 Welcome. I am calling the order of this meeting of the Arlington Select Board on Wednesday, December 21st, 2022, and the first day of astronomical winter. I am Select Board Chair and Sanders' favorite Naughty Elf, Leonard Diggins, and I will now confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in affirmative. Steve Corsi. Yes. And John Herobinorn is later, and Eric Helm is not going to be able to join us tonight. Sandy Pooler. Yes. Doug Heim. Yes. Ashley Meyer. Yes. Thank you, staff, for responding in affirmative. Tonight's meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted in a hybrid format consistent with Chapter 107 of the Acts of 2022, signed into the law on July 17, 2022, which further extends certain COVID-19 measures regarding our climate. No participation until March 31, 2023. Before we begin, please note the following. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom. It is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Second, persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participated by Zoom are reminded that you may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. Third, all participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the NOAA's agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. So let's see how much of the town's business we can get done tonight. And unfortunately, it's so hot in here, I have to take this off. So I'm just burning up as it is. You're so naughty. So next on the agenda is acknowledgment and a letter of appreciation to Kevin Mills, member of the zoning board of appeals. He was an associate member from 2017 until 2020, the voting member from 2020 to 2022. So Mr. Mills, thanks for joining us. I apologize for the short notice on the previous invitation, but you're here tonight. And I have to say that we don't have a formal policy of doing this, at least not yet. But when we have the chance, I think it's always good to take some time to acknowledge the people who have served on our various boards and commissions. And not only, I think, does it let the person know that we very much appreciate what they have done and hopefully they get some good feelings from that. But in the process, it helps us to go back and see what they've done and realize to a great extent what we really have to be appreciative of. And in the process of doing this, I talked to a couple of your colleagues and their words were put into the letter of appreciation, which I'll ask our board of men to send to you a hard copy at some point. But the current chair, Christopher Klein, I'm not going to read the whole letter. I'm just going to read a couple of excerpts from it. The current chair, Christopher Klein, said he's always brought an air of levity to what were often many contentious hearings. He had a firm grasp on what was important and could still discuss, excuse me. It's a little hard sometimes in the mass. And could still the discussion down? And Patrick Hanlon said, second, Kevin was totally constructive. Time and time again, he would point out potential problems for the applicants to consider or suggest solutions, not necessarily because that was necessary to meet the requirements for a special permit, but because he wanted to be helpful. And I think those are important traits. And from the emails that we've exchanged, I certainly get the strong impression that these words are all true. And so I'll just add the final line of our letter to you. Volunteers like you are the kinds of residents that make Arlington much better than it would be otherwise. We were delighted to welcome you when you were appointed, and we are even more delighted to express our deep gratitude for all that you have done for us. So once again, thank you, Mr. Mills. Sorry, I have a tickle tonight that won't go away. I also want to thank Mr. Mills Kevin for working over five years, if not longer on the zoning board of appeals as well as, you know, for the town of Arlington. I didn't attend each and every ZBA meeting, but the ones that I did, I definitely was impressed of how you made the transition. From attending associate into a full member, not just with Mugar, but sometimes just with residents appearances before the zoning board. And I really would echo what the chair has said about, you know, working on projects, you know, to make them better, not just to make them pass and to make them better for everybody. And I'm really going to miss that, but I am so appreciative of the many, many, many hours. A lot of people, they hear all these different, you know, AHA, ZBA, all these acronyms and don't really get a sense of exactly what we get from our professional volunteers here in town that so many people who love to live here or do business here. That's a large part of the reason why Arlington is the way it is. So we're going to miss you, but know you'll be successful. And I wish you good health and the best of luck of everything in the future. And thank you again, Kevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, and I also want to thank you, Mr. Mills, for your service, Kevin, for your service on the zoning board of appeals. I had attended a number of the MuGar hearings and was always impressed when you spoke and what you added to those meetings. And also just the stamina, frankly, because there's a lot of late meetings and the members often didn't talk until later in the meetings, and you always added a great deal to those discussions. And when you see how your colleagues wrote about you, that shows you the respect that they had for you on the ZBA as well. I want to wish you the best of luck and thank you again for your service. So with that, Mr. Mills, if you want to say a few words, you're welcome to. Well, I had a really good time on the board. It often was very tedious, but the other members really very diligent. I thought we all worked very well together. We're assisted very well by Doug Hine, Rick Valorelli, you know, the guys in the building department. They're always right there to chip in and help us clarify difficult matters. And really, Patrick Kamlin and Christian just carry a lot of the water in that group. I really learned a lot working with them, and it was a privilege. And thank you for your well wishes. I'm not in Plymouth now, and I'm going to try and join the ZBA down here. Our loss is there again. We're all working to stay together, so I'm sure we'll be seeing you around at some point in time. So thank you very much. And have a good night, happy holidays, and happy new year. So we will now move on to item number three on the agenda presentation on 10 Sunnyside Avenue. And so who do we have with us tonight? Ms. Wrecker, maybe? Or Attorney Hine. Actually, well, actually, I guess Attorney Hine does perhaps want to tell us a few things about what, how we, excuse me, how we should proceed. Mr. Hine. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief in just reminding the board of the board's limited role with respect to site approval or sometimes called project eligibility. In short, the board has 30 days from the date it receives a notice from mass housing of a application for project eligibility by the folks like folks at the housing club of Arlington to examine and consider the site location for general appropriateness and eligibility. I provided you a little memo. We don't need to go through it all about what the criteria for eligibility are. But it's a more generalized review. It's from, you know, 100 feet up as opposed to the type of review that the ZBA or the Conservation Commission would engage in with respect to very specific details of a more refined plan. If, for example, the select board had deep concerns about the specific location or the applicant couldn't demonstrate site control, those would be things that the board would want to register concerns about. The board can engage in any dialogue that it wants with the applicant and it can certainly and should ask any questions it has of the applicant or of town departments and staff. I don't want to speak out of turn. This seems like a more straightforward project than perhaps some others have been. But while we have 30 days the board has in times past asked for a little additional time. If you'd like to make sure that your letter either supporting or opposing or just providing general comment on eligibility needs a little bit more time. I mean, that we would want to talk to the applicants about, but it's not uncommon, particularly if the review period is sort of truncated by the holiday season. And finally, you kind of have two options and depending on how the board feels from its discussion tonight, you can either provide comment and trust that I will develop a letter and this chair or the vice chair together will sign off on the letter and send it to you. If you're not sure what you're proposing, or you can take a little bit more time and have another agenda item where you would approve a draft of the letter before it goes out. But those are the options available to you, depending on how you feel about the project, how much information you have, and what if anything else you need. Here are planning communities on and the applicants will have more detail on some substantive things for your consideration, but that's the general sort of outline process role was like what you guys just keep mine select board is just taking a sort of 500 what view of this talking about general appropriateness of the site, the details of things like traffic studies for stormwater management 4b examined by the zoning board of appeals. Thank you. And you may have gotten my email, Ms. Ricker, memo on the project, so that's for our consideration. So at this point, maybe we can bring in Ms. O'Connor, and she can tell us who else to bring in for the presentation. And I see Erica Swartz here too. So. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Mahan, Ms. Of course, Mary, when Stanley O'Connor for the applicant, the Housing Corporation of Arlington, I first want to thank you for taking the time tonight in this short meeting to hear the presentation that we have, and I wish you happy holidays. You know, it's my pleasure actually to represent the Housing Corporation of Arlington being a resident of this town and good work that they do. This project that they're proposing at 10 Sunnyside Ave is 43 units, all affordable, some at 60% of median income, some at 30%. What is important, and Erica Swartz, who's the new acting director, can speak to the project and she'll introduce the architects, but I would suggest to you that this is really a tremendous and great use of this site. You will probably are familiar with the fact that this isn't a before zone, which is an automotive use zone. And our zoning code talks about trying to change before uses to other uses. And where we are by way of being kind of an MBTA type community, and that particular area is really appropriate for this type of housing. The Housing Corporation has done some tremendous projects in town, Erica will go over them and review them. I think you probably have seen the new construction down at Broadway and in Downing Square. But that's the type of quality that the Housing Corporation is committed to. And I'm going to turn this over to Erica and then she will introduce the architects on the project. Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. You're welcome. Thank you. Hello Ms. Swartz. Thanks Mary. Yes, hi. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for putting this on the agenda, getting this in before the holidays. So I'm actually going to invite our architects on now because they have the presentation. I think they were going to be presenting a presentation. I could call it out myself, but it's Nick Barons and Rachelle Ayn should hopefully you see them. And then Gabby Geller is our real estate development consultant. She also happens to be an Arlington resident. And hopefully they're all, hopefully you see them all there. Gabby might not be speaking much, but she's on hand in case there's more technical questions that you might have. So that you know of the Housing Corporation has control of the site. They've purchased the property. Thank you. All right. I see Nick and Rachelle. I am. I'll go ahead and share my screen Erica. And then you can just tell me when you're ready to advance. Someone can enable screen sharing. That would be great. Great. And I should say their firm UTL, architecture firm, and we've had a fantastic experience with them. I think we're really lucky to have them on this project. All right. So that's loading up. Can everyone see that? Yes. Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes? Great. So I think everyone's familiar with the Housing Corporation but just for a reminder, our mission is sitting up there and we were founded in 1986. It didn't start actually being active in housing development for a few years. In the early years, I think it was more programmatic folks focused and first-time home buyer kind of stuff. We are really community-based and community-driven. We are of Arlington. Our focus is on Arlington. We engage a lot of local people in our committees and our board and our work. The whole point is to reflect what the local needs are and to be of and for Arlington. So right now we have 150 units of affordable housing. They are found throughout every neighborhood and you'll see some pictures and a little bit of some of those. 102 of those were acquisition of existing properties and rehabilitation to preserve them and restrict them as affordable housing and perpetuity. And then 48 are the new construction that Mary referenced, our Downing Square Broadway initiative project that just completely leased up earlier this year. And then we also have a range of social service programs to help families remain stable in their homes and access a range of services. And we're gonna be ramping up in the new year some civic engagement activities, some tenant councils in our own properties with our own tenants, but also just engagement of other residents in Arlington to advocate and participate in town processes and state processes around affordable housing and other related issues. We can go on to the next slide. So this is just an overview of some of the homes we created in our earlier years when we were focused on these smaller properties, buildings of two units, four units, five units, when it was financially feasible to do that, which is not anymore. And it's really special because it means we do have affordable housing that's just part of the natural fabric of the town throughout every neighborhood of the town. So that's a few exterior shots and one interior shot of a home that turned over recently. You know, they're just like the housing we're all used to in the area. So next slide. This was, this is Capitol Square on Mass Ave, 252 Mass Ave is where our office is in the building that's further away in this photo. And this was our first larger development. We acquired this in 2016. It's 32 units among three buildings. So that was the start of us kind of moving into the modern era as far as what the market will allow and really advancing the impact and creating more affordable housing at once as the housing prices continued to worsen. So that was an acquisition and a major rehab and then moving on to the next slide. Came the Downing Square Broadway Initiative project which was our first new construction project, a total of 48 units among two sites and three buildings. You can see the buildings that look similar to each other. You might recognize if you've driven past they're both on Lowell Street and then the building at 117 Broadway. So that again was our first new construction project. It was the second time we had used the low income housing tax credit program which is the federal program that is the most widely used subsidy program across the country for affordable housing and it's the most impactful subsidy. You get the most money per unit but it only really works if you do slightly larger projects. It financially doesn't pencil out for a five, 10, even 15 unit development. So for Capital Square and this project and the project we're talking about tonight on Sunnyside Ave we'd be pursuing that financing source and building on the experience and knowledge and know how that we have from these prior developments. So the next slide just shows you a few interior shots of the DSBI project. It's beautiful, light filled, really feels nice to be in those units and we can go on to the next slide. So just an overview moving on to why we're here tonight. 