs in a cart. So it barely covers the stone. As you can imagine it does more blowing around than anything else, but we've been able to get it to at least be visible. We talked to companies that provide the various types of striping for parking areas or pavement. And because of the high pressure that's involved, it wouldn't leave a visible print at all. So it takes, for that Sweet Owls Park it took two spray cans to, if that helps you with that question to paint the parking area. Uh-huh. So, so far as you know, there's no concern about accumulation of that product on the parking lot. No. And would you be doing it once a month all year round or just during the summer season or something? We'll just be doing it during the peak seasons. I see. Okay. All right. Is there any further questions from the board? I don't. Don't see any. Okay, Johanna. Good. I guess I also have a question about the striping. Because initially the thinking was if we paint the parking lots and get people habituated and using kind of the pattern that the plant town had intended that we would be able to abandon that. So, Rob, can you just expand a little bit more into the experience at Sweet Alice and what is making you think that it's worth both like, you know, I don't know the, I guess I'm thinking like this town's precious staff resources to go and, you know, now we would be spraying three parking lots monthly at Sweet Alice and Stanley Street and at this site and I don't know if there are additional parking lot improvements in place, but it seems, I don't know. It seems like a lot of labor to maintain, I guess. Yeah, so you're exactly right. The plan was to use the markings to try to get, you know, get some consistency in the parking and hope that we wouldn't have to continue it. That's why I've asked for the waivers, because long term I don't think it's going to continue. But when we put it down in Sweet Alice, it was, like I said, it was well received. It was asked for again. There was an event at the Kestrel property and we went out and sprayed it again. It takes about, I'd say, eight to 10 minutes to respray. You know, after we've done the initial marking and have the layout, it's really quick, two cans of spray paint. I don't think we'll be doing it forever, but we'll probably do it next season and continue until people get used to using these parking areas. Okay, thanks, Rob. Not seeing any more hands from the board. Are there any public comments on this topic regarding this conservation property. All right, I don't see any public comment. All right. In that case, why don't we have a vote. Does anybody want to move that the board approve the site plan review application. Johanna. I'll move to approve the site plan review application. All right, and Tom. I second. Thank you, Chris. I see your hand. I'd like to remind you all to include closing the public hearing and meets the relevant criteria of 11.24. And did you have any conditions that you wanted to impose. Can you remind us whether we had conditions on the, the Bay Road property. I don't have that in front of me, but I think you might have said build according to plan. That's a typical one that you put in. Okay, can we simply reference the identical condition. That previous approval. Yes. All right. So I'm seeing you Hannah, you are nodding in agreement to that clarification of your motion. And Tom's nodding as well. We will vote to close the public hearing approve. The site plan review application with the same conditions as previously imposed on Bay Road. And I think that covers the motion. 11.24. Oh yes, and then we find that it's in conformance with 11.24. All right, are we all set. Roll call Maria. Thank you. Jack, you're next now. Hi, Tom. Johanna. Hi, Janet. Hi. Thank you all. Doug. Yes. Thank you. Welcome. Okay. So we have closed that public hearing. That's the fourth item on our agenda. The time is now seven 17 and we will. Reopen a public hearing that was previously continued to this date. So this is the proposal to. Provide the zoning for map 14 a parcel 33. On North prospect street. To see if the town will vote to amend. The fish official zoning map to change the zoning of map 14 a parcel 33. To add a parking facility overlay district. Over the underlying existing arts G. To add a parking facility overlay district and to establish dimensional regulations, standards and conditions. And to require a parking management. Operations. And maintenance plan to include a vacant parcel of land currently used as a parking lot owned by town of Amherst in the vicinity of North pleasant street. North prospect street. Coles Lane and amity street located in the general residence district. We've reopened this public hearing. The applicant. Nate, are you making the presentations this evening? I am. Thanks, Doug. All right. Why don't you go ahead? Sure. So this is a continuation of the hearing. You know, the, I'll share my screen. And. You know, just to let the. Let the planning board know and everyone else know the, the CRC, the community resource committee is taking this up next week. And, you know, we're presenting here tonight to ask the planning board. To either recommend this or, you know, have a further discussion and then. If no recommendation tonight, then, you know, we can schedule a time soon to continue the discussion. And so here's the existing conditions of the property. This was discussed last time. It's about. It's a little bit different. Point six, eight acres. It's now 97% covered with pavement as a surface lot. There's approximately 75 parking spaces. And there's very little setbacks, except for the front of North prospect street. And, you know, for this, for this. For this evening, we. We presented as only district as it would appear. As a formal amendment. So last time we were here, it was. It was, you know, in text form, but not as a bylaw, a formal amendment. So. There haven't been significant changes. I was going to make some clarifications. So as, as an overlay district. Is my, is my, is the word document visible for everyone. Yes, it is. This, this, this would, thanks to this would change article two. Zoning districts and use regulations, article three. And so within article two, we have a listing of special districts. And so this would become, you know, section 2.0 for as the parking facility district. And it would be described as an overlay district that applies only to the municipal lot 14 a dash 33. So that's one section of the bylaw that would be amended and then article three of the use regulations. There's actually a, there had been a section 3.23 that was applied to this property. And it's a vacant section. So this parking facility district would then occupy this section and. You know, it would, it would have a number of sections here a purpose to allow the development of a public or private parking facility. It only apply to this property. It's an overlay district. So it's, you know, the underlying zoning, the general residence doesn't change. It only applies to all other uses other than a parking facility. You know, and the overlay really does apply just to two sections of the use chart. So 3.3840, which is a commercial parking lot or garage. And 3.3841, which is a public parking lot or garage. There's its own dimensional standards, which would replace section 6.17 and table three. So there's no minimum lot area. If, you know, there's no parking space. There's no parking space. Chosen. No frontage. The front edge zone. We're defining as 15 feet between the property line along the right of way. And the closest point to any structure or parking space. Side or rear setbacks. It's five feet from prop the property line, a budding, a residential use in a residential district. Otherwise no setback is required. A maximum bill building coverage of 90%. A maximum height of 40 feet. Measured as the vertical distance from the average finished grade on the street side of the structure, which is typically how we define where the starting point is. And we're saying to the highest point of the parking structure, including a parapet wall or a screen. That's on top of the uppermost parking level. And the height does not apply to stairs, elevator towers or mechanical equipment. So we're just going to go back to that. And I just wanted to add a clarification. Previously I said that, you know, there's seven or eight feet to a parking garage. That's headroom height. That's floor to ceiling. And then there's the structure itself that may have two or three feet of. Of material to support the decks. And then. Given, you know, a 1% or 1.5% slope. To a parking garage and a few hundred feet. That's another few feet. So. That's the height of the parking structure. That's the height of the parking garage. That's the height of the parking floor. And it's really 10 to 12 feet per, per deck level. So. You know, per staff, 40 feet measured in this way. Really applies to, you know, helps measure the height of a parking structure. The way we measure height in the bylaw. Now couldn't really apply to a parking garage. You know, closely enough. So 40 feet is. You know, is something we felt. You know, was a lot easier to measure in a car. In a, in a car, in a parking garage. You know, in a parking garage. In a parking garage surrounded neighborhood. And it sets a height that. You know, an applicant would have to meet. Right. So. They could configure. They could figure out how to. Shape the parking levels. In everything to Matt, to meet that height. And so none of this has changed from the previous presentation. Staff does not think we have to have a setback. You know, many properties. required and so we think that this is still appropriate for this overlay. And even given the maximum law coverage of 95%, it's still slightly less than the existing condition. In terms of standards and conditions, the permacraining authority would still be a site plan review application. The design review principles would need to be applied, would be required to be applied. The design standards and landscape standards of section 7.1 of the zoning by-law would be applied and then the site plan review criteria. These conditions are relatively the same. So we're saying here that the permacraining authority could ask the applicant to provide studies at their cost and peer review of traffic impact analysis. And so right now we don't know what size garage, the number of parking spaces that could be proposed. And so that's up to an applicant. So then it's on there, it's their responsibility to show how they can mitigate for that and the impacts that could have. We still have the parking structure shall be designed to be compatible with the adjacent neighborhood and downtown. The parking structure shall be designed and our facade treatment shall be applied to minimize the visibility of cars parked inside the facility from North Prospect Street. And so these two, in the next one, architectural details and materials shall be used to break down the scale of the parking structure facade. So the three conditions here are really meant to guide the permacraining authority during an application review. So there's been comments about having a solid wall on North Prospect Street. The stair tower should be away from the street. And so as an overlay zone, we're not getting that prescriptive in terms of design guidelines. That's something that the planning board could ask during permitting. You could ask the applicant to have an alternative site plan that has the stair tower away from the street. You could ask them to show different types of facade material. Typically a garage is not a solid wall because then the venting required and it is really extensive and expensive. And so it could be that the planning board or the permacraining authority asked that, all the parking decks have a four foot wall, a solid wall up to a certain height to block headlights when they're inside the garage. But staff believes all that could be discussed during permitting and doesn't need to be written into the overlay. There's still the section 3.2344 that discusses the grade of the entry drive. It has width and really, E says at least one vehicle shall queue on the property without blocking the sidewalk. That's something that was in there. It's something that we think will help at least get cars out of the public way. The frontage zone shall be heavily landscaped with plants having a height of at least one story above grade at the time of planting. And this has been changed right here in addition to other low level plantings and ground cover. And so that's an addition from the last time just to help clarify the types of plants. Did notice actually that sustainable design objectives should be called out as its own standard. So that has to be renumbered. Again, we're not saying exactly what that means it's something that could be discussed in terms of how the materials they're using is that their site design. We wanna allow some flexibility here without knowing what the future could be. This could also mean electrical vehicle charging stations. It could mean more bike racks to allow different modes of transportation. And so without being overly prescriptive this is something that can guide the permitting. Again, the continuous sidewalks. We're not asking an applicant to bring sidewalks outside the site but make connections to existing pathways and walkways along with Prospect Street. Lighting should be installed in download to prevent disbursement onto adjacent properties. And we did qualify the freestanding sign. So we're still allowing additional freestanding or projecting signs that do not exceed 50 square feet each for a combined total of 100 square feet may be installed in accordance with article eight. So previously we didn't have this 50 square feet. So we're limiting a sign to 50 square feet. And again, this is something that can be discussed during permitting. And then we're requiring a parking management operations and maintenance plan. And this would be submitted at the time of application. It would include the number of parking spaces and the intended users, rates and fees, hours of operation, safety measures such as lighting or security cameras, signs, enforcement operations, such as ticketing or towing, trash removal, snow management, treatment and maintenance of interior surfaces and stormwater management. This isn't an exhaustive list, but it's again meant to guide an applicant in their review during permitting. And so this is one step to have an overlay to allow the possibility of a parking facility on this property. If this were to move forward, the town would then need to issue a request for proposals. And so some of the comments we've received in terms of specific elements of the project could be required in the request for proposals as part of a long-term lease or other conditions of the property. But staff doesn't necessarily think they're appropriate in the zoning overlay. So there could be certain elements in terms of a ratio of bike racks to parking spaces or certain sign elements that would go in a request for a proposal, but is not really necessary in the overlay zoning amendment. All right, Nate, is that the end of it? That's the end of it. Okay. So why don't we just get started with the discussion? I will say that I guess, Chris, am I right that the CRC will have a hearing on this October 26th? Is that right? That's correct, yep. Okay. It's in the afternoon. So it's two o'clock in the afternoon or sometime around then for people who might wanna come from the public. Thank you. So it probably would be a good idea for us to vote on this this evening, you know, up or down, at least whether we want to recommend or not recommend at this time. That's correct. So let's try to keep that as a goal for the discussion. And do we have a board conversation about this? Anybody wanna speak to or ask questions of Nate? Janet, I see your hand. Thank you. And thank you, Nate, for this presentation. Has there been any massing study done for this parking garage, its potential buildout? I know we've done, the planning department has done that in response to request from the planning boards for several zoning amendments this year. And I think it would be really helpful for us to see what this building would look like in relationship to the buildings around it, just to see how big it is or how small it is, that kind of thing. And so I had asked for that in an email. Has that been done? Chris or Nate, have you got any comments about that? That has not been done, no. But we did show an image of the garage from Greenfield and gave a sense of how big a garage might be on this property, but we're not designing a garage now. So we didn't think that it was necessary to provide a three-dimensional massing study. Okay. Nate, did you wanna say anything? No, I was gonna just mention that the Greenfield garage is something we had shown previously in terms of a potential massing. Okay. All right, so we don't have that information for this evening's conversation. Right. Janet, did you raise your physical hand? Yeah, I have