 Good evening, everyone. My name is Patrick Hanlon. I'm the vice chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals, and I've been designated as honorary chair for tonight's meeting and for the other meetings that relate to the matter before us tonight. And I hereby call the meeting to order at 731. This may be the closest we are to being on schedule all night so we should save it this moment. I would like to ask all attendees who are not recognized to speak to please mute themselves until they're recognized by the chair that will help avoid the familiar disturbances. I'd like to confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present. First members of the of the Board of Appeals Christian Klein. Present. Roger DuPont here. OK, I'm not the only one that's been listed as a member of the board for a while. Thank you. This is the board of alie. Here. Thank you. Holy. I know Venkat is here because I've solved just a moment ago. Elaine Hoffmann. Adam Luban. Right. Town officials Colleen Ralston. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Good evening. And appearing for the applicant. Mary Wynne Stanley O'Connor. Here. And Erica Schwartz. Here. And everybody else appearing for the ad appearing for the applicant can be will be eventually be introduced by one of those two people. So this open meeting of the Yarlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with an act making appropriations for the fiscal year 2023 to provide for supplementing certain existing appropriations and for certain other activities and projects that was signed into law on March 29th 2023. This act includes an extension until March 31st 2025 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th 2020 executive order, which suspended the requirement to hold all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Public bodies may continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum 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 that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public meeting. For this meeting, the Yarlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom application with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it will be broadcast eventually by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference, others by computer or by telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care to not share personal information. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask that you please maintain the quorum and during the meeting including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the meeting's website or the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. I should note to you that while we do keep adding things to the agenda, there's always a little bit of a lag and so you may need to check back again to find things that are being put in at the last moment. We've received a number of letters, for example, today. They're not on the website yet, but trust us, they will be in due time. So as the board will be taking up new business tonight, I make the following land acknowledgement pursuant to town policy, whereas the zoning board of appeals for the town of Arlington, Massachusetts discusses and arbitrates the use of land in Arlington, formerly known as monotomy in Al Arlington. The board hereby acknowledges that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe. The tribe of indigenous peoples from the colony, province and commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. So there are no, the only item on our agenda today is a public hearing for comprehensive permit. This evening, the board is opening a comprehensive permit hearing. The project at Ten Sunnyside Avenue is the redevelopment of an existing site in the vehicular oriented business or before district. The submitted documents are available from the board's website as noted before. This is a pretty exciting moment for us because this is a project that is being submitted by housing corporation of Arlington. It is all affordable, whereas most 40B projects are affordable only in part. And it includes a substantial number of more deeply discounted affordable units. So it's a big event to happen in Arlington. And it's added a really interesting location because it is located right on a bus line within a few hundred feet of place where, of Clarendon Station, where a number of bus lines come together. It's near bicycle paths and it is a remarkable location in many ways. And so it's a pleasure to be able to open the proceeding and to delve more deeply as we will over this meeting and several others on this application. So I want to bore you, I don't really want to bore you, but I will just the same with a little bit of an introduction to the comprehensive permit process that will sort of set the framework going forward. The applicants are going to be invited at the outset to introduce themselves and their team. And they'll make a brief presentation or at least they will say it's a brief presentation and I will accept them at their word. And of the application of the project that is proposed by the applicants. The board can then, members of the board, present questions of the applicant before we open the hearing to public comment. There will be a brief intermission about five minutes between the initial presentation by the applicant and the comment from all of you. So what is this comprehensive permit stuff? It's also known as 40B. It was established by the state in 1969 to allow developers devoting a certain percentage of the units in the development as being affordable. And then the developer could get expedited review whereby the zoning board of appeals would hear the application and be authorized to grant waivers from any local statute or bylaw, which it finds can be granted without negatively impacting the health safety and welfare of local residents. The applicant cannot request waivers from state laws and regulations, which remain in full effect. And that would include the wetlands act includes state building code and similar state laws. Once the comprehensive permit is filed, the board has 30 days to open a public hearing and the town says seven days to notify departments, boards and commissions of the receipt of the application. Once the hearing begins, which is what is happening tonight, the board has 180 days to hear the case and close the public hearing unless the parties mutually agree to an extension. Once the hearing begins, the board has 15 days to notify the applicant if it will be declaring safe harbor under any of the provisions under state law. And should the board make such a declaration, the applicant has 15 days to appeal. After the public hearing is closed, the board has 40 days to render a decision unless the parties mutually agree to extend. When the board is preparing a decision has three options. One of the things they can do is just grant the application. Another is to grant it subject to various conditions that are designed to protect local needs and local interests. And third is to deny the project. Any decision by the board may be appealed within 20 days of the issuance of the decision. And unless the town can demonstrate that it is meeting its obligations and providing affordable housing and appeal by the applicant is filed with the Housing Appeals Committee by design developer friendly platform. A butter appeals are heard at the Superior Court or Land Court. A town can demonstrate it is meeting its affordable housing obligations by demonstrating compliance