 All right, good evening everyone. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Excuse me, we're gonna get started, thank you. So I'd like to call the June 26th meeting of the town of Arlington Redevelopment Board to order, gavel, let's see. So this evening, please let us know. I know that there is a lot of noise coming from the HVAC. If you can't hear us further back or if somebody else is speaking, you need us to speak louder, please let us know or feel free to move closer. These mics are just for ACMI. They're not going to project for us. So my name is Rachel Zemberia. I'm the chair of the board. I'd love if the other board members could please introduce yourselves starting with Steve. Good evening. Eugene Benson. Hello. And we also have Claire Ricker, the director of the department of planning and community development joining us this evening. So thank you all for joining us. So without further ado, I'd love to move to our first agenda item, which is the public hearing, the open public hearing for docket number 3752, Callix Peak at 251 Summer Street. And Claire, I will turn it over to you for updates on this hearing. Thank you. So I received an email from the proponent for Callix Peak at 251 Summer Street, requesting to postpone until August as the board is only meeting. They requested initially to meet on August 14th. The board is not meeting on that day. So I advise them to please be ready to present on August 28th, which is the only meeting we are having in August of this board. Great, thank you, Claire. Are there any questions from the board members or any discussion related to the request for extension starting with Ken? No. Gene? No. Steve? No questions. Question I have is around timing. Do we know yet the timing working back from fall town meeting as to when our hearing schedule is going to be? It is likely that the hearings, the hearings for fall town meeting zoning will start that same night. Okay. And they did not feel that they would be ready to come in by the last meeting in July? They did not. Okay. Are working out a few issues with the site and they needed the extra time. Okay. I'm a bit concerned with our agenda for that evening given that I have to a 6 a.m. flight the next morning. It's going to be a long night. So I think we're just going to need to really try and keep to an allotted amount of time for the hearing. We'll work that through that with them. Certainly. Okay. So is there a motion to, let me just make sure I get the date of that August meeting? Give me one second. Oh, thank you. Is there a motion to continue the hearing for docket number 3752 to August 28th, 2023? So motion. Great. We'll take a roll call vote starting with Steve. Yes. Jean. Yes. Yes, as well. That meeting, this hearing rather will be continued to August 28th. No, it's not showing up correctly in the line. Okay. So we will now move to agenda item number two, which is to review the draft meeting minutes. We have four sets of meeting minutes. And so let's just take them in order starting with any additions or corrections to the meeting minutes from March 13th, 2023 and I'll start with Steve. Nothing beyond what I've already submitted to staff. Okay, great. Thank you. Jean. I haven't seen what Steve submitted to staff. So can we do that? I have also not seen what Jean has submitted to staff. Hold on. Steve, were your comments, do you know where your comments incorporated into the latest draft? I did not check, but I do have a copy of the latest, of the last week. Nope, down on 624. Nope, that's the working group. I believe that all edits and comments have been included in the draft minutes that as they were put on the website. But Mr. Benson, if you would like for me to verify that, I can do that and we can vote on them at our next meeting. I think that would make sense. Okay. Sure, absolutely. They're here in draft form. So we could just move through the formalities next week. But I'd like to make sure we capture any other edits so that we can vote on them next week. I suggest a lot of edits which I believe are incorporated into this. Okay, great. Ken? I am not. I haven't seen this, but the previous one, I haven't seen my edits. So they're not changed track? No, they're not. Well, in that case. Why don't you spot check? And I'll just note that I had one edit here. So on the last sentence of the second page, there is a reference to in the Alewife group. I just wanted to see, Gene, if we could specify what that is, that's the save the Alewife work working group. So if we could just add save the Alewife work to that, that would be great. Any other edits to the meeting minutes from March 13th? Great. And Steve, were you able to spot check? I think it's in here, but it was minor. So yes, it is here. It is here. Okay. So the latest set includes Steve's, so Gene, do you feel comfortable voting on them then? Okay, great. So is there a motion to approve the Monday, March 13th, 2023 meeting minutes as amended? So motion. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve. Yes. Gene. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. Those have been approved. Okay. The next meeting minutes are from March 27th, 2023. And I will start with Steve for any additional edits or corrections beyond what's already submitted. So I'm, I'm verifying. Okay. Gene. I don't have anything else. Ken. No, I'm nothing. And I do not have anything other than to ask Claire whether or not when we approved the submission for the hearing at this meeting, they were supposed to bring to the department a sample of the metal panel profile for review and approval by the board. Yes. And I don't know if they have. They have not at this time. Okay. You're right. So that's something we could just follow up on and make sure that they know that they need to do that. That would be great. Okay. Steve, were you able to verify if you were? So I verified the, my suggestions were incorporated. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes as amended? So motion. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve. Yes. Ken. Yes. Gene. Yes. And I may guess as well. So the March 27th, 2023 meeting minutes have been approved. We'll now move to the April 24th, 2023 meeting minutes. Steve, I assume you are verifying any edits. I have verified it. Great. Any additional? Nothing additional. Okay. Gene. Nothing additional. Ken. No. And I don't have anything either. Is there a motion to approve the Monday, April 24th meeting minutes as amended? So motion. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve. Yes. Gene. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I may guess as well. The April 24th meeting minutes have been approved. And finally we have the meeting minutes for May 1st, 2023. Steve. Nothing beyond what I submitted. Great. Gene. It's fine. Ken. No, nothing. Great. Thanks. I don't have any edits either. Is there a motion to approve the May 1st, 2023 meeting minutes as amended? So motion. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve. Yes. Gene. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I may guess as well. Thank you all for reviewing the meeting minutes. And thank you Claire. I appreciate the staff members. Working through all of those. Okay. So let's close agenda item number two and move to agenda item number three. This is the ARB meeting schedule for the remainder of the year from July through December. This is the schedule that we had discussed at our last meeting. So we will look for any additional comments. Claire, did you have anything related to the schedule? I did not other than to make sure that I captured all the schedule conflicts, et cetera, that the board had called me about. I had a long list, but I wasn't sure I got everything. Great. Well, we'll run through and ensure that. And we'll just note too that the October meetings are subject to change or addition, depending on the final date of fall town meeting once that's established. So, Ken, any additions or corrections or comments on the proposed meeting schedule? Yeah, what dates were we planning to use for the MBT communities outreach for the public? I think that was separate based on through the working group, correct? No. I believe the working group was gonna have their numbers outreach and then a plan was to be presented to the ARB. Then the ARB would have their set of meetings with the town, with the public. Okay, well, let's work through that at the working group meeting or the working session that we have a little bit later. So it's not, so none of us cooperate here then? We will have hearings on the MBTA communities. But these are ARB hearings. These are not any separate specific public meetings related to any one topic. We can certainly decide to add that to our schedule, but that will not be these meetings. Unless we advertise again a specific hearing for that topic. That was my understanding, but that's okay. Okay, Gene? I have nothing to add to this. Okay, Steve? The schedule seems fine to me, Madam Chair. Okay, is there a motion to approve the July 2023 to December 2023 meeting schedule as submitted? So motions. Second. Take a vote, starting with Steve? Yes. Gene? Yes. Ken? Yes. Joining us as well. All right, that closes agenda item number three. Let's move to agenda item number four, the MOU for former ARB properties. And I will turn it over to Claire. Sure. So I did receive back from the town manager and town council draft MOU. I believe we were waiting on changes and comments from them and distributed to the board. And I did get an updated version from Mr. Benson today. I do have copies of it, but I haven't had an opportunity to look through any additions that Mr. Benson has made, but we can certainly work through this draft now if the board would like to. Great, thank you, Claire. I have not had a chance. I did not see that come through today either. So maybe Gene, if you wanted to start off and if you could take us through the edits that you have suggested, that would be great. Oh, there are copies to hand out. Everybody can sit down. All right, that's fine. We could just run through them on the screen right here. Let me get mine up on the screen on my screen. Sorry, sorry. Section one, thank you. So that has Gene's changes there. Yes. I didn't do a type changes because they were too extensive. Oh, so you just rewrote it? I rewrote it in the same