10 Sunnyside Ave, as Mary said, we did. We do own the property. We acquired it in October. You probably know, it's a former auto body shop. Was purchased by another entity that had planned to development but their sort of business plans changed so then they put it on the market and we're proposing there to remove everything that's there now and create 43 new apartments with car parking and bike parking, with a community room and with some open space that you'll see in future slides that's basically a deck garden for the tenants there. There really isn't a sidewalk there at all. The street just kind of melds into the front of the building so we'd be restoring that, creating a sidewalk. The goal is to be highly energy efficient and in fact reach passive house standards. And UTL, our architecture firm, is one of the firms that's really on the forefront of that. They have on their staff, I think speaking correctly, you can correct me when you've come up, Nick and Rachela are both, I think, passive house certified. Yes, thanks, so we chose the firm because they brought so many levels of expertise and this was one of them. This will be 100% affordable under that low income housing tax credit program. So the maximum income household would be at 60% of the area median income, maximum to qualify. And I just put some examples here of what that means in this year's dollars as far as HUD every year, HUD updates those figures and they can shift a little bit from year to year, but as an example for a household of two, that means no more than around $67,000. A household of four, no more than around $84,000. But we'll also be reserving some units for even lower income families of a maximum income of 30% AMI where if you're that low income, there's so many waiting lists. It's just really, really, really hard if not impossible to find a suitable place to live in Greater Boston and certainly in Arlington. So next slide. So just wanted to go over what our anticipated timeline is and of course it's sometimes hard to predict these things, but we think this is pretty likely if things move as we expect. So we're having these informal converts, not less formal outside of the official zoning process and conversations now. We had a meeting with some of the butters the other week. We're gonna do a little more of a butter outreach. And then throughout 2023, we'll be working to advance our design. Hopefully we will get our zoning in the next few months. We will then be applying for those low income housing tax credits and other subsidies as soon as the next funding round comes up. A lot of this timeline does depend on when we get those subsidies. They're all administered by the state so the state awards these federal low income housing tax credits and a range of other subsidies that we'll need. And I say when and not if because I have full confidence this project will get funded. It aligns exactly with what the state is looking to fund, but they always have a major backlog because there just isn't enough money budgeted by the state to accommodate all the legitimate projects they get. Arlington hasn't been funded in a few years since our Downing Square project. I think we will be very well received and hopefully get through the first time we apply but not guaranteed at all. They do know that we're out there. We have communicated with them and they're fully aware that this project is planning to be in the queue. We actually submitted a pre-application just a couple of months ago. We were not invited to submit for the full application because they were so backlogged but we're kind of on the radar of the state which is a good thing. So if all goes well with that we would apply in January 2024 and get an award in the summer of 2024 and then close on that financing and start construction by the very end of 2024. So we anticipate completing construction in early 2026. We anticipate maybe a year long construction process and having tenants move in shortly thereafter in late winter, early spring of 2026. And then this project would be taken on by our property management firm Peabody Properties. They are a large firm that's able to grow with us. So we've already alerted them that this could be coming in a few years and they'll be able to grow with us when the time comes. So I think that was it from me and now I wanted to turn it over to UTL so they can get into some of the details of the design and you can think about what we're seeing, what we're thinking. Great, thanks Erica. So yeah, my name is Nick Bearons. I'm an associate principal at UTL. We are about a 70-person architecture and planning firm in downtown Boston and I manage our affordable housing practice. We've been building affordable housing for non-profit developers like the Housing Corporation for over 15 years in Greater Boston and beyond in New England. So really excited to have this opportunity to partner with Erica and her organization and do our first project in Arlington. And as Erica mentioned, we've developed a real sort of affinity and expertise for sustainable design and we're seeing passive house and similar strategies really become the de facto standards for affordable housing. So we're also excited to further that and every year with this project. I'll just give a brief sort of introduction to the site. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it but just to sort of frame why we think this is a great opportunity for redevelopment affordable housing. So you'll see here a map of the neighborhood. Sunnyside is right off of the Broadway corridor obviously, which is an increasingly dense commercial corridor. We're only about a quarter of a mile from Mass Ave which I'm sure you all know is an important commercial corridor both for Arlington and for the broader region. We've got a stop and shop right across the street and summerville here. We've got amazing access to the Ale White Brook Greenway and all of the green spaces and parks that are associated with that. Some pretty good access to bus routes both on Mass Ave and Broadway and then both the Red Line at Ale White and the newly opened Green Line Extension over at Tufts are about a mile away from the site. So, good, really good transit access, really good access to neighborhood amenities. And I think this is your great location for building your housing. Zooming in a little bit on the site itself for those of you that know the area this is kind of an interesting little pocket right on the border of Arlington. So as you'll see sort of at the top of the slide a lot of the historic residential fabric smaller single family homes and smaller multi-family two to four unit homes in the area but not directly in this area right along Broadway. There has been some redevelopment both with a legy medical building over here as well as this building at the corner of Broadway and Summerville but a lot of these older buildings including our own site sort of pre-existing from the historic industrial use in this neighborhood and as we understand the goals of the town there's really a desire to see redevelopment of this type in this area so this project is very well suited to meet the goals of the town in terms of furthering the advancement of this neighborhood. As I mentioned, we've got the bike path here along the gridway, we've got the cemetery right across the street again sort of a really nice well amenitized neighborhood to provide residents with access to open space to the grocery store across the road and to public transit. The site itself is in a bit of disrepair at the moment. The