several questions. So we have done a massing study for the BIA overlay zone. We've had several of those for the 40B, for footnote M and moving the BL into footnote B. And all of those were super helpful to the planning board because we got to see what the consequences of a zoning change were. And so I think we should, we need that before we can make a recommendation. I think the CRC could benefit from it. And then I also think that members of the public and the town councils would benefit from that. So it seems odd to me to go forward without at least a simple massing study, comparing the size of the parking garage in relationship to St. Bridges, the CVS, the houses across the street, and Strong House and the library. So we do that all the time. Okay, thank you. Maria. Thanks, thanks for that, Nate. It's nice to see it all organized and it still looks good. It looks just like what you just showed us previously. My comment about a lot of people asking for studies and why we've done many studies in the past, I keep wanting to say it, but I haven't had an opportunity. So all those massing studies done previously by town staff were because we were studying a lot of different parcels in a lot of different zones of a lot of different neighborhoods. And it was necessary to just kind of get a sense of like what happens on the largest parcels, what might happen on a few typical parcels because no private developer or no one on the planning board can come and do that except for town staff who have that sort of ability and resources. What this amendment doing is literally asking for that for the next step. It's literally saying, please provide us with studies, with traffic studies, with all these options for what could be there. That's literally the next step. So when we were studying all those other footnotes and apartments and things, that was because it was of all sort of town-wide sort of amendment. It was something that no one else was gonna do except town staff. This amendment is literally asking for that study from potential developers and from for the RFP. So to ask the town staff to use their energy time and focus on that next step doesn't make sense, especially when we have a lot of other zoning amendments that need a lot of research and work. So this is sort of a pathway to that next step that a lot of people have been emailing and asking for and I guess I'll just keep saying, we aren't, the zoning doesn't design buildings or design for specific, I guess, doesn't provide exact answers. It's to, like Nate was saying, it's to provide a guide. It's to provide a sort of pathway for potential projects. So I guess, I feel like we're having the same conversation every week, but that's, yeah, that's why we aren't supposed to be thinking through it, that this fine level of detail. I really feel like this is a guide, it's a stepping stone. It's not the answer. So yeah, I hear all the people asking for that, but I just, I think that's the wrong use of resources of our town staff and planners and building department to be designing a building that this is literally asking the next step to be that. So from someone else. Thank you, thank you, Maria. Jack, do you still want to comment? Yes, excuse me. I would like to say diddo, diddo, diddo to Maria's comments. She covered so much. I can't even like follow up that. She hit all the points. So yes, so I have no other comments. Okay, so I guess thus far what I'm hearing is that some members feel we have enough information to vote on this and to recommend it and that some members do not think we have enough information yet. Are there other comments from the board? Well, Janet, I'm going to wait for you. I want to hear from Tom and Johanna first. So Tom. Sure, thanks Doug. You know, I'll follow up and just say that I appreciate seeing it in this format. I think really detailed Nate and outlined. I think that the notion that we're making, that the zoning is coming with standards and conditions is and that they're relatively detailed in terms of the expectations for the next step. I think it's really important. So I think that's a really helpful way for us to move forward without getting into the weeds of what this is going to look like or how it's going to exactly operate. Because I feel like that's what comes next. But I appreciate the level of detail in this. And I think it's ready for a vote. All right, thank you and Johanna. Yeah, similar to what Tom said, you know, I just based on all the work we've done on this, I'm definitely leaning towards this being the best site to explore for our parking garage in town as opposed to other places. I really appreciate the overlay and the constraints that are put on it and the kind of guidelines that are going to be put out there in the RFP. I personally am not yet convinced that a parking garage is necessary, but I'm interested in seeing kind of what this, you know, kind of public-private partnership, whether the market supports it. So I too would be comfortable, you know, moving ahead and voting on it tonight. Okay. And Janet, and after you, Janet, I think I'll go to public comment. Okay, so I have a few things to do to talk about. So I don't want to have those lost. And so I'd like some time. So the other question, I had another question. We had, last meeting we had talked about traffic impacts on the different streets and Andrew had raised that issue. And I hadn't sort of expected that some information would come back on potential impacts on North Pleasant Street, North Prospect, Coles, Amity Street, you know, maybe the need for turning lanes and things like that. And so I don't think this is excessively detailed questions. I think these are kind of normal questions. I know that town meeting, when I was in town meeting, we often got a massing study. I think the town council will want to see it. These questions will come up in town council. It's kind of what we should be asking about. So has any of that been done? And if any more thought about impacts on the roads or where the best places would be to exit or enter, exit is does the town have access or a right to use the CVS exit? And there are a lot to get out that we're doing right now. Is it just habit? Okay, so Chris, I see your hand. We really think that those are things that are going to be addressed during the design process and that allowing something to be considered on this property doesn't mean that we have to have all the answers in hand and answers about traffic impact, et cetera. We probably need to hire a traffic engineer to do that. And if we wanted to talk about turning lanes and all of those types of things, that would cost the town a lot of money to figure that out all in advance. And those things will be figured out when there is a proposal. So at this stage of just opening the door to allow the possibility of a parking garage to be built here, we wouldn't expect to have that information. Thank you, Chris. Okay, so- You have another question, Janet? Yeah, so we had Tossel talked about setbacks, like side and rear setbacks. In the BG, the side setbacks are 10 feet, of course, with the various footnote A, and then the rear setbacks are also, I have a little problem here. Yeah, so the front setbacks is zero to 20, and then the rear setbacks are 10. And so one question I really, and I feel really strongly about this because I own a property with a building right on the property line, and I have a part of the garages on a property line. Has anyone told CVS owners that this proposal could be building a building right up to the property line, and also taking away the spaces that they're currently using for their customers for free? Has that conversation taken place with St. Brigid's and what was their reaction? Because I don't know that they've actually seen this and understand what's happening. Thank you, Janet. Chris. So I don't know what conversations the proponents of the original zoning amendment had with St. Brigid's and CVS. We have sent notifications to everybody within 300 feet of this property for the public hearing that's going to be held next week by the CRC. So they will have an opportunity at that time to comment and that's all I have to say. Okay, thank you. Have they seen the drawings or just the notification? Well, I'd be certainly aware of these hearings. And so if they want to participate in the hearings, they'll see the drawings. Okay. So another question, Janet? Actually, not a question. I actually, I sent out an email with 10 additional requirements that I think should be added to the profile. The parking facilities overlay district. And so I'd like to make a motion that we add those to it and then discuss them. And I can give my reasons why? Because I was looking for like a way forward and trying to reverse the, trying to take concerns and considerations in advance and shape this proposal or the zoning amendment. So it's stronger, it's more clear. It provides reassurances to butters and residents. And so my goal was to find the middle ground. I am very concerned that this property, this parking lot is too small for a parking garage. The study that we, the last study that was done about it gave kind of mixed reviews based on a parking garage on the CVS lot plus the town lot. And basically said, does it pick that as the best of the three spots that looked at the bank center and also the Amity street lot. It's that financially it didn't look like a big money maker. It suggested going for a state grant money. And that long-term parking would be a better source of income than short-term parking. And since the purpose of this lot is to provide destination parking for people coming in and out of Amherst, I think that, so I'm just trying to figure out how to get support from the neighbors, make them feel reassured and actually to be flexible. Like maybe the Amity street lot plus Bank of America is a better spot. Developers can look at both of the overlays and pick which one they wanna do, competition and things like that. So I'd like to make a motion to add the 10 additional requirements listed in my document for the parking facilities overlay district. I'd love a second so we can just kind of go through them and discuss them. Thank you. Here we have a second. Jack, I'm seeing your hand. Jack, seconds, you are muted. Jack, you're still muted. I am so out of practice being, you know, non-chairman. Sorry, but I would like to hear the points and that's why I'm seconding. Okay, thank you. Pam, do you have that memo from Janet available to show on the screen? I'm missing mine, I think. Yeah, can you... That's the wrong one, hold on. I could all confuse trying to find the word documents. It's the packet. It's not in the packet. I sent it to attach to an email. I think Nate may have it. No, I have it, Chris. Okay. Thank you, there it is. Yeah, I was sharing my screen. I don't know if that's from me, Pam, or you from you, but as if this is... Oh, it is yours, but I did find it. Okay, Nate, I guess you get to drive for a while. Sure, so this was sent in an email today. Janet, do you want to speak to this or do you want Nate to continue? I'm not sure what Nate's talking, I mean, is he... I'd love to speak to my guidelines, but Nate, did you have something to say too? Oh, no, I was just going to go read through them. I was going to go number one, but if you want to do that, you can as well, yeah. Okay, I prefer to do it, and I'll try to speak slowly. The first addition or condition would be to limit the total height to 40 feet, including the mechanicals and solar panels. This was to alleviate concerns that the building would just get bigger and bigger, and that if solar, we all love solar panels, and it would be a great thing to put over the roof deck parking, but that could push up another eight or 10 feet, and suddenly we're at BG height or 50 feet or more. And so that was just to give reassurance that this building is not going to be big, not to be anti-solar, but to reduce the mass and size of the building to the height of the adjoining RG district. The elevator tower obviously needs to go above the roof deck, and then one of the criteria, so that would be the elevator tower could be taller, but it would be opposite the resonances, because I was just picturing, I've lived in a city, and it's like, if you were living next to a parking garage with an elevator going up and down all night long, doors opening and closing and people talking, put that over towards North Pleasant Street, give the people on Prospect Street or South or North Prospect Street, if this was in Amity Street, arrest. So that was number one, and I just wondered what people thought of that one. Why don't you go, I think I'd like you to go through them all and then we'll see whether there's interest in pursuing any particular. Okay, and by the way, thank you, Jack, for seconding. The second one is to include in the parking overlay district, the CVS lot, the town lot on Amity Street and the adjoining Bank of America and People's Bank parking lots. I might throw in the lot owned by Barry Roberts next to the CVS also. And here's the idea is, I just think, if we're gonna build the parking garage, let's just build one and let's make sure it's economically viable. I don't see that this small parking garage, it may not be viable, but we have all these parking lots next to it, why not just include them into it or just the option to? So this doesn't say, no, you can't build on the town lot, it just tells to any developer you can add to it. And then it also offers the Amity Street lot, the Bank of America lot and the People's Bank lot. A developer could say, I'd like to use Amity Street, it's really central, it's whatever. And then they could talk to Bank of America and see if they can cut a deal, maybe they'll buy the lot or the People's Bank lot and they'll share it. And so it just gives flexibility about the options. It's kind of the American way. It's not saying no to anything, but it's just giving, opening up the possibilities. We don't have any kind of analysis of whether this is the best spot or the bad, good spot or not. And so let's let the developers have the flexibility to do that. So that's number two. Number three is requiring a solid building facade on any parking garage that fronts homes on North and South Prospect Street. This would not be an incredibly large or expensive wall. And I think it probably wouldn't have big costs in terms of ventilation, because it's not that wide. I think it's like 110 feet on South Prospect Street, maybe a little longer. And I just think again, anybody living in an old Victorian house doesn't want to be hearing people coming out of the drake at 12 o'clock or one in the morning, doing their alarms to get the cars open, the strange sound that my hybrid vehicle makes when it backs up, lights, people shouting, door slamming. And so that I think just gives protection to the neighborhood that they can sleep at night and have the parking garage be a good neighbor. Okay, Nate, can you scroll down? Thank you. Number four is required that the solid exterior facade along North and South Prospect Street and Amity Street reflect the character of the 19th century buildings adjoining and across the street, the local historic district whose name are the Prospect Gaylord Historic District. And again, this is to make the parking garage an ad to the downtown. This is probably everybody's sort of favorite part of town, all the old buildings and just to make sure it fits in. And there's lots of examples of this and it doesn't have to be a solid wall on Amity Street, but I just Googled it and there's lots of people building really attractive parking garages. I opted for a more historic fit because pretty much every building, including the People's Bank is going in a traditional style there and it kind of keeps it going. There are some very wild modern examples were sort of interesting that I thought, I think this would again gain support for people if they felt like what goes in is attractive and fits in. And there is an option also on the Amity Street to put small stories along the front, which an example I set around. Number five would be exiting cars only onto the main arteries of North Pleasant and Amity Street. Again, nobody wants to have lights coming, 35, 40 cars leaving at 11 o'clock at night when a show is over or the cinema is out. It just makes sense to me not to inflict that on people. And I don't think it's much of a burden for the garage because there's already a way to get into it from North Pleasant or from Amity Street. Let's see. Number six is require a year-round evergreen vegetative screen to cover the building walls, maybe not the whole amount, but the walls that are facing residences and that may include deciduous plantings that kind of speaks for itself. Number seven is side and rear setbacks of 10 feet. I just think it's not, I really want to speak strongly against having side setbacks where people can build up to a property line. And I think it puts a burden on the use of people abutting property owners. Like they're very