format. So I can walk people through it. It's about to appear on my screen. So if you look at the first paragraph, I changed it somewhat. I took out the references to the civic block and put in the actual addresses of the three properties and indicated that is to maintain our role in development uses of the three properties while transitioning custody to the purpose of town manager. That the rest of that is the same wording. Transfer properties, I rewrote that significantly. It now says for many years, the ARB owned and managed the properties with maintenance of the properties provided by the town for 2023 town meeting the town manager filed warrant articles 21, 22, 23 to transfer ownership and management of the properties from the ARB to the town. The ARB after discussion with town council voted three to one to support the warrant articles with the understanding the town manager and ARB would enter into an MOU that would allow the ARB to retain a role in development uses of the properties. Town meeting then voted favorably on the three one articles to transfer custody. The town manager authority section is the same. I didn't do anything with that one. So Jean, can I just ask a question on second two? Section two, rather? Yeah. Was that really just to provide the main difference between that and the original language? You said you significantly wrote that. Was that just to provide the history? Yes, the better history, I think we all have the history that I thought would help inform what this is about. Okay, thank you. Didn't change town manager authority. Just minor wording changes in section four. And then the three A, B and C, A is pretty much the same. B is pretty much the same with some wording changes that I think gets closer to what we were talking about. And C, which is about 23 maple, I moved the parking piece from B to C because it was about C. And what we don't have in is ability to veto anything because we don't have ability to veto anything. The town manager would do this, just gives us advice and consultation. Yes. And I think this meets most of the town manager's comments as well as I think puts in more of what we had talked about. I'm sorry I couldn't get it to you sooner, I had a busy weekend. Any questions or comments, either relative to Jean's proposed revisions or to the original memo as submitted, starting with him? No. Are we gonna motion to... Have you signed it for us? Yes, that would be the motion to authorize me to execute this on behalf of the redevelopment board. Okay, I have no issues. Okay, Steve? What's good to me? I did not have any issues either. I think that we landed on the phrase intensification of use of the properties rather than a specific percentage threshold, which I'm fine with. And I carried that over from... Right, I saw that, yes. Yep, I didn't notice that, carried over. Okay, is there a motion from the board to authorize me acting as chair on behalf of the redevelopment board to execute this MOU on behalf of the board? So motioned. I'll second. Great, we'll speak of vote, starting with Steve. Yes. Jean? Yes. Ken? Yes. And I may ask as well, thanks you all. Steve, Claire can convince the town manager to sign it. Okay, great. Thank you very much. And I will work with Claire to, after the final review by the town manager and Doug Hine, we'll wait to execute until after they've had a final review of the edits that were proposed. And if there are additional proposed changes, we will bring it back and go through the process again. Okay. So that closes agenda item number four. And we will now move to agenda item number five, which is the MBTA communities discussion. So that will be a working session with the MBTA communities working group. We are going to set aside, see probably between 45 minutes and an hour for anything that we would like to do in terms of hearing where the working group is and then any workshopping that we'd like to do of whether it's the map, the proposals, et cetera. I will note that open forum will occur directly following the working session. So we will invite anyone who is not either on the working group or the board who has joined us this evening to provide any feedback you might have during the open forum section of our hearing this evening. So with that, I will hand it over to Claire. Great, thank you. We welcome everyone from the working group. Thank you so much for all of the wonderful work you've been doing on behalf of the town. I think we mentioned at our last meeting that we all thought it was an excellent public forum on the eight. So thank you again for all of your work. Yes. And the work continues. So at last week's working group meeting on Tuesday, the working group asked if they could have a meeting with the board as soon as possible and we were able to accommodate them as quickly as this evening. So thank you to the board and thank you to the working group members of the working group for reacting so quickly and able to be here this evening. This is the latest version of the map that we have been working on. This is with the changes that were discussed at the working group on Tuesday night. I have brought quite a few copies if you'd like to take a look because in addition to just this overall map, we have kind of the methodology for what happened here and why these districts were drawn the way they were at least the second time. So one of the things that came up in the meeting and in our public meeting, would you mind if I just distribute these while you're- No, please go ahead. One of the things that came up in our public meeting when we sort of showed this map and saw comment in our June 8th meeting was a lot of people, there was a lot of comments about why not Broadway? Why would you include Broadway along with these three other areas? Which I thought was a really interesting and good comment. We had included Broadway on previous iterations of the map, took them out for the public meeting. The map worked a little bit better to remove Broadway. We were able to get the 50% to do this requirement, moving through Arlington Heights and down Mass Ave here. One of the concerns that our designer had was if we bring back sections of Broadway or if we were to include this, would it then make the contiguous district that we had set up non-conforming and non-compliant? And so they did go back and take a look at what could go in on Broadway and not alter the equation such that this area would no longer be contiguous and compliant. So this was there, the designer by there, I keep saying there, the consultant UT who added this little green section here which would represent MBTA community zoning along Broadway. And also on this iteration, I asked for at least some quantification of density proposed now that we're sort of looking a little closer, a little more closely at these concepts, what we are looking at now in a scenario with a 30 unit maximum, 30 dwelling units per acre. You can see the calculations here that UTL did to determine number of units that would go in each, each one of these districts with a maximum four story development, zero setback in the front, 10 on the sides, 20 in the rear and one parking space per unit. So using, you know, this as sort of our standard if we were going to contemplate a four story building with these setbacks, one space per unit minimum parking, these are the development numbers that we would be looking at if we were to limit the unit per acre maximum to 30. And then you can see in these districts what we're looking at that get us to the 15 billion per acre minimum required by NBTA communities. Now, when we did this and we were sort of mapping three families, obviously our density was lower. However, we have a lot of concern that if we do zone for three families that we may not get any meaningful housing production. And so asked UTL to model a four story building which could be four family and eight family potentially even a 12 family depending on the size of a lot. And with this four stories, four unit sort of example, this is what we end up with. Now, if we do this and we say there's no unit per acre maximum, obviously we end up with far more units per district. And then this is the final, this is the capacity using these dimensions. So what UTL did is they've been doing the entire time is to scrape the map of everything that's on it and then try to fit these dimensions in to what we have already in terms of our, you know, our spatial parcel size, things like that. No buildings, just parcels. And so these are the calculations that UTL put together should we do that. Now, if we take away any unit per acre maximum, obviously we end up with the potential, the capacity for this much housing, almost 8,000 units. If we were to keep it under this 30 unit per acre maximum while still keeping that four story development, this is what we end up with. So essentially what we're doing is we're saying height and density across these zones is going to look like this number of units. If we agree as a group, as a working group, that four stories is what we're looking for and that this is the level of density we think these areas can accommodate. So here's basically what that means in real English. Right now that East Arlington district, were we to set these dimensional standards as you see and cap it at the 30 unit per acre maximum, we would be looking about adding about 900 units here. The capacity for 900 units. And this is, you know, this would be built over time and this again is only if we build it four stories. You know, we could do different things here that would yield different, you know, results. But if we were to build standard four stories all the way through here, we'd be looking at about 900 units less. So one thing that I think would be helpful for future with UTL is if we're gonna give capacity for us, might also be helpful for them to give us the context of what the current unit now. Oh, that's interesting. Maybe some of the other areas is because I think some people would look at that 3,000 number and be shocked and I wouldn't, you know, but I also wouldn't be shocked if you went, how did, how many are there? And that number was, I'm just guessing up my head but like 2,000 or 1,500 or one. There are 20,000 wrong units in Arlington and that's a fact. Can I ask just a quick question. What is our target number? Our target number is 2,600. By target number, you mean our, our bare minimum number? Our minimum. Not that we're aiming for, not that our target is the minimum. I just think it's helpful context. Right. So our target number is, I believe 20,000. Minimum target, yes. Minimum. Minimum requirement. What do you have 2246? 