 I have, wow, 10 people already attending. How many? 10, 11, keeps going up. All right. The chair notes the time is 6.02. I call this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals to Order. My name is Steve Judge, a ZBA chair. I want to welcome everyone to this meeting. We'll begin with the roll call of the ZBA members and panels for tonight's meeting. Steve Judge is present. Mr. Craig Meadows. Present. Mr. David Sloveter. Present. Ms. Sarah Marshall. Present. Ms. Hilda Greenbaugh. Present. The quorum is present. Also attending the public hearing tonight is Mr. Rao Wachilla, Planner for the Town, Ms. Chris Brestra, Planning Director for the Town, and we expect Mr. Rao Mora, Building Commissioner to also attend. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extended by chapter two of the Acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 48 for the general laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare, the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 48, in article 10, Special Permit Grinding Authority of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff and they may be viewed via the town of Amherst's YouTube channel and ZVA webpage. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or to gather additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen or by pressing pound nine on their phone. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where the information about a project and input from the public is gathered followed by a public meeting for each. The public meetings portion is generally, is where the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time that will decide upon the applications tonight, each petition is heard by the board as distinct and evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of the hearing to file a decision. For a variance, the board has 100 days from the date of filing of the variance request to file its decisions. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed in the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there's a 20 day appeal period for an agreed party to contest the decision with a relevant judicial body and superior court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of deans to take effect. Tonight's agenda, minutes approval of the, our consideration of approval of the minutes from January 11th, ZBA FY20, 24-10, Archipelago Investments, LLC, requests for a variance from the conditions of section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw to reduce the required amount of non-residential space on the first floor of a proposed mixed-use buildings from 30 to 10% gross floor area due to hardships created from soil conditions, topography, and latte at Gould Way and Lannan Lane, MAP 25B, parcel 52 and 58, BVC, Village Center Business Zoning District. A public meeting on ZBA FY2009-08, Vivian Addison and Alec Eric Travis request to satisfy conditions three and four to allow for the issuance of a building permit upon review of the updated site plan. The request is to construct a single family residence and a detached garage by right on the second of two flag lots approved in ZBA FY2009-08, upon approval of the submitted plan by the ZBA. There'll be a general public comment period on matters not before the board tonight. Other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours in adjournment. The first order of business is consideration of the minutes from January 11th, public hearing. Are there any discussions regarding the minutes? Yeah, I wanna say something, but again, I've got a split screen here. Can I talk? Yes, go ahead, Gould. I will sign these minutes because I was at the meeting, but I have a very hard time. Finding on the conditions for things that weren't our purview. I think that it would have been better just to sign on to the items on which we had jurisdiction and not preempt the planning board for whatever they might wanna put there. But I will sign it because I was there, but I think on a more contentious issue, it might get us into trouble because we hadn't, things are up regarding the rest of the site. We weren't really asked to look at, yet we made findings that might not match what the planning board comes up with. I just wanted to put that up for another time. That just address the issues that we're supposed to address in whatever decision we make. Any other comments? If there are no other comments, I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes for the January 11th ZBA meeting. So I have such a motion. Ms. Marshall moves. Is there a second? Second. Mr. Slobber, there are seconds. It's moved and seconded. Is there any discussion regarding the motion? If not, the vote occurs on the motion to approve the minutes. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows, oops, you're muted, Craig. I was not at that meeting, so I have to abstain. Mr. Slobber. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Ms. Greenbaugh. Aye. The vote is four in favor, zero opposed and one abstention. The vote passes and the minutes are approved. We have two more action items tonight. The first is a public hearing on a variance and the second is a public meeting to review a site plan pursuant to a previously approved special permit. Are there any disclosures from board members regarding either of these two items? Yes. Go ahead, Ms. Greenbaugh. My advice of Mr. Mora and Ms. Brestrup, I called the other commission this morning and they told me to disclose that I have no financial interest in this project or in any other archipelago project and I have no connection to archipelago that I can act fairly and impartially on this decision and I have filed this disclosure with the dunk work and the tongue council. All right, thank you. Are there any other disclosures? All right, the first item is ZBA FY 2024-10 Archipelago investments, LLC, requests for a variance from conditions of section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw to reduce the required area of non-residential space on the first floor of a proposed mixed use building from 30 to 10% gross floor area due to hardships created from soil conditions, topography and lot shape at Gould Way and Lanin Way map 25B parcels 52 and 58 BBC Village Business Center zoning districts. I'd like to review the submissions that we've received on this matter. The applicant submissions include ZBA FY 2024 application form, the same ZBA FY 2024-10 project narrative, existing conditions prepared by Randall Eisner dated 522-2022, a conceptual site plan prepared by Moda Studios, no date, conceptual sketch prepared by Moda Studios, conceptual renderings, aerial images from 52, 62, 85, and 2012, results of soil evaluation and soil logs prepared by Alan E. Weiss dated 11, 29, 2022, soil contamination report prepared by Lyons Witton PG LSP dated 9, 13, 2022 and wetlands delineation prepared by Wendell Wetland Services, Ward Smith, dated 5, 5, 2022. They requested waivers from the landscape plan, lighting plan and sign plan. We also have a staff submission of a draft project application report, dated 2 to 24. In addition, we've had public comments from Chris Hoke on the eighth, Geneva Schmidt on the eighth, Ann Rosenthal on the eighth, Gustavo Oliveira on the seventh, Ira Brick on the seventh, as public comments all within form of emails to the board. Were there any other, Rob, Mochila, is there any other submissions that need to be noted? Mr. Chair, I received prior to this meeting five more email comments that I'm gonna forward to the board right now during this meeting, but if you'd like, I can read the names of those individuals that would be helpful. Yeah, please. So the first one was received today, February 8th at 449 p.m. from Ari Nepp. We have another one at 525 from Cheryl Waxler. We have another one at 529 from Anna Martini. And then we have a comment from Nina Barman, who's a doctor at 551 p.m. That's it. And you're gonna forward those to all of us via email, so. Yep, I'm gonna do that right now just so everybody has those comments in their possession. During the course of the meeting. Great. Yep. A quick note to the board. Tonight's first matter is a request for a variance and variance is something we don't do very often. State laws require us that to grant a variance, we need to make four very specific findings. These findings are laid out in the draft project application report. This request is to grant a variance from the bylaw section 3.325, requiring mixed use building in the village center that must have 30% of the first floor square footage assigned to non-residential use and instead just require 10%. We're not considering the entire project. If we approve the variance, the project will go to the planning board for site plan review. I wanna make sure that we understand the board's mandate under this case, under the bylaw is to deal just with the variance. We're not looking at the whole project. So if there are any questions regarding that, I'm gonna have the applicant provide a presentation. Then I'm gonna ask Rob Mora to just run through the history of section 3.325 of this project and also talk a little bit about variances if we have questions. So I know this is something that I don't think any of you, I have done a couple of variances. I don't think anybody else on the board, maybe Ms. Greenbaum has done variances in the past, but I wanna make sure we understand what our role is in this case. So are there any questions regarding the procedure tonight? Ms. Greenbaum? When did you wanna hear about our site visit before I asked? It's right, there wasn't one that was scheduled, so you took it on yourself to go up and so this would be the place to do that. Thank you. I thought it was important. Yep, go ahead, yep, give us your site plan. Impressions. I went out at noon time today with staff and we went through the entrance to the site off Gould Way and Lanin Lane and noted that it can also be accessed either from West Bay Road or West Street Route 116. The site is split into two parcels, which are separated by a wooded wetland area. The east part of the parcel will be a parking lot and that's on the corner of Route 116, visible to the public. It's raised from West Street and Lanin Lane and is relatively high and appears to be dry and flat. The parcel to the west where the building is supposed to be built for this West Bay Road, it slopes from the corner of West Bay Road and Gould Way and the grade change of this corner is noticeable. Lanin Lane is proposed to be extended via a driveway to connect with Grambling Road with a sidewalk along the edge of the drive providing for that pedestrian access from Applewood to Atkins Market. And they will also be parking along the driveway loaded close to the proposed building locations. It appears that retaining walls will be required to retain the earth where the building will be built and where the dog park and play area are proposed and the dog park and play area are also on Bay Road frontage from what I can tell. This is still also, there will still also be a retaining wall needed along the parking area to the east. There's a huge wooded wetland to the south of where the building will be built. It appears to be undisturbed. Atkins Market is close by and the well within walking distance of the new building. We observed wooded stakes in the grounds throughout the West parcel, but weren't sure if they represented the building location or what they were. There was also a red flag flying off one of the trees whether that was marking anything, I don't know people. There's a huge solar ray on Hampshire College. Poverty across on West Bay Road on the, and since that phase of south, it's directly at the same level as the windows would be of the apartment buildings and that could be caused glare, not so about that. It did look like the parking was at some distance where the residential building was gonna be built. I wondered if that might impact distances for children or older people to get from their building to the car. Just one thing I wanted to know about that. And the rest of them mentioned that they come up and support it. And I will forward this to Rob right now. Thank you, Ms. Greenbaum. Are there any other, I also drove by the site. I have no additional comments here on what Ms. Greenbaum said, add nothing to that. Does anybody else have any comments on your own independent site visit? All right. So I think this is the time to ask the petitioner to make, provide his or her presentation. Could we, who's gonna represent the petitioner? So I believe the applicant is Kyle Wilson. If he's in attendance, could you please raise your hand so I can identify you? All right, so I'm gonna promote them to panelists, just accept this invitation so you can join the panel. Good evening. Good evening. Can we get your name and address for the record? Sure, Kyle Wilson from Archipelago Investments. We're at 37 South Pleasant Street. Go ahead, Ron. I was gonna ask Kyle, is there anybody else from your team that you want me to promote as well so they could contribute to your presentation? Yes, Mark Pobrowski should be in the audience. All right, he's gonna panelist invite right now. And what I wanted to do to start was to, I'm gonna go back through all this. I wanted to give the floor to Mark Pobrowski to start our attorney who works on a lot of land use cases and can hopefully provide some opening comments on the variance process. Mr. Pobrowski, you're muted. So if you unmute yourself and then provide your name and address for the record in your affiliation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Attorney Mark Pobrowski, my office is in Concord, Massachusetts in Damon Mill. Okay, so do you wish to proceed, Mr. Pobrowski? Sure, Mr. Chairman, I listened intently as you described the board's infrequent experiences with variances under chapter 48, section 10. So perhaps I can give the board members a primer here on how the statute is intended to work. The first prerequisite of the four that you mentioned is that the petitioner must show that there is some sort of peculiar soil condition shape or topographical feature. That's a narrow structure for the variance statute, but it was amended in 1976 to narrow accordingly. So there must be a showing that the soil condition shape or topographical constraints on the property or the structure, which is also mentioned in the statute, that's a threshold inquiry. The second is that there must be financial hardship or hardship financial or otherwise the statute says. And generally the hardship has to be related to the unique circumstance. So for example, in this case, the property's frontage on Gould Way has a topographical decline from 282 feet to 262 feet. I think Mr. Wilson will testify that the cost of putting fill in that area in order to make commercial space work represents a premium cost and a premium cost is a hardship. And so there has to be that relation. The court has called that relationship symbiotic and that's from a case involving a water town. The third prong of the test is whether or not the grant of the variance would result in substantial detriment. And the fourth prong of the statute is whether or not the grant of the variance would derogate from the purposes of the bylaw. The courts have subsequently called those two tests, third and fourth tests, two sides of the same coin. So if there's no detriment, there's no derogation. If there is detriment, there is derogation, but it's one finding for all practical purposes. So I think let's revisit those prongs as they apply in the instant matter. And I'll ask Mr. Wilson if he wants to put up anything by sharing screen. I could pull something up. Let's see here, let me pull the... If you pull up those two things we shared