 All right. Well, it is 734 p.m. on Thursday, January 26th, 2023. Good evening, everyone. My name is Christian Klein. I am the chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I'm calling this meeting of the board to order. I would ask that all attendees who are not recognized to speak to please mute their connection until such time as they are recognized by the chair. I would like to confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present. Members of the Zoning Board of Appeals, Roger Dupont. Here. Patrick Hanlon. Here. Daniel Rickidelli. Here. Ben Keholly. Here. And Elaine Hoffman. Here. Welcome to you all here on behalf of the town. Valerie our board's administrator. And Rick is here. He was tied up with another thing. So he may be stepping out for a minute. Vincent Lee, assistant staff. We're also joined by Marcella who's our senior planner in the Department of Planning and Community Development. And also joining us is Jeff Maxutis, who is the vice chair of the Transportation Advisory Committee. Consultants for the board, Paul Haverty. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. Paul is joining us from BDH Law. He's our MHP technical review consultant. Also joining us from Tetra Tech is Courtney Sudak. Good evening. And also joining us is Cliff Boomer, who's a principal at Davis Square Architects. I'm here. Wonderful. And then appearing on behalf of the applicant, we have Paul Selman from Davis Mom to Augustine. Good evening. Good evening, Paul. We have Matt Mejuri, the president of the Mejuri companies. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. And then we have, I believe both Paul Mejuri and Jackie Mejuri. Good evening. Good evening. And we also have Chris Mulhern. Good evening. Oh, right. Matt, is there anyone else who you are anticipating being on the call? Jeff from Venezia Associates. Wonderful. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. And no one in the waiting room. The open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with an act relative to extending certain state of emergency accommodations signed into law on July 16, 2022. This act includes an extension until March 31, 2023 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, which has ended the requirement to hold all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Public bodies may continue holding meetings remotely without a form of the public body physically present at a meeting location, so long as they provide adequate alternative access to remote meetings. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting and opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. 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The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda as chair or reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. We have no administrative items this evening. So we are turning to the comprehensive permit hearing for the residences at Mill Brook located at 1021 through 1027 Massachusetts Avenue. This evening the board is continuing the comprehensive permit hearing for the residences at Mill Brook the redevelopment of an existing site in the neighborhood office district. The updated documents are available from the board's website or as an attachment to the posted agenda. At the previous session the board heard testimony regarding wetlands and stormwater plans for the property. Tonight the applicant will be invited to introduce themselves and their team and the applicants traffic and transportation specialists will then speak to comments received from the town and the board of consultants. The board will then present questions to the applicant regarding traffic and transportation concerns. The hearing will then be open for public comment and questions on the topics being discussed this evening. The board has scheduled several hearings for this project. The scheduled dates are available on the project website under the ZBA page on the town website. At the conclusion of public comment, the board will discuss plans for the next session with the applicant before a vote to continue the hearing and adjourn for the evening. So at this point, I would like to introduce Attorney Paul Feldman from Davis Palma di Agostini to introduce the project team. And then I would ask that their traffic transportation consultant address the town and the board's consultants comments to their initial application. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Paul Feldman. I'm an attorney representing the applicant. As the chair, recognize various people from the applicant. Matt Mashory and Jackie Mashory are are from the Mashory. Company and they are the developers of this proposed fully be project. The architect is Chris Mulher and our traffic consultant is Jeffrey Dirk. I'm not going to. I'm just going to repeat slightly what the chair said. This is our third public hearing with regard to the 40 B application. The 40 B application is presenting a 50 unit residential condominium project with some commercial space on the ground level. 13 affordable units will be provided. The permit projects are limited dividend return projects, meaning the developers return is capped with a convenient project at 20% of the eligible costs through regulations and certification. At the very first hearing, we presented an overview of the proposed development. The architectural plans for the building, the site drawings and various other piece of introductory information. At the hearing that we had two weeks ago, we focused on the site layout, stormwater management and wetlands. Our civil engineer was present in our wetlands consultant, wetlands scientist was present. And at least from the applicant's point of view, we thought that was a very productive beneficial meeting. We paid attention to the comments and feedback that we heard that night. We also have had the benefit of third party review consultants that have been retained by the board, both tetra tech and Davis square architects. Two weeks ago, a lot of the comments that the civil engineer focused on were presented by tetra tech. And if you go to the project website, you will see that there have been follow up materials submitted. In response to those comments and we look forward to addressing those responses and any other open questions about stormwater and the site design at a future meeting. As the chair indicated, our focus is presenting a the traffic impacts of the project. And then after that, we will return to the architectural design for the project in which our design architect will have a short presentation. Where he points out a certain changes that have been made in response to both public comments or comments and comments by the third party review consultant. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeffrey Dirk from Vanessa associates to traffic assessment materials that was submitted to the board. Good evening, Mr Chairman members of the board for the record. My name is Jeffrey Dirk on the managing partner with Vanessa associates, and we're the transportation consultants on the project. If the chair would mind I'm going to share my screen I have a just a brief presentation to go through the findings of the transportation assessment. And I would mention I will work in some of the responses to the comments that we received from the review consultant as well as the town departments which we think are beneficial and result in a much better project. Perfect, you should be all set to share. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. I'm able to see my screen. Yes. Okay, well good. Good for a start. So just by way of a high level summary of the of the transportation assessment and as I mentioned, you know, we have the benefit of having tetra check conduct a peer review of the study. We always very helpful for us to receive those comments in advance of making a presentation to you. We have provided a response to that comment letter, as well as the comments we received from the department of homework works as well as a transportation advisory council, all as I have mentioned very good projects and or comments and work those responses into my presentation as I said, we think that has resulted in some refinements that have resulted in a better project. The first thing is just in terms of the assessment itself. There are standards we have to follow and preparing this assessment and you're consulted as they're conducting the peer review. The first thing is to make sure that we followed all of the applicable standards and those standards are, they're set by the department of transportation. They do spell out kind of the parameters of our transportation analysis data collection methodologies. The analysis methodologies that we need to follow and as I said, tetra tech did have a chance to review that. And from the standpoint of, you know, the facts finger figures and the methodology and the study. I think they've affirmed basically that the findings of the study and the methodology was in accordance with those standards for I think there's a good baseline at least to start from and start a conversation as it relates to impacts of the project. And I think importantly, how the project can benefit the community with respect to improvements. The project is not a large traffic generator at 50 units were expecting it's going to produce less than 30 trips during the peak hours on a weekday so that's it's one additional vehicle every two minutes, which is not a level that rises to significance in that. If you look at motorist delays and vehicle queuing so basically if you want you experience on the roadway today, you're not going to see a significant difference. As a results to this additional traffic from the project you'll still see a new driveway you'll see a brand new building. But as it relates to the increase in traffic over the peak hour you're you're not going to experience something that is going to cause increases in delay in queuing. And that being said that does not mean that as it relates to the driveway and in particular looking at the safety of pedestrians and bicycles and transit riders at this area. That that's not something that needs to be addressed as we think about the design of the project and looking at the thoughtful comments that were provided, you'll see they really focus in on those areas which is making sure that this project. And potentially as it relates to areas that are beyond my expertise, but from a transportation perspective making sure that we understand what is there today, and how can we approve improve upon those facilities and and not create a detriment to safety and and that's the focus of the review and how we've revised the project to address some of those comments. So focusing on safety. We look at a couple of things as it releases safety we look at motor vehicle crashes. When I mentioned motor vehicle crashes it's not just vehicles. It's vehicle interactions with pedestrians and bicycles as well so we're looking at that component which is very important as we look at this area. Given the fact that we have the bike lanes and we have sidewalks and we want people to be able to safely use those modes of transportation. And looking at is there a crash incidents or crash history as it relates to the those modes of travel as well. Happy to report as it relates to this area where the project is located. There are no safety deficiencies. We did identify one pedestrian crash that it did occur just at the north of the site at the signal at Brattle Street. And that was the only incident that we saw that there was an interaction with a pedestrian or bicyclist at that one location. Safety the other aspect is lines of sight. Very important when we're considering an urban environment that we have on street parking we have a bike lane we need to make sure that not only can a motor vehicle coming out see other vehicles. They need to see a pedestrian and sidewalk and they need to be able to see a bicycle and that bicycle lane before making sure that they can stick the front end of their vehicle out into either of those transportation facilities and then safely exit the project site. So we've confirmed that those sight lines that are necessary for that safe operation are available. Your consultant is also provided some comments to us in terms of how we might be able to make that better. And I'll talk about that later on in the presentation. So now just giving some context to the study area we evaluated as well as the project site so the site is showing the hard to see but it's in this area here. And the two lots where you can see you can see the large roof building here so it's the lot here and the lot here is where the project site is located Mass Ave obviously running in the up and down direction on the slide here. This slide shows the study area that was the focus of our transportation assessment. It's essentially the entirety of the Mass Ave corridor stretching from Brattle Street in the north, and then Walnut Street in the south, and then each of the intervening intersections at Monotmy Ray Orchard Place and Walnut Street as it exists along the roadway. And then of course the site driveway which is located between those two roadways here. So now looking at a little bit more detail in existing conditions so again refocusing ourselves I've changed the direction of Mass Ave so now it's running in the bottom of the slide here obviously and these two buildings here where the project site is located. Our driveway is going to come out just about in this location here. I'll mention how that relates to this bus stop area here in a moment and some of the changes that we're going to be making. Before we get into some numbers as they relate to the project just looking at existing conditions. So this section of Mass Ave where the project site is located accommodates about 12,000 vehicles per day on a weekday that's two way traffic in each direction. If you do write that number down and I'm going to talk a minute about how much traffic we're going to add to that 12,000 vehicles per day so you can get a range and kind of an estimate of what the increase in traffic relates to the project. 12,000 vehicles per day during each of the peak hours it's somewhere around 960 or so vehicles per hour during the morning peak hour which is eight to nine in the morning and about the same volume in the evening in the evening peak hours for 30 to 530 so that's the hourly volume. Also very apparent the figure here or the picture we have sidewalks on both sides, we have bike lanes on both sides, we have bus stops on both sides so the MBTA 77 bus runs right down this section of Mass Ave connects up to Harvard Square so you get opportunities to get on the important as it relates to the project site is are all of those amenities I described, we do not want this to be an auto centric project anymore than the board does so we want to make sure that you walk, you bike, you can get on public transportation those are all right in front of the project site you come right out the front door, you have all of those opportunities. And so we as a part of our project and what we'll be doing for transportation and management is making sure people understand this is it's all there for you. There's no need to get in an automobile if you don't want to, and to make sure that they're aware of that so you know that's that that's a specific amenity to the project. Also looking at bus stops. It's very important as we think about, you know, inbound and outbound bus service that you've got a place where it's easy and proximate to cross the road so that you can get the inbound boss and then when you get the outbound boss to come home. You've got a safe way to cross the street so you do see in this area here at Brattle Street, we have the crossings at that signalized intersection so push button control there so you can push the button and safely cross the intersection. Also, as a part of the transportation assessment, we do look at Americans with Disability Act compliance as it relates to these accommodations. The sidewalks, the crosswalks and the crossings here all are ADA compliant in that they have the wheelchair ramps they also have the tactile strips that are required at the bottom. So as it relates to accessibility at this location, you know, this is a good location for crossings. It's a perfect location for the site to be located so that we can get access to the bus stops on either side. So this slide shows the project as proposed you see the building here, the two existing buildings are in these positions here. You do see the driveway coming out here where I had shown it in relation to that bus stop. Which is starts just about after the after the driveway here and that extends beyond the project site so this is where the access is located from the site. So now going back to or looking at some traffic numbers or the amount of increased traffic that we expect the project is going to generate. So we have the two components as Paul was mentioning we have the residential components so this is the 50 residential units. The commercial trips which is the small amount of accessory retail space that's associated with the project. So about 930 square feet is associated with commercial space. You see this column here which is non auto trips so this is the benefit of people using public transportation walking and biking. So that we've assumed is 20% of the residential trips. As you look at the census data as for this area of where the project site is located. What the census data reports basically residents in this area have reported that about 30% of them are just under 30% use an alternative mode of transportation so they're walking biking or using public transportation. 