2200. 2046, excuse me. 2046 is bare minimum compliance. Thank you. Yep. Now, oh, please. Can I just, before we do that, could I ask that you all just introduce yourselves for the record for those who are joining us remotely? We'll start with Sanjay Artero. Sure. I'm Sanjay Artero. I'm the chair of the MBT news written group. Thank you. I'm Vincent Boudoyan. I'm an e-star in Arlington. I'm an architect and part of the working group. Great, thank you. And could I ask one more favor? If you wouldn't mind moving the microphone closer to just where all of you are sitting so that we can make sure that the mic picks you up. I want to make sure that everybody's comments are heard. Thank you so much. That's perfect. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Okay, sorry. I don't want to interrupt the order of things, but in our last working group meeting, we went around our table and just did some takeaways from the public meeting. And so we heard from Mr. Ravelac. I was wondering if we could just hear, I think Mr. Vincent and December, you were both there. I was wondering if we could just hear if you articulated anything from your tables, anything you heard, any thoughts that you had? Gene, what did you start? I thought it was a very well-constructed, a very well-run meeting. I didn't sit at a table. I basically went around and sort of listened in, had a lot of tables for a few minutes to hear what people had to say. I was impressed with the number of people who were there. I have some concerns about what was written in here, which I can discuss in a minute. Why don't you go ahead and top line the concerns that you had. Okay. I'm sorry, the mic is not going to project, so I'm gonna ask Gene to project. I will have to project. Thank you. Thank you for letting us know. You couldn't hear, I appreciate that. One is the bullet that says, while the legislation allows us to zone for three family home, our consultant utils advice is that developments of that size will not be cost-effective given the cost of land in Arlington. And the stringent building code requirements for multi-family buildings, 248 Mass Ave, which was built just a few years ago, is a three-unit building. It's expensive. Each unit is assessed for about a million dollars each, and it was a tear down of a complete tear down of a different building and built of that. And I know some people in this room have just worked on a three-unit building in Cambridge. Again, they're fairly expensive to sell, but they're doable. So I'm a little bit concerned on that. I don't think we should zone only for three family, but I think this isn't precisely correct. Maybe utils said that, but I think facts on the ground are otherwise. And I'm concerned about that. And it relates to the map, but I'll get to the map later. And the other one was the last bullet on the second floor that says it's possible to incentivize development that has commercial on the first floor, ground floor and residential usage on the floor above, height bonuses, et cetera. That's true, but it doesn't talk about how difficult or impossible it is to really come up with an incentive that will economically work. So I'm concerned that that bullet was also a little bit misleading, but other than those two things, I was very pleased with the meeting. Great. Thank you, Jean. I also was really pleased with the meeting. I thought that there were some great engagement. There were some, I did sit at a table for a portion of the evening. And there were some really interesting and I think very creative ideas that were put forth, specifically around how to distribute some of the MBTA community's district parcels throughout some of the secondary quarters in town as well. That was something that we were really excited about, which I was surprised to hear come up, but there was a lot of excitement there. And I think my big takeaway at the end of the evening, when everybody shared out what they had learned was how much people were, number one in favor of this in general, about not, there wasn't a question of why or if, but it was how, which to me was really exciting and how much people also wanted to prioritize the commercial development that we have and have the opportunity to continue to grow. So that was something that I think came across loud and clear as well. Great to hear those impressions. Do we wanna share a little bit of some of what we talked about at our meeting too? I think sort of one of the big takeaways we took, we got was like, you know, we're in the right direction. Like we didn't come away from that meeting feeling like, oh, grow the map away, right? Where we've got the totally wrong idea, right? I think you came away with that we're on the right idea and let's keep iterating this and we're gonna, this is not the final map, but we're in the right ballpark and now we gotta start figuring out we're finding and finding more details. I think was one of the sort of takeaways and I mean, I mean, as you can see here, one of the takeaways you heard from a lot of people, why not Rod, right? And so, you know, this you see here is definitely a response to something that we heard at that meeting from a number of people. And then we had considered, you know, that's why we're gonna iterate and we're gonna hear positive things from people. I don't know if anybody else from where you're going to share. Well, I kind of have my own statement that I want to make. Just try to stop me. Anyone does that at the beginning. Fine, so I have my, yeah. Okay, so, I mean, you all don't know anything about me, a couple of you do because I've shared, but I have been studying towns and cities and urban growth and forms since I arrived in Manhattan for college in 1997. So I have degree in urban studies and planning. I have a fellowship in urban design and I have a master's in architecture. So I have been thinking about these things for a very long time. Now I have never volunteered for the town because I don't have a lot of time. I don't know if I ever will again and I have because I'm very passionate about this issue. So my goal for tonight is to articulate the huge opportunity that this MBTA communities 3A legislation is and that this could be the biggest zoning change in Arlington in 50 years since the down zoning in the 70s. And in my opinion, that is unequivocally a good thing and that we need that. Now, you know how hard it is to pass any zoning legislation in this town. The incremental changes, they get hacked apart, beaten down, talked to death. I've heard the stories and I've experienced some of it myself. There are dozens of initiatives happening in town, no less than 10 plans, as far as I know. Many of them residing with ARB and that you guys are taking up in the course of your regular business. But the 3A legislation is not business as usual. It is remarkable for several reasons. Number one, the state has given us a mandate that we have to do this and we risk losing very important funding and we risk being sued and other things like that. And they've also given us a very good tool which is a simple majority in town meeting which you guys don't get the benefit of for all your regular work. Just to clarify, we do for some of it. For some of it, yes, absolutely. There are four different criteria which allow us to. Ah, okay, thank you for the clarification. Okay, so Lexington has passed a very ambitious plan and they have included numerous changes to their zoning that go beyond the scope of the 3A legislation. And I think we can do that too. But I think that we all need to work together so that we're just meeting for the first time. We've been working for months, but we need to work together on this and come together as a group. We've had a good process so far but the working group has been dancing around a few issues that we keep kind of getting stuck on. And one is the redevelopment of Mass Ave. And what I have heard from almost everyone I've talked to is that they agree there should be more density on Mass Ave. And the survey bears this out. And that we should also protect the commercial and industrial zoning. And I think we can do both. And I think a little bit of creative thinking can allow us to do both of those things at the same time. So I propose that we roll some of the ARB's current initiatives into the 3A proposal. For example, the Arlington Heights Business District as well as an outline of a center business district as well as a capital square business district. Roll that into the proposal. And that way we'll know which areas of Mass Ave are gonna be set aside for mixed use, commercial development and which areas might be available for 3A multifamily housing. I also propose that we allow neighborhood office uses in R1 and R2 districts. Now that's the paper, that's the proposal that I sent to you, Jean and Rachel. And I have shared already with the working group. So that is neighborhood office uses that could go on secondary corridors rather than on our primary commercial corridor. And that's a two-part proposal. One is allowing those uses only for streets, that only for parcels that face certain key streets which you can decide, Park Gav, Mystic, Lake Street, et cetera. The second part is what then to do with the B1 parcels. There are 83 B1 parcels on Mass Ave that I've counted. 