limited in what they can do. If you want to fix your parking garage, you're standing on their property. If you want to put a building in, you're constructing under a very tight envelope. I live this experience and I can't tell you how negative it is. And I don't think we should inflict it onto some other, onto St. Bridges or anybody, people's bank or whoever is abutting. Nate, can you scroll down? Thank you. Let's see. Number eight is require that 50% of the parking spaces are available for short-term use until 10 o'clock at night. That's just what it speaks for itself. The purpose of this garage is not long-term parking or it can be used for it, but during the day, our goal is destination amers to get people in and out to know there's parking spaces to help the local businesses. And so the fear that people have expressed to me or in this meeting is that it's just going to be long-term parking for our expensive apartments that are coming in downtown. This doesn't say no to it, but make sure there's space there. Number nine, I would say we should do this by special permit by the ZBA and not site plan review by the planning board. This is going to be a controversial project and the ZBA can take a fine tooth comb to it and make sure it fits in and looks good. The special permit, it has more criteria and it's more clear and also some more controlled by the board to kind of move things around. And so I would just advocate for that. And we have special permits for all sorts of buildings. I think this one, to give everybody reassurance is that there's a little bit more of a harder look, a little more thorough look. And then finally, to avoid excessive number 10, to avoid excessive curb cuts, requirement that easements be secured to cross existing car exits and entrances. I think this one's a little heavy-handed, but I just thought we don't want like more and more curb cuts on South Prospect Street or North Prospect Street, or it's just, let's consolidate them. There's already a system of sharing and just make sure it stays. All right, thank you, Janet. So, Jack, I see your hand. Yeah, I just wanna say, I don't wanna go item by item, but I think Janet has, there's a handful of very good points. And so, I would move that the planning department reviews these and consider revising. And, you know, I don't know, certain of the expediency of this particular by-law, but open to conversation. But I think there's some very good points here. So that's it. Okay, thanks, Jack. Chris or Nate, do you have any comment about this? Some of these? I would rather hear what specifics we wanna change because, you know, my thought is on some of these, these would be great things to have in our quest for a proposal and not specific to zoning in terms of curb cuts or the number of parking spaces available for short-term users. I also think that some of these things are parts of the design and process that would work during permitting. So the planning board has plenty of authority to review the design and shape and massing of a structure is placement on the site, the curb cuts, the traffic impact, the design of the facility. So, you know, I think all those things can be done through permitting with the permit, you know, with the planning board, not in the ZBA, but I don't think the planning board has any less ability to do that. You know, and so for a number of these, it would really be then, what does the planning board think in terms of the direction? So, you know, I think if they, you know, for instance, if number five or whatever number the planning board would like, I'd like to hear the direction specifically because I feel like there's a lot here to consider if it's just left to staff. Right, thank you. Thank you, Nate. Tom. Sure, thanks Doug. I, you know, Janet, I really appreciate all this, these comments and I tend in many cases on this list to agree with Nate in that I feel like a lot of them will belong in an RFP, especially about, you know, the use of parking, because I do think what we need to address there is your concern about having an actual review of our parking needs. And so to say 50% without actually having any kind of analysis doesn't really make sense. So I think including that an RFP or including that they provide in our review of our parking requirements downtown and then having us, you know, give input or feedback about setting those values, I think is a really important thing. And I think, you know, trying to cut down on sound in a parking lot is difficult because there's a parking lot there and people are gonna flood out of whatever's there, get in their car, slam the door, honk and chit chat and all that stuff anyway. So I feel like, you know, we're, you know, again, that's a nice thought but there's already a parking garage there. So if we don't build it, it's still a problem for those particular people. I think the one thing I will say is that for item number two, about the multiple lots, I feel like the only problem I have with that right now is that we haven't reviewed those whereas we've reviewed this one in great detail. And so I would recommend that if we want to add an overlay district to these other lots and somebody brings it to us that we can review that, have a conversation about it and then approve that. No one's stopping anybody from doing that. It's just, it's been requested that we look at one particular lot, then that, you know, whoever's gonna propose the parking garage there will have to determine whether it's feasible there or not. And if it's not, then maybe we do wanna consider other locations and maybe someone should bring forward or propose that we do look at an option for additional parking lots in the area or parking areas to be approved for an overlay. But again, I don't think it's part of the purview of right now because we haven't reviewed those things. So I don't feel comfortable adding those in without having that conversation as a group actually looking at those sites in particular. Yeah, I mean, this proposal originated with two town counselors who convinced town counselor to refer to us for these hearings. And that's all we've really been asked to do at the moment. Maria. Okay. Yeah, those are really great points. And Janet, a lot of your concerns are exactly the things we need to be thinking about at the next step. But just to be specific about answering what Nate wanted to know if there are any particular edits. Like for example, I don't agree with number one or number seven, the sort of changing of the dimensional regulations that Nate already presented. I think those would just stay as drawn up in my opinion. That's where I am standing. And then most of the other points are exactly the kinds of things that will come up when we have a design. And those are all really great concerns. Oh, also don't agree with number nine about changing from SP to SPR. But otherwise, yeah, it's all the kind of deep dive into the sort of questions and research and data that we need to make sure this parking deck works in all the different ways we've always already brought up as far as financial traffic, parking, scale, mass and all that. So, but yeah, I don't, I would say kind of, I forget who said kind of like what Jack was saying, just sort of, you know, review with the staff and just keeps a lot of these suggestions and ideas in mind for the RFP stage, but that I wouldn't change anything right now in the bylaw amendment that you proposed. Thank you. Jack, you are next. Yeah, I just wanna, I guess I was seeking some conversation amongst the board. And I really thought Tom and Maria, you know, helped me understand, you know, where we're at with this. And, you know, I'm not really, you know, concerned, you know, the setbacks and, you know, the dimensional things are, they should be in line, you know, as proposed. And, but I really would like to see this area kind of expanded. But again, that's another process as Doug, you know, you know, mentioned. So, but yeah, I appreciate the comments of Maria and Tom. Thank you, Jack. Johanna. Thank you very much. I have a question about the potential implications of the first recommendation to include the mechanicals in the 40 feet height. And maybe this is a question for Nate, but like based on what we know now and other parking garages, perhaps the Greenfield one, how many parking levels would we have in a 40 foot structure? And if we included mechanicals, would it eliminate one of the levels potentially? Yeah, sure. I think the, you know, the 40 feet as measured from the street, you know, the, because of the topography of this site, you know, there could be a subterranean level. So, you know, a developer could go, if the developer wants to, wants to go, you know, spend their time going underground, you know, so 40 feet, you could say it could be a five story garage with two stories buried. So 40 feet from the street might, you know, might be a three story with a surface parking on the, you know, on the upper deck, you know, to get a solar panels that are, say, if there's, you know, stadium mounted above cars and above, you know, then with an angle. I mean, that might add another, you know, it could be 12 feet, right? So really essentially you're, you're getting down to a, you know, in the 20 foot height for the upper parking deck. You know, I feel like, you know, that's just, you know, an estimate in terms of if we're, you know, if we're measuring it, you know, typically the way the zoning by the works, we don't include, you know, solar panels as part of the height and on any building, right? We don't include some of these mechanicals in the height calculation anyways. And so I think for, you know, staff relied on that and, you know, and just trying to come up with a, what's a, what would be a continuous elevation? So, you know, to the height of a parapet wall or screening, that's usually a level, you know, it's level across the garage, right? At least at some point it's, it's, you know, it's a determined height as opposed to trying to say like a three-story level, that's a harder thing to measure because the garage floor moves, right? It's a slope to it. But I think 40 feet, including solar would greatly reduce the upper height of the upper deck. But, you know, depending on how the solar is arranged. So it's reasonable to think that might cost a level of parking. Right. Okay. One level. I see Janet's hand. Maybe you can make one more comment and then we'll turn to public comment. Nate, I have a clarifying question. So if, if it's 40 feet at the parapet and then there's solar panels overhead, is that 12 feet from the roof deck up? So it's like, and so that would just add more shadow on the, right? But so are you saying like 12 feet from the roof deck? So Janet, one way to think of it would be the first level would be zero to 12 feet. The second level would be 12 to 24. The third level would be 24 to 36. And you could potentially have a fourth level of parking on the roof at that 36 feet above the, above the sidewalk, which, you know, couldn't have much of anything on top of it. If the 40 feet, you know, gets you to the top of the parapet wall of the top level of parking. So then I'm just, I guess the question is, under your scenario, you're 36 feet at the roof deck and then you add 12 feet if you had like a roof of solar panels. Yeah, so the 12 feet would be measured from the 36 feet height. Okay, thank you. So the total would be something like 48, but, you know, all of these numbers are purely speculative right now. That's the way the solar panels are measured now if they go on a house, right? If they're a steady amount, they're not part of the height calculation. So you could have a roof 40 feet in the RD district to the midpoint, so the peak could be higher. And then if you have a steady amount or something above the roof, you're adding, you know, height to the roof of the, of a residential structure as well. All right, so why don't we, let's see, I see we've passed eight o'clock. Usually we take a break around eight o'clock. Do people want to take a break or should we go ahead with public comment on this topic and then break? I'm inclined to go ahead with public comment. I'm seeing Johanna agreeing with that. Jack agreeing with that. Okay, so why don't we go ahead to public comment? And first person I see is Harry Pelts if you could state your name and your address and you are, you have three minutes for comment. Mr. Pelts, are you there? Hi, Harry. Please unmute yourself. No, I'm sorry. All right, we can now hear you. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I reside at 32 North Prospect Street, which is directly across from the entrance to that property is directly across from the exit from CBS's lot. My fellow residents are going to be commenting as well. We have a condominium group that houses approximately 18, 20 people as their residences. I have some specific concerns. One, this 40 foot height, this lot slopes down towards CBS. I want to know specifically where this 40 foot height restriction applies. Secondly, I'm concerned that there wasn't more planning even though you can say, oh, it may cost the town some money to do that and more investigation. You have a 2019 report that has not been updated. I'm also concerned about the fact that this proposal is being pushed by two of the town council people who have to stand for election this coming November. And they seem to indicate that there has been some proposal and contract negotiations with a proposed build. There's been very little public access to the process that's gone on. And I believe it impairs the credibility and trust in our town government when so little is given about the actual process that is happening. And it also indicates to me from past experience that possibly there are some agreements between some people that result in a profit to business people or others in town government as a result of this particular proposal. I'm going to defer to my other fellow residents who have I know extended comments and I ask you the question of traffic and the effect on the historic residential area on the other side of North Prospect Street is going to be an impact which I think will diminish our town greatly. And I ask you to consider that along with everyone else's comments. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. Next we have Pam Rooney. Hi Pam. Hi there Pam Rooney. Can I get your name and your address? 42 Cottage Street Pam Rooney. Thanks for letting me speak. One quick question that Nate can answer afterwards and that is what is the difference between a frontage zone and a front setback? If he could explain that, that would be great. In the 3.231 section, the applicability, I would agree that it is not just the CVS area lot but also that should be broadened to include the Amity Street lots and those would be parcel 14A 216, 14A 330, 14A 217. I have to disagree with a number of you who stated that that kind of conversation is outside of your purview. I think very much that the planning board has the responsibility to take something that's handed to you and actually analyze it to understand if there are broader applications for it or if it's just an absolute single application. So I do appreciate that at least somebody is asking to take that broader look. Let's see. The conversation about the height, I think you're gonna hear a lot of this. It's interesting because on the one hand, a 40-foot height in the RG, I think it's typically measured to, it would be to the top of the parapet. But I think it's absolutely a valid question to ask for a massing diagram because a 40-foot structure on North Prospect Street is a very, very different beast than it would be if it were out in the middle of a parking lot somewhere without a two-story or two-and-a-half-story gabled mid-1800s neighborhood next to it. So I think the request for a massing is absolutely appropriate in that setting and would strongly recommend that you all suggest doing that before it goes to 10 council. So quick summary, I think the application of this should be broader and not limited to this one lot. I know that was handed to you on your lap, but I think you all are the board to deal with this. And I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Next we have, I believe it's Bob Pam. Please state your name and your address. Hello, Bob Pam. Hi, I'm Bob Pam, 229 Amity Street. I am speaking as an individual, not as an official of any organization. There are three concerns that I guess I would have to address. First one having to do with the library. As you know, that is next door. If that project proceeds, the only access that will be available for doing the construction will be through the town parking lot. And so that is probably means that for the next three years at least, one ought not to be thinking about building anything there. That suggests that there is really no time frame on this which would require action by this board now. Second, again, thinking about the library, we have provided instructions to the architects who've done the work so far, that the height of the building ought not to be visible from Amity Street. And I don't know whether, if you think about this building now, whether that is going to be visible. And if so, should we be reconsidering the height restriction we've put on the library? Second concern has to do with CVS. And I will talk about that in two ways. First is that it is the only quasi grocery store in downtown. It depends to a large degree on its parking lot. The parking lot is a free parking lot. If you put it next to a fee parking lot, what I anticipate will happen is that people will park in the CVS lot at eight in the morning and will leave at five or some such hours. And its access to its own parking lot will be restricted in ways that are simply not appropriate. The third has to do with neighborhood. And of course, say if you talk about this as parking for the Drake, which is a bar as well as other things, we're not talking about people leaving at nine. We're not talking about people leaving at 11. We're probably talking about people leaving at one. And when they leave, they will not necessarily be quiet and orderly. So think about what that means in terms of the neighborhood. The last point has to do with access. And currently the only way you get into that area is by crossing traffic in most cases on North Pleasant Street. If you then close that for vehicular access and you now put it all onto North Prospect, it is not clear to me how that is going to work for that street and for the neighbors to it on Halleck and other streets nearby. So that is, those are the concerns that I would raise. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. And thank you for the clear articulation of your points. It certainly sounded like you may have written those out in advance. That was great. Next we have Ronnie Parker. Would you please state your name and your address? Hi, this is Ronnie Parker again, 24 North Prospect Street. Oh my goodness. I am sure that none of you lives anywhere near here because the idea of a 40 foot building across the street from us, our bedroom is going to be looking into the parking lot. So I really want you to reconsider the height restrictions. Now, many of you have spoken about this in very technical terms. You have to really think about it in human terms. We're going to have a library building that will take down three oaks in the back. The very little green that's here will be taken away so much for a green amherst. It's really shocking to me the way this discussion is going on. The proposal did originate with two town councillors but they're not here for the discussion. They have never explained why they said three levels and now they're saying five. They've literally lied to us when they said, trust us. I heard that myself and I thought, well, of course, these are people who are representing us. So I would charge you to really think about what it's like to be in the place of those of us because that's your job. You're the planning board for the town of Amherst. You're not talking about your own home. Think about what it's like. Come and walk around here and see what it's like. Somebody said, oh, there's already a parking lot there and there's noise and there are people banging their cars at night. So this is just more of the same. No, it is not. That parking lot is hardly used. It is never full. We never hear noise from there. So hang out here and see what it's like. See what our reality is like before you make these decisions. The second thing that I really have noticed here that bothers them to me is that the town officials are supposed to respond to us and to you. They're supposed to provide information. So personally, I don't think it matters that Mr. Malloy, I have nothing against you and I want your technical expertise here. But I don't think it matters that you agree or disagree because you're not the designated authority. You're the technical expert. It does matter what the members of the planning board think and I am sort of surprised from my previous experience with local government that there's so much of a blend here. So since my time is running out again, I would say, please pay attention to height. Think about a tower in front of your bedroom. Do you want that? That's what you're relegating us to and pay attention to the setbacks. Thank you. Thank you, Ronnie. Next hand I see is from Dorothy Pam. Name and address please. Hi, Dorothy. Hi, Dorothy Pam, 229 Amity Street. And I'm speaking in my private capacity. I don't care for the logic that says the town doesn't want to spend its own money on a traffic study and you want a private person to do so that puts the private person in the driver's seat. I cannot believe that if a traffic study were done, honestly, that this lot would pass. The street, North Prospect Street is too small, too narrow, and it would not work. I've also seen somebody's study that discussed all the on-street parking spots that would have to disappear in order to make North Prospect Street safe as an entrance and exit street for the parking garage so that you are actually cutting into parking that we already have. So right now you're saying the town does not want to spend the money on a traffic study, yet nobody seems to care that the owners of the property across the street from it will be losing the enjoyment of their homes. They will absolutely have their quality of life changed and made much more negative. There was a moment today when the height was discussed as being a normal BG height, but I remember that this lot is now zoned at RG. It's zoned RG, it's right next to a historic block. It took years and years and years for that block to develop for those houses to be built. And unless you feel like you want to just, you know, erase Amherst's history and get rid of the beauty that is here in order to make a convenience for some people who are sure that this parking spot will really work even though as it's been testified again and again, that the part lot is not used very well and that you want the town to forego if the town is short on money, it will forego the $30,000 to $50,000 it gets right now a year on parking revenue. So I am really, really upset that this has continued to be discussed in this way, kind of like, well, we don't know, we can't tell. We'll just let some private money person come in and do the studies to see if this is really a suitable spot. So I totally support Janet's position of investigating the Amity Street parking lot, which is in fact in the center of the town, in the center of all the places that need parking right now. We're talking of course about parking for shopping and for entertainment. We're not talking about us devoting our time and energy to provide parking for private developers who chose not to provide parking in their apartments because that would be a total disgrace. So I just feel that this is being pushed, it's being rushed and I don't see the point of it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dorothy. Chris, I see your hand. Is there something you wanna respond to at this time or shall we wait until the public finishes? I wanted to respond to the comment about not wanting to do a traffic study. A traffic study is necessary eventually, but right now nobody has appropriated money for a traffic study. So there is no money for a traffic study. Town council could make that choice to do a traffic study if it thinks that that's necessary and town council has the ability to appropriate money but the planning department and the planning board don't have that ability. So if people think that that's a necessary component to make this decision, then so be it. But it's not something that I can say yay or nay to. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Pam, could you, yeah, thanks, reset the clock. Okay, next hand I see is from Jennifer Taub. Name and address. And Jennifer. Okay, thank you. I didn't have an unmute button. Jennifer Taub 259 Lincoln Avenue. I haven't written my comments in advance as Bob Pam did because I'm responding to a couple of comments that were made during the planning board's discussion. If I heard correctly, did at least one planning board member said voiced a specific objection to having a special permit but to keep the site plan review. And I think what the residents in the surrounding neighborhood are really feeling is that the planning board just doesn't care what are, how we are affected by this. Would it really be too much to give us, you know the extra care of a special permit instead of a site plan review? So I would ask that when, I think the way we got to this overlay district instead of rezoning, one of the concerns, you know when we were promised that the parking structure we were promised this by the sponsors of the zoning bylaw amendment would not exceed three stories. And that when I first, you know the, when the proposal was made instead of rezoning from RG to BG but to have the overlay it did seem like a response to our concerns about not permanently changing the zoning until we knew whether a parking structure could actually go there. But it's almost, but the overlay now has parameters where the building could be higher than it was when it was first presented by the sponsors of the amendment for rezoning. So I also share the concern I don't know how we got from three stories to out of 48 feet. And it, in terms of I guess also as an aside with the library the new wing of the library is going to have large windows looking north and is it going to face, you know a four or what seems like it could almost be the height of a five story building. And then I did want to reiterate in response to the comment that it's already noisy. There virtually no one parks in the lot now. So it's not noisy, especially in the evening it's empty. Thank you. Thanks very much, Jennifer. The next commenter is Kitty Axelson-Barry. Please state your name and your address. Kitty, am I on? Yes. Kitty Axelson-Barry at 89 Stoney Hill Road that's in Echo Hill South. I agree with Johanna Newman's statement that she's not really sure that a parking facility is needed. And Johanna, I think you said you would be willing to you know, go along with it but that really there's a lack of information about whether it's actually needed. There were two studies recently done of parking. One was just in 2019, two years ago. And that recent study concluded that a parking facility should be the last resort here. And I have to say, a parking facility might be the right thing and it might be the right thing there, but it's this advice from the consultants that the town hired has been completely ignored. They had a number of other solutions to the perceived problem of parking. One of them was signage, one was lighting, one was using existing spots that are not used currently during the busiest hours for visitors, which was certain evenings. One is that we have that they suggest that we use two feet less space for existing street parking spots. And another one, ironically was that we required developers to provide one to three spaces per dwelling unit. So I don't think that there's been any further documentation at all about whether it's necessary or even wise to have such a parking facility. So that's really what my question is, is it needed? And if it is needed, could a new study perhaps determine where it is needed or whether two smaller parking facilities would be better? I mean, we're just running blind here on the basis of these two counselors and the bid director, I think. So that's it. I'd be curious about what a study would say about is it needed and if so where? That's it. Jay Silverstein, please give your name and your address. Hi, Jay. Hi, how is everyone? Thank you for the opportunity. Jay Silverstein 32 North Prospects 304, one of the condos directly across the street of where the proposed garage will be. First, I'd like to stop by saying to Mr. Malloy, I really appreciate the mumbo jumbo, but you didn't answer any of the questions for the residents. You just played a hotshot. Also, one of the things I'd like you to correct is you said that you're gonna go up 12 feet with the greenery. The building however is gonna be up to 38 feet. So that means 30 feet of garage you're gonna let us look at. I appreciate that. Mr. Long, I don't really particularly like the way you snick it when you say noise is noise from the garage. We don't have any because half the garage is never more than half full as the parking on the street. Now, let me just give you some numbers. There are 36 spaces now on North Prospect Street. There are 21 spaces on Halleck and there's 75 in the lot that's there. That's 132 spaces. Ross and Ryan said in not three stories, but three levels, they said one could be lower and two could be above ground. At 65 spots, 65 spaces per level. That's 195. So 195 minus 132, you could do the math. It's 63 spaces. However, Cal's Lane will probably also lose spaces. They're 13 spaces because it's a very narrow street and in the winter it's very un-narratable. So now we're down to 50 spaces. Then of course, in the wisdom of the CRC, they took away the main street parking of 31 spots. So now we have a mid-gain of parking of less than 50 spots. So it really, I don't know if it pays. Ms. Chow, you're really putting the cart before the horse. I mean, if the resident came to you and said they wanted to change their zoning, what would you do? Would you say, okay, change your zoning and then we'll see what you're gonna build? You wouldn't do that. And I don't know why you're doing it to the residents of North Prospect Street and the surrounding area. These are, are you gonna have the fact that the state looked like Victorian, grand Victorian homes? No, no builder will do that. And first of all, chances are with the speed that you wanna be, that you're acting in and the lack of facts that are pertaining to this. I mean, the residents of North Prospect Street as well as the other residents, we really suspect in propriety. I mean, how else can we think? You're not responding to the people, you're doing what you wanna do. And to be honest with you, I'm looking at you all my life and you really have a, you know, let's get rid of this. This is the attitude I'm picking up. Let's just vote on this and get rid of it. That's my opinion. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Silverstein. The next commenter will be Susanna Musbrat. Name and address. Hi, Susanna. Hello, Susanna Musbrat, 38 North Prospect Street. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I think you have my comments at some length in your packet and I feel like I've said so many times what's objectionable about this garage. I would like some clarification if somebody can give it about who is going to be writing this RFP and whether there will be any opportunity for public input in the process of creating the RFP or is that just gonna be done so out of the public eye? I don't understand particularly Ms. Chow, why you're saying that it's worth spending effort on looking at sites that are all over 10 years that are affected by some zoning amendments and it's not worth putting any effort into this particular overlay because this overlay is really to describe one building and that is one parking garage. I don't understand why suddenly for the height you go with the RG height limit when you won't go with the RG side setbacks or front setbacks. I mean, a building that's right up to the street practically in front and 40 feet high is going to have an entirely different presence than one of the houses on the other side of the street that's two and a half stories with a peaked roof with at least 10 foot side setbacks. Many of them have more and at least 20 feet in front. We need to see how that build out is going to look in our neighborhood context. It's hard for people who are not architects to be able to imagine that in their head and it would really help us if we could see it. Thank you. Thank you, Suzanna. That's the last public comment I see at least at this time. I see Jack, you've got your hand up. You wanna make a comment? Yeah, I just, I wanna reiterate that, yeah. There's a perception for Amherst downtown that there's lack of parking. I've heard that from 90% of the people that I've spoken with. So we do have this perception. And so, a lot of folks are talking about finessing what's available or not. But I think there's this perception that we, and that's why this is appealing, I think. And, but I agree that it needs, it probably needs a little bit more of a look in terms of finessing and expanding. But I do feel like we have to be careful that the design, this is zoning, this is not a design study, no one has proposed anything. And so, I just feel like we're putting the, people are jumping to conclusions on this. But this is a much needed initiative, I think that the town needs to push through. Okay, thank you, Jack. I see Janet, you have your hand up. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you for the comments from people in the public. I always appreciate hearing from people. And I take it very seriously. I have a question is, how much time would it take to do a massing study of the maximum build out of the parking garage with the surrounding buildings? And then, I would request like make the facade on North Prospect Street look pretty, like it fits into a 19th century neighborhood. And then make it look like a parking garage. And so people might have very different reactions to the facade, and we can do design review standards. We can put them inside the zoning. We, you know, I wouldn't rely on the design review board standards. I've never seen the planning board apply them. The design review board feels unheard and things like that. So I just think it, I think it would help us to understand what we're approving. It would help the CRC, it will help the neighborhood. It might make them feel better because the setback is fairly large, the frontage space. It might make them feel better to see if a facade that fits in. It might be a factory building with some fancy work on it, interesting brickwork. And I just think, I don't know why we're pushing forward and sort of surging on like, why not just do a little extra work, listen to concerns. Let's build, let's put this thing together that people support and don't feel opposed to. There's no rush for this. I mean, you know, Gabrielle Gould said that this wouldn't even be, you know, starting till 2024 or 2025. And I just, I think, you know, let's take some time with it. But my question started with time, like how long would it take for to do a massing study and have the CRC and us take a look at it and the neighbors and the town council. Is that eight hours? Is it four hours? It's sort of outside my wheelhouse. Thanks, Janet. Chris or Nate, would you either of you want to comment on that? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure, Janet, exactly how long. I think it would take staff a number of hours. I think my concern there is that, you know, we could come up with a number of designs for what a parking garage may look like, but that's not actually what an applicant may propose. And so, you know, are we writing design standards based on, you know, one concept or many concepts? So, you know, I think, you know, it is possible. I think it does take a little bit of time because, you know, we don't have the other buildings, say in a 3D model. So if we're going to be doing detail on the garage or a concept model and the other buildings are just big masses or blocks, you know, I think people get tripped up in those details. And so, I think a computer model is helpful for general massing, but to try to get detail and other things in it is like we tried with the BL overlay, you know, you commented and said, well, it looks like we still could build ugly. And some of it is because computer renderings take a lot of time to make it look nice. And so, a massing model or a concept study is a lot different than a detailed design model. And so, I think a concept model is something that, you know, staff could do in a few days. You know, that's two staff working, you know, many hours a day, so we could, you know, do the math. You know, that's like, you know, it's like six work days of time. And but that's not providing detail or things that would be necessary that you're asking for. So that's not, you know, showing the solid details or treatments because that's really difficult to articulate. So, because I've seen like when- Thank you, Nate. Chris, do you wanna comment on that at all? Well, I would like to comment because, you know, we have a lot of other things that we're working on and to take, you know, six days of time to do a massing model for a garage that may look completely different from what we imagine in our massing model doesn't seem like a good use of staff time. We have many urgent pressing things that we're trying to accomplish. So I don't necessarily think that you need that in order to make a decision, but I'm not making the decision, so that's up to you. Okay, thank you. So at this point, I think what I'd like to do is to ask people to indicate whether they are comfortable making a decision one way or the other tonight. So the first roll call I'd like to do is whether you're comfortable doing any sort of decision making tonight, all right? And so, Maria, are you comfortable making a decision one way or the other tonight? Yes. Okay. Tom, what about you? I am comfortable with that, yes. And recognizing that we're making a decision about zoning and not approving a parking garage building to be built, yes. Okay. Janet? So I am not comfortable. Like I listed this before the meeting that we have no massing study. We don't know the number of parking spaces in a garage, the need for the parking, the economic feasibility, no comparison with other sites. We don't know what's gonna be removed on North Prospect Street and Cowl's. We haven't discussed possible traffic impacts. We have no, very little understanding the impacts on the neighbors and on the CVS and St. Bridge's use of the property with no setbacks. So I count like 11 things that we don't know. We probably don't need to know 11, but we need to know a bunch of them. So I would say no. No, you are not comfortable. No, I guess not at all. Okay, nice. Thank you. Johanna? I'd be comfortable moving ahead with this first step. Okay. And Jack? Yeah, I'm definitely on the fence, but with a slim margin, I will, you know. So this is simply, do we want to have a vote to recommend or not tonight? Yeah, I mean, again, I have to defer it at what, you know, Maria and Tom's input really kind of, you know, soothes some of my concerns, but it's a difficult. You're on the fence. Yes, I'm, yeah, it's a complex, you know, peace for the downtown. You know, there's no doubt. And not without controversy. Right. I do see two more hands in the public. See, Mr. Peltz, I see you have your hand up. Is that a legacy hand or are you, would you like to make one more comment? Just give me a few more seconds. I was out Friday night with my wife to Greenfield to see that parking garage that was mentioned two times before that it was already there. That would be a masking thing. Run up there and take a look at what it looks like. And also notice that it is nowhere near any residences. It's in a large building area and a parking lot, large parking, open parking lot that's opposite to it. Right. Take a trip and take a look. You'll have your masking and you'll see the monstrosity they want to build. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peltz and Ms. Parker. Hi, Ronnie. Hi. So yeah, I was making the same point that a neighbor of mine did go and see the actual site and it's nothing like our context. Therefore, I think an important issue is do the people who you represent who's interest you're supposed to represent do we need to see this? And we do because I have to say honestly, I'm usually the proponent of local economic development. Ms. Parker. Yeah. Sorry, I find that I feel really strange being in a situation that's contrary to my usual which is pushing economic development. I feel strange being in this place. The truth is neighbor, I heard from a neighbor who actually went and saw this garage that you all showed and told me the same thing that Mr. Peltz just did. So we need to see what this is going to look like. That does not apply to our context. That is not a good example of what we're dealing with. Therefore, we need to see what it looks like. And the reality is, yes, there's a cost but look, all of this stuff has a cost and we have to think about it. If we're not willing to do this cost, then what's the goal? I mean, if the goal is really important to us, we should be willing to invest in making it happen. So I'm not, I have to say, I feel strange. I'm a proponent of economic development. I'm not the person who comes out and says, don't do it. But in this case, we just don't have the information. And for me, it would be very helpful to see what exactly will this look and feel like. So I also suggest that it's a good investment. And in fact, the town should be prepared to make more investments if you're considering any development option because it costs to ensure that the public interest is well represented. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So since there seemed to be at least a reasonable level of support for making some sort of decision this evening, does anybody want to make a motion to recommend this to town council? I think if that would be the preferred form of the motion so that a yes vote means we recommend and a no vote means we do not recommend. Tom, I think that you got your hand up first. Do I move to vote to recommend? Thank you. And Maria, your hand was second. Second. Okay. Do we have any further conversation by the board this evening about this? Okay, Janet. What was your feeling about is the time to go forward, Doug? Okay. So I guess my feeling is that this is an incremental step. It is not a definitive step that will result in a garage. I think Maria was right in that she pointed out that when we are making decisions about multiple parcels with multiple owners, there's no one private entity that would be motivated to study an entire district that is beyond the extent of their property holdings. However, in this case, because this is a single parcel, anybody that wants to put forward a proposal for this will have control of the entire area and therefore they will be incentive, they will have the motivation to do the study that needs to happen. They will have to study the traffic impacts because we will require them to do that. They will have to study the financial feasibility of it and whether this parcel is large enough for a parking garage because they'll wanna probably not lose a lot of money on it. And so at this point, we're recommending to town council and town council may not adopt it. Town council may adopt it, in which case they probably will recommend that town staff prepare this RFP. I presume there would be public input into that and that town council would probably want there to be simply to make sure that constituents continue to feel heard. There may be nobody that responds to the RFP because their back of the envelope assessment before they do a real proposal is that it's not feasible. So there's a number of ways in which I view this as an incremental step. And given that this has been a point of conversation for decades in this town and that we took this property by eminent domain in the 70s, I think, it doesn't seem to be a bad idea to finally move it farther, far enough forward to actually get some answers on whether it makes sense. So, Jack, I see your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to say a good, very good comments, Doug. I feel like the building block sense of this is very important. It's not the end all. There's nothing complete. There's nothing, you know, there's no design that we're approving here, but there's a concept to alleviate the perception that there is a parking issue downtown, which, again, for me is very apparent. So I appreciate that, Doug. I appreciate your perspective. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Janet? I think it'd be really useful if the planning board was involved with the RFP creation because we've heard a lot from the public about what they're concerned about. And, you know, we do have a responsibility. And I think it'd be good for us to be part of that, to kind of reflect the concerns and issues that were raised. So I wanted to put your thoughts on that too. Well, I have to confess, I don't know enough about how the town, what the town process is for developing RFPs to know whether it would make sense for us. You know, I think there'll be a number of groups that want to be, at least have their voices heard. Chris, do you want to comment on that? Yeah, I mean, we do from time to time have groups or at least individuals from groups that are participating in the RFP process. We had participation from the chair of the housing trust in the development of the RFP for the Belcher Town Road and E Street project that would provide affordable housing. So I think that we could conceivably get the planning board involved in the development of the RFP or at least reviewing what we develop. Okay, great. All right, we have a motion on the floor in a second. I don't see any more hands. So why don't we go ahead through the roll call? All right, in the order of my squares on my screen, Maria. Where? Tom, this is to recommend to the town council. Approve to recommend to council. All right, Janet. Disapprove. Thank you. Johanna. Hi. Jack. Hi. And I am an eye. So we have five in favor, one opposed and one absent. All right, at this time, it's just before nine. I'll take, we'll take a five minute break. Check on the Red Sox and. May I suggest that you close the public hearing if that's your intention? Oh, yes. Okay. Thank you, Chris, for keeping me honest here. So I'm public closing the public hearing at eight 57 and we'll take a five minute break. Come back at two minutes after nine. Please turn off your video and mute yourself until you're back. Thank you. Well, I guess I'm sorry. I went and checked on the Red Sox. I don't follow any of that. I'm so thankful that I don't. And that no one in my house does. I'm purely a fair weather fan. Oh, yeah. So when they're, when they get into the post season, I pay a little bit of attention. I work somewhere where they would get visibly and physically just upset. Like they couldn't function when Red Sox weren't doing well. And so emotional about it. It was pretty funny to see. Well, like I don't think I got that emotional about my kids even, you know, like they were just so into it. That was bad. I guess so. I didn't have no idea it was going that bad. That, yeah. Well, I was watching last night at the end and there was that one strike that was called a ball and that would have been really consequential. Yeah. I hope the unfair thinks about that for the rest of his life. I don't think so. I doubt it. Well, they're keeping it interesting. I am. So the advertisers will be happy. So Doug, not that it matters, I guess, at this point, but we never voted on my motion. I just realized this. So. Oh, well, let's talk to our parliamentarian here. Chris. I put it on you. Yeah, thank you. I'm, you know, incompetent. Yes, I think you should vote on it because it was a motion that was made and seconded. Yeah. I should have remembered myself. So. Yeah, I'm sorry about that, Janet. It's okay. So we've got, let's see, we've got everyone with the Ohana back. Do I, do I look as washed out on the screen as I think I do? You do look, you do look really, you're not ghost-like. I gotta work, I gotta figure out the lighting in this shop that I'm squatting in. You also, the background is like, kind of like really light. Strange. Yeah, I've got the blur function on for the rear, for the background. Where are you? Are you in a garage? I'm in my workshop in the basement. Oh. I always feel a little bit of a common, you know, experience with Andrew when he's on and I can tell that he's in his garage. Yes. Yes, with the, with the, like the, the opener. Yeah. The garage door opener is overhead. All right. We got, we got Ohana back. So we're all back together. For those of you that came in late, we, we had a mistake in terms of our procedure and we never voted on Janet's motion for the changes to the, the bylaw. So I think we need to go through a roll call for that. I guess I need to ask is, was there any more conversation about that that people wanted to have? All right. So I don't see any hands for that. So I'll just go through the roll call here. Maria. No. Janet. Yes. Jack, you are muted, Jack. Geez. So bad at that. So I would say Nae, but I think the town council will know and the CRC will know, you know, our concerns. Okay. Thank you. Tom. Nae. And Johanna. Nae. And I'm a Nae. Okay. So I think that cleans up the procedure for that. So the time now is nine oh seven and the next item is under old business. The zoning bylaw article three use regulations, section 3.325 mixed use buildings and article 12 definitions. Discussion and review of proposed revisions and possible re-vote on recommendation to town council. Chris, I would like you to introduce this. So I think Nate is going to give some introductory remarks, but I wanted to say that you did vote to recommend the mixed use building zoning amendment on, I think it was August 18th. And since then we've had some discussions here about the lack of clarity in the description of non-residential use. And we've realized that the bylaw as it was recommended on the 18th was not clear in the way that non-residential use could be interpreted. And so we went back and tried to figure out how we could make it better. And that involved splitting out some uses like common space, et cetera. And so we are coming back to you. You've seen versions of this over the last, what is it, month, two months now. And you haven't actually had a chance to discuss it. And it has evolved further. So Nate can talk about its further