70% would use either in an automobile or some some mode of vehicular traffic. Another phenomenon in that is of course the work from home, which has now become a more statistically significant amount as well which is wasn't reflected so much in the earlier census data. But that generally is in your 5% or so range on top of that so what we've used is 20% the actual numbers are probably closer to 30%. Projecting traffic volume increases on the high level. This last column here is the new trips so as we're looking at the impacts of the project. These are the numbers that we've added on to the 12,000 vehicles per day and the 968 vehicles per hour on the roadway. So the top number that you see here this is the daily number so this is the number the 320 is the two way vehicle trips going in and out of the driveway so half in half out total is 320. That is the number that gets added to 12,000. So you can see so it's a it's a small increase over what's out there today. And then these smaller numbers are the peak hour numbers so the 18 vehicles here. That's the morning peak hour so that's that eight to nine time period in the morning. We're going to add 18 vehicles on to the 960 vehicles that are on mass have today so a small increase. And then the other number the 27 you see here that's that that's the amount we add during that evening time period between 430 and 530. We're going to add 27 vehicles over that one hour period to about again 960 vehicles along mass have so that's the one additional vehicle, every two minutes or less than one a vehicle every two minutes during those peak hours that's where that numbers do live from. So as we're looking at those numbers. And of course when you come out of the driveway. Some people want to go north some people want to go south so these numbers as you get away from the driveway, I'll get smaller and smaller, about 60% of this traffic wants to I guess will be to the southeast along mass have on the balance 40% would go to the northwest. So we're looking at 18 to 27 peak hour trips. 60% of it if it's coming out of the driveway 60% goes left 40% goes right coming out of the driveway. So we'll get to each of the intersections the traffic starts to get smaller and smaller. So the point really is we have concentration it's 18 and 27 right at the immediate drive point. And then when you get away from the driveway the numbers get smaller and smaller and so that's where the one additional vehicle every 2 minutes is at the driveway, and you get away from the project site those numbers are less than that so as we're looking at impacts, we're really talking about increases in traffic that are really around the 10 to 12 vehicles at any one intersection over the course of an hour. So the numbers get quite small as you get further from the site so that's where I was mentioning as you're out there today and seeing how the roadway works. You're not going to see a significant change. As a result of the additional traffic that this project produces just because the numbers aren't that large for this level of development. And again, recognizing that we're really expecting more people are going to walk by their use public transportation than what these numbers would suggest. So, after all of that analysis what we look at is is recommendations for not only how the site is going to operate so with some driveways with some drive aisles within the project site. We're also looking at offsite elements as well in a lot of these have been refined based on the comments from the town departments as well as from Tetrotech is what is included within that. So we have a letter dated January 23 that probably just came into the town that outlines each of these items as well as responding some of the questions that were asked of us. So the first thing in terms of recommendations is we want to make sure that all of the signs and pavement markings that will be provided not only external to the site but also within the site are standard we don't want any signs that are non compliant with what you'd expect to see on the roadway. And so those are really what is known as manual and uniform traffic control device compliant that we want to make sure that this consistency. I also recommended that a stop sign and stop line be provided coming out of the project site. That is important because we have to really two areas where we have interactions of vehicles with vehicles but also vehicles with pedestrians and bicycles so we need to make sure people stop before they go into the sidewalk. Once they perceive through the sidewalk area they need to stop before they get to where the bike lanes and then proceed into the roadway. So providing the stop sign and the mark stop lines provide some areas where we're defining where we want the motors to stop and pay attention to these interactions that will place. As I mentioned site lines at the driveway it doesn't need to exceed industry standards for safe operation were required to have a minimum of 250 feet based on 35 miles an hour long mass have the site lines exceed 250 feet so it's it's more than what would be required for safety. What we've been asked to do is is looking at again back to that existing conditions drawing that we had. And you do see this parking along mass have one both sides, but as I've released to our side, we want to make sure that there's a buffer between that parking area and where the driveway is. So the vehicles are parked right up against the driveway because that not only inhibits some turning movements that it also inhibits site line so Tetra Tech had suggested that we stripe or work with the town to stripe in a buffer area so basically a striped out area where we denote vehicles should not park or up right up against the driveway. That gives us some improved site lines as motorists are coming out of the project site so we've agreed to work with the town to to restripe that buffer or provide a buffer area on either side. The next comment is again something or commitment is something related to the comments from Tetra Tech. As you saw with that bus lane so the bus lane. Basically as you're heading will be to the northwest on mass and it starts right after the driveway. So there will be the need to do some adjustment of that bus stop striping. And so we'll be working with the town to see how we can modify some of the bus stop area maybe that it gets shortened a little bit and then in one direction extended in the other direction. But we'll be working with the town to adjust the bus stop location as it relates to our project site. It's not moving the bus stop it is just moving the pavement markings that exist there. Bicycle racks again we've got the bike lanes out in front of the project site so we do have both internal and external external bicycle parking that will be provided. The architect may talk about that a little bit more as it relates to how it's going to be accommodated within the parking garage itself. But we've been we've committed to providing that both externally and internal to the project site itself. We will be providing orientation packets relating to the MBTA bus service that's available in the area, also providing bicycle maps and bicycle route information so the residents are all aware of this information. So if you're a new resident coming into the building you're going to be provided with this information, so that you're aware of that as you move in what these amenities are that are available to you. And then lastly, and I have a slide to show this one of the areas that Tetra Tech did ask us to look at is that the mid block crossing that is to the to the southeast of the project site, just south of Walnut Street or west east of Walnut Street. This is the cross crossing of Mass Ave. And what we were asked to look at is similar to the Brattle Street crossing is whether this has ADA compliance as it relates to it so what we did identify and it's hoping to show up a little bit better in picture but you can see on this. This is the project side of Mass Ave. You see there is a wheelchair ramp and this is the tactile strips little domes that exist there so that someone who's visually impaired who might have a cane. You can detect this tactile strip and then it actually points them in the direction of the crossing here. On the other side, opposite the project site side of this crossing, there was not a tactile strip. So there's a need to bring this into ADA compliance so that is an option or an item that was requested that we evaluate and that we commit to bringing this up to ADA compliance so that is something that one said we would do as a part of the project itself. So I will stop sharing my screen and I will turn it back to the chair, and I'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have. One thing Jeff that I just want to point out because the board should appreciate this is that since last meeting to tonight's meeting, focusing in on the driveway access and the garage door, it has been widened to a full 20 feet. And the architect will speak to it when we talk about the building, but we also were got advice from Vanessa about widening the driveway access from what was previously shown on our civil drawings to what is now currently shown. And it's a full 20 foot in width that would accommodate, you know, both cars exiting and entering simultaneously. And the other feature of the driveway that was changed and I don't want to take the thunder away from the architect that's relevant to the traffic is that the garage door has been set back by 12 feet into the building. So that there is queuing available when you come out of the of the garage. You're not coming right out into the setback area. You're actually coming out into, you know, the first 12 feet is within the building footprint, and then it's giving you an opportunity to then go out into the setback area, and then ultimately the sidewalk and then to the street so there's, there's been substantially enhanced queuing to the civil site design, which was recommended by Venice and others. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. Just like to make this sort of the standard thing, but I think it's much to the convenience of the board. If when we get demonstrative slides that those are also inserted into the record so that they can be consulted without consulting the recording. You know, I will otherwise say this each time but I like it very much if the applicant and others who have may have slide presentations would would follow that practice. Thank you Mr. So if we could get a copy of those slides, that'd be great. Yeah, I'm going to stop. I'll email it tonight so that I'll send it to through Paul and you can forward it to the board. Perfect. Thank you so much. So Christian and Patrick is it is it the request that you have that in advance of the meeting or just supplied as we would after the meetings. No, it's fine. Have I think it's fine having it after the meetings. It's just that we want it as a, because it's submitted as evidence during that hearing we just want to have it on the record. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. I would turn to Courtney Sudak. Petra Tech to address some of the traffic issues please. Thank you. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. So we greatly appreciate the applicant making a lot of progress. The last few weeks to address not only our comments, but obviously the town department comments. As Jeff mentioned, the responses to the town and touch tech comments were only received by touch tech today. and get that back to back to the town. But it does sound like they have addressed the majority of the comments we had. We'll take a closer look at what they're offering for mitigation and we would recommend to the town that they work closely with the applicant on that striping plan. As Vanessa had mentioned, there's a lot of different transportation facilities. One for the sidewalks for pedestrians, the bicycle lane for the bicyclists and then obviously the motor vehicle lanes. So we want to make sure that it's as safe as possible. One of the items that I know we had raised in our comment letter and I'm not sure if you would want the applicant to speak to it tonight is the proposed parking supply versus the anticipated demand. That was a comment that we had asked them to look more closely at. And one other thing that we were hoping that they could clarify is it looks based on the latest like the latest plan set that the emergency vehicle access is connecting into an adjacent private property. So we would want we would recommend that the town have them clarify if they have the legal rights to do that. And we haven't had a chance to review the construction management plan in detail. But that was something else that we had some concerns about. So I'm happy to answer any questions that you have directly for me or if you want to open up some of those comments to the applicant, I'll link that up to you. All right, thank you. I just want to just briefly go to Jeff Max Tutis who is the vice chair of the transportation advisory committee for the town for comments. Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chairman. What was the board? Good to see you, Jeffrey. Again, a few things. I know I just briefly glanced at the response to comments today. So didn't have time to fully go through them. But correct me if I'm wrong. I think we had asked for some additional information. And I think the response to comments letters said there was attachment for things like pedestrian bicycle volumes, parking space dimensions, and turning templates. I don't think I saw those as attachments. So I'm not sure if those, maybe I just missed it, maybe they weren't provided yet or maybe they're forthcoming. So I was wondering if you could just respond to that. So they shape, there are items like the pedestrian bombs, those should have been attached. If there are things that are missing, I will make sure that they're sent to the board immediately. Because if they are available, the truck turning or the vehicle turning may have been something that the architect or civil engineer was going to prepare. But I will track those down and then make sure that we have a complete response. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I briefly read through the responses I thought most of them were adequate. So I'm not going to go through those. I concur with Courtney's comment on emergency vehicle access. I think we'd like to see clarification on that. And also on truck loading and deliveries. I'm not sure we've seen anything. You may have replied, again, I went through it briefly, but I'd like to better understand how small delivery trucks will access the site as well as a large tractor trailer, people moving in and out, how those will access the site. So that would be helpful to understand that. And I guess the last comment I had, and we didn't make this comment before. So this is additional about the mid block crosswalk. So the Transportation Advisory Committee, you know, Mass Ave has been a priority for us for a long time. And we still have safety issues. You know, we've had pedestrian fatalities, you know, on Mass Avenue. So if the board agrees, I would like to ask you if you could consider additional enhancements to that crosswalk, you know, such as with a rectangular flashing beacon be appropriate as in has enhancement, because Mass Ave is our main street. We have issues with crossing. We're going to try to address other locations. This one hasn't come up yet, but it's all pedestrian crossings on Mass Ave are particularly hazardous, particularly at night. So if you would consider, you know, appropriate enhancements for that, like I say in our RFB, if that's, if that's appropriate, like to hear back from that. And that's all I have from them. Thanks. I thought the report was done well. Thank you very much. Are there questions from the board about the traffic? Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Mr. Goodell. I just liked maybe just echo the question that was just raised about loading, move in, move out, move out and trash, just how that's dealt with on the site, if that's internal or if that's done along Mass Ave. And the other question I looked at the responses briefly today. But there's there's a mention that fire truck access would be from Mass Ave and then from the rear parking lot that's adjacent to the site. I was just wondering if the applicant has already met with the fire department and talked about that. And also, you know, because that's private property that's not a part of the project site, if that had been discussed with I guess the condominium owner that's behind them. Mr. Felvin, if you want to answer that or yeah, I can, I can speak to some of these. I've been jotting down the questions quickly. Please. Let me start with that. The comment that was made by Jeff about evaluating enhancements across the walk, give us an opportunity to consult with Vanessa about that. And we will respond back on, you know, if there is something we could do in addition to what you heard Jeff talk about tonight. So that's what we have to evaluate that with Vanessa and put it into the project budget to see what comes out. But we'll definitely do that. In terms of emergency access, there is no easement right in the record title of the property that the developer is acquiring for emergency access. But as I think everybody understands, emergency vehicles don't need easements to access people's properties. They get to, they get to travel for, in case of emergencies, where they need to go. The expectation and intent and what we spoke about with the fire department was that if there was an emergency where the fire department thought it was prudent and necessary to approach from the rear, there is, you go down Brattle Street, you go into the parking lot for Mill Brook, and they could physically drive their vehicles and stop. And then what we've made sure and what you will see presented by our site engineer, not necessarily tonight, but is the enhancements for emergency access from the rear that have been made to the site plan, which includes an access, direct access from the parking area, emergency access from the parking area onto the project site, and then a path so that responders can easily walk up to the building. And there's been a change in some of the proposed vegetation so that the bucket truck can extend over any vegetation when they reach, when it reaches full maturity. So that's been evaluated. So, you know, the, obviously, there's access directly to the building from Mass Ave. There's, there's, there's responder access, not vehicle access, but responder access down each side of the building. And, and there is vehicle access in the back, but there is no, there's no easement right that the property owner has, but that's not going to inhibit or impair emergency vehicles from being able to access the Mill Brook parking area, if in case of an emergency they needed to, to do so when the border was prudent to do so. The other thing I just wanted to speak to briefly and then I'll just turn it over to Matt because I know Matt has had conversations directly with the deputy fire chief is delivery vehicles. When Chris Mulher makes his architectural presentation, and we have the plan up where we sort of zoom in on the first floor layout and where the trash room is, where the driveway access is, where the access to the garages will make a point to respond to Dan's question about delivery vehicles. Because, as I mentioned, the driveway has been enlarged and the, the garage door has been set back, Vans can easily pull in off the street and take care of vehicles. You know, we'll, we believe that the trash person will be able to, you know, go ahead first, but they may not choose to do that and get off the street. You know, if there's a large moving truck like with furniture, the expectation is that they would occupy the parking spaces in front of the building, a long mass app for the offloading, and then there would be direct access to the elevators through the garage door. But that would, there wouldn't be a place for a large moving van to physically, you know, move on to site that the, the, the, there's just not, there's just not enough room for a truck that size. But the architect will, will be able to show, show that and we'll, we'll speak to that. And then the last two points that I heard from Courtney that I just want to quickly respond to and then move on is we, we were purposely not addressing the construction management plan tonight because we were going to wait for Sean from Tetra Tech to be available and he knew, he knew he was going to be available tonight. So it's a subject matter that we will fully address, but I think it'll be at the next hearing. But we have submitted a detailed construction management plan and phasing plan which lays out exactly how we would go about the process, how we would go about building this building. And it will be presented in detail at another continued public hearings. So we appreciate Courtney's question on that subject and we've really worked hard to, to, to lay out a complete full detailed explanation that we'll go over with the board and Tetra Tech at a later hearing. With regard to the parking ratio, we have 51 spaces for 50 units. So we were planning on one vehicle per unit, roughly one vehicle per unit, you know, in an urban setting where there's good access to public transportation, you know, one to one ratio is deemed when I've been doing these projects and many of them over the years, many multi-family projects of one to one ratio in an urban setting does make perfect sense. Sometimes, you know, it, it, in a more suburban setting, you're up to one and a quarter or one and a half parking spaces per unit, but we don't think that's going to be necessary or called upon here. We don't want to go below one space per unit, because, you know, if a condo owner is going to buy these units and this is a four ownership project, this is not a rental project, this is a four ownership project, we would expect that our, our owners will at least have owned a vehicle and we would want to be able to provide off street parking, garage parking for that vehicle for our future owners. Having, haven't done a further statistical analysis other than what we've just described in the experience that both the developer has and I have as being counsel to developers for the last 40 years and doing, you know, dozens of projects like this, but that's, I just didn't want to, I at least wanted to provide that basic information on how we came up with the ratio of trying to do one, one parking space per unit. Matt, I know I invoked your name, I don't know if you want to fill out any other information based on your conversations with the, the deputy chief of the fire department, but you know, I'll let you go. So just to Paul covered, I think all the, just about all the bases, just a couple things to add in conversations with deputy chief Melly and site visits with deputy chief Melly. In addition to access from the Millbrook parking lot from Mass Ave and from the size of the buildings, we also identified as depicted in the third to last sheet of our civil drawing access behind 11 Brattle Street. So you could see basically what we did is for each of these, each of these layouts, we asked what the standard size of a first responder ladder truck would be. And then we superimposed those on the site in a scale, scale manner, you know, with the radius, as far as we were, we were told the ladder could reach. And you'll see those three radii of along Mass Ave at 11 Brattle and as well as in the rear corner, the actually the northeast corner of the Millbrook parking lot. So those were identified as possible locations. I know Christians had spoken with deputy chief Melly on a separate note and there was some conversation about the fire ratings in the building. And just obviously we're going to be designing this building so that the vehicle storage would have a fire separation from the residential. And that's going to be a concrete structure. So we could certainly prove that out. The building is a fully sprinkler building. There's going to be standby risers and each stairwell stores connections, fully addressable fire alarm panel, fully sprinkled building. So we're, you know, we're covering all the bases with respect to all those things as well. I think that covers the additional items I wanted to mention. Great. Thank you. Are there questions from the board? In regards to traffic and transportation? The chairman. Mr. Hanlon. Just to sort of finish off, I wonder if Mr. if there were any concerns or issues that were raised by the assistant fire chief that we haven't, that we haven't, but haven't discussed just trying to make sure that what we have discussed is all the issues that there are. Certainly. So in my conversation with, you know, the assistant chief, Mellie, the fire department is fairly confident that it would be able to serve the building, you know, they think it would be ideal if they could bring vehicles, you know, adjacent to the building on all four sides. That would, you know, certainly be the best situation, but they feel that they can access it. You know, they have very good access for Mass Ave. They would have to carry ladders up, but they could set up ladders in the side yards. They do have access to the side yards and that wraps around to the rear side of the building. They did mention that they could bring a truck on Brattle, through the, you know, from Brattle Street coming into that parking area and possibly reach from there. That's certainly, that's something that would be easier at the start of the project, but as the trees grow up, that would become more and more of an issue. But as Mr. Feldman mentioned, that that is something that the landscape architect is looking into as a possible thing to keep tabs on. I also have no idea if there is any fire effort, if there is a fire hydrant or anything that's available on the rear side of the building or from, from Brattle Street near that. So the utility to that is a little, I'm not entirely sure. The other thing that the chief had mentioned was that the water pressure in the fire line in Mass Ave on that side, particularly the north side of Massachusetts Avenue in that area between Brattle and Grove, that the pressure in that line is run is a little bit low. And that they have had some issues with when doing sprinkler tests of getting enough pressure. And I'm sure it will come up if it was, it was addressed in the letter from the architect that there is a provision that should a fire pump be required for the site in order to be able to provide, you know, to boost the pressure to properly serve the building, that that is something that the applicant is aware of, that that might be something that's needed. Mr. Chairman, could I make a couple of comments? Sure. So with regard to the hydrant, there is a hydrant in the Middle Brook parking lot in the approximately where, and it's not on the plan here, but it's approximately where the fire truck is depicted in the, in the northeast corner of our, you know, just off of our property to the northeast. There is a hydrant there, where you could see the ladder extending out toward our property. We've already updated the landscape drawings to specify low growing plant material in that area. So at full maturity, there would be no issue with the ladder projecting over that plant growth. And finally, we were aware that there's two lines, two domestic water lines in Mass Ave. The one that would be furthest to the north, closest to our side of the street, is a low pressure line. There's a high pressure line that has, I believe, a residual pressure of about 150 psi. And so it's our intention to spend the money to cross Mass Ave to be able to tie the building into that to avoid the need for a fire pump, which would require a generator, which in turn would require a gas line to the facility. So those are our intentions. Right. Thank you. But Matt, just so that we're clear, it's been contingently designed so that if we do for fire safety need to have a fire pump, a generator, a gas line, it's been designed in so we could show the board exactly where it all works and how it fits. And those facilities can be provided even though we think they're going to be unnecessary. Right. And obviously we're going to do our own flow test of that high pressure line just to confirm the static and residual pressure to make sure that we can design our sprinklers based on that pressure. Yeah. And certainly just for everyone's knowledge, obviously all the fire separation, fire protection, fire alarm provisions of the building code as well as the Massachusetts fire code and Massachusetts fire prevention code, those are all state codes. None of those are under the jurisdiction of the Zoning Board of Appeals. Those are all in full effect and need to be fully complied with before the building can receive a certificate of occupancy. So none of that is really relevant, apart from the fire department's ability to actually access the building. Any further questions from the board? So we're about to change topics. So the change is pretty dramatic, but going from traffic to the architectural. So I'm thinking that I would like to just take a few minutes now for public comment as it relates directly to traffic and transportation, which would allow those members, those people who are here, our consultants for ourselves and for the applicant that would allow them to sign off once we've done that. So public questions and comments will be taken as they relate to the matters at hand and should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. The chair directs individual public speakers to please limit their comments to three to four minutes and to use their time to provide comment related solely to the topics that have been discussed so far. That would be the traffic and transportation related questions. Please note there are multiple hearing scheduled. If you would like to address the board, please use the raise hand button on the participants tab of the Zoom application. And if you're participating by phone, you may dial star nine and I will call upon you, ask you to unmute and then you will be given time to ask your questions. So public comment will be opened and the first name on the list is Winnell Evans. Hi, thank you. Winnell Evans orchard place directly opposite the project. This is just an observation. The project side of the mid block crosswalk does have a ramp, but it is not shoveled when it snows. So it is not accessible. I realize that's kind of outside the scope of the management of your building, but it is something to be aware of. Thank you. Ms. Evans, is there a building directly on opposite sides of the street that would be in theory responsible for clearing that? Yes, it is one of the apartments and I have no idea what the name is, but it's the one. I think it is the Millbrook condominiums, as a matter of fact. It may very well be. And their parking lot is what is opposite the high rise apartment building on the other side. So it's not the frontage of their building, but it's their parking area. And they clear the sidewalk somewhat, but not the ramp. Okay. Thank you for that. Sure. Thank you. Are there any other public comment as it relates to traffic and transportation at this time? May use the raise hand feature on the participants tab or you may dial star nine. Seeing none, I will close public comment as it relates to traffic and transportation at this time. And we will be moving. Mr. Chair, if I may, is it okay if Mr. Dirk leaves the meeting at this point? I think he has some other things going on tonight, and I want to free him up if it's okay. If a traffic question does happen to pop up later that we can't respond to, we can certainly make sure that Vanessa's advice of the additional question and we'll get a response. We're running about half a minute ahead of me. So I was just going to say, since we're moving on to architectural, we could let the traffic and transportation consultants go. So I wanted to specifically thank Mr. Dirk for attending tonight, Ms. Sudeck for attending tonight, and our rubber Jeff Mexican from the transportation advisor committee. I want to thank all three of them for being with us this evening and they may go and we will move on to architectural issues. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. So with that, I will turn back to Mr. Feldman to introduce the architect again, and I will give him permission to display. So as I mentioned, Chris Mulhorn is with us. He's prepared a presentation for the board. We're not going to repeat what was presented at the first hearing, but we will in order to have context make sure not only that the board is familiar, but the public is familiar, provide enough baseline information that everybody can fully appreciate the architectural design and how this project is going to fit in to this such mass avenue. So with that, I'll turn it over to Chris. Thank you. My name is Christopher Mulhorn. I'm going to share my screen now. I have a few slides to show you. Can you see my screen now? Yes, we can. Thank you. Thank you. I'm a principal at Harrison Mulhorn Architects. We are a design architect for the project. Our small design-oriented firm is located and has been in Winchester Center for 26 years. For the past 15 years, I lived in Arlington Heights with an easy walking distance of the project site. This is our third major multifamily with the Magiori Group. Tonight, I'd like to tell the architectural story of this project in five chapters. The site and context, the building proposed building changes, views from the street, aerial views, and some detailed studies supporting the design. First up is the site, project site and context. By way of review, the site consists of two deep narrow lots on the north side of Matt's Avenue. They're outlined here in orange. The property encompasses the yellow and the white houses in the middle of this slide and the wooded area behind. This view looking west up Massachusetts Avenue, this portion of the street has a mix of building types, mostly dating from the first half of the 20th century. There are a variety of uses and a wide variety of relationships to the street. Here's where the project is located. This is the Highland Fire Station, three doors down from the site. This three-story apartment building sits east of the fire station, and then the Millbrook condominium, which is five stories with the ground level slightly below the street grid. On the other side of the street is the Kenwood, the Kentwood, excuse me, an eight-story apartment building. Moving west on this side of the street, there is next a group of residential buildings which have been converted to commercial uses. Three-story apartment buildings complete this section of the avenue. A bit farther east on the avenue, near the new high school, are some examples of the type of mixed-use building we are proposing. This new three-story podium design abuts one-story buildings on both sides. It has residential units above retail space, with one ground floor, tenant being a new daycare facility. This building is right on the property line on Mass Avenue with a modest setback from Shuler Court. Across the street is this brand new four-story mixed-use, with minimal setbacks from Mass Ave and Lockland Road. Together, these two structures begin to define a more modern scale and flavor for this portion of Massachusetts Avenue. This rendering captures what we want this project to look like. This is a podium-type building with a steel-framed ground level and four wood-framed residential levels above. The separation between them is rated to three hours for fire. The visual scale of this building will be similar to the new four-story building in the 800 block. As you will note, the fifth floor of our building is not visible in this view. In response to the comments from the town departments and our peer reviewers, Davis, Square Architects, and Tetra Tech, we have made a number of revisions to the building design and to the drawings. The changes to the elevations are concentrated on the ground level and at the roof. Here's a line drawing of the front elevation with the revisions outlined in yellow. The garage door has been widened to 20 feet and increased in height, and also setback 12 feet from the face of the building. Screens have been added at the roof level at the equipment locations. This right side or east elevation also has the changes highlighted. There are screens at the roof for equipment areas and louvers added for garage ventilation. As the grade falls towards the rear of the site, we're proposing steel mesh panels in front of the brick facade to allow plants to grow up the wall without damaging the brick. The same changes carry around to the rear elevation. In addition, we show a second access door to facilitate the maintenance of the rear landscape area. Come back to that in the plan. The left or west elevation reflects the same revisions, including louvers for the garage. We want to share some additional information about the exterior materials. The detailed materials booklet was included as part of the most recent submission. I will touch on the high points here. This building will have a light gray brick veneer base on all four sides. This is the detail of one of the three tower elements on the street elevation. The light gray brick rises from the base as the main material. It supports projecting bay, clad, and wood look cementitious panels. One corner of each bay is glazed with a black curtain wall topped by an aluminum sunshade. Punched windows and a light-colored metallic corners complete the tower design. The infill areas between the three towers are set back from the base and tower elements. They are clad with smooth gray cementitious panels at the second and third floors with off-white panels set even further back at the fourth floor. The two mini-bays with projecting cornices are a nod to the scale and forms of nearby buildings. This bird's eye view shows the overall arrangement. The party and materials established at the front elevation carry around to the other façades including into the courtyard area. Projected bays, horizontal trim lines, and a variety of textures and colors work together to reduce the scale and enliven this contemporary design. As a result of the reviewer's comments we have made some plan changes particularly at the garage, the lobby, and the roof. Here's the ground floor plan with the main garage changes outlined in yellow. The entry door is widened to 20 feet. The door is recessed 12 feet to increase the kewing space and allow for delivery trucks. The edge spaces are designated as compact with additional maneuvering room at the wall. The aisle and space dimensions have been added to the plan. The building columns have been added to the plan as has the second door to the rear yard area. This door is wide enough to allow maintenance equipment to access the back area. We show two van accessible ADA spaces and 11 electric vehicle charging stations, more than 20 percent of the total parking spaces. Following the suggestions of several reviewers we have reorganized the residential lobby to enliven the front façade. The office and package room are shifted towards the street with a modest residence lounge added. The trash and recycling facilities are located farther into the building with access from the lobby and the garage. In addition to the wider garage door, hose bib and fordrain have been added to make a space for cleaning bicycles. At the basement, a repair stand and air pump have been added in the bike room. Both elevators are large enough to accommodate bikes and will have durable interior finishes. Turning to the question of the building setback, this diagram shows the offsets from the right-of-way to the proposed building and the nearest butters on each side. The front corners of our building are 13.8 and 16.4 feet from the property line for an average of 15.1 feet. The neighbors to the west are 6.3 and 19.4 feet back from the right-of-way while the houses to the east are 17 and 14.4 feet back respectively. The average of all six points is 14.55 feet putting the proposed building slightly farther back than the average. This detail from the landscape package shows the changes to the area between the building and the street. We have added a bench seating area to the west of the driveway near the bus stop. The bike rack has been turned and moved behind the below-grade transformer vault at the center with a tree added to balance the garage entrance. The residential entrance will also be flanked by columnar cherry trees. A small paved plaza with the retail entrance anchors the east corner. In the event a food use tenant is secured for the retail space, this area could be populated with tables and chairs in good weather. A service store for the retail is located partway down the east facade. As a refresher, this plan of the second floor shows the U-shaped configuration of the upper levels. One bedroom units are shown in green, two bedrooms in yellow, and three bedrooms in tan. This floor features a shared courtyard in the center of the U above a portion of the garage. This blow-up of the courtyard shows a little more detail. The private patios at the perimeter will be screened by six-foot-high fence sections and the planted islands. The vignette on the right gives a sense of the space. It faces east so it will be sunny in the morning and shaded by the building in the afternoon. There are no changes to the third and fourth floor plans. This is the fifth floor plan. We've added the rooftop HVAC equipment locations and the related screening. There are three potential locations for solar panels. In the event that a generator is needed to drive the fire pump, it will also be located at this level. You can see it on the left about halfway down the sheet. This upper roof plan is in addition to the set. Screened rooftop equipment and space for solar panels will occupy much of the available area. Energy recovery ventilators for the common areas in retail space will live here along with heat pumps for many of the units. Between the two roof levels, we are showing 2,905 square feet of potential solar panel area. This next section shows before and after street views of the project. We started approaching the site from the east along Massachusetts Avenue. In this shot, the Milbrook condominium is in the foreground on the right. Here's the proposed building photoshopped into the same image. Moving closer, this image is about 300 feet from the site. Here's the same image with the building added. Closer still, this image is about 200 feet out and the same image with the building added. Here's our street level rendering again. The eye point for this view is about 100 feet off the property corner. This view is looking east from about 150 feet west of the site and across the street. Here's the same image with the building. Earning down Brattle Street, this view is at the first opening in the building line just behind Quad Cycles. The proposed building is just visible behind the apartment building at the center. The next gap down Brattle between the wood frame multifamily and the four-story apartment building looks like this. And here's the building added. The third gap on Brattle is this parking lot between two residential buildings. This view catches the back corner of the proposed building in the beginning of the rear landscaped area. The rear edge of our site at the existing parking lot looks like this. The new fence and landscaping will mostly hide the new building from this vantage. Next up are some aerial views before and after. Here's our bird's eye rendering again showing the overall project. Here is the existing view looking west along Massachusetts Avenue. We are about 500 feet from the site and 125 feet above the surface. And here's that image with the building added. This view is looking northeast above Monotomy Road. And there's the building tucked in. This shot looks east along the avenue from the Brattle square block. And there's the building tucked in. The drone was above the Milbro condo parking area entrance on Brattle Street for this image. That parking lot is visible at the lower left in this slide. And here's the same image with the building added thanks to Kyle Zick landscape architects for their help on the rear landscaping course. Finally, this view is looking southwest from a spot above Dudley Street northeast of the site. And here's that same image with the building added. The Milbrook and the condominium parking lot are in the middle of this view along the new fence line which you can see on the right side. We have some detailed information to add. First, the photometric study. We propose only very limited exterior lighting for this project. The photometric plan shows the light levels at grade from the proposed fixtures. This updated plan shows that there is no spillover at the property lines. The photometric plan for the second level courtyard is in progress. It's not ready yet. Next up is the solar study. This slide shows the location of the project on the planet and the height above sea level. This solar insulation diagram for the site shows the path of the sun at three different times of the year. The concentric circles indicate the altitude while the arcs indicate the sun path for various dates and times. The blue arc at the bottom shows the winter solstice condition December 21st, the shortest day of the year. The orange arc at the center shows the March and September equinox conditions when day and night are of equal length. The green curve at the top depicts June 21st, the summer solstice and longest day of the year. For this study, we compared the proposed building with a building of the same footprint that is designed to the 35-foot height limit allowed by right by the zoning for this district. This diagram shows the December 21st condition with the proposed building on the left and the theoretical building on the right for 9 a.m., noon, and 3 p.m. As you can see, the early morning shadows, the differences are minimal and by afternoon there is no additional impact from the additional height. By the March or September equinox, the 9 a.m. morning shadows no longer reach the Brattle Street of Butter. The noon shadows are largely confined to the project site. The 4 p.m. shadows from both buildings impinge on the house to the east. In summer, the 9 a.m. shadows from both the project and the as-of-right building still touch the westerly of Butter, but by the middle of the day they are confined to the project site. The afternoon shadows touch the easterly neighbor in both cases. This shadow study demonstrates minimal adverse impacts as a result of the additional height of the project and the requested height waiver. Last up here are some views of the landscape areas that were prepared by Kyle Zick landscape architects. This one is taken from the access door at the garage showing the meadow planting and the fence atop the retaining wall. Here we're looking from the gate just inside the gate on the e-dress path at the northwest corner of the building. So we're looking to the northeast here. Here we are approaching the sitting area at the center of the rear space. This is the sitting area with the retaining wall and the fence in the background. Finally, we have this one back looking back at the sitting area with the wall and the building beyond. We appreciate the feedback from the folks who reviewed our initial submission and think the revision is presented tonight addressed the issues raised. Our point-by-point response to Davis Square Architects Review and the architectural comments made by Tetra Tech are contained in our letter of January 20th, which is part of the most recent submission. That's all we have for tonight. Thanks for your attention. We'll do our best to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Hart. Mr. Chenner, the one thing I wanted to mention before you turn it over to the board for questions to the public was that it was at the first hearing where we were asked if we could try to create some visual visuals of what the new building would look like in the context of the neighborhood. That's why I think Chris did a brilliant job between getting drone pictures and street pictures and being able to actually physically locate the building. We tried to give the board and members of the public a 360 understanding of how this building is going to fit into this section of Mass Avenue so everyone can appreciate how it's been designed. The only reason why I'm interrupting is to remind everyone because, again, having done this quite a bit, the bird's eye views you don't get to see unless you're in a helicopter or magically can fly at about 125 feet to 250 feet above the surface. While we think it's important from a presentation point of view to give the board and members of the public a full appreciation of how this building fits in, it's not a vantage point that you're ever going to see, but the only reason why I point that out is sometimes everybody gets hung up on those views, but that's not a view that you're going to be able to experience in real, under real circumstances. Thank you. Thank you. Before I introduce the board's architectural consultant, are there any questions from the board? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Handlin. Just to be clear, I hope there's a sort of a standing understanding that the demonstrators will be put into the record and this is the last time I'm going to raise that, but I just wanted to make clear that it wasn't just for the one that we've already seen, it's for all of us. Not a problem. Thank you. Then with that, I would introduce Cliff Bomert, who's the architectural consultant for the board. Hey, everyone. Can you hear me? Okay. Well, I think you can tell there's been a lot of new material submitted, a very big package a couple days ago. I have, I think I've looked at virtually all of it with maybe the exception of some stormwater information that I think pretty clearly falls outside of my purview, but I did review the responses to the, as well as the initial letters, but response to Sibyl, response to Landscape, and of course the response to my own memo. And I will really start by saying that it's, I think, a truly vigorous and detailed response that we've seen. Very careful attention paid to multiple perspectives by different reviewers, and not just the peer reviewers, but town reviewers as well. A lot of coordination work has gone in cleaning up inconsistencies in the different documents. Really some serious work. And I think the board should really appreciate that. And maybe that's a little bridge into what my role is, anyway, because it may not be clear to all of the 20-some participants. As a peer reviewer on the design side, my goal is really to get the best possible project, knowing the constraints that the Comprehensive Permit Statute, that kind of overlay on a project is, does have constraints on both sides that have to be recognized or real, but it's an incredibly valuable vehicle for bringing affordable housing to communities that need it. And saying that I do want to expose a couple, I just want to put a couple things out there so nobody thinks that I'm trying to drive the bus in any particular direction. I just want my own biases from having reviewed a lot of these developments and having lived in Massachusetts since 1970, recognizing the incredible need for and probably never will be met need for affordable housing. My belief is that when you do find a suitable site for a 40-B project, as I believe this site is, it's incumbent on everybody to consider the vehicles or designs that really can maximize the number of units. It's kind of that simple. If you find a good site, you really need to explore ways to create the largest number of units, assuming that you're in a community that really needs it. And getting down a little closer to Arlington, I'm fully aware that Massachusetts Avenue is an appropriate place to be looking at density. So I just want any listeners to really be aware of the fact that I'm in no way am I arguing at this stage of the development, which even though these are really high quality rendering, some nice imagery, a lot of work put into it, these are still schematic designs. This isn't a building. These are early in the design process. And that's also very important. You couldn't build from what we've been seeing now. There's a whole lot of work that needs to happen before this ever really becomes a buildable project. Because there is a really large volume of material, of new material, a lot of existing material, but I think a lot we've had time to absorb most of that, there is a lot of new material from my reading of it so far. I think it kind of falls into three categories of things. And I'll probably focus mainly on one category, because the other two categories I think are probably better done in a more kind of point by point fashion, which is the way that we received the commentary in the, as I said, the really vigorous response from the applicant. There are these categories and they're rough because it's multidisciplinary. The response covered a lot of different perspectives. So there is a lot of overlap. So these aren't perfect categories. And I haven't had enough time to try to make it any better than what I can say right now, frankly. But there is a lot of more detailed information that to me makes a lot of sense. I think it's valuable information that now is part of the record that really were legitimate questions before, not just architectural, but also landscape and civil questions. I think a good example of that is I really appreciated Chris's, that generation of the materials handbook, the previous iteration of drawings was generic. It said cementitious siding, the detailed, I think it was like 10 pages of material, detailed material call outs that went so far as to actually specify a brand name that I know is a very high quality material to use. There's a broad range of cementitious materials. And this developer seems to be, seems to have made the commitment to using very high quality cementitious materials. So there are a number of examples in the new material that fall into that category of here's what we're really intending. We really are putting greats to provide a ventilated garage on the elevations. And here's an idea of what they look like. Lots of good good thinking on that front and really direct response to questions and really questions that are concerns unless you have answers for them. There were also some responses that I take issue with. And I'll outline some of those now because I hope we've seen a lot of work by this developer. And I hope that they want to keep working on this because I'm sure they want to get the best possible project they can within their own constraints. But there are some items. I'll bring up a couple. And I don't think this is probably the right venue to really debate them. But one, for example, is the parking system. I know they're, I think this current design is largely driven and this will drift into the third category eventually. But this design in many ways, and I think it's evident from the very what I would call minimal side setbacks on the development, was driven by a kind of parking plan and certainly checking the boxes on programmatic elements at first floor plan is much better now than it was and more realistic than it was. But I think there are some of the concerns about taking it, I guess, as a given as an absolute immutable given that you need that many parking spaces and a large part of the design would be driven by that first floor plan to fit in the parking spaces. One suggestion I made in my letter was to look at a stacking system. And the response was that that really wasn't feasible because of each individual resident would have their own space and would want to get access to it. And again, I think this may be something that should go in writing to help advance this a little quicker. But there are systems that are completely tenant or owner activated. They don't need an attendant. You poke in a code or use a card that will actually deliver your car to the open slot in a stacking system. And this isn't a suggestion that has to do with a better technology or quicker way to get to your car. It was in the context of my letter was really thinking about ways where you could potentially make a smaller footprint on the building so that you could accommodate greater side setbacks on the building, which I think crosses over and a number of things we've talked about tonight, including emergency access on easier emergency access on the sides of the building, delivery areas, making the potential areas where you could fully pull bigger vehicles and get them completely off the street, potentially even creating an entrance into the parking area from the side of the building, even potentially expanding the commercial space, the commercial frontage across the full width of the building if you could enter the building into the garage behind the commercial space. So there are all kinds of things that open up if there are certain certain constraints that are laid out, I think in the developer's argument that are baked into the design that really can't be reconsidered, which is actually, so I can't go to the third category, which is what I would hope to see. And again, you know, I'm working for the board and I'm working for the town and the board and my recommendation to the board is certainly appreciation of everything that's been done and the kinds of commitments that have been made that are either completely tangible at this point or could, if not fully tangible, things like, well, we will meet the code and we'll meet the enhanced energy code. That's all good stuff and whether it's completely tangible now or something that could be embedded in a condition on a decision, there's a lot of good stuff there. What I would recommend to the board at this point is ask the developer to uncouple or reconsider some of the design constraints from the, strictly from the design perspective, some of the constraints that are baked into the original plan and then carried forward. And I think justified in, in, in some cases, some compelling ways, but baked into the current plan. And I think at the top of my list of those considerations are, I do think there is a way through, and I mentioned in the letter about a redistribution of the massing of the building. And I do believe there is a way to, to increase the, as I hinted at, to increase the commercial frontage. I think it is possible to increase the side, the side setbacks. And I think I would go as far as to say that if one should at least, and the actually, excuse me for a moment, it was either in the landscape response or in Chris's response that they had looked at the potential for preserving that 42 inch sycamore tree. And I do think there is a building form that could be considered that could take, take a more individualized approach to this site. I think that the initial planning exercise, just again, kind of reverse engineering from what we see, because we weren't involved in, in, in the kind of initial design drivers that were laid out. But I think what the way it appears is that there was an idea about a building pretty similar to the, I think a very successful building that this developer already built in another community and transferred a very similar design to this site. And I think if that's the way it has to be, sometimes I think it's good for the board to see why other potential design drivers just plain don't work. And even if it's really just to make that point that, yes, we, we said we looked at saving the tree, but it can't be done. If the assumption is that the idea is to put that particular footprint on the site, I think it's clear that that tree can't be saved. But it, it doesn't mean that there isn't another footprint that could, that could really preserve, preserve the, the scale, I think even preserved scale preserve unit count and, and actually be more individualized for this site. Just a couple other brief, and again, I'm totally open for questions. I really have read all the materials, but I just haven't put together a coherent answer to everything. I think that the other kind of, and maybe this is drifting a bit too much into design speak, but I think what, I think in Chris's letter, I appreciate his, his, I think very well-spoken vision for what he sees the future of Mass Ave that, you know, that this is the future of Mass Ave, this type of building. And I, I think he used that as a kind of a rationale for not really having to look or, or let's say respect the existing smaller scale neighbors, because it's in a likelihood they're, they're going to go away someday and, and they'll be building more like this building placed on the site. And I think the, that's, it's an unusual, I think that is an unusual perspective for a 40B development to, to not really have a, a strong argument of why, you know, the existing pattern of development shouldn't be considered for the site. I think, and Chris mentioned this in his presentation, I think one of the really notable qualities of Massachusetts Avenue actually is the variety of development on it. And I don't think it's really cast in stone that all future buildings along Mass Ave are going to have, you know, 15, 10 to 15 foot side setbacks and be a similar scale. So I, I hope that I'm not sure where you want to go unless you want to. I think maybe the best, as I said, I answer a lot of detail in, in writing kind of on a point by point basis. But I, I think my most useful role at this point, I, I hope would be to help, help shape the continuation of what I consider to be a schematic designed level of exploration at this point. All right, thank you very much. Are there questions from the board specifically to Mr. Ballmer? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I'm going to focus on the last thing you say, Cliff, in terms of respecting the scale. When I looked at the pictures that Cliff showed earlier, I didn't get so much the impression that eventually this was what the Massachusetts Avenue was all going to be roughly the same scale as this building. So what characterizes Massachusetts Avenue from those pictures and also just walking up and down it is the diversity of sorts of buildings that there are. And what you think is the prevailing scale depends a lot on how many hundred feet you move from this building. If you go down to where the condos are further down, those are actually seem quite, quite a lot bigger, even though I know that they have more land to, to, to deal with. Immediately next to this is sort of a smaller scale. The apartments across the street have got some similarities in terms of materials but are smaller but, you know, intermediate. And if you sort of think that diversity is what really is going on here, it's not 100% clear to me why this would not fit within within the sort of diversity that there would be a lot of it has to do with design and some has to do with materials and so on. But, you know, the pictures don't look bad. And and I don't, it's hard to even say that something is or isn't within the context of the, of the street as a whole just because, because there's, because there is no, no single context. This isn't the, this isn't a big design development on the street. It just grew and it grew in different eras and with different philosophies as to what proper building should be. And in some ways, this diversity is, is, is one of the best features about it. So I guess I'm, I'm kind of figuring out, trying to figure out for myself just how important this consideration is and what it means when there's no thought that they'll ever be uniformity here. Yeah, I mean, I think that, I think from my perspective, you know, it is that kind of organic, the organic aggregation of buildings can add quality, but that I don't think that means that there aren't standards that could begin to build a kind of coherence. And I'll give you an example that, well, and could also solve practical issues. And I think, again, going back to some of the issues that have been brought up by the civil reviewer, primarily by the civil reviewer, I think about access around the sides of the building. If this, if this is kind of a snapshot of, of a kind of prototype that there may be more of, it may not be immediately next door, but is, is that, you know, is that really the right idea? Or are there, are there other kind of multiple, a multitude of issues be solved with, with a different kind of footprint? But back to what you're saying, is I think that where, where I've seen other communities go through either formal or, or, you know, from a zoning perspective or through a lot of development on a corridor, a good example being Harvard Street and Brookline, that's, they've had a dozen, something like a dozen 40 B's on that street that actually have shaped an attitude about the, the street, what's the quality of the street. And I think in this case, to me, it's a extremely simple gesture. The building immediately to the west or your northwest is, I think about three feet further back. And why, why when there's a kind of a squeeze of stuff in that front yard, why wouldn't you just match that? Like even if there's a small scale way to potentially create some chance of coherence, you know, and, you know, that combined with looking at schemes that do, that do solve problems of access on the side of the building just seem to be very easy moves. I think the best thing that this building has done that, that I think does connect with this existing somewhat irregular pattern of development, I think the divisions on the front elevation of subdividing the, you know, vertically subdividing the elevation into sort of residential, more typically residential scale pieces is very effective. And I think, and I really appreciate the, the graphics that, that allow all of us to really see that, I think it much better now than we could in the last iteration of touring. So I'm not arguing for uniformity. I'm certainly, I, I think I really don't believe that it's inevitable that all of me, the mass have is going to turn into Harvard Street and Brookline. It may never, ever go that way. But there's, I think there are some very small moves that can, that don't turn this building into some of the other, I think some of the other bigger buildings that, and I said this in my letter that I think under current sorts of standards probably wouldn't happen where they just kind of randomly placed relative to the street. And, you know, I think not me, but other reviewers have, have made suggestions about, well, maybe we don't want our sidewalks right up against the curb line of the street. And there are communities that Boston being a prime example of, I'm sure many of you have looked at Boston Complete Street standards where Boston has said, okay, if you're doing a new development of any scale, we want to talk to you about the streetscape. And it's an opportunity for the, to set a standard and maybe convince other future developers to, to spend a little more thinking on the public realm associated with their building. Right. And imagining that the key to unlocking this or to being able to preserve the number of units and, and presumably the size of the units is has to come from what you do with the parking or do you imagine that something like increasing the height of the building say or, or some other way of preserving those while reducing the footprint should be something that, that is being considered. What do I think? I, well, I think there are areas, there's a couple easy things. I think that on the, the Northwestern top floor of the building, which is single loaded. So most of the building is pretty conventionally double loaded corridor with, you know, U shape with courtyard making that possible. But the top floor is single loaded. And then I, to me, that is actually not a very impactful part of the building relative to that existing three story brick building. It's neighbor. And to me, that's kind of a lost opportunity to regain volume. If you make a smaller footprint thing, and again, this is a given, I don't make up the givens. It's just the developer makes up the givens. But if you want to preserve volume, that is an area that to me is could be filled back in again. And certainly if combined with increasing the setback on that side, and then filling it back in, to me, it's a, it's a win-win. Matt Mejuri? Matt, you're on mute. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I just want to kind of start by saying, you know, this project has been conceptually priced, you know, based on today's construction market, there are no provisions for any sort of automated parking system for this project. That's appropriate in a downtown setting where you're triple the price per square foot. That is not an appropriate solution for Mass Avenue Arlington. So that's a non-starter for me, with all due respect. I will, so with that in mind, we need 50 parking spaces for marketability. We are trying to promote other means of transportation via foot, via bike, providing significant dollars to build a basement for bike parking. We're all about other modes of transportation. The reality is people are going to have a vehicle, most likely. And for resale value, someone is not going to buy a unit without a parking space. It's just, we're in this business, we've sold thousands of units, and we know the formula that works. So we need a footprint that can accommodate a minimum of 50 parking spaces. Therefore, the footprint we have cannot change. It's, it's, you know, we are where we need to be for setbacks to make the footprint work. So we have a footprint issue with parking. We also have a certain number of units that we need to fit to make the 50 units feasible to be able to make this project move forward financially with our obligations to ourselves, to the sellers and our construction costs. So certain, you know, one bedroom unit has a matrix of square footage that works, a two bedroom unit has a matrix of square footage that works, and a three bedroom. And we've been very thoughtful and careful about how to lay those out so that we can maximize natural light while providing that center courtyard, which is contributing to a whole variety of environmental factors, i.e. heat island effect, additional green space, etc. So the footprint of the residential really is somewhat cast and sewn as well. Because again, we total up all the footage of all the units, and we have a certain number of three bedrooms required, two bedrooms required, and one bedroom required by mass housing, and we have to comply with those ratios. So that kind of, you know, unfortunately just kind of, it sets, as Mr. Hanlon said, you know, the keys to opening the door to this project are bound by, you know, the square footage of area that we need for parking and for living space. As it relates to, you know, changing and shifting the massing, you know, off a mass of, you know, we respectfully disagree that that's a good move for design purposes, not like Chris, you know, discuss that more, but we believe the symmetry of the towers on the west side and east side of this building are paramount to the image, the vision, and you know, what this building will mean to the community. And I'll let Chris chime in on that. Thank you. Mohan? Yes, thanks, Matt. We have gone through a number of iterations of the layout on this site, and early on we did look at options that had a driveway along the side of the building to try to enter the parking partway down. And at the end of the day, after looking at a number of choices, the combination of the topography of the site and the narrowness of the lots, the basic width of the site drove us with reluctance back to the garage door on the front of the building. Not our first choice by any means could not figure out a way around it, could not figure out a way to save a magnificent tree that's in the middle, dead in the middle of the footprint of the site and get the program that our client wanted to put in place. As far as the street elevation goes, we believe in the three towers being the same height. We believe in the, you know, five part design that has the three towers and the two infill spaces where the entrances fall. We like the design and we think that it's appropriate and we think that it's, frankly, significantly better visually than many of the other podiums that we've seen both in Arlington and elsewhere. So we have a client who's committed to a variety of materials and using quality materials and delineating and articulating the facade and we're delighted to be able to do that and we think we have a pretty good product here that meets the program requirements delivers 13 affordable units to Arlington as a sustainable design. It's going to be an all electric building. So it checks a lot of boxes as far as we're concerned. Paul, do you have something? Yeah, I just have one, one thing I just wanted to comment. If I can, Mr. Chairman, just to remind the board about there is another major constraint in terms of how you can locate the footprint and that is the riverfront area. You know, as we presented last time, we're in the outer 100 foot riverfront area and under the Wetlands Protection Act there, which is a state law, can't be waived. We got it designed to the performance standards of the Wetlands Protection Act. You know, we need to address disturbance in the riverfront area and you can, for example, make the building narrower and push it back further back in the site because you're going to be affecting undisturbed riverfront in a way that we're not going to be able to mitigate. So there's another substantial constraint from the design point of view that Chris and the civil engineer had to take into account and so the building can't get narrower and longer, for example. That's just not an available opportunity. So that's one thing I wanted to mention. Well, this is always a difficult moment. I appreciate Clifford Boehmer's comments and, you know, you're dealing with a developer and an architect that have worked hard to design a building that they really think works for this site and it's our job to advocate it and present it. We don't want to be closed-minded to certain things that can improve it and we're definitely, my imaginary is one of the most open-minded developer clients I have, but to start an exercise of a wholesale redesign that's just not available to us and we really do think that Chris's shop really did study what opportunities were available for this site and it is a really good site for a 40B development and I think the architect worked very, very hard to put something in that fits into, as Mr. Handlin was pointing out, the diversity of the area. So I appreciate Cliff's comments and thinking, but we're not going to be able to modify the footprint and have an economically viable project. All right, thank you, Mr. Feldman. Questions from other members of the board? No, I'll just go ahead. I do have one. I'm happy to go after you though. Nope, why don't you go ahead? All right, just a couple of minor comments about the materials in planning. One, I also appreciate the sort of breakup of the facade to make it work with the scale of several others have commented that seems to work well and the quality of the materials is very nice. Just a maybe personal opinion. I'm not sure. You may have too many materials. I'm not sure that you could maybe streamline that and it would still have the same effect. But my other question was, are you performing a whole building life cycle assessment for embodied carbon of the materials? And are you evaluating specifically the cladding materials in terms of their carbon impact? Does that maybe something to explore further as the design progresses? Mr. Chairman and Elaine, we haven't been tasked with doing the full on carbon assessment of the cladding materials. We certainly can look into that. Obviously, the selection of exterior materials has a lot of factors. The durability, the price, the carbon footprint are all part of that equation and part of those choices. So that's something that we will get into as the design advances. The question of whether we have too many materials is a very interesting one. It's what's fun about this NICIA system that we're using for the or proposing for the cementitious panels is that you can mix and match with pretty much impunity. They're all mounted and detailed and dimensioned the same way in a modular fashion. So we have the opportunity and I'm happy to take a look at that and see whether there's a way to simplify without losing what we think is a pretty interesting look. I appreciate that. Yeah, the reason I mentioned the embodied carbon with regards to cladding materials is just between the cladding and the windows, the whole exterior envelope is such a typically large percentage of the total embodied carbon of the structure. It seems like it would be a good place to explore. And the other piece that I just wanted to question a little bit was the, and I know it's early, I love the inclusion of the aluminum shades. And I was wondering if they were placed based on solar daylight autonomy studies or what was driving their location? Honestly, given more by the look than by the actual solar effect in this, if we were really all about shading all of the glass, we would have a lot more sunshades and they would be a different shape and configuration than what we're showing right now. So we're sensitive to that. We understand that, but we're trying to walk the tightrope between doing some good as far as shading goes, getting a look that we're looking for, and keeping the cost of the project reasonable. Yeah, understood. I guess the underlying sentiment of my comments is that just because it is a large problem going on Mass Ave that I think is sort of a keystone of some of these blocks, I think the material selection and the layout of these solar shades, the more that they do support sustainable design, the better because it will just be such a prominent building. And I think I was noticing that there aren't any shades on the top floor that also has some of the largest windows. So it might be just nice to relocate some of them based on the areas that may have the most considerable solar gains just to help your energy model. And those are my comments. Yeah, those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I had a few. So in tagging along with what Ms. Hopper was saying, so you had shown images of two other podium buildings that were built recently in Arlington on Mass Ave adjacent to the high school. And those buildings, particularly the one that I think it's 887 is the one that's on the high school side of the street was not particularly well received by a lot of people in town who felt it was too close to the street to nondescript and really just sort of formed a wall for no reason. There's no forecourt. There are a lot of urban, it does a lot of urban moves in an area of town that still has some sort of an infield to it, which I think the building across the street addressed a little bit better, but it had the advantage of having a much deeper site. And I think that one of the things that this building is doing fairly well is it is sort of with that same sort of podium building is taking a much better look at very varying materials, giving it more of a profile, having really using the cladding system rather than as a means to just clad the thing quick to really sort of make some moves with it. I appreciate you're doing that. One of the questions I have is that and this might be a question for Matt is it's been stated various times that 50 is the magic number, it's got to be 50, we have 50. I'm curious to where that number came from and how that number came about and how that's driving what we're looking at today. We actually, if you can remember, we contemplated 48 units when we were originally laying this building out. Geez, it's got to be close to a year ago now. And the 48 units was based on a variety of factors, mainly to begin with financial. So when you start off with acquiring a property like this, or in this case, multiple properties for redevelopment, you have to be able to build that acquisition cost into the performer and being in a location where it is obviously is not an inexpensive piece of land or combination of pieces of land to purchase. Then we factor in our construction numbers and our soft costs and what our risk tolerance is for taking on a project of this nature, being liable for financing with lending institutions and the general risk in the business that we conduct every day. And there's a certain there's a certain minimum return where the project either makes sense or it doesn't. The return is gets to be fairly thin on a 40 B when basically 25% of the units you're basically building and selling at cost. And that's kind of how we perform our promises. If there's 13 or four units, we're basing the acquisition price on the other 37 units, because basically you're breaking even by building affordable and selling it. So the project worked at 48 units. During our working sessions with conservation, we they suggested that we come up with a manner to mitigate and improve along Millbrook on our own property, which brought forth the idea of the urban woodland that we proposed. The combination of the tree removal and the stomping in the site work and the associated planting to the standards of the conservation drove the construction cost up even more significantly than when we had the 48 unit scheme. So at that point, we determined that if we could provide one more affordable unit, because at the time it was 12 units, provide one more affordable unit to bring it to 13 and get one more market rate unit that we would have the ability to bridge the cost of constructing the urban woodland. So at the end of the day, we based our unit count on financial decision to be able to build this project. We would love to do this project. We think 13 affordable ownership opportunities in Arlington is a home run. We've had a lot of other similar projects with you know less standard zoning affordable requirements and obviously that bringing those opportunities to a community is important to us in our business model. So we're hoping that we're able to do that here. Matt, can I just ask you a quick question that may be relevant to this? If I don't remember the pro forma exactly that was submitted to mass housing, but I thought I remember that you're prepared to go forward with this project without being able to reach the dividend return that you would otherwise legally be allowed. So there's a limited return of 20%. That's the maximum of a developer can make. This project right now does not pro