48 of which are in East Darlington, by the way. Now those could be rezoned in either a sort of central business district high density or mixed use high density way or for potential for the multifamily housing. But I think those are an example of a low density use along Mass Ave that just no longer fits with the vision and the goals of the town. So this is the first time we're seeing this new iteration. I think what we've got is a very lukewarm compliance plan here with, we're starting to get, there's starting to be some kind of a concept about coroner or whatever, but it's still, it is very much under cooked. I think that we can do a whole lot more with this legislation if we coordinate and we organize our efforts together and try to put forth something that is a bit more comprehensive than the direction, the role we've sort of been given to date. The comments in the working group? I'd love to hear from Steve and Ken, your thoughts from knowing where our discussions have been before the redevelopment board and your role in the working group. Maybe we can start with you, Steve. So there is, I mean, one of the things that strikes me about this is the way it resembles the map before it was rewritten in 1975. It's very much a corridor field to it. Part of it, it took us a little while to get to the first iteration, having no constraints around where the district can be located. So we're, the zero percent needs to be within half a mile of drinking, that's the guidance that we have. So, I mean, it was nice to get a first iteration. I'm sort of torn about the parcels right on Mass Ave. And in one sense, I think this makes a lot of sense to include, on the other hand, I know we've talked about wanting to do something more, but for better or worse, and I don't mean this as a criticism, the rezoning of the business districts has been on the two lists since at least 2015. It is the first recommendation in the economic development section of our master plan. So I had not heard Metta's idea for combining Arlingtonites business districts, but I think, I like the idea of, at least now, at the moment, I'm liking the idea of trying to think a little more holistically about what we're doing here and what we kind of want for the future of Mass Ave. I like the way this is progressing. As not everybody here may know, but this is probably like the sixth or seventh version of a plan or direction that we're looking at and it's been following some comments from the public, some comments from us where we said, we want to maintain the liability of the commercial spaces and retail spaces and that's, and we've been trying to attract all, coordinate all in. And I think it's coming to where, we have a sort of a quarter approach that Steve said, I think this works well. I think our next steps are that along this quarter, it's gonna be different, I think we're gonna do different densities. So like in East Arlington, the density may not be as high. It may not be five stories. It may only be four stories or three stories, but the density has increased there or we haven't got there yet. So I'm not, don't take that for granted. Okay, please, we're just talking about that. And then in some areas of the central, the high team may go up to four or five or six because the ability of the topographics may work that out. So it's a process that I think, I'm encouraged that we're doing right now and it's going the right way. I'm not saying anything that's gonna say, this is it, nothing's actually in stone, but the process is there right now. I think another thing I would like to push on a little bit more, as far as I'm personally saying is, yes, we have designated zones for commercial, but also I wanna maybe designate somewhere where there's zones where there could be some growth, future growth in the commercial. Just like I had met and said earlier, we can take some of those lower B1 ones and move it out to the side streets which allow more growth along the major streets, meaning Mass Ave and Broadway, but I'm not saying let's all replace that all with just pure housing. Maybe we have a growth area that if it's adjacent to existing commercial, there is potential for that to grow a little bit more. So it's just, we're working to the next steps. And then we're just doing zones or how things reach out. And I think we're getting there and I think if we keep the meetings up, we're gonna get to a compromise that works for everybody. And I just wanna keep on encouraging not to hem things in, because this thing we're looking at, it's gonna be 30, 50 years before it becomes anything. Five years from now it's, it may just maybe one or two pieces, but it's gonna take time to develop. And I just wanna make sure we have enough thought to think that way. Great, thank you Ken. Gene, here you go. Thanks, yeah, I think that was right to have Broadway. I heard that. And I think we actually had said that earlier at some redevelopment board meetings. And we had said that earlier at some redevelopment board meetings also. I'd like you to think a little bit about thinking about sort of a concept and form-based codes with transects, because it looks to me like you're allowing MBJ communities not simply on Mass Ave, but also on the side streets and maybe the next street down in some places. So if we have four or five story on Mass Ave, I'm thinking of lower buildings as you move away from Mass Ave, because that I think is more in character with what the town is like. So I'm thinking about that. I took a walk on Mass Ave the other day looking at a lot of the residential lots. I didn't get all of Mass Ave done, because I was walking and thinking and it's hard enough to do both of those things, let alone traverse all of Mass Ave. And there are seven story apartment buildings on Mass Ave. So four stories is maybe too small in some places too. And I don't know how, it's almost seems to me that before we're done, have to go out and look at each one of these parcels and put them in some sort of context to what we're thinking about. The other thing, and I'd mentioned this before, I think it would be interesting to allow mixed use in all the R zones on Mass Ave and Broadway also. So that there'd be, let's say you're gonna say four story, max residential, but I'm making up the numbers honestly. Six stories residential. So if those actually incentives work, we may get some more commercial retail space. And if we don't, we're not losing anything by trying it. But if we flip it the other way and try to do the mixed use on the business and it doesn't work, we're losing the business. So I would like to try thinking about on the R's on Mass Ave and Broadway, doing something like that. And therefore, if we have seven story buildings and we do four stories of residential, but six stories, if you do mixed use, we may be better off. I ended up reading Mehta's proposal late this afternoon. Thank you, Mehta. I think one thing that's interesting to think about which Mehta points out is all the B1 zones on Mass Ave. And it reminded me of something when I first moved to Arlington over 33 years ago and somebody said to me, isn't Arlington so much better than Cambridge on Mass Ave? Because once you get into Arlington, you have all the small buildings on Mass Ave. And I think that was the thinking from back in the 1970s. But I'm not sure it's consistent with 21st century thinking and what the town needs. So I think there can be some discussion about whether the B1s should be flipped to B2 or something else. I'm not sure that allowing doctors' offices you know, in the R1s and 2s on Park Ave and Pleasant Street is the right trade-off for allowing residential and the B1s. I'd be more interested in thinking whether we should do something different with the B1s as part of this. But I do like the idea about allowing professional offices on some of the streets. But I think that's gonna have to be separate from MBTA communities. And that's gonna require a two thirds vote of town meeting, but I think it's worth thinking about that as a potential package. One just last thing before I'm done. You know, for a lot of years I taught planning and land use law. And I often use Arlington as an example, right? So what could I know better? So I had an example of a dentist office that currently exists in a house. And I said, and you know, I showed them what the accessory uses were. And I said, how could this dentist office possibly be in this house? It violates all the rules for professional businesses in houses. And finally, about the fourth or fifth year when I taught the course, one of the students came up with the right answer. I guess the house must be in the business, all right? Which is the right answer. So I think we should think about some of what Matt is talking about for some of the side streets to let in, you know, doctors offices and maybe some professional offices there. But I don't know if it has to be done at the same time. This is done now. We at the board had talked about holding off on the Arlington Heights Business District until the spring so that we could get this into town meeting with a few other things we wanted to do without sort of having too much going to town meeting at once. I still think that's a better way to think about doing it, but what you raise an important issue and maybe other people will think the other way. Thanks, Jean. I think I agree with you. I think in an ideal situation, I would love to do the Arlington Heights Business Districting at the same time. I just want to be completely realistic and that it's a capacity issue. Claire, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you know, our Department of Planning and Community Development is running at far less than a full capacity staff. And I want to make sure that we have the capacity to appropriately depict the potential impacts, the capacity building that we have within MBTA communities and the other very important dimensional modifications that we have to the zoning plan. And I would hate to shortchange any of them because we tried to take on too much. We have been wanting to tackle this Arlington Heights Business District. For some time, we wanted to do it this spring and we're asked by the town manager not to. So it was already on the agenda. It is certainly not a lack of willingness by this board to take on those pieces. This is a board that has a lot of new members with a lot of new energy. We have a planning director who is ready and willing to take on these challenging discussions. We just have a capacity issue right now to take on these items. So I think that the other thing that I will mention as well is that you brought up the B1 districts, which I know that I was in your memo. I would much rather see those redistricted as other B districts than into housing because many of them are just, they are hemmed in between before and industrial zones. And I don't believe that redistricting those small parcels as residential is the appropriate way to move forward. It's not productive in that it keeps some of these small parcels from being combined with their adjacent parcels, which is