this morning, Kyle, with the pink 1030. Yeah, here it comes. This is the proposal with 10% the pink ground floor area shown as fronting on Gould Way. And it needs to be contrasted with something I'm sure he'll put up next, which is 30% on Gould Way. I don't have that, sorry, Mark. I just have this one. Okay, well, imagine if you will, the pink line extending roughly to the... That's exactly right where it goes to. So note that the topographical constraints along Gould Way, it's 282 feet at the back of the pink and it's 268 feet at the front. That's a 14 foot change in grade. Obviously the building is gonna have to accommodate that in order to work. That represents a premium cost. I think we start from the presumption here that the only place where commercial use is viable, economically viable, on the first floor of this building is going to be along Gould Way. The building is perpendicular to Bay Road with regard to the two individual components there that you see with the wetlands separating them. And then there's a substantial grade as well along the long stretch to the West that goes from 295 to 268 at the corner of Gould Way, another topographical constraint, not to mention an economic constraint. In order to have workable, feasible, ground floor, non-residential, you're gonna have to have access and it's gonna have to be visible from some public place in order to attract customers. The only place that really fits that bill is Gould over on the right hand side. So extending that pink area, which is 10% of the total GFA to the line that Mr. Wilson pointed his cursor to representing 30% is going to involve premium costs associated with the uneven terrain there. And I think there may be other constraints as well that have to do with the statutory prerequisite soil conditions and the shape of the lot. Mr. Wilson can fill you more in about wetland areas if he'd like to. And then, so those are the first two problems as we think they apply here. The third question is detriment. Will the grant of the variance result in substantial detriment? I don't see how that would be the case. It doesn't look like it will result in noise, traffic. Certainly parking is more available at that location than elsewhere. And then the fourth prong of the test is no detriment, no derogation. So, Mark, I could- Mr. Wilson, can you describe the project? Sure. I'll start with the plan that we have here, which is the conceptual site plan, which shows the site, which is two parcels, which spans from West Bay Road, downcooled, Lannan over to West Street. So there's, and frontage on Rambling Road as well. The site is bifurcated by wetlands, which are shown here. You can see the line of the wetlands here. Those wetlands extend to the south. And it is bound by Bay Road East West and West Street North South. There's parking on the Eastern side. There is residential on the Western side. We've extended the land and proposed extending the Lannan Lane street that went in when the roundabouts went in 10 years ago or so. And making a pedestrian connection that would allow anybody from Rambling Road or from campus to get over and get across into Atkins without going across Bay Road. I wanted to show some site conditions. So I'll pull up what we've submitted to you, which is from Lions Witton and OHI Engineering. This is the plan that was done after we had the wetlands flag to investigate lead arsenic and to begin investigations for groundwater and its heights. So you can see some of the stakes that you might have saw on site were related to some of these locations and test locations. So extensive testing has been done for lead arsenic on site and any other pesticides outside of the wetlands. There's a, I don't mean to get it too far into that, but the analysis on how high the lead arsenic was and what the criteria that we have to follow in order to put residential on the site is included further down to show that effectively every foot of soil everywhere outside of the wetlands has to be removed from the site in order to begin a residential development of any scale. Excuse me, Mr. Judge, we're not looking at the plan that Kyle is talking about. Yeah, I'm confused too. I don't think we have it. I'm sorry, I'm sharing the wrong portion. I'm sorry about that. Thank you, Mr. Judge. Sorry about that, everybody. Here we go. Apologies. So here's the plan from Lions Witton OHI Engineering. This is the locations of all the test bits and tests that were done for lead arsenic. The green line is the wetlands location. And as I stated, there's extensive lead arsenic throughout the site. Everything outside of the wetlands, a foot of soil outside of the wetlands on the entire site will have to be removed in order to develop a residential on the site because of its history as an orchard. I'm gonna show you, I will show you the survey. Here. That will... Sorry guys, I'm having trouble with you guys here. Here we go. So can you see the survey? Yeah, we see it appears to be a survey. It's got lines along. It seems to be delineating the wetland. It's wet. And then there's some topographical indication. And I believe those also show the test bit locations that were reflected in some of the stakes that you saw. And so you can see the topo as it drops from west to east and from north to south along Gould and Bay Road. I will also show you, let's see this. I'm gonna... Okay, so this will help. Now I can just share. You guys can see my actual screen here. So now you see the survey again. I apologize for... Technical difficulties. So yes, you can see all the flags that they put in for the wetlands that define the wetland that divide the two sites. You can see the topo that drops down and you can see our test bit locations for groundwater and any contamination. You can see the site drops precipitously from Bay Road down to Gould, where Bay and Gould meet and also drops where Lannan and West Street meet. Here is our survey that shows the actual acreage of each. The ownership, transformer pads, some additional information from an ALTA survey in terms of overhead utility lines, et cetera. Again, shows the wetlands and the extent of the wetlands. We have an image that we sent to you that showed the historical use of the site. So here is 1952. Obviously in the midst of orchards everywhere, here is 1962 with orchards, 1985 with orchards and then 2012 with less orchards and with the creation and the construction up. We have the soil analysis done by Cold Spring Environmental which went over the whole site and took the work that OHI had done, the wetlands work that had been done and did additional work to look at soil and the groundwater. Groundwater very high. Our ability to, anybody's ability to develop this site and take it from undeveloped to developed and manage stormwater regs in a place with high groundwater is significantly limited which is why you see the separation on the site between building on one side and parking on the other. All the stormwater will be retained underneath the parking. We've got our wetlands work that was done back in 22 that did the delineation initial sketch to show us where that wetland, the extent of the wetlands and then we have our narrative which kind of shows our history with Hampshire College on the site began a conversation way back when I've looked at the site many different ways. I've looked at the site before the recent zone changes after and the other additional thing is a rendering, a sketch that was done, a concept sketch to show the building from Lannan as looking from the east towards the west. And then we put together a concept rendering to do the same which is to look from the east to the west on Lannan Lane to think about how the west side of Lannan can get engaged deal with stormwater and the building can be in front of us on the gold side. And I think with all of that, I will pull up this site plan, this building plan and try to stop talking and take any questions. The first question is, can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is for the numbered units? What, how much parking you're gonna have and are the, is the parking for the residents that's in that separate second parcel? So they're the walkway, they have to walk over to the building from the parking spot. Is that what that parking is for? Yes, so there's parking on both parcels. There is immediate parking next to the buildings and then there's a bank of parking that is on the opposite side of the parking that Atkins has. The issue in front of us is conceptual in terms of ground floor retail and how that translates to the building above and around it. So we don't have a final number of units yet. We have the concept of it is that it's one building, is that it is mixed use and that the mixed use is in the optimal location, which is along Gould way. And so as this plan shows, the grade is 295 where rambling and Bay meat and it's 268 where Gould and Bay meat. So this building would have to step down and deal with the grade, you know, almost 30 feet of grade change going from west to east in some manner to make grades work and ramps work and slopes and pedestrian access and all those things work. And as Mark Barbrowski mentioned, it's 282 at the Gould and Lannaner section drops to 268 again at Gould and Bay. So same thing, managing that is still to be determined in terms of how the site and the topo could be reconciled and make all the first four spaces work. There's definitely have to be different slab heights in the building as it steps down to make the entire building accessible. Okay. So what I'd like to do is, Sarah, I know, Ms. Marshall, I know you have a question just a second. What I'd like to do is if the applicants are done with their presentation, I thought it'd be helpful for Mr. Mora to go through a bit of a history of the 30% requirement, a bit of a history on how the history of this parcel, what's been contemplated and then any comments you wanted to make on the four, the four findings we have to have. I mean, I think we've already talked about that and it's been in need of the project application for it as well, but I think those three things would help to frame the discussion and then we can have questions, both the applicant and the staff at the same time. So Mr. Mora, do you wanna be comfortable in doing that? Sure, thank you, Mr. Judge. And I'll leave the variance piece aside for now. I think Attorney Bobowski covered that really well and I think we'll go back to that later with questions. But as far as the mixed-use building use classification, section 3.325, it was amended a couple of years ago, almost just over two years ago now, the by-law was amended to require 30% of non-residential space on the ground floor prior to that, although there was a mixed-use classification, there wasn't any requirement for minimum amount of square footage. So we often saw very small spaces in the buildings that were proposed. In one case, I think as little as maybe 180 or 200 square feet, that really drove us to creating some sort of limited minimal number of square footage required for those non-residential areas. So that's how that came to be and there's a little bit of criteria in the by-law related to the mixed-use building. Now, this particular site, Mr. Wilson, developer of Archipelago did come meet with staff initially with a proposal for an apartment building development of the site, which is also a allowed use, it's by special permit, probably the only other residential development type that would be considered on this parcel in a large building design. The apartment building classification does allow for more than one building, but only allows up to 24 units in each building. So to get the density and the coverage of the seven acres or so with an apartment building, we end up with multiple buildings, seven or eight buildings in order to put together the proposal that the developer was looking for. So in reviewing that, my response in particular, and I think together with staff was, why not come up with something better than a bunch of little apartment buildings, 24 unit apartment buildings with no commercial space at all. It really wasn't in keeping with the build center definition for this area or contributing at all to the expanding the build center concept. So in those discussions, the developer was very receptive and went back and revisited the idea of the mixed use building. Definitely came back and let us know about the challenges with the topography and the filling that would be needed in order to create the parking for all the commercial space that would be required in this size building. And we ended up in this place where 10%, reduction to 10% is what would work for their development proposal. And we thought, why don't we talk about this with the zoning board, apply for a variance. And our feeling at this point is that 10% is better than no commercial space in the village center. Preferred not to see that other design and really want to explore this option and see if, between the zoning board and the developer, they could come up with a plan that would work. And that's pretty much how we got here. Thank you. Thank you. So this is the time for the board to ask questions of the applicant or of staff. And Ms. Marshall, I know you had your hand up and I want to return to you first. Okay, thank you. So I have two. Did you consider building the units on the lot that you're showing for parking? It looks like an easier, flatter part of this, flatter half of the site. So that's one question. And two, and then, so this is partly legal, maybe not entirely legal, but every builder makes choices that affects the cost of the project. So given that it is, I think it is possible for you to either level this part of the site that drops off so much, or do some kind of multi-level structure. How do we know at what point the increased cost is a hardship as opposed to just any other choice that a builder might make? I appreciate that. For the first question, the site has very unique subsurface conditions for groundwater and the groundwater on the western portion is very high, higher than the section on the east. The reality is the only real section where subsurface stormwater can be retained is to the far east of the eastern site. So you can kind of see on our plan, there's a little hatched area where the stormwater would go. So that stormwater is a guide in some ways in terms of where the building goes and where the parking goes. Also, it has been made clear to us that the view from Atkins to the south is very important to Atkins. And we appreciate that and understand that. And as we looked at options and how to balance all of the diverse things that we're trying to balance on this site, it soon became clear that to do a mixed use building that the western location was the best place to do that. Relative to the question of grade or what we could or could not choose to do, I don't have a real good answer to that. I think that what we're trying to, I think that the 10,000 square feet of retail that is 30% is a very large footprint. So finding a location for 10,000 square feet on Gould Way has always been a challenge since we began considering to try to fit this puzzle together. So it's just a challenge. I don't know, maybe I could answer your question some other way if that's not clear enough. I don't know. It's a trade-off when we're balancing all the other big items in terms of how to balance the building and make the stormwater work and remove all the soil that's contaminated. Can I add something, Mr. Chair? Yes, that can do. Yeah, I appreciate that Atkins likes the view. Well, sure. But if it were possible to put the building down there, that makes most sense from, I mean, to me, more sense as a location for the commercial part. Of your project because it would be closer to Atkins. It would be closer to their parking. So I guess I would need to see the illustration of the groundwater flow or your stormwater management. I don't quite understand why that means you have to have the parking where you're suggesting it, but I'll leave that for now. Just to point out, like we haven't done a full analysis. We haven't done all of those things. Those things require a bunch of time that we would do subsequent to this. So we don't have a, that's why the renderings are a little, are very conceptual because we're, we haven't taken that to the point where we have a stormwater management plan completed. Mr. Wettchill, I noticed you had your, Ms. Marshall, are you done? That's enough for now. Thank you. Mr. Wettchill, go ahead. I was going to ask a clarifying question of what Ms. Marshall said. And Mr. Mora could probably answer this question the best, but in terms of the mixed use, both uses commercial and residential have to be part of the same building structure. Is that correct, Mr. Mora? Well, not necessarily, but they're proposing one building in this concept. So could the applicant technically separate those two uses into two different buildings on the same property if they wanted to? They could not be, well, they could, but the second building might be defined as an apartment building and have the limit of 24 units, I think is what you're getting to. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. So wouldn't the one mixed use structure in that case, it would be a mixed use structure and then a separate apartment building. The separate apartment building doesn't have a, doesn't have a requirement for non-residential space to it. So you'd be just, so the non-residential space would just be determined by the size of the first mixed use structure. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay, all right. Mr. Sloveter. I just want to clarify something to get a better feel for the size of this project. A reference was made that 30% retail on the first floor would be equal to 10,000 square feet. So that translates, even though all the conceptual drawings only show four floors, my understanding is that the proposal is for a five-story building. So that would translate to 33,000 square feet per floor times five. So is the full square footage of your proposal, 165,000 square feet? Or if not, where are the, what are the numbers? No, the requirement for ground floor is related to the floor plan, the total ground floor floor plan. So the 10,000 square feet comes from 33,000 square foot floor plan times 30% of that, which is roughly 30, 35,000 square feet. Per floor. Per floor. Per floor times five. No, not times five. Times what? Times three or four. The proposal, your overall proposal is for a three or four-story project. Correct. Oh, okay. So it's 35,000 square feet per floor times however many floors you ultimately decide to propose. That is our current approach to seeking a variance to reduce the size of the commercial, correct. Okay. To keep it to 10% from 30%. Thank you. One, I noticed two other features of the plan. There's a dog park and there's some kind of a playground area in the, where they would otherwise have had conceivably had the commercial space or the non-residential space. What are those part of your plan? Is that set part of the plan that you'll propose to the planning board? Oh, Mr. Wilson, you're muted. Yes, sorry. And what we're trying to do there is provide activity and space facing Gould that is a shared amenity that can be shared amongst people on Gould and people in the building. So that's how we would reconcile that grade with external amenity space. And then, so you must have had some general thought of the number of residents and the need for cars. So we're looking at approximately how many parking spaces would you have in front of the building? And then for lack of a better term, the satellite parking in that separate in the second parcel, what are you looking at for that? Is that all for the residents? Is it for another purpose? It's not to help Afghans, obviously, because they have enough parking themselves. So the parking is shown in two different ways. One is along the land and extension, right? So that is limited by the number of cars that we could get there and still have the entrance as it needs to be. And the other is effectively coming up with capacity on parking on the Eastern side, right? And that's gonna be, that capacity is going to be driven by some landscape regulations, going to be determined by how much space between each parking, how much planting are we doing? Are we doing low impact development between the parking spaces? Do those flex a little bit? Do they get shortened? Are we gonna put some parking space on either side? So what we've tried to show here is conceptually that parking would be located, what it would look like approximately 100 some spaces. And obviously there'd be a lot of discussions with the planning board on what that looks like and where that would go and how we would go from there. And then in terms of housing, I think everybody is very well aware of our housing crisis and where we are with housing. So this is the only parcel in South Amherst that's looking to be developed anytime soon in our village center to assist with our housing crisis. So we're looking to have a building that would significantly, that would help with that as best as it could. So I would love to build 300 units there. I don't think, I think it's gonna be less than 200 when all is said and done. And one last question, then I'll go to Mr. Meadows. I mean, one of the rep, the drawings, the conceptual drawings of looking from the parking lot back towards the building, there was some kind of a structure. What is that? I mean, I look at that and think, is that gonna be a walkway with a covered walkway over to the main building? Is that structure, what is that structure? Or what is your thought there? What's the conceptual thought there? I appreciate that. That came from conversations we had with the town, conversations about mixed use, conversations that I think tie into Ms. Marshall's comment about Wain and Wain being a place that is close to Ackens and could communicate direct. And what we're looking to do is have a bus stop slash kiosk slash pavilion. And it's obviously, there's a number of slashes in that description. But the point is, is that it is a place that activates all the new sidewalks that we would build, a place that becomes a center for people to gather, even if you're just meeting in South Amherst, not necessarily to go to Ackens, or not necessarily to come to see us, but maybe you're going across the road to the trails. Maybe you're going to the left to the mountain bike trails. Maybe you're going to visit campus. Maybe you're just meeting somewhere. So looking to make a one story mass timber component that could do multiple purposes, could activate the drive out, could announce South Amherst, could show a trail system, could engage with the trail system folks that are maintaining and activating. So we see it as something that would anchor the sidewalk, the new sidewalk on the South side of Lannan, and provide activity in front of the parking. And that structure is, I mean, what you're talking about is something conceptual, that structure is not on the site plan currently, and you're not committed to that at this point, but it's what you're saying is that's the concept that you have? It is, and it is on the site plan. I'm sorry if I should show my screen again. Yeah, please do. Yeah. I didn't see a structure there. Sorry, so. Oh, that's what that is. I thought that was just marking on the ground. It should have been colored. It should have some color to it. So it's hard to see on this, but that's the concept. And then if I, I'll share the rendering again. Sorry to, this was the rendering that shows that on the left hand side. Okay. All right. Mr. Meadows. I'm in a loss to understand this completely. You have your drawing shows commercial space at 10%. And the rest of the building has residential space on the first floor. Is that my correct? That's correct. So if you're building the same building, where is the hardship? Because you're, you're still building one building. Whether the, that part of the building is residential or part of or large or has more space that's commercial. It's still building the same building. You have no hardship that I can understand in building the building. So, but if you could explain where you think you've got a hardship, I'd appreciate it. You want me to say it, Kyle? Please, thank you. If Mr. Meadows, if you, can you put the picture with the pink of 10%. So the building components that you see in blue are really not feasible economically for mixed use for non-residential space. That's going to be attractive and workable for the public for shopping purposes. It's a non-starter. The only place to put that additional commercial component is taking the pink 10% towards West Bay. And essentially, Kyle, if you can put your cursor on that line, it would end right about there. And that would constitute additional space that would be folded into the math calculation so that it's 30% of the total building. But that last stretch from the existing pink 10% to the line that Mr. Wilson is pointing to is the most expensive piece to build, given the topographical constraints of 282 to 268 as Gould falls towards West Bay. Oh, Mr. Meadows, you're muted. I failed to see the logic in what you're saying. You have a building that you're indicating the building is going to be there. Whether you've got 10% or 30% of that ground floor, you still have the same building. There's no difference in the cost of building it. What you're suggesting to add more space, I mean, we have a building in South Amherst that is really not particularly visible from the road. It doesn't have to be visible for a while. There are signs that indicate what commercial space is in there. Why would this be different? You're not increasing the cost of the building. Go ahead, Mark. No, go ahead. I think the point being made is that obviously to that argument, this whole ground floor could be commercial, right? I think the point Mark is making and the point we're making is that all of that being commercial is not successful commercial. It's tucked behind, it's a place that better supports residential. And the place to support retail, even though there's the best retail in all of Amherst that does everything you ever need right across the street from you at Atkins, the place to do retail is along Gould Way. And this will, and 3,500 square feet or 3,600 square feet of retail don't know what would go there on Gould Way as it currently stands. I certainly don't know what would go in 10,000 square feet of retail next to Atkins. I think we've seen what has happened in other projects with too much retail in the ground floor. And I think that this, what we're trying to, with the current bylaw as it stands, with the mixed use bylaw as Rob Mora has described, with the apartment bylaw as it is described, this is a very important parcel. It's been an important parcel for many, many years, many, many plans have shown this as a village center. We're trying to work within the constraints of the current bylaw as it relates to the plans that we've done in the past, many of which if none, if none of which could be built in the current bylaw. So we're trying to come up with a balanced approach that provides a little bit of retail and a lot of housing and come up with a way where that retail has the best chance to be successful. And that's why, as Mark said, the 10% shown on the plan is where we think that that has the best chance, where the grade is flat-ish, where there's not significant ramping, where we don't need a sign to send people down some way and we're swapping out tenants over and over again. That's where we think that the 10% comes into play. But if I could just, Magnif, I think what Mr. Meadows is saying is that if you move the pink area back into the, some of the blue area, even if you don't extend your property, you're building into the, the swale or the, I think he's saying, can you push, if you push this back to some extent, you'd have this, you could get 30, you could get more square footage of commercial space. You'd have to have access on, I guess, lawn and lane as well for the first floor. And then you have the rest of your space residential, but you have to have that pink space expanded in that first building at least or maybe even reconfigure those buildings in a little bit to provide the 30% without having to build on that sloping land. Is that what you were saying, Mr. Meadows? Oh, you're muted, Craig. Exactly. The cost of the building wouldn't change at all. There's no hardship because you don't change the cost of the building. All you're doing is increasing the commercial space. And that area is ripe for additional commercial space. There's very little in that section of town. I think the thing that's not being considered when it is grayed, it's 282 where the pink is. It's 295 where the road comes out. So that land and lane extension goes up 13 feet as it goes across the site. So if we push back 30% in there, either that retail is gonna be buried in the basement because the slab height for this blue section here, the significant is probably eight feet higher than the slab height for the retail. So if we push that pink into this blue, and let's say we took over that whole thing and we kept that slab height the same which works with the street at Gould and Lannana 282, it's gonna be 10 feet lower than the grass out here in the courtyard. So we have significant topography that we're also trying to solve for when we put together this proposal. And that getting access to either deep space, then we'd either have to grade all of this section out in order to get access back there and create a bunch of retail. And I would disagree that there is a shortage of retail in this area. I think that, as I stated, Atkins is amazing retail and almost anything you would put there would be some element of it is being satisfied at Atkins right there. So, but my main point is topography and that the slab heights that need to take place and the step up in slabs to actually make this thing work would make extending the 30% into this back mean you get a basement retail that kind of comes out of the dark and faces Gould way to the East. If we, as Mark Barbrowski mentioned, if we just built additional building, which obviously would be additional cost to the East, then that's sloping down 14 feet. And we're either stepping that down or creating a slab and a berm and retaining walls and a bunch of ramping. So it's not as simple as just taking away apartments and residential units, which we need much more and replacing that with retail because of the topography. So you're suggesting that the area in blue to the north could not be commercial space. The whole thing could be commercial space. I mean, if we would just have to, if we were trying to make this entire 35,000 square feet into active commercial, we would have an approach that first deals with what is the height of the slabs and how are you getting people in and out of all those spaces? And- It just doesn't make any sense to me. If your question is, we'll re-ask your question if you would and I'll see if I can best answer it. Take your pointer and move it to the far north of the building. No, over there. Yes, you were just there. No, north, north. That is north. Excuse me. Then farther west, that area. Okay. The commercial doesn't have to be continuous, does it? No, you could eliminate residential units and put this right behind the Berkshire gas easement that they have over here for the infrastructure that they have along Rambling Road. So that, there's not a easy, there's no direct access to Rambling. There's commercial gas infrastructure that they were just working on and as Apple does their additions over here. So you could replace some of that and then you'd have your commercial access in along Lannan on that side, which to Mark's point is not a commercial area, is not an area that is adjacent to, immediately adjacent to Atkins, is adjacent to Applewood and the Eric Carl Museum. Exactly. All right, that's why I don't see, I don't see where there's a hardship. You've got the same building, you're just relocating the commercial space. Any other questions, Mr. Meadows? No, not right now. Thank you. I'm gonna come get to you in a second, Ms. Greenbaum, but I hear that Chris Brestrup, Ms. Brestrup has her hand up. Thank you. I'd like to talk about a call on her. I just wanted to recognize the fact that when Mr. Wilson came to us to talk about this parcel or these parcels, he showed us a site plan that had eight buildings that were apartment buildings that are allowed by right. They have no commercial space at all and they were scattered throughout the parcel and they took up a lot of space and they had very narrow little spaces between them and it was more like a barracks than a place where people would want to live and that did not have any commercial space at all. In this plan, you have some commercial space, albeit not as much as would normally be required and you also have an efficient use of property because you're putting all of the units in one building and you end up with more open space, more usable open space. So I guess what I'm inquiring is, would it be helpful to see the plan that Mr. Wilson came to us with initially to show what could be built by right here and he wouldn't have any problem with commercial space? I think it could be built by right. I guess Rob Moore would have to confirm that but anyway, I just thought it might be helpful to see that plan. Mr. Wilson, do you have an earlier version that does not involve mixed use building? You're muted, Mr. Wilson. Sure, let me try to pull that up. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, while he's doing that, I'm special counsel to the Berkeley, Massachusetts Planning Board, they're waiting for me. I'm zooming in. I told them actually their meeting was at six o'clock as well. I asked them to take an hour and 15 minutes and let me attend your meeting first. But if there are questions for me, if I'm happy to answer them before I go, but I'm going to have to go shortly. Thank you, Mr. Broski. If there are any questions for Mr. Broski, ask them now and then we can go to the Mr. Wilson's previous plan. Okay. Thank you. May I just correct something I said? I said that apartments would be by right. They're actually by special permit from the zoning board of appeals. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Broski. Good evening to everybody. Thank you, Mark. I think. I'm trying to pull up a plan, Chris. I'm sorry. I don't have that ready. But I think Ms. Brestrup's point was that absent the variance, there's another way of developing the property that has no commercial space. And the town staff reviewed the previous plan, which would have to go to special permit. And so it could be conditioned. It could be due to the judgment, subject to the judgment of our board as to how it would be developed. But there would be a plan without any commercial space at all, if you didn't grant the variance. That's your point. Is it not, Ms. Brestrup? While we're waiting for you, Mr. Wilson, to pull that up. Ms. Greenbaum and Ms. Marshall and Mr. Sloveter all have indicated they have a question. So who was first up there? I think Ms. Greenbaum, you were first up. Yeah, I've been waiting for a while here, supporting what Mr. Meadows said. When we first saw mixed use buildings in town meeting, I believe we intended to have 100% of the street level of any building be commercial. The downtown needs different kinds of things besides bars and restaurants. And the same thing here in this location, Atkins does not have a duty follow. Atkins does not have a drug store. Atkins does not have a bookstore. Somebody else suggested a daycare center for the employees of Clownshire College. There are all kinds of things that could go in that space that are not intrusive on the elderly neighbors or the college students being intrusive on them. So where I use this, that could go there, that I lack atkins is food. People need a lot more things than food. And I started to say the 100% ground floor, then it became a 30% of the ground floor. And 30% was real compromise. And we really didn't want it. We wanted a reason to go downtown besides student dormitories that would purchase, borrow and purchase from the restaurants and the kinds of things that are so full, just don't bother going down down floor. And so we've gone from 100% on the street floor to 30%. And I don't think that area needs to go any less because there are uses. And I would say the 10,000 square foot is 10% of the size of 100,000 square foot staff and child. It's a pretty small space. But a few people who are paying a lot less rent than the apartments have gone accost. You put four or five of them together in 30,000 square feet. It's gonna come up to the price of the apartment and make the building more attractive to the people who may wanna live there. I'll probably have something else to say. I can't remember. I'll come back on when I'm ready. All right, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Grimba. Oh, I know what it was. Yep. Visiting the site visit that lot that's just south of the dog park is a pretty flat area. The dog park probably is on the hill. But I think that that area on Gold Road there looked to me pretty flat. And I don't see any reason why you can't have some stores there. I don't see any reason why the parking lot can't be divided and put some commercial there. But my other question would be for Mr. Mora. Reading the section 10 of 40A, what is this variance that they're asking for? It's not use, really. It's just, as Craig said, the land is there. It's whatever you wanna put inside it. Uses that are allowed by our bylaw can be allowed with the variance, but this isn't a use by our bylaws. I don't know how to interpret that section of 40A on variances. A real difference would be you wanna put a gravel pit there instead of a house. That would be allowed. But what is it that they're asking for? They want less of something or more of something else because it's an economic decision, not a land use decision. Mr. Mora? So we actually don't allow use variances, specifically in our bylaw, even though 40A section 10 could allow them if we chose to allow them, our bylaw specifically says no. So it has to be a use that's permittable in the district and mixed use buildings are permitted in the district. So the variance request is a dimensional modification, a dimensional variance. Like height or setback would be, it's that 30%, it's a dimensional variance, not a use variance. Oh, you would call that a dimensional variance from- That's right. You would? Okay. I'm listening. So the variance is on dimension and the justification for that in the applicant's mind is that the topography makes it a hardship to try to construct it. That's the assertion from the petitioner, I think. If he says so, I'm listening. If I'm wrong, not correct me, Mr. Wilson, but I think that's what you were saying to answer Ms. Greenbaum's question. Yes, I think that the site has a number of conditions that make redevelopment difficult, including lead arsenic, groundwater, topography, a number of things that make any new development difficult. Then can you build residential there if it's not, this is what Craig was asking. How can you put residential there if you don't think that you can put commercial there? Convertent. Anyway, I'll sign off, somebody else can talk. All right. Ms. Marshall, I know you've had your hand up for a while and then Mr. Sliver. All right, that's fine. So a couple of things I wonder, Kyle, if you know off the top of your head how the number of units might compare between this proposal and the separate apartment buildings. So that's one question. The other is that I think, well, that does the commercial space have to be contiguous on the inside? I mean, I understand that if the slabs are at different heights then you can't do that, but can you not have basically separate like stores at different heights reachable from the outside? I mean, our main street is like that. It's on a slope and the buildings, you know, march down the slope. So is that possible? And then finally, I think my problem is that I I haven't seen in other sketches like how you've tried to make it work and why other layouts are even more problematic. Like, can you spin? And it looks like two separate buildings to me. I don't understand why I'm calling them one building, but like the Eastern one, can you just spin it 90 degrees and put it down along Bay Road, West Bay Road and have commercial right there. So I mean, I appreciate that it's a difficult site, but I guess I don't have a sense of all, you know how you've tried to make it work. So I'll stop there. And that's a good question to point to the, that's a good question, Ms. Marshall, about trying to identify the difficulty on the site. And that would be helpful. Mr. Wilson, can you speak to that? But you need to be unmute yourself. I promise that'll be the last time that you have to say that. I will show this, which is the survey that shows the wetlands and the topography. Any building that goes on this, whether it's all commercial, all residential, some percentage of one or the other is gonna have to deal with these issues. Once it has any residential, then it's under the purview of the mass TEP laws that are gonna require you to remove a foot of soil from the entire site. So anybody who's proposing any building here that has any component of residential is gonna have that financial hardship in order to begin the process. They're gonna have to remove a foot of soil over the entire site. They're also have to contend with a lot of groundwater that's gonna make the stormwater, which we're proposing would be on this far Eastern side, where you can see the grade pitches down. And the groundwater is, there's the most distance between the groundwater and the top of soil. That's really the only space where groundwater can really be stored unless you build significant retaining walls out on the Gould and Bay Road intersection to increase the ability to separate from the groundwater to soil height. So if we went away tomorrow and somebody else began this process of trying to develop housing, mixed use, something on the site, they're going to be dealing with those exact same issues. And they're going to be expensive. And the fact that the wetlands took out three acres of the middle of the site and bifurcated it, it's an issue that needs to be addressed by anybody who is trying to put development on the site, which I think everybody on this call supports. I think everybody on this call supports more housing. I think some people support more commercial than others, but we're all supportive of this site getting redeveloped and adding to the tax base and helping solve the housing crisis and putting this back into active use. So anybody that does this is gonna deal with these site conditions and then they're going to either deal, then they're gonna deal with the zoning bylaw, which either allows for 24 unit apartment buildings, which I can't find the plan for, I'm sorry, but that would have to be sprinkled around that would not have central management or a larger mixed use building. The concept of the apartment buildings are more units than the mixed use buildings. The apartments will be even more units if there's 30% of ground floor, 30% of non-residential on the ground floor of a four-story mixed use building. So what we're trying to present is something that is a balancing act of all these competing factors. Redevelopment of this site is going to be expensive and difficult for anybody. There's a reason it has sat there for quite a while. And I think that the hardship that we are discussing is relative to all of these soil conditions, all of these site conditions, the uniqueness of the site in that Bay Road is not a commercial street. There is no other commercial that's on Bay Road in order to get to Atkins, you pull off. So what we are trying to present for discussion and for everybody here today is what we think is the best mix of that, considering all the other things that we've seen in town and where we think retail is as someone who's very involved in that. And I think from what we've submitted, the site has a great deal of limitations that I've gone over in terms of, regardless of whatever site, whatever building you put on here. And that's why we are seeking the dimensional hardship. Mr. Sloveter, you had your hand up. Yes, I have more observations. I'm listening to everything. I'm trying to figure out, like Mr. Meadows mentioned, where the hardship is, 3,500 square feet of non-residential space translates to 2.5% of this entire development of 140,000 square feet over four floors. And since this is about a mixed-use building, a building where 97.5% of the building is one use and 2.5% of the building is another use is pretty minimal mixing from what I am observing. Even if they built at the 30% non-residential on the first floor, that would only be 7.5% of the total square footage of the development, which is still pretty minimal for mixed-use. There's not much mixing going on there. So this whole discussion is really over about 6,500 square feet. And would it be residential or would it be commercial? Would it be commercial? And if the developer went with 30% of the one floor, there would be no discussion. They could just go ahead and do this. So this proposal seems to me to be taking what is already a really minimum amount of mixing to qualify for a mixed-use building and reducing it even further. So this is part of what I am uncomfortable with on this. The other thing, I appreciate that Ms. Brestrup brought up what she brought up about other possible uses, but I'm not sure what relevance that has with our discussion tonight. If there is an alternate use that would be proposed, that's not what we're being asked to determine tonight. We're being asked to determine a request on this design. And if we look at this request with a lens of, well, we might want to go along with something that doesn't feel entirely right in order to avoid something worse, that feels a little inappropriate to me. So the numbers are what basically bothers me. 2.5% of a building, 7.5% of a building does not seem like an imposition in order for it to be qualified as mixed-use. That's it, thank you. I guess one of the questions I have is, you have made Mr. Wilson, you've made a determination that I would assume you've done a business analysis about what is the potential commercial viability of this space, or have you? Do you know that this is something that can only support 10% of that 10,000 square feet? Or is it something that do you think that there is a greater amount of commercial viability than the amount of non-residential space that you currently are dedicating to this building? What's been the analysis? We haven't done an analysis outside of ourselves and our understanding of what we've done in town, our tenant spaces, what we see as demand, what we hear from folks in the industry. So the 10% is really a function of the site and that corner being the