historic use of this site has been as a garage and not about your repair shop for I think close to 100 years at this point and the building itself takes up about a quarter of the site maybe and then sort of an open paved parking area with some debris and garbage is accumulated in sort of a lot of room for improvement here. As Erica mentioned, there's no public sidewalk in front of the site or really for the continuation of sunny side going down the street there. So we're looking at enhancing pedestrian access along the street and really improving the urban character of the site. A few photos here for your reference. You'll see the existing building here is a one-story auto body repair shop and then the open areas of the site which are a little bit overgrown at the moment. Excuse me, next door is Aramont Fuel which is a fuel oil business. So again sort of in that character of the late industrial context. A couple more, close here from the interior of the site. So as Erica mentioned, we've made an initial submission to the state which has prompted our request for a project eligibility review with you and that submission was very preliminary from a design standpoint really not a lot more developed than sort of this simple mass that you see here but the fundamental characteristics of the project really haven't changed as we continue to develop the design. So it's a five-story building right around 50,000 square feet and as Erica mentioned, 43 units. The distribution of which are really targeted towards meeting the state's affordable housing goals for families which tend to bias the unit mix towards larger two to three bedroom family style units as opposed to smaller one bedroom to three years. We've got about 21 parking space, sorry, automobile parking spaces which is about a point five ratio for our residential units to parking spaces and then quite an abundance of bike parking to meet the challenge requirements there and then a fairly sizable open space roof deck on the second floor that you can see here in concept and which I'll show some more use of as we move forward. And again, really interested in furthering the project sustainability, making a very energy efficient, low carbon footprint as well as trying to achieve really good indoor air quality and health outcomes for the residents so that's an important part of the sustainable outlook for the project as well. I'll walk through the floor plans of the building here. So this is a floor plan on the ground floor and you'll see in light blue, the interior areas of the building. So sort of the core of the building here and then another egress there that comes down in the back. The light gray here is all parking at grade but concealed and covered and underneath the footprint of the building. So there's no sort of exposed surface parking here. It's all protected from view and underneath the roof of the building if you will. We've got ample bike parking as I mentioned so some interior bike parking spaces here in the back of the building as well sort of an exterior bike around the back of the space. We're also proposing as part of this project a small mixed use office component which HCA is attending to occupy for their own use as well as some property management space and then sort of all of the typical infrastructure that you need for building the size trash rooms, electrical rooms, water and fire protection connections, all that types of stuff. As I mentioned, we're planning to improve and add to the public sidewalk in the public right away here and hopefully add additional street trees to continue some of the public plantings that have already been started on sunny sides as well as provide some planting buffers around the rear of the site and in the side yards as well. On the second floor is a large community room which would be for the use of the residents but also available on a reservation basis for community events for the larger community or on an invitation basis. And that's access directly up the stairs and elevator and has doors out to this large common roof deck space. If you think it's gonna be a great amenity both for the residents to use but also really a sort of a visual amenity for the neighborhood in a way to soften the visual impact of the building and the redevelopment and create a little bit of a relationship and dialogue between this site and some of these green spaces that I mentioned that are directly adjacent to the project such as the broken cemetery. You'll see on the rest of the floor plan are our mix of one, two and three bedroom apartments. And you see there's a sort of scattered around the floor plan and color coded here with the lighter tone being the one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom. And really that pattern just repeats itself as we go up the building. So we try to organize these buildings as efficiently as possible. Levels three and four are really just duplicates of one another. And then on the fifth floor as you'll see in some of the three dimensional presentations, we're stepping the front of the building back a little bit to provide some visual relief from the height and scale of the building. And that was something that we picked up on through our review of the town zoning code and directed us about how to approach buildings in this size and scale in this context. And so we think this is a helpful tool to help the building sit better in the neighborhood. On the roof, we're already starting to think about preserving area for photovoltaics which you'll see in the light gray tone here as well as doing some very preliminary space planning for mechanical equipment that will live on the roof and be located centrally to not really be visible from the street and avoid any visual impact there. So here's an initial massing of the building in three dimensions. So you'll see a sunny side here on the front and Broadway in the back. And I think as we've been developing the design of the building, we've tried to sort of focus in on a couple of key design principles. I would say probably the foremost one being the activation of the public street. And as I think you saw in photos, this has really historically been industrial. It's not a very inviting space to walk. We heard from some of the neighbors, their experiences walking down sunny sides who really, the idea here is to create an active street edge to come out with the building to meet the street and make this feel more like an urban neighborhood, more walkable and welcoming for pedestrians. At the same time, I think it's really important to us to find a way with the architecture and the design to tie the building together. We obviously want to provide vehicle parking and do that in a way that's screened from the street. So coming up with a material treatment that both accommodates building entrances and the office space within ties of the parking area together in one unified hole is really important. As I mentioned, on the upper levels, we're trying to find ways to make this building feel as contextual as possible. We're obviously one of the larger buildings being built in the neighborhood here, but using strategies for a side design where we break down the larger elevation into smaller constituent parts, either by subdividing vertically or horizontally, as I mentioned with this step back here to both provide some relief in the frontage of the building as well as it perceived height from the street. And then lastly, I think we're really excited about the second court green space. We think this is gonna be a great resource for the residents in the building to have this commonly available outdoor area and again, just a great sort of visual amenity to the residents who live in the residential neighborhood for down on some side to have some greenery along the street to have this feel like a little bit of a softer edge and to not have the entirety of the building coming out to the street. We've been studying very closely the relationship that some of the proceeding development is created with the