ultimately what our board has really talked about doing along Mass Ave, is to take some of this Swiss cheese that we see all along Mass Ave and to really think about the way that we can create quarters of similar districting rather than what we have now, which is down zoning. And I apologize, just at the scale that this is, I can't really, no, it's fine. I mean, I think that when we see the map in the future, it might be helpful to see it blown up and maybe to see some of these parcels together because it's hard to tell, for example, for me exactly which of these are fronting Mass Ave and which of these are the parcel back. And I'm still very much in favor of ensuring that we do not have any parcels that are part of the MBTA communities, residential only fronting Mass Ave, especially where we have the potential to increase the business quarters. And I think that there are many places along where it appears to me that this is fronting Mass Ave that we have, again, these kind of patchy networks of businesses that I would, again, I think we have talked as a board are very much in favor of uniting by whether it's overlay districts or rezoning those particular areas to really create a more vibrant business district around the three major business districts we have in town. Sure, so just to clarify with this map, yes. These zones where there's no commercial do come all the way up to Mass Ave. There is a version of this map that shows the zone at least one parcel back and also not on any currently commercial zoned area. So we do have that. I would love to ask for another way to think about that is if you're thinking about the future and you want the flexibility to be able to do things, I would, the other way to think about these districts is that we're gonna create some districts now, they don't have to stay the same, right? As long as we add some extra capacity, right? As long as we are not creating a bare minimum map here in six months, right? When you're ready to rezone a section of Mass Ave, you can have that, right? What do you think about the impact though on the owners of those parcels to have to be redistricted multiple times in a row? I'm sensitive to that. That's a challenging position to put those owners in. So I just wanna bring that forward that I think that making sure that we are not giving these folks whiplash either with, this is the new district and the new potential for your property. And then, we come as a board when we're able to do the work that we've committed to and already started as a board to then having to go back to them, that makes our job quite frankly, as significantly harder when we have to go back to them and present yet another modification. I think that that makes a lot of sense in certain areas if we're thinking about overlays and bonuses, again, beyond Mass Ave. My concern is those folks along Mass Ave who would potentially be impacted multiple years in a row by changing legislation in terms of what their parcel is classified as. Rachel, can I? I'm trying to understand what you're saying. Yes. Are you saying you don't think the overlay district should be passed for parcels that are directly on Mass Ave at all? Or for... For MBTA community, for the residential? Yes, I'm concerned, for example, here in the heights where between the parcels we are trying to unite, for example, in the blue here, that's right along Mass Ave. That is exactly what we were talking about changing into a business use. And so by eliminating the opportunity from mixed use or only offering it as a bonus, I think we take away some of the opportunity that we were trying to create. I think as well in East Arlington, again, you see the outline of the commercial and it's spotty, right? So again, if we were to take the same theory that we were looking at, that we were looking at implementing in the heights, we would similarly be looking to unite some of these business districts, some of these pockets that we see on either side of Capital Square and by including these parcels that are right along Mass Ave that are in the in-between spaces, I think we take away some of that potential. So I'm looking at this very slightly differently. Okay. I mean, I agree with you about the parcels in the heights that we all talked about, rezoning to a business when we do the whole business but I guess I sort of feel like Mass Ave can exist with both need size residential buildings and commercial buildings and mixed use buildings and I'm not in the don't do it on Mass Ave at all. I'm more in the let's walk up and down the street and see what makes sense. And if there are a couple parcels that look like they would be much better commercial then they don't go in the overlay district but I think there are a lot of parcel there potentially that would work in the overlay district and we have a street that's activated by both business, commercial and residential. So I'm in a slightly different place than you are. Thank you. No, Vince has had his hand up for a while and I want to realize that he has his hand up and I want to get his opinion. So to these points and the working group hasn't made a decision so I don't want to speak on behalf of the whole working group but I think that we're not necessarily talking about zoning for only multi-family housing. I think that we are open to mixed use zoning along Mass Ave and Broadway and in fact we would love to see it. I've heard some cynicism about the viability of commercial that might zone from excuse but that it might not happen and I suppose I don't buy into the extreme cynicism but I do understand that the market is very different so I'm curious if we could hear a little bit more because I think we could look at a combination of approaches. One approach is that you reserve some space strategically where you say this is an area where we expect to grow our business districts and hopefully we expect to do it not in the distant future but in the short-term future and then on the other hand incentives and carrots that we might use to encourage the mixed use to happen. You know between those two and in your experience reviewing projects and improving projects do you get a sense that some of those strategies might be more appropriate in certain areas, some in others? Just curious if you have some thoughts on that. I remember reviewing Lexington's by-law and they have a district where it's like three stories but if you do ground floor commercial you get an extra two and I was a little puzzled at first but at why two? And it finally dawned on me. It's people who are applicants who come before our board tell us that well the ground floor, the commercial doesn't really make a lot of money. It's kind of hard to finance. Residentials, it makes more money. It's easier to finance and we'd rather do that. So the two-story height bonuses for the ground floor commercial is well one of them is that commercial space that may be challenging for them to do. The other story is a 33% density bonus on residential which at least to me seems kind of attractive. You know I did ask the head of the Lexington planning board if they did any studies for that. He said no we're taking our chances and if it doesn't work we'll amend it. I'm not sure that's what we wanna do with those circumstances there. I like trying it on the residential in the residential zone. I don't like trying it into already the zone. I think an interesting example and this is from a couple of years ago and at 1500 Mass Ave which is in the B1 zone almost at the Lexington line. There was a old tired three unit residential building and it's replaced by mixed use office on the first floor and two levels of residential above two units in each level. So that can happen in B1. We may wanna fix B1 because right now B1 does not allow commercial on the ground floor. This is great. So it'll have to office. It'll have to office. So we might wanna as part of this at least if we're not getting rid of B1 and maybe we should at least fix that part of B1. I guess I should mention this is a lot of stuff and a lot of decisions to be made. And my real hope is that we end up with a unanimous vote by the redevelopment board because I think that will send a much stronger message to town meeting than a split vote on this. Yeah, I just wanted to push back a little bit and say that's exactly why I wanted to include the Arlington Heights Business District in this because you're talking about wanting to take some of the residential because you already have a plan. So, and I personally don't think it would be that hard to draw an outline around the center or an outline around East Arlington. We all kind of already know what it is. But if what you want is continuous commercial all along Mass Ave. Number one, I think that's never gonna happen. And it's just economically not viable. But what we're looking for as the sort of housing advocates is give us some of Mass Ave. that where we can put some housing. And so take all the commercial you want but let's concentrate it. And by the way, that makes for much more vibrant and interesting commercial centers that will support them as opposed to this like strung out Christmas lights thing where it's like dotted all along. So, you know, but there are huge sections in between, for example, in between the center and Capitol Square that is a lot of apartment buildings, a lot of V1 that's just really two family homes with massage therapists in it. And, you know, why can't we have higher density multifamily housing in those areas? So, you know, I just think, I think that, you know, we are forced on a much faster timeline than you are because, and because the town, town meeting members, the majority of whom 95% want us to participate in the fossil fuel pilot studies. So we have to get this done by the end of this year. We could have taken a whole other year. I'm just going to say something. There is no us and you, it's a week. Okay, so that's the first thing I just want to say. That's fine, but we need to get to a week because we're not understood. Understood, and I need you to hear what we are. Okay, so part of this is listening not to be reinforced, but to hear what ideas are coming from this group that's been working with the town for a very long time. Okay, and I think that we certainly getting to the Arlington Heights Business District is more than just drawing a