evolution, but I just wanted to put that in context. So we're, you've made a recommendation and we're coming back to you with a revised proposal and ask you to make a recommendation on the revised proposal. Thank you. Okay, thanks Chris. So Nate, I guess it's your turn. Sure, thanks. It's also the CRC is holding a new hearing on mixed use as well, you know, the planning board. And this will be October 26th as well. Right. So the planning board doesn't necessarily have to hold a new hearing, but the timing requirements do hold to the community resource committee. So there wasn't a recommendation made within the timeframe allowed to their issuing, you know, they issued a new notice and a public hearing for next week. And so Chris is right. So I was gonna, I'm gonna share my screen. So on August 18th, the planning board recommended the amendment at that time. And then in the packet for September 1st, and then for September 14th, there were updates to the mixed use by-law in the packet, but were never discussed. And then now it's here tonight. And so, you know, there are incremental changes on the 1st and the 14th, and then tonight that are all consolidated into one. I just wanna show the 18th amendment, you know, where, you know, this is formatted as it was. It's from the packet on August 18th. And so we'd be, you know, we wouldn't be changing the permitting in the zoning districts. That remains the same. We'd be removing the standards and conditions in the use chart and then providing, you know, these five standards and then a definition. And so on the 18th, we said no more than 60% of the gross flare area of the first ground floor shall be a combination of residential use or parking, including incidental or associated spaces. And then we have the 40% gross flare area for any permitted non-residential use other than parking. And so that's a minimum. So it could be more, but, you know, at least 40%. As Chris mentioned, this includes incidental and associated spaces. And since the 18th here, there's been, there was some discussion about, could this 40% also be split amongst different buildings or how would that be calculated if there were two buildings on a site? Could the 40% be spread out over, you know, two floors, you know, what, you know, so if someone wants to have some upper floor uses, it also didn't include common space. So there's been some discussions about if there's a common lobby, hallway, elevators, other things could, you know, how that be calculated toward the 40%. So those, you know, these standards have been updated. You know, any dwelling units located and enclosed parking on the first or ground floor will be located at the rear of the building in design to reduce visibility from the public way or walkways that was in there on the 18th. Sloping lots, lots with frontage on more than one right-of-way. The permit granting authority shall determine what is the, you know, really the first floor or ground floor and then we're proposing a bedroom count, a mix of bedroom sizes consistent with apartment so that no more than 50% of the total dwelling units shall have the same bedroom count, you know, except for mixed use buildings with less than 10 units. And we're also proposing in our definition in Article 12, a mixed use building is a building containing one or more dwelling units in combination with permitted non-residential uses. So, you know, in our bylaw, we don't define a live work building or if it's two units or one non-residential use. And so really any combination of those would be a mixed use building. And so, you know, it's just a broader, it's a definition that would apply to any combination. And so this bylaw amendment was recommended. And since then we've staff, you know, have made a few changes, it was in the packet and it's really shown and highlighted in yellow. And so, you know, I think there's a few differences here. Now we're saying, I'll start with a 30% here. We're saying now at least 30% of the gross floor area or the ground floor or first floor shall be a permitted non-residential use other than parking, including incidental spaces. And this is the new changes. So some of these changes were in the packet on the first and the 14th and it's been consolidated now, except that the permit granting authority may allow the required non-residential uses to be distributed on any floor or in any building of a multiple building development on the same parcel provided that the portion of the ground floor or first floor of any building facing the street be occupied predominantly by such non-residential uses. And, you know, what this means is that the 30% could be split between floors so long as the ground or first floor facing the street be predominantly occupied by the non-residential use. And street is a defined term in the zoning bylaw. So before we had said areas customarily used by the public or walkways. And that was somewhat confusing. And so really, you know, this is trying to get at having a majority of the street side be non-residential use, active non-residential use. And this is something that would be discussed during permitting, you know, what does it predominantly mean? We've also added this section for the purposes of this section, incidental spaces shall not include common areas shared by multiple uses or other spaces not contiguous to the non-residential use unless the space is included in the description of the premises leads to the non-residential tenant. And we did this for instance, we did, you know, someone could try to satisfy the 40% by having some space along the street and then having storage in the back of the building or having, you know, incidental or common spaces that they would count towards this, the non-residential gross floor area, but it really doesn't achieve what we wanted. I have some illustrations that could help explain this. And so really this 30% now the gross floor area is active non-residential use. So it's really, although it's a smaller percentage than before is actually, you know, it takes away any of the common spaces or other incidental spaces that could be counted towards that, what was the 40%? And so we changed the 70% here of the first or ground floor shall be residential use, parking or common area shared by multiple uses. So basically anything other than the non-residential use is now calculated as part of the 70%. And so that helped clarify that calculation. The other conditions are the same except that we've now used the defined term of street. So dwelling units and parking would be at the rear of the building and designed to reduce visibility from the street. And same thing for sloping lots with frontage on more than one street. So we, you know, that's a defined term that we wanted to use. And the definition is still the same one or more dwelling units. And so the text in yellow is what's changed from the 18th. Some of this was in the CRC recommended earlier that the permacraining authority allow units to be distributed or the space be distributed on any floor. And that was going to come back to the planning board in September, but it, you know, we never discussed it. So this, you know, this, you know, most of this change was in a previous version that was in the packet. Okay. Is that it? Oh, you? I just want to, there was an illustration here that good, I hopefully can help. So, you know, there's two examples of a mixed use building. So currently in the bylaw, the October version, you know, 30%, it's a minimum 30% be non-residential use, including incidental space or that is contiguous with the active non-residential use or non-contiguous space that may have a lease agreement. And then, you know, no more than 70% could be residential parking or common areas. And so here's an actual building, Beacon Street in Boston. And, you know, the color coding, the pink is the commercial or the non-residential space. The blue is the common spaces and the yellow is residential. And so, you know, right now the retail is 45 to 50% of the floor area of the first floor. It's more than the minimum 30%. It's just, this is an illustration. But before without defining the common areas, there could be an argument made that half of the blue space or more would actually be considered part of the retail because they would say, oh, well, you know, this hallway is being used to get to the back door of this retail space or people who come into the building to use the non-residential space may be using the stairwell and walking through here. And so we've clarified that to say that any of this hallway space doesn't count toward the, you know, the 30% anymore. And so someone can't try to, you know, say, well, half this common space is really part of this calculation. And again, here's another misuse building from Portland. It's a little bit more complex. And again, the red is the non-residential space. The blue is common and the yellow here is parking. It could be considered residential. And what this is showing is there are storage areas here and here in the back. There's bike storage here. There's trash here. There's a lobby that's common to, could get into some of the retail spaces, but it's also for residents. So there's a mailroom here. There's elevators. And so in this example, an applicant could have said, well, we think most of this lobby is actually gonna serve one or two businesses. We think this hallway is really used for, you know, half of the space could be counted toward the retail square footage calculation. And we're now defining it as common area that's considered part of the 70% calculation. And, you know, in this example, if we said, okay, well, half this blue area could be considered part of the non-residential calculation, in effect, you'd be losing a significant amount of square foot that's actively used for, you know, a business or commercial or office use. And so staff thinks that those changes in the language help with, you know, how an applicant would measure and how a board would review those calculations. You know, for instance, if this storage area back here where the cursor is, if you can see that, if that was an lease agreement that, you know, this retail space was using this as part of their inventory storage, then that could be counted as part of the 30%. But it would have to be shown at time of application that there's a lease agreement, that that space is part of the non-residential use. And I think that's, you know, that's it right now. Like I said, the CRC made a recommendation as well back in September, and they're gonna be looking at this again next week to, you know, to take up this new version. Thanks, Nate. I wanna mention that the time is 9.21 and Andrew has arrived just for the minutes. I got there about 15 minutes ago. Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. Let's see. Chris, do you wanna say anything else about this? I know your hand is not up, but before we get into the conversation. I don't think so at this time. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Janet, you had your hand up for a while. You wanna? So I found this new language almost hopelessly confusing. And so if it was meant to clarify something, I just got lost and I read it over and over again. And so I think I don't understand it. And I sort of understand your explanation, but I don't think this language clarifies what you're trying to get to. And so I was just thinking you could just say no common spaces will be counted as non-residential use. You know, that could just be a simple line because the word incidental kind of shows up and it's incidental to residential use or non-residential use and it just swam around the paragraphs to me in a way that I just couldn't understand. And so, you know, anyway, I tried hard. So I think the CRC has was suggested reducing the non-residential, the commercial space from 40% to 30%. I mean, I think that's where it comes from. I don't think it comes from planning department staff. And so I don't support that. I thought we should do 60% for commercial uses, not 30%. And I kind of, I did go to one of the CRC meetings and I do agree with Steve Schreiber. You know, it was like too confusing to have the space kind of wandering around. You lose the street front part of the buildings, the commercial street front and the language was just confusing. And so if somebody has 40% commercial on the first floor and wants to do a rooftop restaurant, that will stand on its own legs. If they can make money doing that, they'll do that. You know, we don't have to have every building be mostly residential, it could be a mix, but we do have to have a strong commercial presidents on the first floor. So I'm sticking with Steve when I sit at that meeting and I just, but I think the language you put in here, I was just lost in it. And I do understand the change to street that seems super clear. So those are my three points. Thank you. Thanks Janet. Any other comments? And I have a couple of questions for Nate. Chris. Yeah, I wanted to comment on the, going from 40% to 30% and that was not something that originated in the CRC. It originated in the planning department and with Rob Mora and the planning staff. When we started to look at taking out any portion of the common space, we realized that the net result would be approximately the same. Whether you had 40% that included common space or 30% that didn't include common space. We also had heard from, and I think Janet was part of this conversation that Gabriel Gould felt that 40% was way too much and that nobody would ever be able to fill that. So that was also part of the mix of the conversation that we had. So I just wanted to acknowledge that it came from the planning department staff and from Rob Mora, it didn't come from CRC and they haven't had an opportunity to review this yet. I think that was all I wanted to say right now. Okay. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Doug. And Chris, thanks for adding that Gabby Gould had mentioned that. That surprised me a little bit. It does sort of seem like we're going the wrong direction, but that makes sense when you describe it as like the trade-off of 30% plus the common is equal to the 40%. But the notion that we couldn't put 40% that 40% is too high seems a little farfetched unless we're really building out really massive building that are just going from property line to property line. Yeah. I'll just say that it's, sorry, I don't have a question here, but just as a thought it just seems like we're moving further and further away from having the really vibrant downtown and building out areas which just really could be primarily residential. Thanks. Chris. Yeah. I just remembered what the other thing I wanted to say is that incidental space and common space are different. Common space is shared space, space that's shared by the different uses in the building. Incidental space would be things like storage for a retail place or the back part of the kitchen in a restaurant or just places that public wouldn't go to but are associated with a specific use. So that's what incidental space is. And incidental space is included in this 30%, but common space is not included because that's shared space. Thank you. Maria. For clarification, Nate. So you talked about the 40 going to 30, but then you kind of pulled in a part about the as long as most of the retails predominantly occupying the street style on the first floor. But then how does that relate to like multiple buildings and other places other than the first floor? Is that like basically a developer or property owner can do whatever they want beyond the 40 but beyond the 30% minimum? Or how did the other locations relate to this change? Sure. So the 30% is a minimum and the requirement is so that at least 30% of the building has to be non-residential and the ground or first floor facing the street has to be predominantly that use, non-residential use. And so what we determine is that if someone wants to do two floors of or have non-residential uses on two floors, it could be an excess of 30%, but they could just be at 30% and still meet that requirement. And so the way the bylaw was written previously is that the 40% had to only be on the ground floor. And so if you're going on, if you're putting a second floor of non-residential use, that would have to be basically beyond the 40%. And so now we're allowing that 30% to be distributed so long as the streetscape is still maintained as a non-residential use. And staff talked about having some other requirements there, like so much of the frontage be built out. There's different ways to phrase it, but we left it as predominantly non-residential because that's something that permit granting authority can really discuss, what is appropriate for each building in each site? I guess I don't, Maria, is that legacy hand? Well, I get started following up so, say you have 100 feet of frontage and 30% of it is retail, but say you have some on the second floor, then is it 15% per floor? Am I doing that right? Yeah, I mean, I think that, that becomes an applicant would have to describe if