street edge here as well as what some of the historical industrial context is created. And I think what we've tried to do here is strike a balance between, you know, being responsive to neighborhood context, but also hopefully setting a precedent for future development of this area and creating a project that other developers will look to as this area and this neighborhood continues to change and see redevelopment. So a couple of views here for your consideration. This is from Broadway looking down sunny side where you'll see the existing building on the corner here with our new proposed building set back from the street and you'll see the main residential entrance here where my cursor is, the proposed office space here on the ground level. Again, you know, we sort of split the facade in half here and then pushed the bulk of the building back behind the green space to provide some relief and scale and then access to the parking area through this really nice sort of perforated brick screen while here along the street. A similar view here at this time standing on sunny side and looking back towards Broadway. So this would be the cemetery and the distance here. And here I think you can really see, you know, this desire and intention to, you know, continue the public, you know, pedestrian right of way here as much as possible. And to, you know, really create a framework for future redevelopment and neighborhood to create a welcoming urban streetscape and really bring the building after the street. Make it feel like it's part of the neighborhood. And just another overview here of the project where again you can see the main residential entrance here in the middle of the building, office space here on the left, bringing, you know, the smaller portion of the facade after the street with a larger portion of recess and then the green space in front of it and then access to the parking lot. So I think that's a pretty good summary of where we're at in the design process and look forward to hearing your comments or questions. Thank you. So I'll turn to my colleagues, you know. Thank you, it's very impressive and I see you have quite a timeline laid out. I've heard from a few residents on sunny side who are definitely looking forward to meet future meetings to hear more about the project, just sort of as a preview, I guess the top three or four issues that I've heard were and you've touched on some of them. The parking, which is sort of in the envelope of the building and I probably missed this and you said it and I apologize. Is that ground level or is that sub grade and approximately how many parking spaces? So all of the parking is at grade but it's all entirely screened from the street and it's 21 spaces currently. So it's about half, 0.5 parking spaces per residential unit if you will. Okay and then I don't want to answer to this tonight because it's not under the purview of the select board but one of the positives is also a somewhat of a con in the sense of near the owl wife in the greenway as well as the flooding issues that are down there. Although just from what you presented here tonight it really seems like you're working within the existing framework of what's there anyways. You're just building up more, not necessarily out and I noticed the setbacks that you've highlighted in the plans. Do you anticipate that those, and I know everything is subject to change but the setbacks that you presented here tonight with this building is that something we can pretty much sort of bank on maybe with a little bit of a variation but that will be what's incorporated into the final plan. I can answer that Ms. Mahan. They will, the setbacks that appear on the plan will be what we're presenting to the ZVA for approval. Okay and then congrats on having attorney O'Connor sort of help herald you through this process because she's worked on and is currently working on some other housing developments here in Ellington. So she's very well versed besides being an Ellington resident and advocate for the town with neighbors concerns and with any project it's going to be a temporary thing but undoubtedly there'll be some sort of disturbing or relocation of the neighborhood of some of the rodents that will come out during the project but I know that similar to other projects that we have here in Ellington you'll have some sort of plan for that. Absolutely. Thank you Ms. Mahan, we will. Absolutely. And I know attorney O'Connor is dealing with that with the schwa mill. It's kind of a similar topography in terms of size of building near a waterway abutting neighborhoods. And I only had one call during that current project and it was something that was taken care of right away. And then the only other thing that there's no way you could determine it tonight but as you go through the subsequent boards that you will go through in the next year or two the other question that I got a lot of is traffic impacts and what I've been saying in terms of road closures where Broadway is somewhat main thoroughfare that people come in Ellington and go out of Ellington and what I've said to residents is pay attention to and businesses, the plans as they move forward but I would only anticipate similar to any of the other projects like the Ellington High School, schwa mill, even Downing Square with the exception of perhaps temporary a few hours or days. I don't see anything in the plans as well as construction vehicles coming in and out and materials getting delivered. I don't see any large projection of totally restricting access on Broadway for any extended period of times and is that what you all anticipate? I wouldn't think so and I can tell you that we've already had niche engineering do a complete traffic impact study for this development and there'll be no impact at all from this project on the traffic in that area based on their professional you know the L-life Broadway intersection is one of the worst intersections for crash debt data but we're not gonna worsen it. If we can't improve it unfortunately but it's not this project isn't gonna impact it in any way. Okay and just one small little housekeeping thing that's not a big thing but it is it's sort of similar to when people come before us and they profess on and on how they know about the city of Allenton and the city and the city's doing a good job when in reality it's a town and just as the slides go forward sunny side all one word not two words just because it's a small thing but like you know one of the good things I can say is we have our HCA director who's based out of Allenton and is very well versed we have attorney O'Connor who not only has you know years and years of experience with different projects in Allenton and is an Allenton resident she's very well aware of that but I just noticed it in the slides it's not a biggie but it's the kind of thing that you'd be surprised and I think that attorney O'Connor will know. Understood, understood. Yeah okay and I don't mean to be nitpicking. Yeah it's a court reporter in me just for consistency sake Joe. I don't want somebody saying oh you know you haven't used the proper legal street name and even though it's just a plan so and again I'm very excited that we have our executive director from the housing authority sort of championing this projects and certainly we have other projects we can look towards as you cited on Broadway Downing Square as well as the two family projects amongst the town that HCA as well as the housing authority has been doing and I guess just as an aside to the town manager if we could just for curiosity sake between now and maybe before town meeting starts so there's no rush on it if the board, if you could just sort of email us current housing units the town has I know we've applied and said that we thought we were there and there's been an issue with water bodies and things like that but if you could just sort of give us a ballpark what that magic number is recognizing it could change but just you know so as we start to put in and I'm very excited that