boundary. There is, again, we had really talked about, given our experience with presenting to town meeting the types of visuals that are required for people to see the potential in many of these ideas, many of which we're going to need to show them for these MBTA communities pieces to work as well. It's people, most people in town meeting can't read plans. They're not architects like you and like me. And so they need to be able to see things in three dimensions and that takes time and that takes resources. And we are 100% committed to doing that. So I want you to understand, again, what resources are needed because of the types of materials we are going to need to show town meeting members so that they can really see the potential and understand the full breadth of what is coming in front of them. Sure, and people have been telling me some version of that story since I joined the group. It was not a story, that is what we're going to be doing. I know, but it's of no and I can't and that's not how it's done. That is not what was said here. It wasn't, no and I can't, it is to get to a yes. This is what we are going to need to do together, okay? I'm just pushing people a larger vision. I've heard you, okay, thank you. Please. I'm sort of witchy on that. No, that's so unusual. I know. No, no, no. Having some of yours with his residential MSF, I'm not that's concerned. Okay, I'm not saying we have to reserve all MSF for commercial, but also I agree with you a lot saying, right now what's wrong with our commercial is, it's all these little piecemeal parts. So when we do insert some housing there, we can't hem the commercial in. So that's why I talked earlier, we have to give the ability for the commercial to grow. And I don't mean like the size of the square footage of the commercial is going to double the square footage. I'm not necessarily meaning that. That may happen, it may not happen, but I'm talking about each parcel has to grow. One of the biggest things we've heard from a lot of landowners and people who want to rent a space is the parcel is too small. They can't do anything with it. That's what we have to address. And then the building's too old, we need newer buildings and then the foot traffic. So I think having a blend of some housing around there, either behind it, on the side of it, whatever they can increase the foot traffic is good, but we don't want to hem in the commercial. I think we're working on that. I appreciate that. They're not working on it. One of the things I think that I'm really hearing is don't fill in the Swiss cheese. Don't fill the holes in the Swiss cheese so that the block of Swiss cheese can become something other than Swiss cheese. Cheddar, we can make cheddar. Does that? I think it's accurate. Yeah, absolutely. I think again, we would like to make sure that as a board, what we have talked about is making sure that again, the business districts have an opportunity to continue to grow. And that this does not fill in the gaps that we have prioritized for future commercial films. One other question I would ask is, back to what Jean and King were talking about is, does a zone that obviously allows say something along the lines of what Lexington did of three stories of residential by right and five stories, if you do commercial on the ground floor, does that feel to you like the commercial districts grow? No, no, doing that in the currently residential part. No, what? Did I say it the wrong way? But not within what we identified in the business today. Yes, in between spaces. In the places that are today colored. Yes, within the currently residential parcels. I like, I said I like that. I do like, I think it helped me what Kim and Rachel were talking about because then people have a decision to make. Do I want to do residential or, hey, all of a sudden I can do mixed use in these parcels. But I want to make sure, Jean, that we're in alignment, that's in the spaces outside of the business districts. Okay, yes, that's what I'm saying. Yes, okay. I'll actually maybe get a word back then come to me. Yes, so this is just a point of clarification for me being the novice amongst all of you. You all keep using the term business district. Now I've lived in Arlington for 30 years and while I understand that some people might consider massive from Cambridge to Lexington to be a business district, that is not how I've ever perceived it as a resident. There is areas that are very business and I can stop at several shops when I park. And so that would be the heights and it would sort of be the center and it would be capital square. But then if I need to stop at my dry cleaner that happens to be out of the center on the way to capital square, that to me is not a business district. I have to drive there, I just get out of my car running and drop off. If I'm lucky, the post office would be open and I could do something there too. But what do you view the business districts to be? Because if we're allowed to then consider anything in between business districts to be opportunities for multifamily housing, I think that picture on the map would be nice. So there are currently the business districts are challenged, right? We'll use the heights as an example. So the heights, there are three clusters of business areas, but when those holes are filled in, that becomes a nicely sized walkable business district without feeling like there are pieces that are disconnected from the hole. I got that, that's logical to me. Right, and then capital square. So that's again where there is opportunity for it to continue to grow and where we're saying we want to make sure that there is opportunity in that space. So for example, the potential future hotel, right? Right there, yes. That is, that would not be the end of the Arlington Heights Business District potentially. When you create larger parcels, there is an opportunity for the parcels adjacent to then realize their potential. And so what we're looking for is to create that buffer so that we incentivize to Kim's point the combination of parcels in the future for some of these larger developments. Okay, so Claire just pointed, we're now almost at the purple, which is what's being called the Arlington Center Sub District. So you are talking about connecting all the districts potentially along my side so that they're, I mean, by their character and personality maybe they are three different business districts, but the business districts in your view are best allowed to expand so that they connect to one another all the way from one end of Mass Ave in Lexington to the other end in Cambridge. Again, I think we could look at whether or not there is some discontinuity between the, actually that's not entirely true. So the purple along here, there is some discontinuity between Arlington Heights and Arlington Center and between Arlington Center and East Arlington. But in East Arlington, for example, at the edges of Capitol Square, there is, again, there are those pockets which could allow you to fill in some of those spaces to pull in more of those businesses as a recognized business district within East Arlington. I think what you're asking is very hard for us that you are different, the finance right here because you're putting us on the spot, all right? No, I'm not saying, I mean, why you're on anything else. I'm just saying, you know, we've got to look at it as a group there where these spots are. And I think asking Rachel where it starts and it stops is not clear to her, it's clear to us, okay? But it's knowing the fact that we want these to be next to each other, so it has a synergy to it. We also want it next to each other, so if someone wanted to combine spaces, I'll give you a hotel, for example, it's a combination of two spaces. One space was not enough to put a hotel together, okay? So if we give them opportunity to combine spaces, so we can actually have commercial space. Because otherwise you lock in these 5,000, 6,000 square foot minimum dots all over the place and we're back to Swiss cheese again, even though it's all one line of business district. So was it your thought that we need to do something along the lines that has been described, which is sort of a walking tour of Mass Ave, so that, because for us to propose something that is amenable to the visions you all have for the commercial districts, don't we kind of have to at some point know where these lines are gonna be? Again, it must be de-prioritized Mass Ave and try and ensure that we meet the capacity through these adjacent parcels, which is what I know we had originally talked about. Steve? Yeah, I see. You know, the tricky part about this is we've kind of got three balls up in the air at once and it's really a question of how to get them to stitch together. And what I'm kind of getting the sense of is that, yeah, Mass Ave, there's a lot of lonely little business districts. We need to give them room to acquire friends. You know, there are a lot of narrow parcels we need that are really not developable under today's zoning and we need to give them room to grow backwards. The little broken up districts, you know, we need to make some accommodation so they can be glued back together, but maybe if there are sections that are, you know, if a decent sized residential section, then maybe that could be okay for MBTA communities with the mixed use allowance. Yeah, yes. Is that? I wanted to bring up a couple of other things, just keeping an eye on the time. Yeah, I think we've got about 10 more minutes. Yeah, so one other thing that I would love to sort of talk a little bit about is the idea of site plan review, because that is an option that's available to us and I think it would be also, you know, if there's anything that we should be either considering or pushing for in terms of design guidelines, I don't know if that's something that we can like do as certainly on this timeline, but if we should be opening that conversation and then I don't know that we need to necessarily talk about it, but I think sort of confirming for folks that like, I think we expect to keep our same inclusionary zoning of 15% at 60% AMI and that we should be able to have util and or whoever our consultant is confirmed for us that that's economically viable. So those are sort of three things that I know we've only got 10 more minutes, but. So one of the