with one of the safe harbor provisions under the enabling state legislation. This could include having greater than 10% of housing units listed on the subsidized housing index maintained by the state. It could include having a certain percentage of more than 1.5% of available land dedicated to affordable housing. Or there's a similar provision with respect to total land area. And there are a number of others. The related. So and we will address those at the very end of the meeting. The applicant needs to demonstrate that it meets the statutory requirements for its submittal. And the applicant will no doubt explain to us the way in which they do that. But much of that is included in their in their written plans which are on the website and which I invite you to look at. The board is also able to request funds from the applicant to allow the board to properly and thoroughly review the application and supporting materials by hiring consulting engineers with expertise in areas like traffic and storm water and utilities and the like. The board can engage a transcription service also to create a written record of the hearings. And then typically in Arlington, the board does do that. Under certain circumstances, the board can retain a financial consultant to review the projects pro forma. Negotiations of work sessions may occur between the applicant and their consultants and the town and its consultants, but no decisions can be made at those sessions. The board is limited to conditions which could be applied in similar proposed developments pursued through regular zoning. The board cannot consider any impact a 40 B decision would have on public schools as families are protected class under the Fair Housing Act. The board cannot reduce the number of overall units unless it demonstrates that the necessity to protect the health, the safety and welfare of residents. And the board cannot increase the percentage of affordable units which is not really relevant here or the affordability of the unit. So only the subsidizing agency can do that. So I've now reached the end and I can, while I take my breath, I'd like to ask Mr. Havardy if there's anything that either left out that anything necessary that I left out or anything that I got wrong. No, he didn't. You did very, very well, Mr. Chairman. I don't think there was anything I could add to that. Great. All right. At this point, I'd like to introduce attorney Mary, when Stanley O'Connor of Craton Meyer, Craton maker O'Connor and Ingrid PC to introduce the project team and make a presentation to the board in the town. Expect me explaining the proposed project, Mary. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon members of the board. Good evening. Paul, good to see you again. On behalf of the housing corporation of Barlington, it's my privilege to be able to represent them. As Mr. Hanlon has said, this is an exciting project for a number of reasons that we will go through. I'd like to first introduce the project team. I think many of you know Erica Schwartz, the executive director of the housing corporation of Barlington Erica, you can raise your hand there so people can see you. Gabby Geller, who is the development consultant is also on the call. Our design team is led by Nick Burence from Uteal Design. The civil engineer on this project is Sammy Otis consultants and Steven Garvin is the primary contact. The landscape architect is offshoots Inc. And we are using a niche engineering Brian Zamolka. You may recall he was the traffic engineer on 1165 our mass app and we've used him for this project as well. You have a complete application, which includes everything from a control of the site and project eligibility letter and all the plans. I'm sure you are familiar with what the housing corporation has done in the town of Arlington. The most recent developments comparable to this were Downing Square, which was, is now complete and tenanted the Broadway project on Broadway and Capital Square. That's just some of the units that the housing corporation has developed in this town. I would suggest to you that this project is in keeping with that commitment to affordable quality communities in perpetuity. This development consists of 43 residential units. And I would submit gets Arlington even closer to its necessary thresholds for affordable housing. It's located in a before automotive district as Mr. VanLyn mentioned, and as the zoning board knows, the zoning bylaw specifically contains a provision that says when the ZBA or the ARB has the ability to change an automotive use to some other use in a before district, they should really seize upon that opportunity. And this is a perfect situation. The project is in alignment with the goals of the town as well as the state to have housing near transit, public transit, retail shops. You have Arlington and Summable here on both ends. You have the list of waivers that we've provided. There are not a tremendous amount of waivers that are necessary for this project because it generally comes within the bylaw for this district by way of height and similar things. You have the extensive traffic report and that we will get that another night. And I would suggest, and I think the board can concur that this proposal is a tremendous improvement over what is there and something which is very much needed. With respect to the commercial space, there's proposed 600 square feet of commercial space on the first floor. It is the intention at this point for the housing corporation to use that space for its management office. It's my pleasure to represent the housing corporation on this project. We have received just so the board knows we have received the April 23rd memorandum. And our team will review the comments and the recommendations and at another meeting respond. We've also, I've also communicated with Mr. Hanlon and we're ironing out the number of parking spaces. It's some number based on the bylaw. If you look at six point one five and eight point two for a of between 10 and 39 spaces. Depending on what the ZBA does. We have proposing 21 parking spaces in this project. So I would like to turn this over to. Nick who can present the plans if that's okay with you, Mr. Hanlon. Yes. It's quite welcome. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mary. Let me just go ahead and share my screen here. Everyone see that slide deck. Yes. All right. Great. Great. All right. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much. Members of the board for having us to echo everyone's comments. We're very excited about this project. I think actually we're going to start with it. Just a brief overview from Erica. Introduce the project and the timeline. And then I can jump into the design. If you want to. Give a brief overview about the goals for the project, please. By all means. Sure. So I think Mary really captured it. You, you know who we are. I just wanted to say thank you. For having us here. We're very excited about the project. I'm interested in hearing the feedback and working through this process. And our timeline is really with a goal of. Going through this process. Advancing our designs and applying for the necessary subsidies from the state. Probably in January of 2024 when, when the state has its next opportunity to apply for those funds. We're hopeful we'll be successful. It's not guaranteed. The state has a lot of demands on its limited funds. But if we are successful at that time, then we could see tenants moving in. You know, less than three years from now. So that's our goal and this timeline works well with that. So just thank you for having us here and I'll turn it back to Nick. Great. Thanks, Erica. So I'll just introduce myself briefly. My name is Nick beer. And I'm an associate principal at UTL. We're a 65 person architecture and planning firm in Boston. I manage our affordable housing practice who work with. CDCs and nonprofit developers like HCA all around the greater urban area in New England. And really excited to be putting together a team for this project and invited by Erica to participate. And bringing affordable housing to Arlington. I'm joined by Rochelle Ayn from UTL, who's the project manager and an associate at UTL. And David Charlotte and who's our project engineer from Sam Yiddish engineering. And David will share some details about the civil engineering plan as well at the end of the presentation. So I'll try to keep my comments as brief as possible, so that we can go ahead and take a moment to get to the point where we'll start in person and leave plenty of time for questions. Just to orient everyone to the project we're right on the Arlington Summerville Cambridge border along the wife Brooke. In the middle of the screen here. And as I think everyone knows, this is really an ideal location to bring additional housing density to Arlington. The city's master planning efforts and as adjacent to bus lines, the Massachusetts Avenue commercial corridor, not too far from both the red line and the green line extension. We've got a shopping grocery store right across the street. So really an ideal location, great access to the greenway and other green spaces all along the wife brook. So really an ideal location to bring affordable housing. The actual site itself is, you know, fairly modestly sized. There's an existing. There's an auto body use that's on there. The building itself takes up about a quarter of the site and the rest is, you know, paved parking area and a little bit overgrown and neglected at this point. But for those of you that aren't intimately familiar with the location. There's a little pocket here where there are still vestiges of, you know, light industrial use and automotive use along sunny side. And we're a little bit set back from the residential neighborhood. So, you know, part of what we see here is an opportunity to maybe provide a little bit more density that might be might not be appropriate in the midst of a residential neighborhood, but to really encourage additional capacity for housing along the Broadway corridor to provide excellent access to the greenway and the bike path and to set a precedent for future redevelopment in this district. Just a quick snapshot of what the site looks like today. As I mentioned, it's a wasn't existing auto body shop. I think had been the same use historically all the way back to the 1920s. And, you know, that that business is no longer operating at this point. And the lot itself is sort of overgrown. There's been some stockpiling of debris and stuff like that. So very, very underutilized at the moment. We went through an initial, you know, sort of capacity analysis effort with Erica and her team in the fall. It made our initial submissions to the state to determine eligibility for the 40 B process. And, you know, really the core metrics of the project having changed since then. We tried, as Mary mentioned to work very closely within the existing zoning as much as possible so the height, the overall mass the FAR really isn't keeping with what the zoning allows. And, you know, we've tried to provide open space to provide bike parking to provide a certain level of articulate architectural articulation to the building and keeping with the spirit of the zoning code as a way to make this building as contextual and appropriate for the neighborhood as possible. I'll walk through the floor plans briefly. On the ground floor plan, you'll see in blue here the sort of interior area of the building and then in gray the parking which is underneath the footprint of the building above. So really the entire site is taken up with the building. The parking is open air. The blue area is interior condition space. So we've got our main entrance to the building here sort of on the left hand side of the page with a residential lobby, a property management office and meeting room for residents and social service providers to use. We have a trash room on the ground floor. We have some interior bike parking here as well as additional exterior bike parking in the back of the parking area here and tucked into the front of the parking area. And then, you know, the typical sort of service spaces that we need to run a building besides electrical rooms, elevator machine rooms, that type of thing. You'll see here the commercial office space that Mary mentioned previously. And as she discussed the intention at this point is for HCA to occupy that space as part of their ongoing operations in Arlington. On the second floor, we start to have our residential units and you'll see there's a generous elevator lobby that comes up here in the middle of the plan that provides direct access to a very generous community room that will be available for the residents to use and potentially available to be booked by the outside community and have, you know, members of the community come in and host events here as well. And that provides direct access to an open space roof deck here, which is really, I think one of the core features and amenities of this building and something that we're really excited about. Part of the thinking about, you know, the site plan was really obviously to maximize the amount of affordable housing we could provide on the site. But we did want to make sure that residents had access to green space directly on the site. And as I mentioned, you know, there's excellent adjacency to the bike path and all these other great open spaces in the neighborhood. So we felt like it was appropriate here to maybe limit, you know, some of the onsite open space and really use that as a focal point to frame the, you know, the residential spaces and the community spaces around that. So you'll see typically on the upper floors, there's a mix of one, two and three bedrooms, you know, pursuant to the state's funding guidelines were biased a little bit more heavily towards the larger units to provide room for families. And on the upper third and fourth floors, the plan is identical. Those units just stack going up. On the fifth floor you'll see here, excuse me on the front of the building, you've stepped the building back a little bit from the lower floors and that was again sort of a nod to some of those step back provisions that are called for in the zoning. We asked for some relief for specific dimensions for that we really wanted to use that device as a means to try to mitigate height and presence on the street and make the building feel like it's set in the neighborhood a little bit better. On the roof, we have a mechanical penthouse area, which will primarily be used for a central domestic hot water plant that will serve the entire building. And there'll be some exterior, you know, rooftop mechanical equipment that you'll see in this hatched area that's generally located in the center of the plan both to eliminate noise transfer to the units below but also make sure that we don't have any slight lines from the street to see that equipment. And then, you know, the majority of the roof is really dedicated for a photovoltaic array, which