all 43 of these units in some form or another are affordable so I wanna thank everyone for that and I apologize for having so many questions but I did tell a couple of town meeting members who contacted me to follow the process and any public documents so I'm just gonna have the select board's office forward the memorandum that we receive from our planning and community development director just for them to have something as they move forward so thank you to you all and thank you Mr. Chairman I apologize for all big long questions no problem and before I turn to anyone else so a quick question since we talked about saying it's I being one word what is the suffix for Broadway? Is there a suffix for it? There's none right? not that I know of either so it's not like a street avenue or anything it's just Broadway the legal street name is just Broadway but it's not broad way that's for the naughty Santa you guys weren't here before the meeting the chair is one of the naughty elves sorry go ahead I can handle this this is a Corsi thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you for the presentation this evening it looks like a very exciting project and I just have a couple of questions you mentioned the butter outreach earlier on and that there's going to be more of it but can you tell us what the extent of it has been to date and maybe the timeframe going forward sure what we did was we took all of the names who were in the who would receive legal notice as to the project and we sent them letters and we had a meeting in the selectments in the Lions hearing room about a week a little over a week ago and presented this plan three people came the three were very positive about the project they had some comments and suggestions and we're going to hold another butter by Zoom another butter outreach as well and I've since learned actually from one of those attendees that there is a neighborhood list served for sunny side so we'll reach out to that list to invite them to a Zoom meeting and I would also like to say anyone who's interested or concerned I welcome emails I'm happy to have people contact me directly if they have questions or concerns or anything like that great thank you and then another question on this is a review period for mass housing and it's a common period for us has mass housing come out to perform the site visit yet and if not when are they due to come out yeah so yeah mass housing administers this but it's the DATD actually does the site visit so we just had that this week Monday and it's really just them making sure the site is real and it's a very minimal visit just to make sure that they see the site and it's real and it's as it seems like it was from the initial project eligibility letter so that happened went smoothly and whatever write up happens after that should be should be happening internally at the state level this week okay and just a comment for you and maybe a comment to my colleagues too I have I think a number of us have visited the sites on Broadway and Downing Square and if that's an indication of the type of construction I was very impressed with the other buildings that have been put up and the work that you did there in terms of going forward we have a 30 day period as you know to submit comments and I think from what you're hearing people sound favorably inclined however the 30 day period ends on January 8th which is Sunday that pushes to Monday the 9th that's our next meeting I'm just wondering if there was a discussion here about looking to extend that period by a few days so that we could receive any input from departments would you have any objection to our doing that no we understand that the board would like to have ample time and this is holiday season if it was if we could get it in shortly thereafter that would be very helpful okay thank you attorney okay Mr. Herrick thank you thank you for the presentation I actually had an opportunity to do a Zoom meeting a few weeks back and get the preview of the presentation and was able to to have my questions answered at that time so I do appreciate your time again for the very detailed presentation here tonight um you know it's for the ZBA to review the technical details of the project I think for this board it's really to look at the project as a whole and see if it if it jives with what we're with the town's goals and what we're hearing from residents and we've said this time time again in many different aspects of of items that have been before us affordable housing is on the tops of the hearts and minds of a lot of residents in Arlington if that might be the number one issue that we hear from residents and a goal that really almost all Arlington residents are looking to move towards um but it's difficult and sometimes the discussions are hard to have and some of the residents don't want to understand what it takes to create more affordable housing units we don't have a lot of space and so to have a project like this with forty three and I'm sorry if I misquote the number but forty three affordable housing units a few of which are at thirty percent AMI is really a blessing towards our goal of creating affordable housing especially for the extreme uh extremely affordable nature and I think that this project the designs have clearly reflected some of the values that are important to Arlington I think the architects took took to heart and listened to the town residents and looked at other projects and certainly took the wise advice of attorney when Stanley O'Connor as to what is important to Arlington residents with the bicycle parking and the open space uh the setbacks and I think that this project within the they found a good location there aren't a few many locations in Arlington where you could build a building of this size but I think you found one and I think based on what we've seen we can make it work you have to continue to work with neighbors and allay concerns of that any butters might have because there are different uses here and it's it's starkly different use of what's been in the past and there are other auto shops around there that want to make sure that they can continue to maintain their businesses and run the businesses like they had for many years but I am excited to see this project move forward I think it is something that could be beneficial for the town and have done in the in the way that's as it's been presented you know the HCA has a great name in Arlington so we certainly trust the work that will come out of the HCA and again I look forward to getting more affordable housing in Arlington and seeing this project as it progresses thank you Mr. Chair thank you Mr. Hearn yes and I was uh I had private presentation also so I got to ask a lot of questions and and give some insights as to my vision for what that area could become you know and and a lot more of a Broadway and as I mentioned it's interesting how this kind of fits in with some of the ideas that came out of the Broadway corridor design contest you know and uh almost all the designs had be some kind of larger structure there that was kind of like the gateway to Arlington and I think it's really nice in this case that the gateway is is a building that's all affordable housing you know and and there's as you mentioned too in the presentation that it could be a trigger me and for other kinds of development so I think maybe some concerns mean from residences that means some types of converting and business properties mean into housing and thereby you know precluding the ability to you know have increased the the revenue that we get from businesses mean but I think this could stimulate more development that would also bring in other businesses mean I know you have some office space in there so it's not you're not going to lose all of the potential for taxes from from businesses but like I said I think it can stimulate more development even if not in just that location but maybe further up and down um Broadway so so this is um I'm enthusiastic about it and thank you to my