things that I think would be great, Claire, is if we, one of the things we're going to need to do is probably update the residential design guidelines. Correct. Because we, they were really focused on one and two family and some three family. So if we are looking at four plus invite as of right, we're going to need to put probably need to ask how meeting for an appropriation for an update to the residential design guidelines as part of this work. You all say that that is something that would be helpful, especially again, if this goes to an as of right proposal. And I'd like to get back to site plan review because I know Claire, you had some thoughts about that. Everybody's been saying Lexington passed SMBD communities, but right now they're working on the requirements sort of site plan review. I met with a few of them over the weekend. I have a list I was going to bring to the meeting tomorrow to show you guys what they're thinking about on the site plan reviews. And I believe they're way off. Okay. Who's today? Lexington. Oh, Lexington. I mean, we don't even have that in our reviews. They're looking at balloon studies where, All right. What? Really? Yeah. I'll show you. You had a great list, Claire, that you shared with us. I did. I believe that. There's all these, all the things that are just stacking on there. Okay. So less than that, they just clearly passed. And they have all the regulations that they're trying to look at. Okay. And I'm saying, well, this is unenforceable, but they have this thing there. You know, I mean. Lexington emulate because they passed SMBD communities. But what they passed and what they're proposing to do is not where we want to go, necessarily. Yes. But we will talk about that tomorrow, hopefully. Kim, can I? Please. We had discussed this at our last meeting. Yes, site plan review. We were thinking that maybe for three families, it would be an administrative review by the staff. And for more than three families, it would be administrative review from the board. And the reason for that is, if you say, oh, three family, no site plan review. There's like, oh, I'll build three families. I don't have any site plan review. So there needs to be something at each level so that there's some way to go about doing this. We may need design guidelines for larger buildings eventually, but I think we can write enough guidelines into MBTA communities to get us through site plan review. I don't think we need a 20-page booklet. In terms of the design? In terms of doing site plan review. What? I haven't thought through what they are, but I don't think we need a 20-page booklet to do some site plan review. Are you, sorry, Jean, just so that I'm clear, are you saying we don't need a 20-page booklet on what is reviewed through site plan review or for the residential design guidelines? Residential design guidelines. We have a version of that right now, don't we? But therefore, one and two. We could apply those principles to the larger buildings until we get some. So I don't want us not to, because they're gonna give us something. We're gonna hopefully get something through town meeting. And this is gonna be at least a year before we get residential guidelines for larger buildings. I understand that. Honestly, I don't. I would just like to say that I think architecturally, the guidelines for a one and two family are going to be very different than. Yes, I agree. So I think we should ask for the appropriation. Right, okay. Yeah, I'm saying in the interim. In the interim, I understand. Steve, did you want to weigh in on those three questions on Jay's questions? I think, yeah, we had talked about site plan review for design guidelines. We also have, in addition to residential design guidelines, we also have another set of. We have an appropriation for them. Well, we have an old version from 2015. Right. And an appropriation. It's not particularly useful, yes. Yeah, and I think we are expecting the same IZ. Assuming we can justify it at the scale that we're considering a lot. Anything else from the working group that would be helpful? Those are the main top. I think we've covered a lot of ground here. It's been really very good. It's wonderful to have Steve and Ken there, right? They give us lots of perspective, but it's also good to have this sort of larger conversation, right? Where all of you get to talk to each other and all of you get to listen and ask some more detailed questions. This has been really good for us. I don't know what other people have. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. And then we will open this up very shortly to public comments so that the working group and we can all hear all of your feedback as well, too, very interested in that as well. Richard, I bring up one more thing. Please, go ahead, Ken. We had talked about the group, the MET communities have been having these outreach and community outreach. I thought we, as ARB, was also gonna have our own. We're not planning on that. You don't think it's necessary for it? I wanna talk a lot about ourselves. No, we had talked about how once the recommendations are made to the Redevelopment Board and we review and vote to recommend action or not and work through those items for town meeting that we absolutely will need to create public engagement pieces and whether opportunities and whether that occurs through precinct meetings or through some other space, we haven't identified that. But we will hold our own. We will hold our own. Either our own or again, like I said, I really believe this is a we. So whether or not the Redevelopment Board can certainly lead those, but I would certainly welcome and love to have some of the members of the working group as part of that, as much as you would like to as we bring this forward in its final. In its final. Okay. And also, the last thing I wanna say is being on this new working group community, everybody that's been working on that is doing a lot of work and spending a lot of time. I'd like to congratulate and thank you guys for doing that. It has been great seeing you guys do all that work. And I don't wanna say it's not underappreciated. And I'll add to that, I have a very big thank you to Claire and her staff because they also make those sorts of things possible. And things like due date, all the kinds of support we're getting from the DEI division to be able to do the kind of community outreach that we've done and are gonna continue to do in the summer. That, thank you Claire and the rest of the staff. I would just say it's one final thing. I mean, we're taking a lot of information back, obviously. And I think if the next version doesn't get you to enough units, you need to think about pulling back off Mass Ave and Broadway more. Because a lot of those streets already have a lot of freeze and floors on them. And there are some streets not in this zone that have four floors and sixes on them. So I think there's probably a way to do that a little bit too. Great. Thank you very much. So with that, we will close the work session agenda item number five. And I will move to opening up Open Forum. So at this time, we'll invite any members of the public joining us this evening to please raise your hand. I will recognize you with an opportunity to speak. Thank you so much. We'll move the microphone over there. I'll ask you to please come to the microphone, introduce yourself by your first, last name and address. And you will have up to three minutes to address the board. So please. Again, it's not going to project. It's just to pick up where you see them at. Thank you. All right, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all very much for all your work. I'm excited to see what's going on here. Some comments and one question. I wanted to know what you said about not deeply joining the idea of three families. I read a really interesting post from the Harvard Center on Joint Housing Studies today talking about how even in high price and desirable areas, three families are immediately able to ownership, particularly for immigrants, who frequently pool various family members by a three family, living one way or the other two. And they talked about how important it is to preserve and renovate these older three families and the construction of them should also perhaps encourage. I think the only thing that three families do is adhere to one of the recommendations of the Unite guidelines, which is to build the importance of the aesthetics and the scale and the style of the community. So I think they have a role to serve in serving Americans as they live forward. I also want to say, I hope we don't go too far down the road of holding up Lexington as a guide. Lexington has three times our land area, two birds on population, half our housing, and so it's a weird, so it's something to look at. They've obviously come up with beyond, but I'm not sure that we should model too much of what we'll do on them. I also want to bring up the fact that several residents have put a lot of work into creating alternate maps and they seem not to really be considered. I know that you guys are on a track and to start reading something that's completely different, really implementation of a different direction. But some of the maps that I've seen are very, very interesting. I think one of the ones that Ted deals has worked on. And we do a little bit about what you talked about about putting some of this back, spreading it out into other neighborhoods, kind of sharing the pain of getting this into various parts of town. I think it would be really worthwhile to take a look at these. You know, maybe as a whole, they're not great, but maybe there are bits and pieces of them that could augment what people are just doing with their map. These are not maps that have been tossed off, so there's a good bit of work that's gone into that. And my final piece of question, we have resolution design guidelines that are voluntary, but we also have design standards which are not voluntary. They are to minor standard requirements. And since all of this could be by right, with those design standards for 2018, would they still be doing the standards that we've been using? What's an example of a design standard? They were design standards for commercial areas. Right. They're old, and I don't think they're referred to here at all, but I don't