we are doing on a lot of our projects and which we're excited to include here as well. There are a couple sort of key design principles that we've been trying to adhere to as we develop the architecture and, you know, meet with neighbors and meet with the town department heads. I'll just review those quickly here. I think, you know, probably the most fundamental one is really about creating a new street edge and street presence along sunny side. As you saw on the photos, there's no sidewalk currently. There's no curb line there's, you know, very little in the way of making this a pedestrian friendly street and that was one of the things that we heard loud and clear from the neighbors was, this could be a real improvement to the character of the street and to make it a much more walkable and pleasant place to be both in the daytime and in the evening. So we really tried to pay close attention to that. And as I mentioned, you know, we're making a number of moves here to try to break down both the breadth and the height of the building in a way that makes it feel a little bit more contextual. This is a sort of a precedent for some taller redevelopment here along Broadway where we're trying to make some alignments with our step back there, and then also sort of frame, you know, portions of the elevation in a way that read a little bit more like the smaller scale, you know, one, two and three family buildings that are around in the neighborhood. And as I mentioned, you know, really the, the open space here in the roof deck, I think, is a great sort of focal point for the project both as a place for residents to gather and to use, but really also as a visual amenity to the neighborhood and folks on the street. And we think having that space space out onto the street having it be sort of a green buffer to the project and to the street edge is a really nice future of the design. So we're going to have a subsequent conversation I think that sort of a more detailed plan developed in coordination with our landscape architect but I wanted to share some preliminary thinking about the streetscape and we did get some initial feedback from the town engineer and department heads about this design as well so you'll see, you know, we're trying to sort of pack in a lot of activity and activate what's going on here in the sidewalk so adding new street trees obviously down the length of the sidewalk, adding the itself of course, really limiting the width of the curb cut so that that doesn't take up too much of the frontage of the building. And then you'll see here, this idea about sort of, you know, creating really what's a almost like a front porch for the building so we're dealing with a little bit of a great change across the site. It's taller on the left hand or higher on the left hand side of the page and shorter on the right hand side of the page so finding ways to use steps and sort of slope surfaces to mitigate that great change and you know provide a little bit of an elevated spot where we could have some seating, a little bit of a sheltered entrance if we think is going to be a really nice feature. And then again just finding opportunities to add additional landscaping and greenery along the edge of the building. So here's a view of the building as you would see it head on on sunny street on sunny side street. And you'll see the main building entrance here with that front porch area that I was talking about here's the community office space over here on the left. So we're looking over here on the right and we've, this is sort of, you know, version three or four of the parking design we've really been trying to pay attention to how this is evolving architecturally obviously we want to provide parking for the residents but we also want to do it in a way that isn't a negative impact both from a visual standpoint and from a safety standpoint. So that's some great feedback through some of our butters meetings about ways to both enclose this but also make it feel more open, make it feel incorporated with the architecture. And I think, you know, maybe most importantly, finding a way to light it in the evening and make it feel like it's really an integral part of the building. And that's something that, you know, continues to evolve and I know there were some comments in the boards memorandum specifically about that and that's something that we're actively trying to address with the design right now. Here is another view of the project from Broadway looking towards sunny side. You can see the main building entrance sort of here in the center and this idea of sort of a stepping and pulling of the front facade to create alignments with adjacent buildings to break down the overall height and breadth of the building in a way that feels a little bit more Congress with the with the neighborhood. And a view here looking back on sunny side towards Broadway in the distance there with the cemetery where you can see, again, some of the architectural motifs that we're trying to deploy to screen the parking and to activate that portion of the building tie it together architecturally with the open space up above and with the storefront and building entrance further down the street. I think that's the gist of the architectural presentation. I'm going to turn it over to David to briefly review some of the civil engineering aspects of the project, grading utilities and stormwater and then we'd be happy to take your questions. Hi, I'm David. I came with same year as consultants here to present the same utilities and stormwater design for the project. We have received the town engineer comments. They also reasonable and we'll be making revisions to address them. On the screen, you can see the site layout with the building located the bottom left of the plan and the covered parking to the north and east. The walk would also be provided along side side Avenue with the street trees. If we can skip to the next slide utilities. Oh, yeah, okay utilities. Utilities will be provided for the site. The new domestic water and fire protection will be brought off of the main and so inside Avenue, the sanitary sewer will connect to the existing manhole and inside side Avenue. Water collected by area drains inside the parking garage will be routed through a sediment and oil separator prior to connecting to the sanitary manhole. The electrical transform the electrical service will be run underground from an existing utility pool across across the street to new pad mounted transformer. Where the building power will be run from. And the gas service is located. To the left of the building off of the main and so inside Avenue as well. The storm water, we are also proposing a storm water management system that will be D. P. and local regulations with BMPs, including area drains, mammals, cast iron pipes. The infiltration system with HDPE chambers and a dry well. The overflow connection on the site will be from the dry well to an existing 10 inch PVC pipe at the east corner of a lot. That's all for my presentation. We have received the town engineers comments and we will be making revisions to the plants. Thank you. Thanks, David. I think that's everything that we have for you as far as the presentation goes. So happy to go back and review and as materials or take your questions. So thank you for your presentation. The, this is a point where the board has questions. This is the time to ask them. There are two general principles that just like everybody to try to observe. One is is