colleagues for having uh allowing this you know to take place tonight on what's supposed to be a shorter uh meeting for us being but it did come up on the eighth being and I didn't want us to be in a position where we wanted to say something and we had uh missed the deadline you know so so um so here we are you know we'll decide you know whether to ask for a delay or or I guess another possibility is that we can meet me a little bit earlier um before our next meeting but I think we'll decide that so uh I'll ask um um Mr. Manager if you have any questions or comments that you want to make or no I also had a previous presentation I think it looks like a good project and um I'm excited to see this uh more affordable housing being built in town great thank you so um any other comments or questions for me from from our guests thank you thank you for scheduling this I know we appreciate you trying to to move it forward and if it has to be delayed a few days that's fine but appreciate this time thank you very much to all of you and happy holidays welcome thank you you as well thank you so um so how do we want to move forward Mr. Deglesi yeah thank you Mr. Chairman I I think we're moving towards a letter of support but I think given the time frame and in the deadline I I'd move that we request an extension until no later than the end of the week of the ninth and that we um perhaps I don't know if you're going to be working with with town council and in this record but if there's a letter um available or draft available for approval on the ninth and if we approve it we could send it out that week second right you know so I'm certainly trying to say that you know and so I think I think this reason was expected we'll get that um extension Mr. Mr. Heim Mr. Heim thank you Mr. Chair just so I can understand um what I am receiving from the board tonight in terms of my read of motion by Mr. Deglesi the board's general tenor is that I will work with the director of planning and community development to draft a letter of support for this project uh site approval but that I will also ask for an extension from mass housing with the consent of the applicant uh or the agreement of the applicant to the end of that week so that we could finalize the target of finalizing a letter um on that Monday January 9th is that a fair summary yes yes Mr. Heim thank you so is it and just I know we'll be submitting comments either to the chair or to town council attorney Heim when we get the draft letter and what should be included in there but if we could somehow in the first paragraph or second I don't think it's going to be an extremely long letter um highlight that um I know we break out the 43 units and the 13 units but if we can just highlight that this is a totally affordable um in different variations um proposal that the HCA is putting together great chair may I say something yes mr. Heim I'm sorry miss mon I didn't cut you off if there are any individual comments the board members would like to submit to me just individually not if not among yourselves that you'd like to have especially to highlight certain things um I'd be very receptive to receiving that though I've been listening to continue notes to the dialogue here tonight thank you okay thank you Mr. Heim so with that uh motion by mr. DeCorsi and a second by Mr. Herd meaning that we ask for an extension meaning that we do proceed forward with the letter of approval that we will review on the ninth you know um oh well here mr. Mr. Heim I was looking over there for you that's uh so Mr. Heim Mr. Herd yes mr. DeCorsi yes mrs. Mahan yes mr. DeCorsi yes it's a four-zero vote mr. helmet the absent well thank you have a good night folks thank you tonight so moving on to the consent agenda we have the minutes from our December 5th meeting and a request from monotony grill and tavern for a late night event on uh the 31st of this month through the first I mean there's even the new years uh and that's by monotony grill and tavern 25 mass av will in minds and and lastly a reappointment to the public mourners committee of Dennis Corbett term takes fire on January 31st 2024 you know and I have a quick question on that that 2024 just seems a little short two years from it's about a year it's about a year staggered so he's filling the staggered term okay okay gosh all right thank you my math is bad all right we're still in 22 I just want to let you know that yes there was an emergency that then that's attached yes and that's also part of the consent agenda yeah thank you I remember it's doing the presentation so it's like that so um and so um that is a request for a contractor training to train layer of license second so on a motion by this behind a second by Mr. Herd to the consent agenda Mr. Hyde Mr. Herd yes Mr. Corsi yes this is behind yes Mr. Biggins yes Janice Covey thank you and so now on to item number seven for approval a common victroller license I'm Maria's piz Rhea K6 Mass Avenue Hakee Denz Deng Ziggly hello can can you talk because I'm not hearing you you just have to unmute your body hello you're okay you're fine just so yes thank you for joining us meet up so uh you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and what you plan to do my name is Hakee Deng Zilly and I own the company name is Pisa Days I have a seven store around the Massachusetts and one in Miami I'm taking over the Maria's Pizzas in Grill 86 Mass Ave Arlington so I'm here right now to get your permission to take over the location and I've been doing this business almost 20 years I'm helping all the schools and all the kids love my pizzas I want to continue as is I'm not going to change anything um other than that any question I can answer great thank you I'll turn my colleagues move approval I do see you list you're going to run this with only two employees but I have a feeling you're going to need a few more but that's your business management plan correct it's not easy right now to find someone that's true that's true even though it's Sunday week they close I do my best yeah I need to train the people so okay so move approval second promise me so look thank you very much me for um for continuing the business here I mean and yes it is a struggle but there are a lot of hungry people out in the east mean so I think you'll do well and and we'll understand if we have to wait a little longer me for our food so so on a motion by Mrs. behind and a second by mr um to horsey you know oh i'm mr. heard yes of course yes yes thank you yes thank you very much take care thank you so on now to item number eight for approval the license renewals and this is everything you know for the for the whole town you know and I'll turn to my colleagues move approval motion by mr. heard second by mr. coursey so any comments questions so so I saw me in a couple cases mean that would that there was a reference to me to comments you know and is that just boilerplate or were there comments to me that just weren't included in the back but so you should have been able I don't know it was possible but to hover over at the planning department had just made a couple notes basically it was if a restaurant was on the list that had closed in the air they had noted that yeah if it was changing location they had noted that yeah but other than that there was no controversial crazy comments that they had okay yeah I did see a little yellow thing hover yeah a little like yeah I think maybe the way I downloaded it mean it didn't work because I kind of downloaded them all onto this machine but I think you have to maybe have the link live and then you see that so okay you know so all righty you know well you know that no other comments and questions for me so on a motion minister heard and a second by mr. Corsi mr. Hyme yes Corsi yes yes yes mr. Davis yes thank you so open forum accepted unusual circumstances any matter presented for circuit for consideration of the board shall neither be accurate upon nor decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established it should be noted