know. Right. I believe for guidelines as well, they may use the word standards, but they are not part of our zoning code, and they are not part of any regulatory requirement. So, yes, they may be named something differently, but they are currently not part of the environmental design review criteria or the special permit conditions. Yes. So there's not really a lot. We do now have in the zoning bylaw rules on transparency and other things for first floor. Those should remain in effect even if there's an overweight district. But in terms of form related to architectural style, et cetera, those style is not currently. Okay, Mr. Peele's maps are attached to the working group agenda for tomorrow night. If anyone would like to take a look at that. No, we haven't seen any. Thank you. Next. I just want to read the description of the town website that indicates about the urban ecological framework. The urban planning for the redevelopment welcomes Tufts University graduates to the researchers to present their findings on an urban ecology framework in the town of Arlington. The framework is planned in old Arlington, which its goals for the people are land management. It also identifies opportunities to enhance habitats and urban landscapes that focus on the university. It tells researchers, you know, I saw all of the towns and lands that we've done and the gaps, they suggested best practices and et cetera. So I'm mentioning this because we're talking about site management here. And I'm wondering if this can be an opportunity to work in the concepts of the ecological framework that the environmental planner was talking about. Again, I was very interested in working in where we trees go, where we only space go, where are we, what are the pollinator verbs, the small ones, those sorts of concepts. There's one for the water company in the future. I'm wondering if this might be taken in this framework and perhaps David could have some, maybe have some of a few representatives for the more environmental-oriented issues between the environmental space and the conservation issue to talk about. That's the need for protecting the businesses and the business and the industrial districts as well as allowing for a buffer or parcel or two to allow for commercial growth in the future. And I also just wanted to say that at a previous ARB meeting, I heard an ARB member, Gene Benson, refer to 15-minute cities or 15-minute neighborhoods and I am involved by that idea. And the idea that everything that you need to be within a 15-minute or half-mile walk of your home is, I think, really desirable for these new neighborhoods that we're going to be building upon. And so within these neighborhoods that the good folks on the MBTA community's working group are imagining, we could have walkable access to jobs, parks, schools, banks, medical facilities, libraries, art studios, theaters, cafes, art galleries, restaurants, a farmer's market, bakeries, and florists, gyms, offices, and a wide variety of diverse businesses, including legal, architectural, consulting, landscaping, auto repair, warehousing, construction, investment, personal care, animal daycare, et cetera. And this is a sustainable vision, one that would reduce reliance on single occupancy vehicles and is in keeping with the base attendance of the MBTA community's housing act. And I think that when the chair of the ARB used the word vibrant, that's what I imagine is being floated. And I also hope that some of this needed new housing that's going to be developed as a result of the work of the MBTA community's working group is permanently affordable. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. I mean, I think the point to make, and Susan, the important point to make, and Susan, you reminded me of it, is there are a lot of sections of the zoning by-law that get activated when there's environmental design review, special permits. Well, since we're gonna get rid of those in the MBTA overlay district, at some point before we go to town meeting, we're going to have to go through the zoning by-law and see what we're gonna have to amend so that those things will also be applicable when it's not through environmental design review. It may be like public shade trees for total residential buildings and inclusionary zoning. So we will have to go through and see what is tied to special permits and environmental design review that we'll need to modify in the zoning by-law. Thank you, Jean. Did I see one more person? Please. Hi, I'm Brian McBride. I'm a member of the Open Space Committee and recently a member of the Conservation Commission. And the Open Space Committee recently sent a letter to you all. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it, but I think the main thrust of that letter is that the same kind of consideration that we're giving to commercial aspects of this development ought to be given to Open Space in the districts that we're talking about. This is a critical part of a livable environment. And it's one of the reasons we have successful districts like the Center today, right? You can go to Kit-Stan Cafe and sit outdoors, right? You can walk over and have a coffee from butternut at the Jason Russell House, right? This is how people mix together. This is why people move to our length of ways, green and sleepy, as open spaces. There's no reason you can't have a large building next to that open space, right? But if we have a wall of commercial and retail and residential buildings down Mass Ed, and we've seen some of these buildings, I'm concerned about them, right? They come right up to the street. I'm concerned about the zero setback that I saw on one of the graphs. Not an architect or designer, so I'm not sure even what it means. But the concern is you don't, if you don't have a livable environment, and that means the district interspersed with small parks, with places you can sit and enjoy the trees and the sunshine, where you can meet neighbors, this 15 minute district that you were talking about, right? I think this is an important part, and I'm not hearing it yet in the discussion today. So I really ask that we consider Open Space, community connections, a support of habitat and nature, some of the creatures moving back and forth from parcel to parcel. We have a great opportunity to make Arlington a wonderful place with additional density, but also green and open spaces built into that plan. And we really think that we should build this in now. It's gonna be too late, right? If we make large buildings and five-story apartment buildings, and then later on say, gosh, where's the open space? It's gonna be too late to turn back. So I wish we would add that to our planning right now, and I'll give you a consider that. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. Would anyone else like to? Cameron Coleman, 12 Whitmore Street, also town meeting member of precinct six. One or two questions and comments. Has anybody on this board asked or tried to answer the question, given a plot of land, or given some constraints, what is the cheapest that you could construct units of housing? We don't typically answer questions. We'll take any comments you have and then we'll be able to address those later. Oh, okay. I guess what I see, and I also read it in the 3A guidelines, there's no consideration of affordability, or shall I say token consideration only. And I guess what I see happening is Arlington turning into a golden jaded ghetto where you will build lots of housing. It will be very expensive and only those who can afford those very expensive prices will be able to live here. And I don't think that's the community we should be trying to build. Thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else like to make any comments? All right, so. At this time, I'll close open forum and we will move to agenda item number seven, which is new business. Claire, did you have new business to share with us? No, I have no new business to share. I was just trying to think of some. I have the MVCA working groups meeting as tomorrow evening, and I believe we've moved the location. They'll be held at the Arlington Police Department in their community room. As we move forward in the summer and different vacations and things, we still have a lot of work to do. So we decided to move to a location where we could have a hybrid meeting or allow for people to participate remotely. Great, thank you very much. And I'll open it up to the board. Steve, anything under new business? The evolution of Cambridge is affordable housing overlay, but I'll leave it at that. Okay, great. Thank you, Jean. No new business. Ken? A while back, I did ask about the status of our new projects. Yes. I don't want to add Ellen. Claire and I just talked about that before the meeting started. Okay. So that is... When you have a chance, okay? I'm not saying I need the next week. I just want to know where the status is or some of the stuff. Understood. And that's all. All right. No, I mean, if you're pressing it, other things, do that first. Don't, no. I'll put that to the bottom of your list. I will sleep. Yeah. How about that? Thank you. I did want to just talk about next steps. So in terms of timing, we have two more meetings before the August 28th meeting where we will most likely start our warrant article. Well, we'll have to do one article review that night and identify the final wording for the warrants and then move into the hearings. So is there... Sanjay, I don't know if there is a sense of when the working group, if you would like to come back and chat at one of our two July meetings, whether July 10th or I think the other one is the 24th. Let me just pull that up so I can... I think honestly, like next week is 4th of July. I think it's going to be hard for us to come back and have anything... I mean, if we want to continue the discussion we've had tonight, we can do that in July 10th. I don't think we're going to have much more meaningful to look for you to iterate between now and then. I think it makes probably more sense for us to come back on the 24th. Well, let's plan on that. Perfect. All right. Great. And with that, I will see if there's a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Some second, dude. We'll take a vote starting with Steve. Jean, Ken, and Hamias as well. Thank you all for joining us this evening.