forma out at 20%. It's not what was it down to like 15 or just where in the mid mids, low 16s, I believe the last time I looked at the pro forma. Right. So so what's happening Christian to to respond to you is that you're not going to get you're not going to be able to build this and underwrite it and get financing on it. When you're return, you can't get up to this 15 18% return, but never mind the 20%. The measure is prepared to go forward and get this done without maximizing the return that is available on the wall. But the project will become economic if you can achieve, you know, at least this 15 16% range and that all works by balancing unit count construction costs, the portables. And so the jigsaw puzzle fits at 50. That's where it comes from. There because it leads to I have a couple of questions about sort of the overall the size of the building that is all sort of tied together. So I appreciate that you finally have on the parking plan, you've put the columns in. The issue is that the way the parking spaces are allocated there to the center line of the parking space whips are to the center line of the columns. They're not to the face of the columns. And so you have a vast number of parking spaces that are listed as eight and a half feet wide that are only eight feet wide. And you have a driving aisle that's listed as 24 feet wide that's really only 23 feet wide. So things are tighter in the parking area than you're initially letting on. And I think you need to really work to provide those full spaces because you know, as we all know, vehicles are only getting larger vehicles are only getting heavier. And it's going to be difficult to maneuver in there when the spaces are starting to get constrained. Mr. Martin Christian, thank you. Last week when we were redoing the plan, we had a serious internal discussion about whether to put the plan out the way it is where the little bit of extra room we had is allocated to the end spaces to improve the maneuverability of those versus using that little bit of space to get the full eight foot six clear in the parking spaces that are adjacent to the columns. And at the end of the conversation, we got to the point where we didn't know exactly what the column size was going to be. So we weren't really comfortable about committing to a face of column dimensioning regime for the garage. I take your point. It's a valid concern. And we can certainly revisit that and reallocate the footprint that we have so that we use up some of that dividend space, if you will, to address the column positions. In addition to that, I'm also concerned about the side yard setbacks because the building is at a width where it extends about two feet into the side yard setback on both sides. And as we've discussed, there's fire department access at the front. There is fire department access at the rear through another property. And there's not fire department access with a vehicle on the side. Obviously, they're going to have to be working on foot coming in on the sides. And where this building is significantly taller than the structure is on either side of it, it's taller. It should step a little bit further back so that it's not as looming on the street. It's not looming on its neighbors. And I would be curious to see, would very much like to see if there's a way to sort of skinny up the building so that you don't need to request the side yard setback waivers and still be able to accommodate the parking that you're looking for. And that may involve having to adjust the columns on the interior to figure out how to make that work. And so they sort of tie together. I would very much like to see if that's a possibility to make that work. And then also, as was mentioned by Mr. Boehmer, the building is just a large block dropped on the land. It's not tied at all to this piece of property. Like you could take this and stick it almost anywhere else on Mass Ave. And it would be a building on Mass Ave. Because it doesn't really tie to this particular site. And it would be, we wish it had a little more context driven as to why it's where it is. But because all the buildings around this are red brick, that this is gray brick. Doesn't mean it used to be red brick. It just like, you know, it just sort of, I don't quite understand exactly why it looks the way it does in the position it is. Because it just doesn't feel like it was designed necessarily for this place. It just sort of feels more generic in some respects. On the upper, on the fifth floor, it was mentioned that it's a little odd where the elevators at the front of the building, and there's sort of a free one sided corridor that has to wrap around the front of the building to get to the apartments at the back so they have access to the elevator. And I don't know if there's any way to sort of better utilize that space on the upper floor that would then open up space on the sides of the building in order to pull in the building and get those side yard setbacks. And another concern I have is the courtyard space on the second floor appears to only have one means of egress. It doesn't have two. And that one, the one place you enter it in exit is the farthest place from the elevator and the two stairs pretty much on that floor. So I was curious if you could look at maybe providing access to accesses on to that patio that are more sort of directly in line with where the stairs are. And you could then sort of rotate the units around to close in where the opening is now. If that's a possibility that would get your two means of egress. And it also means that for a tenants on the upper floors who might be coming down the stairs to go out on the patio with some more direct connection for them, they don't have to navigate half the second floor to get out to get out onto that patio. That's a good point. We'll take a look at that. Okay. And then my only other sort of last piece. So this is a condo development. So the units will be sold. Some of the units are going to be sold at market rate. Some are going to be sold at an affordable rate. How have you sort of envisioned this building with long term maintenance in terms of 15 years down? What are the lifespan of some of these systems and finishes? And how does a condo board address dealing with these maintenance issues going down the road where some of the tenants have full price units and some have reduced price units? And I don't know if that's a question for Mr. Feldman or if Mr. Haverty maybe would respond. I could respond to your question. When the condominium documents will be created, each unit is going to have what we call a common area interest percentage. And under the state law, under the Condominium Act, those percentages have to be based upon the relative value of the units. You can't just simply, you know, a portion, a bigger percentage to one unit and have the same unit that has the same value magically get a smaller percentage. So you have to equitably based upon the relative value of the units allocate 100% of the responsibility for maintaining the building. Because the affordable units have a permanent affordability restriction which limits their fair market value, they automatically will have a smaller percentage of the common area responsibility in perpetuity. So even though it's physically, if it was a market rate unit, it would have the same percentage because of the affordability restriction, it could be as much as a third less economic responsibility. So the market rate units will pick up that subsidy not only during development, which is how 40B is designed, but in perpetuity in terms of maintaining the building. And then it's the responsibility of the condominium association to build in to the condominium budget appropriate capital reserves as it anticipates capital replacements given the useful life of certain elements of the condominium property. And for the market rate unit owners, it's very important for the building to be properly maintained and kept up because that's how they preserve their market value. So it's partly a function of the condominium act where the percentage share of responsibility, the costs of maintaining the building is based on the relative value of the units. And because of the affordability restriction, those units will not bear the same responsibility than a similarly size unit shape unit and would otherwise have a different value. Thank you. Mr. Havity, do you have any additional comment on that? My understanding is that the shares of the condominium dues can basically be based on one of two different formulas. As attorney Feldman just explained, it can be based on the relative value of the units. It can also be based upon the square footage of the units. However, when it's done that way, that results in a higher cost for the condominium fees for the unit owners, which then drives down the affordable unit sales price because that's all part of the calculation as to how they're determined. So the vast majority of the times the developer is going to choose to have the condominium apportioned based on the value rather than the square footage. Thank you. Other comments from the board at this time? Mr. Measuring? Yes. Sorry. So with regard to the building materials, we're giving the association a good send-off with what we're providing. The Nietzsche panel, I believe, is a 25-year warranty. We'd be using a PVC trend at our windows and at our facias and soffits. We'd be using a aluminum composite metal panel at some of the projecting bays, which has an infinite lifespan. Thinbrick has a fairly infinite lifespan if it's installed properly. A maintenance-free vinyl window. So at the end of the day, there's hardy products being provided that will not require replacement for a long period of time. All right. Very good. Thank you. Any further from the board? Mr. Chair, I had a few questions. Golly, please. It was on the sheet A3.1, which had the view. I think it's the elevator overrun that's showing up in the street view. Is that the height to scale? It was my first question and wanted to check. It seemed a bit impounding right at the center, especially off the base, and which was so important for, as mentioned by the architect Chris. So I was curious and tagging on what you were solving with the double egress from the courtyard side. Could that solve at the same time? And then the elevator overrun could be pushed back from that view. It's just a thought there. I'm on sheet A3.1 and someone wants to see how the view of that elevator overrun looks on the street side. Thank you, Mr. Alley. The elevator penthouse is 18 feet back from the street elevation, right? And the overrun is about five feet above the upper roof. So as part of looking at the second egress or second attach access to the courtyard, we can certainly look at potentially flipping the elevator to the other side of the corridor and therefore moving it back another 15 feet. And that potentially could get it out of the view that you're talking about. Right. That's what I'm talking about. And based on some of the views that you presented, again, I could be wrong. The rear of the building is visible from some of the view vantage points, if I'm fair enough on that. Is the finish on the rear of the building same as, because I didn't see a rear elevation in the package, is that similar to what is on the front and the sides? Yes, it is. Yes. There's a brick base. There are projected bays at the second and third floor. And then there's the cementitious panel material with the punch windows on the fourth and fifth levels at the rear. That elevation, the rear elevation is on page 2.1 with the front elevation. And then the side elevations are on 2.2. Right. Then I could be, I probably have to look at the package one more time. What are the sustainable goals for the project in general? We're still evolving the sustainable goals. Obviously, we're going to meet the code. So we're going to meet the enhanced energy code. We're going to be in all electric building. We're going to meet the enhanced air barrier and bridging requirements of the new energy code. And if Arlington adapts the expanded code, then we'll jump up to those requirements as well. So in broad strokes, those are the sustainable goals. We're trying to do a good job at this. We're walking the tightrope between what we wish we could do and what we can afford to do. And so that's kind of where we come out on that. Okay. And last one. I did see the photo matrix when you presented it. I see some signage on the building at this time. Again, this is very early stages. And I drive by this every day and was curious, other than the signage that's currently shown, which is for the main building 1021, 1025, and then retail store there. Is that the only signage? And there's, I hope not, there's additional fabric signage or other signage that you have in mind, or is that evolving? Our thinking is that we don't want to apply a lot of signage to the side of the building. So we want to use the individual letters on the canopies for the retail store and for the building entrance. And then if the retailer is looking for additional signage, we want that to be behind the glass in the window line. So I think that is in terms of fixed exterior signage, we're right now limiting ourselves to the individual letters at two locations. Obviously, there'll be wayfinding signs and informational signage for the fire department and everyone else. But that for identification address signs, that's what we're working on. Yeah. And then for the lighting portion, no additional building lighting other than the entrances, right? Is what the assumption has been made for the photometrics study. So the photometrics include eight ballards in the rear yard to mark the egress path. Right. They include eight downlights on the west elevation to light the egress path along the side of the building. And then there are, I believe, 12 downlights that splash light from the bottom of the base down the lowest level of the facade. And then there are two locations where there are downlights at the entrance to the retail and to the building entrance. So the downlights from the base are the projecting down the base at every bay. Okay. Yeah. Three little downlights. That's it. No other uplighting. There's no uplighting. There is one other element in the lighting package, and that is that at the top of the building on the three towers at the front at the street, there's an LED strip that's tucked up under the overhang. So those LED strips light down onto the aluminum cornice material and just get a little splash of brightness shining down so that they're still okay sky-wise because they're shaded on the up direction by the overhang. Okay. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anything further from the board? Mr. Chair. Mr. Rakanelli. Yes. I just said one question that, you know, actually maybe just to build off your point about the side yard setbacks, you know, I just listening to the comments from Mr. Ballmer and the great presentation from the architect and the client team. I think you addressed a lot of the concerns. I just, you know, I think that those side yard setbacks are going to be critical because we're talking about a, you know, 55-foot building that I just measured it. So on ball parking, that's about 180 feet long on the one side. And I think, you know, on the side of the building where the courtyard, you know, creates a U-shape, it really helps with the massing on that side of the building and provides relief to the neighbor because essentially they have the benefit of that light and air. But on the other side, my concern is that that's going to feel very much like a wall for those residents of that building. And, you know, in the future, because we don't know what the development of this neighborhood will be, we could envision that there would be another building of the similar size right next door. So I think maybe just to reiterate the point that Christian had made, I think it would be good to understand if there are options for looking at those side yard setbacks and if there are massing moves, even if it's not moving the building to do something that may provide a little bit of relief to the neighbors. Thank you. Okay. So at this point, I would like to reopen the hearing for public comment. Public has been very patient with us as we go through this. So again, public comment is taken as it relates to the matters at hand. It should be directed to the board for the purpose of helping us inform our decision. We ask individual public speakers to try to limit their time to three to four minutes so we can get as many people to speak as possible. We do have multiple hearings. So and we do encourage strongly encourage people to provide written comments to be reviewed by the board and concluded in the record. So again, if you would like to comment, please use the raise hand button in the participants tab in the Zoom application. And if you are calling in, you can dial star nine and you will be recognized by the chair as to give your name and address to the record and then given time for your comments. So with that, I would call on Winnell Evans. Thank you, Mr. Klein. Winnell Evans, 20 orchard place opposite the project. First and very briefly, thank you to everyone. I really appreciate the collegiality of these hearings and I appreciate the responsiveness and the care that everybody is taking with this project. I have to say that Mr. Bowmer's comments really spoke to me, however, and I have read his assessment of the project and I agree with many of his points. And I want to very, very respectfully disagree with Mr. Hanlon's point about this building and the diversity of Mass Ave because I think that this building and the two at 880 and 887 Mass Ave are kind of the wedge end of where things are going on Mass Ave. Not only were those two buildings not well received by the public, I've heard the newer gray one referred to as an excrecent. So just for the record, because these two lots together are so deep, wouldn't it be possible to use that depth and to somewhat reduce the park behind the two buildings, which is a lovely amenity. But if this building could be pushed back, I actually did an aerial view and drew a line of all of the setbacks and they are fairly consistent on that north side of Mass Ave. And if the building could be pushed back, there would be so many benefits there, you could perhaps even widen the side setbacks and put that massing onto the rear of the building. It would allow a deeper front setback which is much more in keeping with what the rest of that block looks like. It would allow room for a health strip and some street trees. Right now there is exactly one street tree on the south side of Mass Ave and none on the north side of Mass Ave. This would be an enormous boon to the neighborhood. It would, I think, relieve that sense of this very, very large facade because this is a whopper of a structure in that setting. And just to kind, you know, I live across the street so I see this every single day. Just to defend that neighborhood a little bit. We have one building directly across the street on our historic inventory. We have the fireplace, which is the fire station, which is a historic structure. The house next door to it is on the historic inventory. We do have a couple of commercial buildings on the south side of the street, but they maintain a residential exterior appearance. Gibson Sotheby Realty is a little Victorian house. You know, we have subsidized housing directly across in a beautiful old 30s, 40s brick style. This is not a commercial block by any stretch of the imagination for those of us who live there. It is very much a residential appearing block with older houses and this is going to be a really, really different look. So I think that a setback would go a long way to addressing some of the concerns that I have and would make a little bit better use of the plot. And thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I really appreciate it and I believe that that was everything I had to say. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thank you. Next on our list is Mr. Don Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I'd like to talk a little bit about the solar study and I was wondering if it would be possible to bring up those slides. Mr. Mulhern, you still have co-host privileges, so I think you could bring that up if you wouldn't mind. I've seen a fair number of these studies submitted as part of special permit applications in Arlington and most of them are pretty confusing and very hard to interpret and some frankly are just garbage. They're totally useless. I like to say that this particular one is a model of clarity. It's probably the easiest one to understand what's going on and I'd like to compliment the applicant for doing the necessary work on it. If you could go to just a couple of comments on corrections. If you go to the first row showing March 21st at 9 a.m. I don't know if you can zoom in a little bit. But this is almost more of a typographical error. You have down there the solar azimuth as being 249 degrees and I think you'll find that it's more like 125. The shadows themselves are fairly correct. Now if you can go to the last part showing the December 21st shadows, I think this was skipped over during the presentation. I'd like to point this is the one that was really most important of all of them. It shows the most impact and particularly the some of the apartment buildings on Brattle Street specifically 11 and 17 Brattle Street are very much impacted by the shadows during the winter. An error I believe exists in these diagrams in that they're assuming a level terrain whereas in fact Brattle Street goes down an elevation from Mass Ave and in fact 17 Brattle Street which is the apartment building at the top of these pictures. That's a good 10 feet below the level of this proposed structure and the actual shadows should extend a good 25 to 40 feet further than it's shown here depending upon time of day. I also something sort of caught my attention just earlier this evening and the fact is that we can clearly see the actual shadows on 11 Brattle which is the second one down from the corner and this is a much smaller building and it doesn't seem like it's consistent with quite consistent with the length of the ones for the proposed building. They're a little too similar and it makes me a little suspicious about whether these shadows should be shown a bit longer than they are. And now I want to get to the question how this relates to the architecture. As been noted all the massing of the building is sort of shifted to the western side and that's the side that's really most adversely impacting neighbors because of the shadows I'm on Brattle and I was wondering how feasible it would be to simply do a mirror image swap left to right so that the courtyard is facing westward more towards Brattle and this will provide some relief on shadow impact on those apartment buildings on Brattle. And even better would be if it would be possible to make the upper stories sort of an inverted L so that the courtyard faced out both to the west towards Brattle and also to Mass Ave. Something very similar to that is being proposed for another 40B right now on sunny side. I think any efforts to maybe modify the design a bit should pay more attention to what's happening on Brattle. And just to switch topics a little bit on the I found the discussion on diversity be rather interesting and I want to add to the argument simply by quoting from our by law this is a B1 district called neighborhood office district and in our by law it says that this type of district is primarily located on or adjacent to Massachusetts Avenue and this district is intended to encourage preservation of small scale structures to provide contrast and set off the higher density more active areas along the avenue. And that's pretty much all I have to say thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Seltzer. Next with the hand up is Steve Moore. Yes thank you Steve Moore Piedmont Street. I want to applaud the applicant for providing the excellent packet of visualizations of the building that's probably the best I've seen when I've been involved in any of these sorts of hearings very helpful to understand how it's going to look even though clearly from a bird's eye view we're not going to be looking from that angle at all. And also I want to say how much I appreciate the finances that was provided by Mr. Manilori and Mr. Feldman. That always helps to know is how we came to where we are right now in terms of sizing and affordable units and such so that was also quite helpful. I found what Ms. Evans had to say just now took a lot of wind out of my sails because she pretty much said most of what I wanted to stress along with also finding myself in a probe with Mr. Klein's comments relative to the problematic nature of the podium buildings that were built down towards the high school that Mr. Klein mentioned. The proximity of this very large development here to the street as Ms. Evans mentioned I think it does need to be pushed back it's too close it's too large too close in my view. I guess we can't based on the economic shrink the number of units but it's a very large building for what amounts to a much smaller scale area. I know that there are some large four story and five story bill or even eight story buildings not far away but those were probably built prior to prior to any of the zoning rules that we have and there's no reason to repeat the mistakes of the past just because they're there to make what amounts to this project being large being good company. I'm thinking that it's a very large building and I'm not sure it fits the neighborhood that it's in. I find myself in a very peculiar spot of disagreeing with Mr. Hanlon. I understand this point on diversity. The problem with diversity is the more large buildings that get added you can't ever unbuild them and eventually the diversity moves only in one one I mean the diversity sizing of decrease moves only in one direction and that's the larger and larger massings and once they're there they're there Arlington's trying as a community is trying to differentiate itself from other communities and this is moving more towards Cambridge than it is towards a lot of Lexington in terms of massing and density and I'm thinking this is again a pretty large building for the area and I don't I'd rather see something scaled down or at least farther back from the street. So those are my comments. Thank you very much Mr. Moore. Thank you Mr. Moore. Are there any further members of the public wishing to address the board at this time? I see none. I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment period. I just want to quickly note so the meeting was advertised is ending at 10 30 which is in 11 minutes and I am assuming that I have been told that that doesn't mean that Zoom will cut us off at that time. However I don't trust that necessarily so before we go any further with the agreement from the applicant should Zoom cut us off at 10 30 that we are on agreement that we are continuing until Thursday February 9th at 7 30 p.m. Do you agree with that Mr. Feldman? Yes. Okay. So with that I wasn't sure if Mr. Mulhern had a comment he wished to make. Mr. Chairman before that I just want to make sure before 10 30 hits that you actually vote on that continues. Okay thank you. Mr. Chairman do you want to take your vote now? Mr. Havard if I if we take the vote can we continue to discuss or do we have to stop discussing? I think you're better off finishing your discussion and then taking the vote just make sure you get it in before 10 30. Okay. Then Mr. Mulhern. I'll be very quick I just want on the topic of the solar study it was prepared by my office I didn't do it myself I believe that the grade change on Brattle was taken into account but I will verify that and make sure that we've adequately dealt with the fact that the site slopes down and the neighborhood slopes down towards the Brook. With respect to the other issues we'll have to circle back with Matt and Paul Maggiore and Paul Feldman to develop a strategy to address the concerns that you've raised with respect to the side setbacks the mass of the building and the position of the building on the lot. Having said that the riverfront and the river buffer areas are a serious constraint on this project as we try to move the building more north. That's all I had. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you. So Mr. Feldman and Mr. Maggiore as far as what topics would you like to address on February 9th given the comments you've received today would you want to revisit some of the the civil comments that came in at the prior hearing or where would you what would you like to accomplish on the 9th? Right so I think what we're going to be prepared we may be able to do several things but one thing we want to do on the night is when Sean is back from Tetra Tech have civil present the response to Tetra Tech's comments because I think we're getting close and we may be able to get there by the 9th to really close out whatever civil issues have been raised and we know that at least that can be addressed so we want to we definitely want to on on the 9th on the on the civil side. We also will going to address constructability which was an important subject of Sean's and from Tetra Tech so we want to present constructability on the 9th and we certainly will make an effort to address or begin to address what we've what we've heard tonight on a variety of subjects I mean we'll we'll go back and we'll study the setback issue I again I every community response to constraints in different ways and I always find it so interesting how each community is so different because I've been in communities where you know they're two feet into the side yard setback is like you know doesn't mean anything to them I know there's only a 10 foot side yard setback here but it happens all the time but I I'm sensitive to the community that we're in now and I'm sensitive to the points that you guys have made so give us an opportunity to look at that and we're going to try to advance the discussion on on the architectural comments as well but we would I think put that third but I want to go think go you know what's going to happen is we're going to debrief tomorrow morning and we're going to figure out how to advance the ball. Perfect okay so we would be talking on the ninth we would be reviewing civil we would be reviewing constructability and then sort of a first pass at addressing the comments that are received this evening. Correct perfect okay set work for the rest of the board. Excellent okay then with that I will ask for a motion to continue the public hearing for the residences at Millbrook until Thursday February 9th at 7 30 p.m. Chairman yes so moved thank you Mr. Hanlon second and Mr. DuPont this is the vote of the board to continue the public hearing for the residences at Millbrook until Thursday February 9th at 7 30 p.m. so roll call vote of the board Mr. DuPont aye Mr. Hanlon aye Mr. Riccadelli aye Ms. Hoffman aye Ms. Holly Mr. Holly aye and chair votes aye we are continued on the public hearings for the residences at Millbrook look forward to seeing everyone on February 9th and thank you to everyone for all they prepared and all they presented this evening it was very informative very helpful I really appreciate it and also to the members of the public who spoke it's it's very important to have your your contributions we really appreciate it thank you as well we really appreciate everyone's time this evening thank you thank you all so just for the board the February 9th will actually be our next hearing so we're free until then just to review Monday February 13th at 4 p.m. we're going to do that training session for how to run a meeting hybrid um so that's Monday February 13th and then uh Thursday the next meet there we don't yeah we will not be having a meeting on the 14th of February so everyone can enjoy their valentine's day uh but February 23rd would be the next hearing date after that which would be another Thursday uh 40 b and so the next regular meeting we have is Tuesday February 28th that's our schedule going forward are any questions with our schedule seeing none um I would like to thank everyone for their participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington zoning Board of Appeals I wish I appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting I would especially like to thank Rick Valerelli and Vincent Lee and the staff over at Department of Planning and Community Development for all their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting uh please note the purpose of the board's reporting of the meeting is to ensure their creation of an accurate record of its proceedings and it's our understanding the recording made by ACMI will be available on demand at acmi.tv within the coming days if anyone has comments or recommendations please send them via email to zba at town.arlington.ma.us that email address is also listed on the zoning board of appeals website and to conclude tonight's meeting I would ask for a motion to adjourn to chairman mr. Hanlon again so moved thank you sir and seconded thank mr. Dupont so there's a roll call vote of the board for adjournment mr. Dupont aye mr. Hanlon aye this often aye mr. Holley aye mr. Rickidelli aye and the chair votes aye we are adjourned thank you also very much thank you mr. chairman have a good night everyone