they have a 5,000 square foot building, then they need 30% of it as to be non-residential use. And then if there's multiple buildings on a property, it's the first floor, say there's two buildings and they're both 5,000 square feet, then it's 10,000 square feet. So you have 3,000 square feet have to be non-residential. I see, right, right. Because yeah, of course, areas different than frontage. So you could have the majority of frontage even though it's less percentage of, okay. Okay, all right, thank you. Well, that gets into one question I had, which had to do with multiple building developments because it seemed like the gross floor area of the first or ground floor was kind of ambiguous, whether it was only applying to buildings that had frontage on the street or buildings that didn't and would be counted. So I think that seemed a little bit like something we could get into a fight about and it wouldn't have a clear answer. And I guess the word predominant, you know, I mean, I'm kind of thinking about the parking conversation we had where we were comfortable having conversation about what was adequate. And I guess I'm imagining that this might be another common topic of conversation about what's predominant, which, you know, I guess I'm not sure I'm crazy about, but I guess I wonder what other people think. I was surprised to see the allowance for distributing the required area onto multiple floors because I thought we were pretty clear that we wanted the non-residential use to enliven the street and, you know, it's not gonna do anything for the street if it moves upstairs or downstairs. So, you know, I guess I'm kind of tepid about this change. Just quickly, Doug, I think there's still a requirement that the first floor be non-residential use and then occupy, you know, a majority of the street frontage. So, you know, that still has to be satisfied. And then if they need to go, you know, if they haven't reached the 30% that way and they wanted to do a second floor use, they could. So there's still a requirement that the street be non-residential use. Okay. Okay, Janet, it looks like your hand was next. Yes, I have a two-part question. So I think, I don't know if I misheard you, Nate, or when you were answering Maria. So 30% of what? So is the 30% of the first floor area or 30% of the entire area of all the building or all the buildings? Well, so it's, you know, if there's one building, it's 30% of that the floor area, right? So if it's a 5,000 square foot building, then it's 30% of that building. If there's two buildings, it's 30% of both buildings. But it's only the first floor. Right, right, right. It's only the, right, the first, right, the footprint, the, you know, the gross floor area of the first floor. That's the way it's always been calculated. So if the first floor is 5,000 square feet, it's a percentage of that. So it's 30% of 5,000 can be distributed throughout one building or several buildings as long as the predominant view or whatever is on the street, there's some stores on the street. I'm just kind of, anyway, okay, so I understand that. I guess I just, so I looked up predominant and it says presents as the strongest or main element having or exerting control or power. And so I think it is a really fuzzy word. And so I'm just kind of, so I'm not, I don't understand. It'd be hard to see that if you had 30% of your first floor area spread around several floors, you know, okay, so then you'd have to have a something in the front to make it predominantly commercial. But most stores, you know, or most restaurants use a lot, go back a lot, they use a lot of the space. I mean, I don't know if you're just gonna have some, a row of ATMs or small, you know, shops or tiny shops that don't, you know. So I just, I'm kind of, I don't know, I don't get it. The other thing is in terms of incidental, I wonder if you need to define it or even use it. So if I have a restaurant and the front of my restaurant is seating and the back of my restaurant is kitchen, I don't think anyone, and then there's storage behind it. I don't think anyone would disagree that the kitchen and the storage was part of the restaurant. It's not incidental to it, it's part of the restaurant. And so if I have a shop and the whole front part of it is, you know, displaying items and down a hallway in the back, I have some storage for my clothes, that's not really incidental, it's part of your shop. And so I don't know if you can have to kind of make incidental, why do we need it there? And then it just sort of wanders around paragraphs in a really confusing way. So I'm wondering if there's a way to simplify this. Nate, does the incidental come into play when the, say the storage is not contiguous with the rest of the least area? It does, I think most, a lot of mixed use bylaws do define incidental because I think otherwise you might be getting people who will, you know, you know, not have a very big active space, but then have incidental space to count towards their, that percentage, right? The utility room, the mop sink, the storage that is, you know, down the hall past residential uses. And so, you know, I think, you know, the last example you gave Janet where the store has inventory, you know, that incidental space, depending on where it is may not count towards the 30%. And so I think it is important to have that in there because otherwise I think, you know, when the previous bylaw was proposed, staff discussed it with different people. And, you know, we were learning of ways to get around that calculation, right? Of how to have it, how to have an argument that incidental spaces could be actually almost half the active retail space. So, you know, in essence, you'd only have 20% of your floor area be active and the other 20% would be incidental space. And so we're really trying to define it in a way that, you know, limits that ability. All right, Tom. I heard, thanks Doug, I heard Gabrielle talk about this opportunity to move some of that ground floor square footage up into the building and distribute it. And I saw value in that, but I'm also concerned about the 30% being divvied up over multiple floors and how that could be exploited. And then as someone mentioned, could have a really big facade with ATMs on the ground floor and, you know, something on the second floor that's offices or whatnot. And it really won't contribute to the live limits of the grounds floor experience along the street. So I have some hesitancy about that being an unrestricted rule that as long as, you know, the predominant facade, I guess I see too many as a creative person, I see too many ways to get around that. And I don't feel like it's contributing to what we're trying to achieve here. I think we did reduce the 30% from where we started and a lot of push for more. And I was okay with getting down to 40 and now I'm okay with getting down to 30 with the understanding of this other space, but I'm not so sure that giving up the ground floor, active ground floor is what we want to do in this particular case. So this is my thoughts on that. Yeah, I don't think we're giving up the active ground floor because it still needs to be, most of the street facing facade still needs to be active non-residential. I also think it's then part of the permit granting authorities ability to ask for that during permitting. And so, you know, you could ask an applicant to present a different design. If they come in showing something that doesn't end live in the street, it's the permit granting authorities ability to say we want to see a better design. And so I think Nate, I'd rather see a waiver for that. I'd rather have them say, oh, we can't fit it all on the first floor. Here's why let's get an application to do something different. And that might be to me that I feel more comfortable asserting that we want this on the ground floor rather than creating the loophole upfront. And we might ask people to prove that they need something different. Thanks, Tom. Andrew. Thanks, Doug. I agree with something Janet said earlier about, you know, the notion of incidental space, you know, the retail lease would include the back of house for storage or kitchen, whatever. I think that to me that is also like clearly would be part of the retail. I actually, I liked the idea also second floor, well, I'm not sure I should say also, I liked the idea of second floor commercial use in that, you know, I think I'd mentioned this one other meeting that, you know, the active street front is more about the frontage than the square footage. I think like it's walking down street and seeing being presented with things, right? So like a bowling alley configured shape is not adding as much value as like something that's really broad. So I liked the idea of, you know, inviting second floor. I had a question though, because if there was any second floor use, they would need to have elevators. So would the elevator, what would that count towards? Because if we're thinking about spaces that are, you know, four or 5,000 square foot floor plans, you know, they're gonna eat up a fair amount for the vertical transportation. So what would that count towards? Yeah, I think if that's a common elevator, then it counts as common space and not toward the 30%. If it's an elevator that is, you know, distinct to that upper floor use, then it would count towards the, you know, that 30% or that non-residential use square footage. Okay, so if the elevator was for the retail use, it would count towards that base. That would count as retail space, the elevator. Right, but typically if it's, you know, if there's an elevator that has a common, you know, it's shared by all tenants, residential, non-residential in a building, then, you know, that's a common space and it's not, you know, it doesn't count towards that 30%. Yeah. Thank you. Maria. I think I finally get it, Nate. So basically, you haven't changed what the bylaw is asking as far as how much street frontage you want. It's just reducing that sort of square footage definition as far as like which uses counts for that square footage of 30 versus 40. And you're saying it's kind of a wash because you've now defined enough things to go back out of that non-residential portion. Anyways, I think some of my confusion might have caused more confusion, but you're not actually reducing that amount of street frontage. You're just reducing sort of what counts toward that square footage on the first floor to hit as far as the minimum of 30%. And I think what's also kind of mudding thing is that you are suddenly throwing all these other things in about like where it can be located. And so there's this worry like, oh, now our first floor is even less retail, but actually it's the same frontage retail, ideally. It's just now, now you're giving a little bit more sort of flexibility as far as making sure someone doesn't come in and like cheat the system and try to put more sort of storage space and say, well, we hit the 40 because, you know, even though we did with back of house storage or mostly with common hallway or you've eliminated that sort of loophole in a way. So it still seems safe, but I do hear a lot of people just saying, oh my gosh, we're losing first floor retail and maybe there's a way to clarify it somehow so that people don't feel that because that was my first go. I thought, wait a minute, are we losing anything really? And I had to do some math and figure out what you were defining as for a street face versus area versus, so maybe there's a way just to, I don't know, maybe it is semantics or some things that Janet touched on about like using words that are a little less loaded maybe. I agree predominant is very open-ended, but then we were also in previous meetings, I remember we were saying, well, don't be so prescriptive with like exact, you know, linear footage of street friends because every part is different. So yeah, it's a hard line to walk because you on one hand wanna be definitive about what it is you want, but then not so much that some parcels are penalized. So I don't know, I guess I don't feel like, you know, this is something that's necessarily taking away from our street liveliness. Honestly, I don't think that this is doing that because what you're saying, but I think maybe the word predominant maybe is, you know, that's our only thing we have to hang our hat on, right, as far as guaranteeing that we still have that active street front. So I don't know, I guess with all these shifting numbers, it just feels like, oh, are we losing that? But I don't think we are, but maybe there's a way to strengthen the sort of street frontage predominant definition somehow. So how that is, I don't know. But I feel like, yeah, a lot of concerns about something that's maybe not actually there. Does that make sense? Chris, how badly do you need us to vote on this? So normally the CRC tells us that they like to have the planning board recommendation before they make their recommendation. On the other hand, you know, if they're meeting on the 26th and if they make a recommendation that night, the planning board could meet on November 3rd. Is that right? Yeah, November 3rd is the date of your first meeting in November. And talk about this then and you could probably have a recommendation before this actually gets to town council. I'm not sure when it's gonna get to town council, but probably sometime in late November or early December. Well, I guess what I was really asking was what if you don't get another recommendation from us? Oh, well, then we live with what we've got from August. And that poses problems. I think it would pose problems to the building commissioner as far as interpretation, but he's very smart and he can probably figure it out. But you might- Well, I guess I'm thinking more about, you know, obviously there's some misgivings here on the board tonight. You do have a timeline. If you just end up at the town council with one version from CRC and another from planning board, does town council have the ability to decide which one they like or pick, you know, edit to be in the middle or something? I think that's gonna be a challenge for them. I don't have as much opportunity to discuss things as you do. Okay. So we really need to kind of run this to ground and decide whether we like it. Either tonight or November 3rd. Right. Or probably tonight, but- Right. And how open are you to us changing this language? I mean, do you simply want it up or down? We like this or we don't? So I mean, I'll speak, I think, you know, I agree that there, you know, although the language, you know, there hasn't been a lot of language added. I think there are, you know, a number of pieces that have changed in terms of, as we've said, the distribution amongst floors, you know, this 30% predominantly along the street. So, you know, the predominant that description. So I think, you know, there are multiple buildings on a property. So I think there are a number of pieces that have been added. You know, I think, you know, the defining of common space and incidental space. So I think, you know, I do think it is a lot to come to an agreement on this evening. And so, I mean, you know, I've taken a page of notes and I feel like, you know, it would take some time with staff to discuss how can we address some of these questions and refine the language, you know, and then if there's still more discussion to be had. So, you know, I'm, I don't know, I feel like we were getting, you know, I feel like there was some common themes that were being presented that we could discuss on how to, you know, refine the bylaw. All right. So you're open to taking our comments from this evening and coming back on the third. I would be. I see Chris nodding and, okay. So, all right. So thank you both. Jack, I see your hand. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just interested in the conceptual model where the developer wants to put all their marbles, say on the rooftop situation, but yet they still, you know, per this, you know, the way the language is right now, they need something along the storefront. So minimally along, you know, the street front there for a building, what, you know, what would pass and what would allow, you know, the flexibility for the developer to, you know, to go with something on, you know, more on the upper floors versus the, you know, 30% on the first floor. Well, isn't that going to be a question for each planning board to consider when they see a design for each mixed use building? You know, do we think that whatever's happening at the first floor street qualifies as predominant? Yeah, I guess conceptually, I'm wondering what that would be though, for, you know, in a, you know, minimalist sort of first floor frontage thing, what would that be if, you know, the development of a multi-use building was on, you know, second or, you know, top floor of the building. I'm just trying to get a feel for that. Yeah, can I just say quickly, Doug, Jack, I think that's a really good question because, you know, staff, we, you know, for instance, some bylaws will say that, you know, it's 85% of the frontage of the building or 85% of the lot needs to be developed as non-residential to a depth of say 20 feet or 40 feet. But, you know, we felt that getting that, those types of parameters in there could actually, you know, discourage some other uses. So if we just said 20 feet deep, then now you're going to get to something that's 20 feet deep where a restaurant might need 50 feet. And so it's kind of difficult to have a number of kind of parameters that, you know, may exclude some possibilities. And so I understand the language we have here is a little, you know, I think Janet said fuzzy. Some of that was to have some flexibility on part of the applicant and as part of the review from the planning board to be able to have those discussions on a, you know, on a project application. But I think, you know, yes, an interesting question. What's the minimum an applicant could do, right? Along the street, really, is what you're asking if they want to have most of that 30% on an upper floor? Yeah. Okay. Janet? So I'm going back to the multiple buildings. So if you had three buildings on your lot, can you spread your 30% of the, does it have to be 30% of the first floor of each building that's the count or just the building fronting the street? The way staff was expecting it is 30% of each building. So it's 30% of the gross floor area of the first floor of all buildings. Okay, because that's not clear. I would be really helped when we come back to this to have a chart with a split screen with what we approved, I think back in August and then the language on the other side that, you know, either it's longer but it's addressing the issue in a different way because I thought the stuff we, you know I still think we should do more than 40% but I thought I understood what we approved and I'm just struggling to understand this language. I find it very confusing. So I think it'd be helpful to me to see, you know what we approved and what you're asking us to approve. And then I think we're all struggling to understand the meaning of it. And then I do sort of dread, you know passing on to planning boards or ZBAs of the future this struggle of like what's the minimum mount in the front. And I think it's, I mean, I think, you know Maria please correct me, but I think you have said it's hard to convert space from commercial to residential or residential to commercial, I can't remember which but I think we would like to leave the first floor able for different commercial uses not just, you know, home for, you know you wanna see a restaurant or a bookshop or that space to be flexible because we've seen that over time over hundreds of years, different businesses come and go. And so we might be constraining too much by putting a lot of residential on the first floor with, you know, 20% on fourth floor and, you know whatever, but you know, it just seems, you know what do we, you know what's the best thing for our business businesses and small businesses through time. So, but I think aside by side chart would help me cause I'm kind of lost here. And I- Tom. Thanks. I just wanted to clarify that I think the only thing that I'm really concerned about is the distribution of buildings and the distribution of floors but I just wanted to clarify that I understand where the 30% is coming from and what trade offs are being made and I understand what is and isn't changing in the other language regarding incidentals. I just think we wanna put that on us on the developer to convince us as to why we can't have those commercial uses on the ground floor. And I can see reasons why those are compelling to do that. I think the predominant language is probably okay to give us a leg to pressure them but I still think that we wanna push them to convince us otherwise as opposed to the other way around. So that's how I was approaching that. Okay. Chris. I just wanted to mention the possibility of a special permit. That's something that I've been kind of talking about in the office and, you know people are sort of suspicious of special permits. They think the planning would grant all the special permits and if the ZBA does too and that doesn't really mean anything but it's another way to approach this if we wanted to allow flexibility and not have to kind of go through the gyrations of the language that we're trying to come up with now. Would it be useful to try to think about how a special permit might be able to help us to make this more flexible? So anyway, I'm just gonna plant that seed. I mean, if you're thinking, you know the space that we could initially mandate on the first floor, could we could potentially allow it on other floors through special permit? I think that would get at what Tom is advocating and looks like he agrees with me. And I think that would be that would go a ways to satisfying some of my concerns. So it's just about 10 o'clock. Sounds like it would be okay for us to come back to this November 3rd. Chris, do we have a particularly full agenda that night or Pam? Well, you have another zoning bylaw that night, which is the parking bylaw. We were trying to kind of distribute the zoning so you wouldn't have like a whole night of zoning, but that is one thing that's on your agenda for the third. Is that correct? Are there any specific, you know, actual projects looking for site plan reviews or anything? No, there won't be because- So at the moment it would just be the zoning bylaws. Yeah. And there's only the two. There would be the two if you continue this public hearing. And by the way, I don't know if you wanted to take public comment. Right. When you decide to continue. Yep, yep. Right. Okay. So I don't see any more hands from the board. We have an attendee hand up. Pam Rooney, why don't you give us your name and your address? Hi, Pam. Hi, Pam. Pam Rooney, 42 cottage tree. I want to say thank you. Actually, oops, you only gave me one minute. No, I'm resetting. Sorry. It's okay. You're okay. I want to just say thank you for actually letting the public speak again. I think my comment tonight is that I continue to feel very strongly that the long night of four zoning bylaws being discussed and the public hearings being held and closed all in one night was just nonsense. When clearly this particular bylaw has had so many tweaks and reorganizations and continuing to sort of mull it over and make it something better. And I just want to say, I think in the future, can we please guard against the rush to try to have a public hearing and close it in order to avoid having the public being able to weigh in? I guess I would just my actual comment on this particular bylaw. It seems like it's going in the wrong direction. And I think I would still feel strongly to say let's have 40% be non-commercial, I mean, non-residential use, not counting any additional common space, but you provide 40% of actual factual non-residential space. And let's not let it slide having a waiver for a request to put some of that square footage on another floor makes sense. But I would say don't give it to them to begin with. Thanks. Thanks, Pam. Next we have John W. Hi, John. Everybody hear me? Yes, please give us your name and your address. Hi, John Robleski, I own property on the corner of Gray and Main Street and Main Street. Seems like all this talk about the mixed use and changing those bylaws pretty much geared to the downtown area where you want to enliven the streetscape where there's a lot of foot traffic. I'm a little concerned about having it apply to the outlying neighborhood business where you don't get that foot traffic. And there's some spaces that is available for rent. And I think it's going to be a harder place to try to find tenants to rent office space or commercial space. It's primarily in that area, Gray and Main and High Triangle Street. That's primarily residential that I think more residential is needed there where they can walk to these services in the downtown area. The other thing is have you considered existing or pre-existing mixed use buildings and how they're impacted with a change in a bylaw like this? I have one there on the corner of Main and Gray and there's a lot of frontage setback there that could be used for residential versus more business that may not attract much. And to some of the small businesses that I've seen and had in one of the properties next door are small office areas and they don't necessarily need that frontage exposure. A lot of them attorneys, that type of thing would rather be toward the back and have parking and ADA access and all that. So I guess I'm just asking that you puts a little bit of thought into the BM district and how that's affected by this and it's really not going to enlighten the streetscape by having some businesses on the direct frontage there. Because people really walk to the bus stop or they walk uptown, they walk to Amherst College or up to UMass or the local schools. So I think it's just a little bit different. And also the issue there on the corner of Main and Gray is I have to frontage on both streets. So sorry, I was working that out. So those are my thoughts and just ask you that I might take a look at that. Thank you, John. Thank you. So I don't see any more public comment. Nate, do you wanna take some of those comments into consideration as you think about this over the next week or two? Sure. Yeah, no, I think there's been some good comments and discussion tonight and I think I'll, I can work with staff on amendments and changes to this amendment. Okay, great. So I guess why don't we just continue this to November 3rd. We're not in a formal public hearing so we don't need to vote, I don't think. But we'll expect you to come back that night. Let's see, Jack. Yeah, I was just gonna say I'd really like to hear from the business section of town, whether it be Gabriel Gould or the Amherst Chamber, but I'd like to get their input on this. I'm sure that Nate has consulted with them but it'd be nice to have their input with our final sort of review. All right, thanks, Jack. Okay, so why don't we move on from this? That's the end of, are there any topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting under old business? No, there are not. No. Okay. Any under new business? Not that I know of. All right. Form A, A and R subdivision applications? No, not tonight. Okay, upcoming ZBA applications. Yes. We do. And Ham, do you wanna tackle this or do you want me to tackle it? Well, I can bring up this screen, Chris. And we can, whichever you, I mean, I have these bullet points here that you can pretty much read. Yeah, so Pam worked with Maureen Pollock on this and this is very helpful. We are bringing this application, the CBA application to you because it's so large and we thought you might be interested in reviewing it. It's a proposal for a solar array, PV installation in the Northeast corner of town. It's along Shootsbury Road, East of Henry Street and East of Northeast Street. It's pretty large. It's three contiguous parcels off Shootsbury Road and they're all owned by WD Coles and it's in the Outlying Residential District. The solar array requires a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. It's currently a working forest so it would require a fair amount of cutting of trees. It's about, it's almost 100 acres and the disturbance would be a little bit less than half of the site. It's outlined in blue here. Pam drew up this map here to show you where it is. So it will be contiguous with another project in Shootsbury, that's my understanding or at least another project that will be close by by the same company, but obviously the town of Amherst won't be reviewing that and there's a notice of intent that's been filed with the Conservation Commission because there are wetlands on the site. So the wetlands public hearing will be opened next Wednesday, October 27th. So our question to you is, would you like to have the opportunity to have a presentation on this project and make recommendations to the ZBA? So that's the question. All right, I see Janet's hand. I would vote yes. It seems like such a significant project with all sorts of impacts and that's it. All right, Tom. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think the scale of it is something we'd be nice to get a look at and have a conversation about. It is kind of off the beaten path, but it does butt up against what looks like a series of residential plots along the North side of that site there. So I think it's worth taking a look at. Okay, and gee, I thought I saw Johanna's hand. I had it up, but I echo Janet and Tom's sentiment that we should take a look at it. All right, so that's at least three members and that seems like sufficient that Chris, why don't we put that on the agenda? When is the ZBA hearing? We don't have a date for the ZBA hearing yet. All we have is a date for the Conservation Commission. Maureen and Rob Mora are looking at the application for the ZBA. I'm not even sure if it's been filed with the town clerk yet, but I wanted to bring it, we wanted to bring it to your attention early so you could make a plan to look at it. Okay, great. All right, any other applications you wanted to talk to us about, Chris? I don't believe so. Okay, upcoming SPP, SPR, and SB applications? You have a new application from Emerson College. They're going to be bringing some signs to you. I think it's three signs that didn't make it into the first review. And so that will be coming to you probably November 17th. Okay. And there are other things that are out there in the wings, but we haven't actually received applications for those things. All right, all right. Planning Board Committee and Liaison Reports. How about the PVC, PC, Jack? Yeah, I believe that Chris Brestrup forwarded a link to the state of infrastructure projects in Western Massachusetts on a state perspective and how difficult it is for some of the more poor town. So that was a, we had a meeting last Thursday and that was a very moving presentation by, it was Suzanne Bump, who's a state auditor there. And the other thing that was presented was there's ARPA funding available and that can apply to housing downtown, assisting the digital sort of divide there that might be happening more in the hill towns and tourism, things like that. So again, I'm sure Chris, you're aware of the potential of that funding and the flexibility of it. But those are two things that were discussed. So. Okay, great. Thank you. Andrew, anything on CPAC? Yeah, thanks, Doug. We do, we've got, so there are 18 applications, five for community housing, six for historic preservation, none for open space and seven for recreation. So we have received applications from those 18 folks. We've sent some questions back to them and they will be giving us presentations starting next Thursday on October 28th, the November 4th and November 10th. So I think, I'm trying to remember what we had last year, I think it was more like 14, so maybe a couple more applications just go around. So looking forward to hearing these proposals. Great. I have no report on the agricultural commission tonight. Tom, how about the DRB? Yeah, we had a very active sign-ins review last week. Arigato Japanese restaurant downtown is putting up some new signage and they've done some window work. There is a new lingerie shop, Art of Intimates, that is opened up downtown as well that has a storefront near Lime Red. So we reviewed their new facade. There is a new Asian rice restaurant on Boltwood that we looked at some signage and wayfinding for and then there as well on Boltwood, there is a new, what is it? It's like a nightclub. It has multiple indoor and outdoor places. Within it, again, in the sort of back area of Boltwood. So we looked at some of those signs that were also approved with recommendations. And then lastly, we looked at some signage for a dog park in the professional research area off of Route 9 by Amherst Woods. So yeah, lots of signage, nothing that seems too crazy, but just checking boxes and making sure everyone's in line. So yeah, that's good. Okay. Great. Chris, the CRC? So I don't think we've met with the CRC for a while. They had a few other things that they were working on and that they are having a meeting next week which has two public hearings in it. And those are for the rezoning of the parcel behind CVS and for the mixed use building revisions. So we'll be attending those meetings. Other than that, I don't really have anything to report on the CRC. Okay. For those meetings, I think I mentioned we're two o'clock in the afternoon. So if you wanna come, don't come at night. Okay. Okay. And as for a report of the chair, I really don't have anything yet to talk about. Report of staff, Chris. I have nothing further. Okay. All right. So the time is 10, 14. It looks like we can adjourn. Thank you all for your time and thank the public for sitting in with us for this long meeting and for your comments. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Thanks everybody. Good night. Good night. Good night. Okay.