that this is an introductory session. So it may be a time to begin to to to get ideas or issues or whatever out onto the out onto the floor so that we can work on them going forward. But also, there'll be lots of there'll be several other hearings and we don't need to explore any anything in depth really we'll get into those things later on. Mr. Klein. Thank you very much, Mr. Allen. I had a few different questions several of these items I think were captured by some of the town's comments as well. But there were different things that I wanted to make sure that the applicant was thinking of as we move forward in this process. One of them has to do with the open space on the second floor. It currently has a single means of egress which limits the occupancy of 49. And I would absolutely encourage the applicant to discuss that design with inspectional services. Before we move too far down the process just to make sure that that aligns with with their interpretation of egress guidelines for this use. We had a similar project recently that had an outdoor space in the second floor. And in the end we we did need to add as they needed to add a second means of egress I just want to make sure that that gets addressed. So that that you don't get caught by that later on. The summary reflects our understanding of the issues and that is our plan currently would be to limit the occupancy to, you know, only have one means of egress. Okay. I just, I would encourage you to have that conversation with inspectional services. Sure. I appreciate that you're creating a sidewalk. This building has had has this is the third time this building I believe it appeared before the zoning board appeals over the last 10 years for a variety of things that never happened. So, I'm really looking forward to, to actually having a clean sidewalk that's flat and level and can be utilized. So I think that that's a very nice thing to see. I'm a little concerned about the visibility coming out of the garage and the width of the proposed garage opening. I just want to make sure that that those are well thought through. So because that obviously that's going to be sort of the pinch point where all these different modes of transportation come together and I really want to make sure that we have a full understanding of how that's going to be managed. And that also sort of extends out to Broadway. There is a 87 bus stop that's heading towards our LinkedIn Center is on this is on the project side of Broadway. But the 87 heading in the opposite direction is on the opposite side of Broadway and there's the nearest crosswalks are several hundred feet away. It's either down at the at the parkway or farther up the block and one of the recommendations was that the applicant consider creating a crosswalk at broad on Broadway at that location. And at town meeting there was a presentation by a local neighborhood group that is looking at safety improvements along Broadway and there may be some synergy there between that group and what this project is considering. And so I would strongly encourage some investigation of as to whether a crosswalk in this area would be would be a possibility would be a great amenity to not only this project but also to the neighborhood behind it. And then the only other question I had at this time I know you are including a gas service and I just wanted to confirm what would be served by the gas service. So, I think we obviously mentioned in our materials and you queued in on the fact that we're pursuing pass about certification which I think coincidentally we had been intending to do and then the town went ahead and adopted the specialized stretch code which made a requirement so we're excited to be complying with that new requirement. So our preliminary thinking at this point is to use the gas service to service the domestic hot water plant that continues to be the most cost effective and efficient way to provide hot water for buildings of this size. The options for doing it in an energy efficient way, following the pass of our standard are fairly limited. Beyond centralized gas plants there's some newer technology to do it through air source heat pumps that are electric or to do it on an individualized electric resistance basis but it becomes a lot more challenging and both costly. So it's a cross perspective and costly to operate so I think that's something we're going to be continuing to evaluate through the design process is whether or not it makes sense to be an early adopter for a system like that that will allow us to be 100% electric or if we plan for future electrification which is a prerequisite of the pass of our standard and something that we would be doing anyway. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dupont. So I just had one question and it's more for informational purposes. So when the plans were shown the second floor, second level showed I believe a laundry room. Correct. And it looked like there were two washers and dryers are the units themselves going to be plumbed to allow for someone to have a washer dryer setup. In this case probably not we were providing common area laundry on every residential floor at a ratio that you know we determined to be appropriate with in coordination with HCA and their property manager so it's roughly about one set of machines per every eight residential units or I think we're actually a little bit over that. Okay. That was my next question about whether there were any sort of industry standards with regard to the numbers because honestly it just seems a little low, especially if people have families with kids. Yeah, so that's roughly that's a fairly consistent standard that we've run across and in our affordable housing work and it's fairly uncommon to provide any unit laundry for the subsidized units. Sometimes we provide one larger laundry room for the entire building here we're doing it on a floor by floor basis I think that's something that we actually got direct feedback from our property management company is being a preference for so you'll see you know going up through the building every floor has their own, you know, individual laundry room so they'll be a pair of machines for every, you know, eight nine units on the floor. Okay, thank you. Do you have any other questions from the board? I have a couple. One is the parking vehicles is .49 per dwelling unit so and I'm wondering what experience you have with basically providing one parking space for every two dwelling units. In particular, what is the situation at Downing Square and at 177 Broadway. It does seem a little bit, a little bit light, particularly since many people who live in affordable housing don't have jobs necessarily downtown and sometimes the transit system is not very friendly to their needs. So that actually, I can't answer it fully and I can get information for you, but we don't have a one to one parking ratio at any of our other sort of larger developments capital square or the two Downing Square sites. So we have, I think actually a slightly higher ratio at 117 Broadway, where it's a much smaller building, but not all we require our tenants to get parking stickers so we know how many people have requested that. And not all of the spaces there are taken by a parking sticker request. So, we think this is appropriate it's actually a higher ratio than some of our properties and we do have tenants who absolutely do need cars, but a lot of our tenants do not have cars. So we think it is an appropriate ratio. But