corner where commercial, non-residential can best work relative to grade and infrastructure and sites and so on. So I mean, the goal of that, well, Rob, go ahead with your, you have a point that I wanna have an observation. Yeah, I just wanna go back to what Ms. Marshall said about reorienting the building to have the commercial facing Bay Road. And I just wanna comment just from a traffic perspective how difficult it would be to do that because A, if you were to put any sort of access there, that turn is already kind of downhill, kind of a narrow skinny road anyways, that could be problematic for people turning off onto Bay Road. So that's why for any commercial space, it's best to have people access it via the side streets of Gould Way or Rambling Road just for traffic calming reasons and to avoid any sort of issue with accidents and stuff like that. The other thing I wanted to mention was that in terms of like general trend of commercial space, ever since the pandemic, you've been seeing less and less commercial space being utilized in areas that aren't already established as true commercial corridors. So for example, all the way out here in Atkins, Atkins has been successful where they are because they're already a pretty big brand. But say if something new were to go here, it might be more difficult for them to really grow and be established in this part of town than say if they were in downtown Amherst already. So if it was something that could have been developed fully as commercial in the past, I mean, the site was already pretty much there for the taking of somebody else when it came and gotten it already, it's got enough space for it. I just think that current market trends are leaning towards an all-time low demand for commercial space, especially in a lot of big cities around the country. And I don't really fully know the history of the site, but that's just in terms of the planning realm, that's what we've been seeing nationwide. One of the things that I observe is that the goal of 30% is a, I understand that goal. What we like to have in the Village Centers is sort of a vibrant mix of residential and commercial activity to bring people to the site, and all of the concept behind the North Mill District and other places where you're trying to grow some amount of commercial or non-residential use, whether all the things that Ms. Greenbaum had talked about, the different kinds of things that could go into these places where bring people in for more than just residential. And that's what the goal of that is, of that 30% is. The question, there's two questions. One, is there a viable economic use there? I can't answer that, I don't know. The risk is that you have a lot of unused commercial space or non-residential space that sits there and has time to use for it. The other thing is that this site does provide some, we would provide, this plan would provide some amount of housing that is not otherwise provided. I don't know what, if the variance, what we're trying to do tonight is say, if we want to have, if we want this plan to go forward, do we want to provide a variance so that they can go to the planning board and then have the planning board make the determinations of what the number of units, parking, all the other kinds of things that we won't deal with. It's gonna be theirs and they'll deal with it. So the real question for us, all these questions revolve around whether the variance is justified, the request for a variance is justified and that's what we're looking at tonight are all these different questions, including whether it's economically viable to have more commercial space, whether this really is a hardship, the questions that Mr. Meadows have asked and the questions that Ms. Greenbaum has asked, those are all questions about the viability and the reason for having, for granting a variance or not granting a variance. And that's what we have to keep in mind that then at that point, if we make a decision one way or the other, if we decide to have the variance, the planning board takes over and does the rest of the work on this. For us, it's whether it's important enough to maintain the 30% requirement in this area to mean that this project has to be reconfigured some other way to provide that or is the variance gonna give the developer the ability to build the units and we live with less commercial and non-residential use than the ideal in the current bylaw. That's how I see the questions that we're facing before us, that to be framed. But Ms. Greenbaum and then Mr. Slobberter. I just wanna ask very quickly that we are getting into our last half hour with 28 minutes and we had 52 people at one point. I'm sure that they would like to talk and I wanna make sure that they get time to talk. If we have to continue the hearing, that's fine too. But I would like to see what the abutters want to let us know. Well, we started at six, so we're an hour and a half in and we have- Yeah, and at six to eight, so I didn't know how long it was gonna be. No, we normally go to nine. Oh, okay, that's, all right. Yeah, so I know we have a large number of commenters and we also have one other item we have to deal with tonight, which should go quickly, but we do- I think we need to hear from the 47 people. Yeah, we will absolutely do that. But I wanna give the board members additional time to ask questions, make comments and seek clarification. So Mr. Slobberter and Ms. Marshall. Just a quick informational question. Commercial space, does commercial space require that it be retail, sale of retail goods, or could it be, which has already been mentioned, a daycare center, hair salon, any kind of service kind, which would greatly broaden the number of business, the kind of businesses that could occupy commercial space. So it doesn't have to be strictly sale of retail, retail sale of goods. It's not, it's non-residential, so it's all, it could be an office. Okay, thank you. Ms. Marshall, you had your hand up. No? Is it, well, I didn't think it was that, but I would just, the dilemma here is that, I guess that we have no independent way of knowing that there are no better alternative plans. There are no better alternative plans. Okay, so the layouts to the building that could create more commercial. So as I said before, if the applicant can show that they tried other layouts that didn't do any better for commercial than, or non-residential floor space than I would be interested in seeing those. I mean, it also sounds like they think that it would not be a good idea to put it down on the southern part of the site, but I don't know. I guess I'm not convinced that there really are no alternatives that would satisfy this 30%. I do understand it's challenging site. I get that. Great, thank you. All right. So what I, normally we take a break right about now for five minutes and if people come back, we can come back in just five minutes. Let's people get a glass of water, go to the bathroom, come back. And I'd like to then round up the conversations, the questions from board members and then open it up to public comment. So let's take, it's 7.36, let's return at 7.41, just take a real quick five minutes, get yourself a glass of water and we'll come back and continue with some board comments and then to public comment. Corrigan has resumed. All right. Mr. Wilson, Mr. Brest will be back and Mr. Morel will be back. We've got everybody here. All right. Last chance for questions, comments from board members and then we're going to go to public comment. Okay. Rob, we have Rob Wachiller, we have a number of people in attending. I noticed there's one hand up already. There's now two. Two. So what I like to do is let people know that this is a chance for public comment. Make your comments to the board, not to the individuals, the applicants but make the comments are to the board. When you're recognized, please give your name and your address for the record. Try to keep your comments, please keep your comments to about three minutes. I'll try to run a timer here to assist you and if we get, if it goes a little long, I will gently remind you of the time that you have taken up. So keeping to about three minutes, we've got a lot of people that want to comment and to the extent that what you wish to say has been said already, just acknowledging that and that you share the same opinion as somebody who's already expressed it would have been leaving the time, leaving the comment period at that point saves us all time and we do know that you agree with the previously stated comment. So first off, I guess the first hand up is Councillor Rooney. So Councillor Rooney, please give your name and address for the record. Hi, Pam Rooney. I'm just here as Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. Very, very interesting conversation tonight. I'm excited to hear that there is the potential for some mixed use building or housing of any kind in the Atkins corner. There were a couple of things that were touched on briefly but I was trying to knit them together in my head and it was finally stated that in fact, the uses that we're talking about here, whether it's 10% or 30% are really the not residential uses. So they are any other allowable use and childcare was mentioned, public meeting space could be mentioned, services that would help knit that community together. If you're an Applewood member, great you have lots of services but you only have access to the services because you're a member, nobody else can have access to those kinds of services. Our bylaw actually says that the 30% non-residential uses can be distributed on any floor. It does not limit it to the first floor or the ground floor. So thinking about this building, if you had three stories up against the old way or Lanin Lane, I guess, the road that runs east and west. So if you had three stories there, the hill does slope down, there's the potential for a fourth floor below those as you go toward Bay Road. So taking advantage of the steep slope, accessing the garden, accessing the dog area from the lower floors means there's also space down there for some of those other non-residential functions to occur. It seemed to me that they did not necessarily have to be right up front and center, especially if they were not retail. I'm looking at this as an example of mixed use. I wanna see it more often in town and I would like to see the mixed use buildings contribute in the way that they're intended to improve the viability of neighborhood hubs and village town, village centers. So I appreciate your conversation tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Rooney. The next hand up is Gustavo Oliveira. Please give your name and address for the record. Hi, my name is Gustavo Oliveira. I'm a resident at 68 Country Corners. This is about 500 yards from the location being discussed. I sent you an email, the board members, yesterday. I appreciate that you received it. I appreciate so much your service and the thorough questions that you have asked tonight. They have only reinforced my sentiment that this request should not be granted. As Mr. Slavitor pointed out, we are talking about really a minimal, minimal youth that is beyond residential here. And as Mr. Meadows pointed out, the case really has not been made for the hardship for the developers here. With all due respect to Mr. Wilson, but we actually live here. We actually walk to Atkins. We know this neighborhood. It is not the case that that little pink square is the only area that could be viable commercially. That entire eastern wing of the building as currently planned could be commercial. As the person before me just mentioned, it doesn't have to be on the ground floor. If this is gonna be a three floor building, you'd be spectacular, for example, to have a rooftop restaurant or something there to appreciate the view. I understand the multiple challenges of topography, of the water table, multiple interests involved. I think it is very important to take into consideration the interest of us, the neighbors, the people who live within walking distance to this area. The people who, as Ms. Greenbaum pointed out, have a desire for more of a vibrancy in our village center. We need daycares. We have a small child. We know many other families with young children. There's a massive shortage of daycare centers as well. This would be a spectacular place for that. More bookstores, more coffee shops. There is a lot of uses that we in the community would really, really welcome. We are not here to discuss what kind of housing is being talked about. That's gonna be if this goes forward at the planning board, I understand. But it is important to consider that the third and fourth test that was mentioned before need to consider the possible detriment to us in the community. And any development here that does not also bring the mixed use is going against the interest in the need of this place as a village center is going against the spirit of a mixed use building. The way that this is planned, a lot of residents in this supposed new building are not necessarily going to be using just that satellite parking, which is quite distant from where that is. They're gonna be parking up on Rambling Road. That is going to cause a lot of hardship for us in the neighborhood. A lot of folks from Applewood walk on Rambling Road because the sidewalks are completely messed. It's impossible to safely walk along them. This is going to dramatically increase traffic there on Rambling Road in that kind of a way. There's alternatives that have been asked about but have not been brought here with all due respect that Mr. Wilson is bringing us a half-baked plan, admittedly so, without even a business plan to what could be there. As I'm saying again, we live here. We have a sentiment for what this area, the potential of it that could be. You know, so I, I, I will wrap up. I love your comments, yep. Oh yeah, thank you very much. So in short, I think that, you know, the very point of questions that all of you have been asking point clearly to a need to reject this proposal. We would be very excited to discuss in the planning board a fully fleshed out, not half-baked proposal that does not need to go through this really inappropriate need, you know, supposed request for a variance to reduce time preference. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next hand I see is Mr. Ken Rosenthal. Please give your name and address for the record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Ken Rosenthal. I live at 53 Sunset Avenue. Could I ask, please, Kyle Wilson, could you put up the plan that shows that pink end of the blue building so that we can, I can refer to it? Would you please? If not, but I'll continue talking. I'm a former chair, a member and chair of the zoning board of appeals and a former trustee, chief financial officer and interim president of Hampshire College but I do not speak for the Hampshire College today. I speak only because of my experience here. I can tell you that this property was purchased from Atkins and Atkins well understood that this property was going to be developed by Hampshire College. So yes, while I think they'd love the view to the south still they understand and Atkins understood when he was sold that this property was going to be developed. I asked for this map because I want you to look at Ramblin Road. I want you to see where upper orchard is written and I want you to understand that country corner is a continuation down to continuation of Ramblin Road. Mr. Olivera spoke just what I would have said for several of my friends who asked me tonight to mention that they would love to have a better shopping area. They walk now to Atkins from upper orchard and from the area around country corner. Mr. Olivera said it so well, I won't repeat that but I will say this. This plan, this property was purchased for Hampshire College with the understanding that Hampshire College has a critical housing problem and it's not for students, it's for faculty and staff. When we speak of housing as a major problem in South Amherst, it's really a significant problem at Hampshire College. The hope was always that this would be developed for housing for Hampshire College faculty and staff who would not need to use their cars to get to work who would have access to a variety of commercial spaces in this and in the Atkins property adjacent to it and be able to walk to work every day. These would be people who would be year round residents who would register their cars in Amherst with the excise taxes going to Amherst town rather than students who register their car back at home where they live with mom and dad. And this development that Archipelago is proposing is consistent with the idea that this be the place for Hampshire College faculty and staff. I know this is not the place to talk about what the units are going to be like. That's for the planning board to discuss and I will do it there if given the opportunity. But I do want to say that commercial property here is not just to serve the people who live in that building. It's not just to serve the people who drive to Actons to shop. It's also to serve the 1400 students who live at Hampshire College, the 100 faculty who work there and the people who live at Applewood, Upper Orchard and Country Corners Road. And there will be ample opportunity for them to show their ability to spend their money with Archipelago's project here in the commercial spaces. Thank you for the time you've given me. Thank you, Mr. Rosenthal. I think the next person is Mr. Ira Brick. Yep. Hi. I'm Ira Brick at 255 Strong Street. I'm contributing my two cents about the proposed three to four story mixed use building that would be built by Archipelago near Atkins Market where they're asking for only 10% of the first floor to be commercial. Please consider these points. Mixed use buildings were to have at least 60% of the ground floor be commercial. 30% was a compromise and was mentioned. It started with 100%. And some private dorms downtown has 30%. 10% doesn't merit the mixed use status that would allow them to build more than 24 units. The apartment building that has been discussed. To develop the Atkins area as a village center, more business than 10% is required. If the developer can provide what is wanted and needed, they shouldn't be permitted. The developer is claiming a hardship because of the topography of the site, but if it's too impractical of a site, don't build there, what doesn't work. Variances should be more difficult to get than a developer making a non-compliant plan and wanting all the variances that will allow what isn't allowed. And I just wanna say, the Zoning Board of Appeals purpose is not to give variances the biases towards not giving it. They need to prove their case. The location of the project miles south of downtown should not diminish the guidance of our zoning bylaws. Our town zoning should be sensible and enforceable and the Chicago Area Investment Company in partnership with the local company, which is their business plan, Archipelago's business plan, should be more respectful of what Amherst is trying to maintain through its sensible zoning laws. And I just wanna point out one other thing. When Attorney Babrowski was saying about the four prongs that need to be satisfied, he was saying that it shouldn't substantially derogate from the intent and purpose of the zoning bylaws. Derogate means to reduce or abolish the use of the law. If now going from 100% to 60 to 30 to 10%, even though you don't work on precedent, this is a precedent. If that does not destroy, if that does not derogate the purpose of this zoning law, I don't know what would. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brick. Other people who wish to speak, numerous people lined up as participants. I see no other hands raised. We'll give it just a minute for people to, there we go. Anna Martini, please state your name and address for the record. Hi, it's Anna Martini. I'm at 65 Country Corners Road. I go to Atkins almost every day. I wanted to bring up two points. First, that I agree with almost everything that the previous person just said, Ira. I agree with most of those things. I wanted to bring up a couple of other points. One is something that was brought up earlier by Sarah Marshall. The best location, obviously, for businesses would be along one of the major roads. If you go into those little roads called Lemon and Gould, that corner pink spot that you showed is not actually ideal even there. The ideal place would be along 116 West Road or along Bay Road where someone could actually see it. You don't see it until you drive in and you're only driving in there to go to Atkins in the first place. So that is one thing. The other thing I wanted to say is that once again, we made up this plan about developing our village centers. And we have backed off on the amount of business over and over again, as Ira said, from nearly 100 on the ground floor to 60 to 30, which was a big compromise, all the way down to now 10%. And this is an economic thing that they can, I believe that they probably can make much more profit to have less space. So I would say that in this case, I don't see the, they have not made a strong argument for this variance. And so please don't approve this variance. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Martini. I see Claire Bertrand has a hand up. Please give her name and address for the record. Yes, hi, Claire Bertrand. I live at 610 Bay Road. And I work at the South Amherst Office Park, which is a commercial center, the actual village center for South Amherst. And I'd like to encourage you to support variants. I feel like these developers have done due diligence. This site is costly. And in order to get the financing required for development and, you know, frankly, I think Rob Wachilla stated it correctly that banks are not gonna look fondly on commercial loans. Residentially, yes. And I'm confident that we are still in need of housing in this town. And there are many developers sitting even on this ZBA who know the value of residential housing and the need as well and quality housing. And, you know, we are at a crossroads where folks want to live here, can't afford to live here because we just don't have enough. And I would appreciate seeing more housing in South Amherst. I think Atkins would love to see more housing nearby. So I would encourage the board to move forward with the variance. I think it's a small, as, you know, it cuts both ways. I think it was stated that the amount of square footage of the commercial that you're talking about is small. Yeah, it is. And I don't see it being a big deal. And if this is what, you know, they're requesting so that they can move forward with this development, I think it's reasonable. I don't feel like it's gonna change anything. And yet having housing there and having folks who will add to our community, that's a very, very important goal. So I support it. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Bertrand. Stella Knepp is the next sign. Please state your name. And if I mispronounce it, please correct me and give us your name and address. Hi, Stella Knepp at 5320 Corners Road. I'd say other than the caller right before me, I did agree with what was stated previously. I just wanna add that what I heard today, you know, big picture here. The main arguments were not having 30% commercial space are real unknown. Are, you know, basically related to the potential businesses concerns here, whether they can have commercial loans, what their marketing will be like, what the market trends are, all of these seem to be enough to sort of have not just a variance here, but again, a precedent for variance that can stretch beyond this project. And that's really depressing. We're essentially trying to have an argument to give up vibrancy in communities, having a lot of, you know, a lot of variety in what's being offered. Housing is important, but we also need to have a lot of, you know, a lot more beyond housing can make it attractive, not just, you know, a place to live. And as far as what, you know, the knowns are here, as somebody had already mentioned, we have a built-in base of eager patrons, including students, faculty, several communities including elderly communities that would love to take advantage of potential businesses that would be, you know, walking friendly. And all of that is something that needs to be really considered, you know, the fact that we've got known that make this place very, very attractive for commercial use. And the real reasons here for, you know, grants of the variance are as someone had said very eloquently before, half-baked. Thank you very much. Thank you. Are there other people who wish to speak? We have Nancy Eddy. Nancy, please give your name and address to the, for the record. Thank you. Yeah, I'm Nancy Eddy, 204 Spencer Drive, otherwise known as Applewood. And a former member of the planning board way back when, and chair of the select board, I have watched what's tried to be done in this village center over too many years and too many projects. It is a very difficult situation. There's no question about that. I wish that there could be some kind of compromise. 10% seems awfully small to me. It does seem to me if you moved a little bit on the, toward the Western end or maybe went up one floor, maybe you could get to a somewhat higher percentage. So I would hope that somehow there could be some conversations about that. The last thing I would like to see is, you know, more small three or four story apartment buildings plopped on that land. That's not what we need. So I hope that the planners and the developer can get together and come up with something better. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Eddy. Other people who wish to speak, please raise your hand. Do we have another hand up? Rob, I see a panelist hand, but I don't see any hands up from members of the public. I am seeing none. Just a quick reminder to folks, if you're calling in, use star nine. If you are on Zoom, on your phone or on the web, you can use the raise hand function to solicit a comment. We'll give people just a minute to get over any shyness. And to figure out how to raise the hand on Zoom. I am seeing none, Mr. Chair. I think everybody, oh, there is one person. I did speak too soon. I did speak too soon. All right. Sherri Wilson, please state your name and address for the record and proceed. My name is Sherri Wilson. I live at Fort Macintosh five, which is an upper orchard. Applewood is three stories tall. What it's proposed here is four stories at a corner that is very rural. I support the idea of more housing apartments in the area, particularly affordable housing. It appears that since there's a dog park, proposed and a playground, that this is not meant to be student housing. It's supposed to be family housing, which is very encouraging. However, the zoning is B for Boston, B for Victor, C for Charles, Village Center Business. Business and 10% of a project this large for business, for retail or offices seems terribly small to me. We have a wonderful institution called Atkins, but they can't do everything. We don't have a drug store. We don't have a place to buy nails or a scotch tape. We don't have many basic necessities, and it would be very nice to have such a place. It would be nice to have a restaurant for lunch and dinner, not just breakfast and lunch. I would be very happy to see some kind of development here. I am not particularly happy about this development. It is not physically, aesthetically appropriate for a rural setting. We do not need to emulate downtown Amherst. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Wilson. Other comments? That's seen any, Mr. Chair. I think that's it. Yep. Just give it just a minute. All right. So the procedure is to provide the applicant with the ability to respond to those questions by responding to the board. So Mr. Wilson, if you have a wish to respond to any of the public comments, respond to us as opposed to responding to the public commenter directly. I listened to each one. I don't think I have anything necessarily additional to say, but could answer any questions that someone else might have. Okay. Before we move to the public meeting portion, is there any questions from members of the board? In the public meeting portion, it's where we deliberate and it's not generally a time for public comment, but to the extent that the board members need for the clarification, we can seek additional comment from people not on the board. So opportunity to speak. If not, let's move, I would entertain a motion that we move to the public meeting portion while keeping the public hearing portion open in case we have to solicit additional information or come back and review this at a later date. I don't know. Does there a second? All right. Any discussion? If not, the vote occurs on the motion to enter the public meeting while keeping the public hearing open. Chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Ms. Greenbaum. Aye. Mr. Sloveter. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Votes five, zero, we're in the public meeting. This is a place where we can talk about it. So first I'd like to get people's general opinion. For me, this is one where I see the benefit of the potential for dozens of units of housing in an area that needs it and an town that needs it. And the question is whether that housing, the number of units that we can get housing in that place, 12% of which would be affordable housing, affordable to people at 100% or 80% of median income, that'd be a requirement. Whether that housing is worth reducing the amount of commercial space and therefore reducing sort of the likelihood of viability of a village center, which is all dependent upon having a diverse commercial space available to the residents into the town in a village center aspect. And looking at it to begin with, I really thought, well, that's a good idea. I mean, I don't know that there's the commercial demand for more than one or two enterprises there. It's an awful lot of everything they need is can be purchased at Atkins. And you could have 180, I don't know how many, less than 200, but you'd have over a hundred units available of housing that we do not have now. And that is a benefit to the community. I also know that there's a desire to have village centers with more commercial space. And at this point, our role really is to say, are we willing to make this judgment? Are we willing to reduce the amount of non-residential space and therefore the likelihood of building up that as a more vibrant village center in order to get more housing in that part of Amherst and for Amherst as a whole. The developer has offered a couple of things, a dog park, a playground and a access, kind of a pavilion or a structure to provide a meeting place for people who wanna go on the trails. And those are the sort of the trade-offs from the reduction in commercial or non-residential space. I always use commercial, I mean to say non-residential. So I think it's, and without this planning and what's out and available to us might be no commercial space at all. And it may be, I don't know if there's another developer that wants to take this on or not. So the question I think for us is, do we wanna reduce the likelihood of non-residential space in that village center in order to get dozens of housing units, some of which are affordable or not. And that's where I come down on, I'm thinking about this, that's the question I have to take. And I'd like to hear from other members where they are on this and also from staff who's worked with this number for this proposal for quite some time. So those I think are the key questions for us to deliberate on, but I'd like to hear from other members of the board what they're thinking. And Mr. Meadows, you were the first one up. So your hand was first and you're recognized. I think your points are well taken, but I don't think that's the real question here. The question here is, did the applicant make a case for a variance? In other words, is there really a hardship? I don't think that there's a case made for a hardship. If they can build on that property, having a first floor, a second floor, or a third floor of equal space is just a matter of how that space is used. And there's no hardship if they're able to build that building. So I don't see that they have made the case for a hardship. And I don't think that they are due to be given a variance as a result. Ms. Greenbaum, your hand was up next, then Ms. Marshall, Mr. Sloban. I agree with Mr. Meadows. I've been doing research since last Friday about finding cases where variances have been given in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and I found zero. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know how to look in the legal spaces, but what I did find and what I do know from reading The Globe every day that for variances are very rare and they have to be really extraordinary circumstances to grant them and to grant a variance for the reasons that Craig Meadows mentioned, I think is illegal. And I listened to the neighbors and they support the need for small local businesses to have a place that's affordable to do their business. You know, businesses that don't have high profit margins like bars, but beauty parlors and barbershops and daycare, there's a real need for them. And I think that we should support the will of town meeting to get in much more commercial space in this town for filling the needs of the people who live here. And I'm gonna vote no. Thank you, Ms. Greenbaum. Ms. Marshall, you were next. Yeah, I am very reluctant to give a variance, to vote for a variance on an aspect of the zoning law that is so vital to the creation of village centers. I would just guess that developers might prefer to not have to make any, you know, zero would be best. I don't know and I, but I'm not persuaded that it's impossible, especially since the non-residential space can be spread over multiple floors. So it could be some offices, some, you know, some one person business. On a second floor room, you know, it's not vibrant retail, but still it would be commercial space and could offer some service that locals would want and it wouldn't require any change to the footprint. So I recognize that there's a risk that the, this project could be canceled then and that the alternative might be lots of little apartment buildings, but I think we should push for the desire, express desire of our town as shown in the bylaw to encourage village center and multi-use, mixed use buildings. So that's where I'm at. Mr. Slaughter. I have only two quick comments. One is that the applicant can still go ahead with this project simply by staying with the 30% on the ground floor which translates to 7.5% of the project. I think that reducing and that is a law, a rule that we are charged with enforcing unless there is a compelling reason to change it. I don't see a compelling reason in the public interest to change this from 30% to 10%. And I actually think that reducing 10%, reducing it to 10% which translates to only 2.5% of the project essentially makes a mockery of the term mixed use. There's no mixing at 2.5%. So that, I don't feel that there is a compelling reason or enough of a hardship or that this warrants changing our view of mixed use. Thank you. One quick question I have either for Rob or for Rob, Mr. Orchiller or Mr. Mora. Does non-residential use on floors other than the first floor count towards the 10% or 30%? Yes, it would. It would, okay. This seems to me that the board's opinion is pretty strong and even though I am inclined to want to move the process forward because I think the need for the housing is great and I think that there's the ability for the developer to add additional commercial space later on in the process. But that's only a possibility. But it is a possibility. I would like to have a move forward. But I think that the 10% is really low and there could be some movement towards greater amount of non-residential space in the development and I think in the project, I think you would have a better response from us and probably from the planning board as well. I would encourage you, Mr. Wilson, to give some thought to how you want to proceed at this point. If I am right and I ask Mr. Mora, if we deny this, can they come back at some, we can deny this, can they come back with a new plan or do they have to wait two years? Is it denial but with prejudice or without prejudice or what happens if they want to come back with an additional, with a substantially more complete plan with more commercial non-residential space included? So if you deny them this variance, Mr. Chair, you're barring them from being able to apply for a variance again. So if they wanted to come back and apply for a special permit, they could. Right. Yeah. If they came back with a 25% plan as opposed to a 30%, they'd have to ask for a variance and they couldn't do that for two years, correct? That is correct. All right. Mr. Meadows. I would like to call the question. We don't have a question. We don't have them. You're right. You're right. Yeah. We don't have a previous question to call. That's too bad. But it does look like there's. Hey, you're turning very red. I was my tan is going away. So I think. We don't have any other. People who wish to speak. It looks to me like this. Is pretty well set. As to where we want to go. Mr. Brestra. I wondered if you wanted to ask Mr. Wilson, if he wanted to withdraw. If he could withdraw the application. And if he withdrew the application, then he could. You know, if it were without prejudice, then he could come back with another proposal that had. 20% or 25% or some number that's greater than 10. For the same kind of variance. Just I'm just posing that as a possibility. Well, I tiptoed up to that line. And who's trying to in ankle that. As a possibility for him. But, and this is a place. Where we would. Seek. Your opinion, Mr. Wilson. One way or the other. Well, it seems like. What I should do is withdraw the application. Without prejudice. That requires a vote of us. And that would be, yeah. Now the upside of that is that you can come back with a different proposal to us with, and you can request a variance as part of that different. Requesting a different variance. But it does sometimes the board wants to just put a nail in a proposal and, and doesn't grant that. So that's the, that's the question here for the board. Do we allow the. Applicant to withdraw, given the possibility they could come back with a, they either not a variance and go directly to the, the planning board, or they could come back with some of a variance of a request for a variance of a different percentage. That's the question that would be posed by the question of allowing that is what is posed by the question of allowing the applicant to withdraw without prejudice. So is there a motion to allow the app to allow the applicant to withdraw that? Mr. Wilson. Sorry. Could I ask a question about that? Cause the way you phrase that, what, what's the, what's the consequence of, of if this is voted down? Well, then we, if this is voted down and not, you're not allowed to withdraw it without precedence, without prejudice, then we would proceed to vote on the waiver. Yeah. Okay. But then all that does is shut down the ability to seek additional variance. Yeah. Relative to this, to this body. Correct. You'd be able to go to the planning board. Without, but you'd have to have, you have to meet the requirements. Of 3.325. 30%. Yep. So. Miss green bomb. I would not support that motion. To withdraw without prejudice, because I'm not going to support a variance. In any account. I want the 30%. Which I think is minimal. And I think it's needed by the neighborhood. And I don't think the arguments are strong enough to give it a variance. So. So let's have a discussion when that motion is before us. Unless it's with prejudice. Cause I'm not going to vote for. Of course it can bring it back to a different board. That's not us. You know, that may fall for this business, which I think is a more. Of an economic than a land use. All right. Miss green bomb. That's a point to make when we have that motion before us. And I'd like to put that motion before us. And I, I think the motion we should first consider is. Do we wish to allow the applicant to withdraw this motion. Request for a variance without prejudice. And that's the first question that's we should deal with. Is there a second to that? Well, I would second that. But it seems to me that if there's not, if there's not a second that we're not going to pass this, that it's not going to pass. So then the motion. That motion was not even made and seconded. Because you didn't second it. I didn't second it. You came up to the line, but. Up to the line, but I can read the room. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll withdraw without prejudice. Is there a second to that? Well, I would second that. But it seems to me that if there's not a, if there's not a second that we're not going to pass this, that it's not going to pass. So then the motion. Since that motion was not even. And I don't think there's, I don't think there's four votes for this. And you'll, I was chair allowed to second. I, well, I think I'm a member. I can vote. I can second. I can make a motion, but I choose. Okay. I choose to allow other members to make the motion. And so I don't seem to be too. Directive on my chairmanship. But look, there's not three votes. There's not two votes or three votes for allowing you to withdraw without prejudice. The next motion is do we wish to grant or deny the variance request that we could withdraw with prejudice, but that's the same effect as denying the, the variance request, I think. So if you withdrew with prejudice, that's the same as denying the variance. So essentially it's the same thing. Mr. Moore has his hand up. Mr. Moore, am I wrong? There's no such thing as withdraw with prejudice. You actually, you would take your vote and if it fails, then. It fails. That's it. Yeah. And it's two years with, before you can come back and ask for a variance. So I would recommend Mr. Chair, when you make the motion, motion to approve the variance and then state the, the permit number. And then if, if that fails to go through, you need four members to vote yes. If you have less than four vote yes, then it's failed. And it essentially denied. Right. All right. So he can, so the applicant cannot withdraw it at this point. Cause we won't let him. Well, there's not, I don't think there's the votes. That's exactly right. Yeah. That's exactly right. So the most, I will entertain a motion. To approve the ZBA FY 2024 dash 10 archipelago investments. Requesting a variance from the conditions of sections 3.325. The zoning bylaw that we've been considering today. Is there a second to the motion to approve that? We need a second for that. We need a motion. We need a second in order to deny it. So. Okay. So I have a second motion from Marshall. And I have a second from Slogger. Yes. You have a second. I second that motion. I don't think we need any more discussion about this. Cause I think the, the lines are pretty well drawn. So the vote occurs unless anybody wants to speak, the vote occurs on the motion to approve the variance request. And I will vote no, because I wish that there could be withdrawn and come back with a smaller number. Another vote. Excuse me. I'm going to vote yes. Because I hope, wish that they would come back with a smaller number. Another, a different, a different amount of number. Yeah. I'm going to vote yes. Because my feeling is I think he should, I would like to have him come back, but that's not going to happen. So I'm voting yes to approve the variance request. But I think there's four votes. No. So, Mr. Meadows. No. Right. Miss Marshall. No. Mr. Sloveter. No. Miss Greenbaum. No. All right. The vote is one in favor for against the motion to approve the variance fails. And that's it. Yeah. Thanks. Can I just announce something real quick, Mr. Chair? In terms of procedure. So, uh, So over the next week or two, Kyle, I'm going to draft the official decision document that the board members have to sign. And then afterwards, uh, it's filed with the town clerk. And then once it's filed, that starts a 20 day appeal period in which you or anybody from the public can appeal the decision of the board to a higher court. Um, so. Do you have any questions for us in the meantime? No, no. All right. We'll be in touch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And you have to put down reasons why we're voting no, or you just say we voted no. Sorry. Let's go ahead. So usually in the decision document, I, um, wait, um, the motion and then the vote, and that's pretty much it. And then I also. If we voted yes. We have to make the findings. We have to do that. Right. So what we did is we just, we made a summary judgment. We made a judgment. Summary is a majority term. We made a judgment that we weren't going to grant the waiver. And we don't have to make findings to that. We voted no. We will also have minutes of this meeting though. Yes. Yes. Reflect the discussion. Eventually you'll have minutes. I'm a little bit behind minutes at the moment. I apologize for that. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you. The next business is public meeting on ZBA FY 2009 dash 08. Vivian Addison and our Alan Eric Travis request to satisfy conditions three and four to allow for issuance of a building permit upon review of the updated site plan. This request is to construct a single family residence and attach garage by right. On the second of two flaglots approved in ZBA FY 2009 dash 08 upon approval of submitted plan to the ZBA. So this is a case of two flaglots. One of which has not one of which has been the structure has been built. The other the structure has not been built on it. They have a the requesting approval of their site plan for a house, a single family home and a garage, a detached garage. They eventually want to have an ADU but that would require a special permit because of the size of the ADU. That question is not before us tonight. So the question before us tonight is whether we approve the site plan for the house and for the detached garage. The ADU would have to come back to us at a later point because it's of the size of the ADU there. So we're going to approve the site plan for the house. We're going to approve the site plan for the house. And we're going to eventually request. So does that make sense to. Members of the board. So, all right. So, Miss. Mr. Travis or who was, was to speak to the. The matter to the. Your request. I'll start. Okay. Hi, I'm Vivian Addison. Eric Travis at 142 B. Amherst road. We're going to approve the site plan for the house. We're going to approve the site plan for the house. With the idea that we're going to build a multi-generational family compound. Today we're asking for permission to. To approval of our site plan. The main house is 1680 feet. There's a garage. Of. 24 by 36. Foot garage. We're planning to. Use a modular company to help cut down on the. Construction process. And. That way the. We will build a foundations and then the cranes will come in and set the modules in place. It's a very sloping lot. And so. The only buildable area is up near the top here. As you'll see, there's a main house. And. Yeah, here I'll use the. Oh, I'll put my cursor there too. There we go. Okay. There's. There's the main house. There's a garage with parking spaces in it, which there's a little note here. Trash storage in garage. There is no storage right here and a turnaround. And two 10 by 20 parking spare parking spots here. With an additional amount of snow storage. Right here. There are address signs on either side of the. Driveway where it runs into the shared common driveway. And also an address sign at the street. Would you like to see the. Would you like to see the lighting plan? You know, I don't even need. We don't, I don't think we need to see it as long as you understand that it has to comply with the. Yes. With the. Downcast. Light and the rules of the ZBA. Correct. Yes, we know that. We really have to look at is this the site plan. Here I have one question for you though. If you're done with the presentation. Yes. The sewer line. Where does that go? It's not the utility line is not going to go through the driveway. Is that correct? Correct. The sewer line will probably go right here. In the, in the flagpole. In the flagpole of the lot. Yeah. Your, your property. So you don't have our property. Correct. You don't have an easement on the other properties for that. Okay. Well, there is a, it says there's a proposed easement here. And I, we think there's an easement here. There's a transformer to get the electric across the shared driveway to the house, but the water is going to have to come out the flagpole and also the sewage line because it's, we will not be using a septic system. We will be using sewage. Got it. All right. This is this driveway is. We fully meets the, the code, the bylaw requirements. Does it not for turnaround and for fire vehicles and everything else? Which route were you referring to, Mr. Rob Moore? I think Rob Moore is gone. I'm sorry. I'm referring to Mr. Whatchula. Okay. I will answer that question for you. I don't fully know the exact regulations for the turnaround, but just from looking at it, it does appear to be adequate. I would say that's about a 25 feet. 30 feet right there, just alone to get in that turnaround and then safely exit the site. It does meet the dimensions in terms of width of the driveway. The minimum required, I believe, is around 12. 12 feet. And they have 20 here at this point. So a truck could easily get in there and back up if it needed to. And yeah, I mean, we could. I'm assuming that this wouldn't have gotten past your shop. If it didn't, if it didn't meet the requirements of emergency vehicles turning around. Exactly. And if the fire department required that they redo the design, they could always come back again. And usually the building inspectors will look at that before issuing a permit and they'll get feedback from the fire department as well to ensure that's a, a wide enough turnaround for their trucks and their apparatus. Okay. All right. Miss Greenbaum. Yeah. Apparently I did this years ago, but I've forgotten it. It was just a very narrow road that had trees on both sides. And there was no place. Is that where they were here today? Cause there was no turnaround. Is that why we're here? So we're here today, Hilda, because these guys need these site plans approved in order to construct the house and the garage, but not the ADU. And so essentially. Yeah. So this, this permit was approved with the lot to the south that has the access easement on it. And the lot that these folks are building on were both approved in the same of flag lot special permit. However, at the time plans are only submitted to build on that southern flag lot and not on the northern flag lot. So since that southern flag lot, the permit was enacted and they built around that time on that flag lot, the south, the permit has become and remains effective to this dates, even with the change of ownership. So the house and the garage on the northern lot can only be built. They can only get their building permit. If they came back to the board at a public meeting and the board approved this site plan, that's technically an update to the plan that's attached to that permit from 2009. So that's the reason why they're here today. The house and the garage are technically allowed by rights. But because this is a flag lot with an existing special permit that allows for the flag lot to be built on. One of the stipulations is that they have to have the update site plan approved by the board administratively essentially. So that's, that's the reason why they're here today. Okay. So my question is what about the building circle that we have to deal with the building circle? Yep. So they did provide a set of plans and I could try to dig them up for you, but they did show us a set of plans. I had the building circle and the building circle did fit all three buildings in that area. So I reviewed it with Rob Mora a couple of weeks ago. And I could try to look for right now. If that. If you've done all the work before, I just. Yeah. I thought I remember a long narrow driveway with lots of trees and no place to turn around. It's probably that Southern driveway. For the house that currently exists. And these folks are building their driveway off of that shared driveway, which they have a deeded easement for. Yeah. Your memory is good. You are on this. Yeah. You are. Yeah. I saw it on the, on the premise. But I forgot. I was sort of from that to me. And I don't. Yeah. I guess probably because we didn't, we didn't see the circle. And so we didn't approve it. They didn't, they hadn't picked a spot where they wanted to put the house. That's probably why we put that condition in there. And they did review. So the owners of that Southern property did come back at some point. And the plans were approved at public meeting. So we, we suggested to, to the current applicants that. You show the building circle, which they did in another set of plans, which I believe the board has their packets. That shows them fitting within the property in that portion with the circle around it. That's cool. Are you. Did I answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. It's a long time ago, you know. Yeah. Miss Marshall. Thank you. Well, welcome to Amherst. Thank you. Um, so maybe this is a quibble, but the. The special permit does say that the site plan should show. The location of the septic system. And I know you're not going to have a septic, but should we have a plan that shows the sewer line? I guess that's more for Rob. Um, Not necessarily because the septic system, usually citing those is a lot more crucial and important than running a sewer line to the street. Usually for the septic. Yeah. There's a lot of conditions. You have to keep in mind with citing those. Like you have to make sure that you're not within area. That's a high water table. You want to make sure you're an area that has the appropriate soils tested for it. And usually you want to put a certain distance away from the actual house so you can have enough room for your leech field. So I would say in this case that wouldn't apply because the septic system. Siting and approving that is so much more tenuous than allowing for the sewer line to go in the front portion parallel to the water line, essentially. So to answer your question, um, I don't think that's necessary. Thank you. Rob, would you even, you wouldn't get a building permit if you hadn't. Would you get, be able to get a building permit without having a, you know, the, the sanitary system someplace on laid out in plans and submitted to the building commissioner. We'd have to have the sewer. If they're not able to get sewer. So if the area doesn't have sewer service already, which this area does, it does have both lines. Um, then they would be, they would be forced to do a septic system. But in this case, since they're not doing that, um, if they were to go for the building permit, um, they would, they would have to show where the line is going to go, but that's not really, that's a very, very minor change. I know Rob more could probably speak to that cause he just rose his hand. Thank you. Mr. Can you speak to that? Well, actually what I wanted to mention was that, um, this is in an aquifer recharge protection area. So that's a lot more critical, uh, concerning, uh, uh, district for a septic system to be installed. So, um, you know, years later, having, uh, sewer available as an advantage and, and that is likely why that was, um, conditioned at the time, uh, because, you know, there's, there's very specific requirements in the aquifer areas for placing septic systems. Thank you for the clarification. Okay. Yes. I just wanted to make a note that, uh, we have already checked with a, uh, watershed person and they have checked our property and there are no plants indicative of water wet lens. We have no wet lens resources on the property. We have a check. We have a letter that verifies that. And they're only forced to build closest to where the bottleneck is because of that steep drop off behind them. Yeah. And it goes all the way down to, I believe like a creek or something at the bottom of the hill there. There's actually a, a bowl. So it goes down to a bowl and then it goes up again before it goes down to the creek. So there's sort of a natural, natural drainage base in there. Well, it's convenient. All right. Other questions for the applicants. All right. What we have to do is approve the site plan with the knowledge that you have to come back to us for your ADU if it's going to be of this size, if you change the size of your ADU and it becomes smaller. So it fits within the zoning bylaw. You can do it administratively, but if you're going to keep this size, you've got to come back to us for your ADU. Okay. For a special permit. Just want to clarify the. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I would entertain a motion to approve the site plan. Um, presented on for ZBA FY 2009-08. The site plan is submitted by Vivian Addison and Eric Allen Eric Travis. Is there a second? Second. We've got a lot of seconds. I heard Mrs. I can't see them. Yep. Is there any discussion on the motion? Is there's no discussion? The vote occurs. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Mr. Slobiter. Aye. Ms. Greenball. Aye. Congratulations. Good luck with your house. Welcome to Amherst. We don't have a sixth street, but there's still some good music on pleasant avenue with the Drake. Yes. Mr. Chair, if you, if you don't mind, Mr. Chair, I would like to just say some real quick to the applicants that that's okay for next step. So, um, I don't know. Uh, If you guys have started your building permit process yet, did you guys do an open gov page yet for your, for your building permit or have you not done that? Okay. So what I'm going to do is, um, since you have this approval, you can now start the process of applying for the building permit for the single family and the detached garage. I'm going to inform our permit administrator that you got this approval for the site plan from the zoning board. And then eventually I'm going to attach a set of meeting minutes from this to, to verify that. So far you, you can, you're free to go ahead and reach out and start that process and you can contact them and I will be sure to contact them directly so they know. Do you have any questions for us? You said there was a process. You're going to send us a link to something we can add documents to. So, um, you, I don't know if you were talking to Jennifer Mullins, um, and communicating with her, you can reach out to her and she can show you how to start the building permit process. And then I'm going to speak with her and let her know that you guys got this approval from the zoning board. So you can go ahead and start the permitting of, of the single family in the garage. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. No problem. Good luck. Congratulations. Good luck. Thank you. The next order of business is public comment on any matter, not before the board tonight. So this is where members of the public can speak to any matter they wish except for those subjects that were the, those topics that were the subject of our meeting tonight. I see no hands up from any attendees. Nope. All right. Next order of business is any new business. Rob, I guess this is where you tell us what the schedule is for the next month, if you would. Sure. And there's not really much happening outside of March. I mean, I'm reviewing two permits right now that aren't officially filed yet that might go into the next March meeting, but of course I'll let you know next time. Um, so we have a meeting next Thursday, uh, February 15th for hopefully one of the last Valley CDC public hearings. Um, so we're going to have a, we're going to have a, we're going to have a meeting next Thursday, and this one's going to talk about. A discussion of the conditions in our decision document for that comprehensive permit. And then the week after that's a February 22nd, we have, um, Two petitions before the board and one continuance, the continuance being the shoots, bare road solar project. Um, and it's most likely that that one's also going to be continued again, because we're still in the peer review process. Uh, we also have another variance petition, which after this meeting tonight, I don't see, uh, Moving on, but I don't want to speak yet for that one. Um, That one is a little bit more of a stretch than, than this one that you saw tonight. So I'll let you know the status of that. And then we also have a special permit for a flag lot. Um, it's a lot that was already created through the ANR process with the playing board to be a flag lot, but it hasn't been approved by the zoning board through a national permit. Um, I believe the current owner is trying to sell it to a potential buyer who wants to build a single family home there. So, other than that, Mr. Chair, um, nothing on the books for March yet. And I'll probably give that update next time. All right. Okay. Any other questions from members of the board? Any comments? I think this is a wonderful way to welcome you back, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking I'd much rather be in Patagonia right now. I can imagine. Yeah. I've lost my touch. It's the first time I've been the single vote one way and not part of the consensus. Hey, I'm speechless. Yeah. Well, I wish I would, I wish I had the anyway. So thank you all. We're finished up 10 minutes before nine o'clock. So you still, you've got 10 extra minutes to your Thursday night and all the work that you guys do. No Celtics game tonight. No, no, no, I don't think so. Nope. No, tomorrow. All right. So the last order of business would be a motion to adjourn. Right. Why are we waiting so long? No, it's not, it's not that I didn't get a chance to even second anything tonight hardly because everyone was so quick on the draw. So I would like to make a motion to adjourn. And I may also second it. You can second it. No, I already made the motion. Sorry. I've started my own motion, but I don't think that's appropriate. We got a motion from Slovater and a second from Marshall. Right. There's no discussion on the motion to adjourn as you've heard every time we've done this. So the vote occurs. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Slovater. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Ms. Greenbaum. Aye. The vote is five to nothing. The motion passes. We are adjourned.