that there is a three-minute time limit to present a concern or request and I'm not seeing any hands up and I'll just add the only reason I added it I know that we wanted to have a short meeting was just in case there were comments based on the sunny side property you know so all right we'll move on to traffic rules in order quick follow-up by me on the town manager screening committee process so the superintendent has agreed to be a part of it you know and so mr. Corsi and I will present a recommendation for someone from the townside probably a department had been on on the night so we'll await your appointees you know at that meeting yes mr. Hyde um well my appointing will be Kate Larry okay I've already spoken to her she's accepted to do it and when the probably after the holidays holy days um either the chair or through the chair with human resources director the other three or the other two appointees if um you or miss Malloy could just sort of send them a general uh time frame of because like Kate was asking me about what does it um encompass and I said well nothing can stop until after January 13th but even then you know it could be four to eight weeks out after that and um she also was asking about uh in-person zoom hybrid um and I said you know I'd leave that up up to the committee right I said probably hybrid but I don't know so and just asking about how many meetings and I said you know once the committee met they would determine that but I didn't see this as labor intensive exercise so whenever those the committees known it um we could just send out to at least the other three designees for myself mr. Helmeth and mr. Harden sort of a framework yeah no no no well that's part of the reason for having this follow-up now and so I had a conversation with um Bernie in luncheon and and we're thinking the commitment will be nine to ten hours I mean I would say you probably eight to twelve to be on on the safe side and it'll extend over three to four meetings you know and and right now the thinking is that the meetings will be virtual you know we will do hybrid mean if if necessary and um and certainly committee you know if it decides that he wants to do in-person or hybrid it'll be up to the committee but in terms of time commitment in probably eight to twelve hours over three to four meetings extending from the end of January into most of February so so so yeah thank you so any other questions concerns or anything for anyone all right I got big on that you know and finally we have um corresponds receive um this concerns um on regarding speeding on Highland Avenue by Garo Saradarian you know and I'll just give a little background this came in in in um November her November and officer Rato responded with being a fairly extensive list of of um times that there had been observations and and I felt that he I could take that in and form uh response to me and then I thought about it for a while and you know I I couldn't really mean so so I'm going to send it on over of the tack and there's a little other hesitancy about sending the tack because because I think we all got the letter so we saw that the bottom I was a little colorful you know and so so I was like can I just kind of handle this and also officer Rato and I had had a conversation about maybe there's some things that we can handle and and not send me to tack if we but I just don't see how I can because although we officer had shown that they had done some observations I mean there were some other issues that were brought up and we just need to send the tack even if tack you know just does a short response it'll be a formal response to the resident and we'll go from there so so so my requests mean well I guess I shouldn't make the request I just explain things so now I'll let someone make the motion you know and we'll go from there we'll receive referral okay second all right so uh bonus to my mr. Hurd and second gladness behind me to receive and send the tack mr. Hyde mr. Hurd yes sir of course yes this is Bob yes thank you mr. Dickies yes yeah thank you so now new business you know uh mr. Meyer just happy holidays and happy new year Mr. Bullard I reiterate that sentiment happy holidays to everybody mr. Hyde just one quick note and I'll echo sentiments the attorney general's office has finished reviewing our bylaw submissions from the 2022 you know tell meeting there was a bylaw that they approved which we've been waiting on for a while about solar panel requirements that was a part of our zoning bylaw there are two other bylaws amendments that they have taken somewhat an orthodox position on Russians and orthodox but atypical positions on one involving our domestic partnership bylaw update which they did not reject but they considered to be a personnel bylaw change and then the second is they're holding our rodenticide regulation bylaw pending some special legislation that we also submitted that same appeal attempt so this is something i'll bring back to the board just so the public will sort of understand what happened and the board can consider you know these issues going forward in advance of our warrant article season thank you thank you Mr. Gorsi thank you mr. Chairman the few items that i have um first of all it uh back in 2020 i know in December 7th 2020 the board issued a proclamation a red proclamation um stating that November 7th 2020 the month before was diamond chimalice day in the town of Arlington she was 106 at that time she passed away last week on December 14th at the age of 108 at the um and at the time of just before her death she was the oldest living resident in the town of Arlington so it was an honor to have her there back at the end of 2020 our condolences to her family but a life well lived by her um second item and those of you who followed the world cup saw that argentina won on sunday there is a little bit of an Arlington connection and it's a very much of a stretch but back in 2016 the argentinian soccer team dined at tango after having a match at Gillette stadium and and among the the participants that evening was Lionel Messi the the great star for argentina so it's a little bit of a connection there to Arlington third thing last week the last friday the long range planning committee met um we will be meeting again in january by talk to the chair um he mr the chair mr poole and i will be talking in january and i believe there will be a a fuller presentation to the board as to our budget situation and and um potential decision points going forward so i just want to update everybody on that lastly happy holidays and happy new year thank you sir my seven-year-old will be happy to know that knowledge the past two weeks he keeps asking me who's better Ronaldo or Messi i say i don't know we'll follow soccer but um no no new business other than happy holidays everybody thank you no new business and um everyone celebrating holy days holiday holidays um happy holidays to everyone as well as um my heartfelt thanks on um my circumstances of late and i appreciate my colleagues and everyone else who's reached out and uh hold all those you love dear and those who aren't so near that they still have a place in your heart thank you you're welcome and that's one reason that i feel that whenever you have an opportunity to express your gratitude to someone you'll take it because you just don't know when that chance will um go away me for whatever reason you know so yes happy holidays everybody you know and mr. de Corsi had the only piece of new business i mean that i was going to have regarding the lrp you know and so so um next year it's going to be an interesting year you know uh they always are you know so so i'm looking forward to it and and i thank to everyone you know for all your support you know in this position you know and yeah so i'll just stop there and say i'll take a motion to adjourn to adjourn second okay so i'm motion to adjourn by mr. mahan and second by mr. de Corsi mr. hyde yes mr. Corsi yes mr. mahan yes thank you mr. de yes i'll be honored to adjourn