I can, I can also get those, I can forward those exact numbers, if the ZDA is interested. That would be very helpful to see. That would be very helpful. And I might also point out, if I may, that you may recall that the project that you approve the 40B at Westminster Ave, there was no parking there on site. And that has not been an issue. I'd also like to add from a funding perspective that the state DATD in particular has had a lot of, they've pushed back a lot about the cost of parking, particularly for moderate to very low income units. And questioning the feasibility and the question of applying resources to additional parking spaces when across projects across the state, they found that they are not fully utilized. So this is something that the state would give us an issue about they don't like one to one parking, especially as you get closer to the city. Right. Well, I actually am not so much concerned about the one to one part is, is just 0.49 and whether where that fits in the spectrum from zero to one. And of course it could be either too much or too little that I noticed that with the staff comments suggest that it would be nice if you had more bicycle parking and I wonder if it would make sense for you to have even less vehicle parking and use some of that space to deal with the deficiency in bicycle parking. I mean, eventually you want to have a balance right and and that works for the people who are working in this building and work for the neighborhood as well. I guess the other question I have is that under the stretch code you're going to be required to do pre wiring for 20% of the vehicular parking spaces. And I'm wondering how that physically works you've got a relatively cramped parking area and I guess this is not a time to get into that in detail but it would be nice to see, you know, visually, how it is that you would accommodate that requirement and what that does to the, to the space that's located in the parking area. I have no more. The, it's now time to introduce for public comment, I was planning actually on having a break here. But we're doing so well that maybe we'll try doing that a little bit later on and and start the public comment. So, before we get into public comment, there are some guidelines that you may find helpful in making comments effective. First of all, public comments and questions will be only taken as it relates to the matter at hand and should be directed to the board for purposes of informing our decision. So this is not indication for having, you know, back and forth conversations that leave the board in the position of your audience. The chair strongly encourages individual speakers to limit their comments and use their time to provide comment related to the topics discussed at this hearing. Please note that there'll be multiple hearings in this case so that if you don't have time to unburden yourself with everything that you're thinking there will be other opportunities where we're for getting into more details on the particular issues that we just touched on lightly today. The chair will encourage the and does encourage the people to provide written comments as well. They have a tendency to last in the mind a lot longer than the oral comments to and and the board finds them particularly useful. The chair will first ask members of the public who have previously identified themselves by logging in through zoom, who wish to speak to digitally raise their hand using the raise hand button in the participants tab, you will be called upon by the meeting host you can unmute yourself and you'll be asked to give your name and address for the record, and you'll be given up to five minutes for your questions and I'd encourage you to if to go a little light on the time at five minutes is a limit not a target. And it would be here. There are a lot of people who like to who will have a chance to speak and this isn't going to be the end of the line for anyone, but so the idea is just to try to get as many people into the queue as as we can. The questions have to be addressed through the chair, and please remember to speak clearly concisely in a way that helps to generate an accurate record for those calling in by phone. Please dial star nine to indicate that you'd like to speak when called upon you may unmute your line and you should identify yourself by name and address for the record. The calls apply to phone participants in the same way they do for participants on zoom. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed or we've reached. Let's say here, nine or 10 after nine. We will have a public comment period for this evening will be closed as noted previously there are multiple hearing scheduled for the project any cheering will have an opportunity for public comment. I will say that when we get to the period of around 10 after nine. If it looks as if there's a whole lot of people waiting in line. We will take a break and give others an opportunity to to finish up because this is this is a time to get everything out on the table and so we're not going to be overly stringent about the about the timing as long as as long as we're not making as long as just continuing to make progress. So that said, the first person on my list here is Steve Moore. So, Steve unmute yourself and identify yourself for the record. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair, Steve Moore Piedmont Street. I want to apologize I arrived late there's a lot going on in town tonight and so I'm trying to do multiple things but so forgive me if the points that I bring up with the questions asked really have already been answered in the presentation. I guess my first question, Mr. chair to you is what is this area currently zone for before. That's automotive uses. Right, automotive uses. And right now the the old Hanson and Chilton garages there and next to it is down the street is the Aramont oil company. I know that when this is when this came up before there was lots of back and forth questions about the previous use and how the site was going to require some perhaps remediation from its previous use having had paint booths and utilities that supported welding and all sorts of things. And also this back parking lot or the back area that was a storage area for vehicles. All this to say to kind of provide some context to my question. I guess I'm wondering for you, Mr. Chair, and the applicant. Why is it the applicant feels that folks, either moderate income or a normal market rate income would want to live in this previous industrial type zone with perhaps issues with. I don't know about dumping but the soil probably is pretty contaminated and there's an oil company just down the street why is it you want to live there I guess I would ask. So, I can answer that we've had a phase one and a phase two environmental study done and the site is clean. And that means test. Mr. Chair that means test warrings in all the areas of that storage parking lot. Whatever the consultant deemed necessary and appropriate the reality is that no bank is going to lend on this property unless it's a clean site and in any event. You know that the housing corporation has previously purchased a heavily contaminated site at Downing Square and cleaned it up and built the project there. So this is, this is a non issue that they contamination issue it's a non issue. Okay, that's good news. Mr. Chair, I would suggest there be sufficient positive set aside for when you start digging around and pulling up stuff that if contamination is discovered, if unexpected conditions are discovered that they can be handled as part of the project project. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. more. Mr. Mongold. Thank you, Mr Chairman. My name is Neil Mongold I'm a board member of the housing corporation of Arlington, and I just have a brief statement that's from the collective individual board members of the housing corporation. We are very pleased to present our development to you tonight of 43 apartments at 10 Sunnyside Avenue in East Arlington. As you know the housing corporation of Arlington, HCA is a nonprofit community based development corporation with board members who all live or work in Arlington, and with a broad membership throughout the town. HCA owns 150 apartments as has been mentioned previously throughout Arlington rain ranging from widely scattered two family homes throughout the town to our newest development which has been mentioned of 48 apartments. For 37 years HCA's mission has been providing and advocating for affordable housing in our amazing vibrant town as a way to encourage social and economic diversity in our town. And 10 Sunnyside Ave will be an important development for Arlington in that, in that manner and for this neighborhood off of Broadway particularly. A thoughtful design that will enhance the street and bring new life to a long vacant site. This project will be a small but important contribution we feel to easing the critical shortage of affordable housing in our town. As part of our efforts to understand and to better respond to any neighborhood concerns HCA staff and board have held to neighborhood and a butter meetings so far. HCA has also had discussions with the select board, the Arlington redevelopment board, the town's planning department and with many interested stakeholders throughout the town. In our meetings we heard comments about the need to bring new life and streetscape improvements along Sunnyside. We heard about the potential impact on traffic and parking. We heard about the effect of a new five story building on the street. And we heard questions about the many energy efficient and sustainability features of our project. And HCA staff and board has worked with our architects to address many of these issues and we will continue to listen carefully to all the comments. As a long term community based organization we will respond to the greatest extent possible to any design or programming issues that are that arise from these conversations and future meetings. The need for high quality energy efficient affordable housing in Arlington is truly overwhelming. This project is a sign of hope for many, many people. From the moment that HCA's board heard about the availability of this site, we were thrilled about the possibilities. And we think that our project will be a wonderful new neighbor on Sunnyside Ave. And on behalf of the board of HCA I again want to express our strong support for this project on Sunnyside Ave. And we asked for the board to support our application. We look forward to continuing this dialogue. And we will take into consideration all of your comments and feedback to ensure the best possible future for Ten Sunnyside. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. And I just want to read off briefly the names of board members of the Housing Corporation of Arlington. Danielle Sherry, Jack Cooper, Abidna Kervei, Tom Knee, who is our board president. Julia Parker, Matthew Pierce, Kinjal Singh, Frank Tadley, John Wallach, Deirdre Westcott, and Laura Wiener. So thank you for this opportunity to speak. Thank you, Mr. Mongold. I think I may when I first recognized you have neglected to ask you to give your name and address for the record and just in case could you do that now. Again, it's Neil Mongold. I live at 12 Brattle Place in Arlington. Great. Thank you very much. The next person on the list is Kelda Fontenot. If that's the right way to pronounce your name. Is Ms. Fontenot there? Yes, I'm sorry. Hi, my name is Kelda Fontenot. You were pronouncing it correct and I appreciate that. So I'm really concerned. Ms. Fontenot, could you identify yourself by address as well? Oh, sure. I live at the Broadway Downing Square initiative built by HCA in their latest project. My address is 114 Lowell Street. Thank you. Sure. So I really appreciate the board's thoughtful comments and questions about the sidewalk and about the parking and everything. We are having some serious issues here that I've gone on address at our Broadway or at our Downing Square. I don't live on Broadway. They refuse that. At our Downing Square place, we have problems with parking. We have problems with Peabody who manages all of HCA's properties, enforcing the no smoking indoors, which is a term for the actual funding. We have problems with the trash room. There is not enough trash, like barrels. There's not enough room in the trash room. And when the trash goes out, it covers up the whole sidewalk. So I think I hope that people will consider asking about like where will the trash be put out if these sidewalks are particularly small. Right now, I encourage the board or anybody concerned to drive through here. You know, it's a public area and see that our trash is out right now. It's been out for over 24 hours. It's out usually five days a week on the sidewalk, which makes the sidewalk very inaccessible and is against, of course, the health code. And I encourage anybody to stand underneath the supposed fire lane and smell the marijuana smoke coming out of the building, which is perfectly legal, except it's a no smoking building. And the funding could be revoked because due to the federal funding, even though marijuana is completely legal here in Massachusetts, it's not federally legal. And this has been going on for the entire year people have been living here. There have been numerous complaints from numerous tenants and retaliation response. So I hope that people keep up the conversation open. Also, the contamination is a problem here. This was a previous landfill and even though there were plenty of testing done. I spoke with the EPA person who was in charge of a lot of the testing. There was never any interior testing done here. And if you look at the history of affordable housing and landfills, almost inevitably, when things are disturbed and when things are built and enclosed, the gases and stuff rising to the interior. So what needs to be tested is the interior air quality that still hasn't happened here in the windows don't open. So yeah, I encourage you to keep this conversation open. I appreciate everybody's thoughts. I think this is a much needed thing. And I hope that it can be done by somebody else who takes better care of the properties that they already have. Thank you, Mr. Contano. The next person on our list is Roberto Acosta. Good evening. My name is Roberto Costa. I live on 39 Michael Street. I thank you for your time. I do have concerns about the traffic as the traffic was done over in order of state emergency. So the flow was not what it is and it's already increasing. Furthermore, summer bill is restricting over Broadway. They're adding bike lanes. And I'm assuming at some point, Arlington may follow suit with what they did in Mass Avenue. We'll lose more lanes on that side. And just with the amount of cars right now, it's impossible to turn onto Broadway. I find myself circling around Michael Street to get where I need to go. The transportation they take it every day is definitely not what it should be. 87 and the red line are really slow. So that should be taken into consideration as well. There may need to be an increase in bus service. Second, we're going to build housing for residents of Arlington. I would like them to have open space in Arlington and be part of the community of Arlington. The idea that they have to travel to Cambridge and, oh boy, I know that. I mean, they know it's summer built. I don't know what's going to happen with the building that they're going to do in front. It's already a space that the town doesn't. We don't control or whether we have that under our own control in terms of space. I think the building is a little too big for the site. We're basically going to add a lot of families and a short amount of space. And I think that's reflected on all the variances that are being asked on the building code. And to second the parking. We do have access to the markets, but there's really no pharmacy in the area. You have to drive to a pharmacy. There are other stores that you need to get access that you do need a car that there's no real easy way to get to. And finally, if there are no bike lanes to go on Broadway, so that's something to consider as we start moving to less cars or more bike transportation. Crossing over to to summer bill and even riding on Broadway in Arlington. This is a challenge on a bicycle. The road's not well maintained and it's sometimes very difficult to navigate in the winter. And my only concern, I guess, along with the size of the building, I think there'll be a lot of shadows cast on sunny side, which is kind of one of the only good things the street has going for it. The fact that it gets on is also that we seem to be kind of segregating the town by income. I think if I look around my neighborhood, we seem to be putting between the two areas, a lot of income segregation and I don't think that's that's necessarily good for the future and for the schools. And that that I think is something that should be evaluated as well. We think there's a number of affordable housing around the area already and I'm just concerned how that the effects of social economic effects in that and on the school already probably have the school that has the highest teacher to student ratio in the town. So, so those those are just some concerns. I am worried about the size of the building. I think probably two floors too big. But I do think the project looks good. I like the passive aspect of it. I just the size and the lack of parking or what concerns me. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Mr costa. Let me just reiterate what I said at the beginning though it's important for everybody to understand that one of the things the board cannot take into consideration is the impact of new housing on schools. That that would be a violation of the Fair Housing Act. So that is an issue that will not be before the board as for the rest. We appreciate your views. Miss Dean. Thank you, Mr chairman and other members of the board. I, my name is Shelley Dean. I live at seven Cleveland street in East Arlington, about four blocks from this development. In terms of other disclosure. I am a member of the housing corporation of Arlington's real estate committee, and also a member of the clean energy future committee for the town. I'm speaking, not on behalf of those organizations I'm speaking on behalf of myself. And I want to say that even though I am not a direct a butter of this property I really consider this a very, very much part of my neighborhood. This is a neighborhood I walk through all the time. I am very, very familiar with it and I'm very familiar with just how convenient a location this is, whether it be for public transit, whether it be for grocery stores, the bike path or greenway, the access to the public library, walkable to elementary schools to medical services. It really seems like it's an ideal location for affordable housing. Because there is just such an overwhelmingly critical need for affordable housing. So I'm really so I don't have any questions I'm really speaking on behalf in in full support of this project. And because of my interest in energy efficiency and in renewable energy. I also am so pleased that this is going to be built to pass this house standards. I am also very pleased with the fact that there will be featured that that the, that the design really took into account many of the butters concerns about the current condition of the streetscape and the fact that the building pulls back a little bit from the street and that there's really much more of a sense of our neighborhood hood and a residential feel for the front of the building, admittedly a multifamily feel but a residential feel. I'm very pleased to be associated with the housing corporation of Arlington, and I know and expect that the housing corporation of Arlington will continue to take a butters concerns into effect as as the design continues so that's my comments. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Mr. Dean, if I could just, I wonder if Mr. We mentioning passive house I thought that it might be helpful if Mr. Burns could, could I mean that obviously is something that reduces energy consumption and it has a public benefit. But I'm wondering if it has any benefit for the tenants in the in the building as well. To speak to that. Yeah, I think one of the great things about the passive house standard is that, you know, it's very focused on both energy efficiency and the use of energy in the operation of the building but also in providing healthy indoor environment so the entire building will have energy recovery ventilation system to provide fresh air to the building. There are a number of benefits to, you know, the design of the building envelope to provide better acoustic separation from environmental noise. So really, you know, there are quite a number of measures that are taken just through the nature of getting the project certified through passive house that result in, you know, better livable outcomes for the residents in the building. Thank you. So the next person up is Laura wiener but if I can ask people who have already spoken to, to bring to take their hand to lower their hands. It becomes easier to call in the next on the next people because otherwise you sort of retain your position first in line. Hi, thank you. Mr chair. This is Laura wiener. I'm a board member of the housing corporation of Arlington and I live at 73 Jason Street. I strongly support this affordable housing project for a number of reasons. Unlike most comprehensive permits. This one exceeds all state requirements for both affordable housing and also for the income criteria. The income that is being targeted is 60% and below of median income whereas most comprehensive permits target 80% of median. The general agreement that housing prices are too high and feel out of control, rapidly rising home purchase prices are out of reach for so many which creates more demand for rental units, pushing up those prices as well. Renters with lower incomes are hurt the most by this dynamic and this is exactly the demographic that will be served by this project, low and very low income renters. As a reason I think this is a great project as its location. It is well served by bus lines, open space and its proximity to stop and shop and other services is the kind of location where some residents won't need a car. This project is both industrial and residential. This particular location had a vacant auto body repair shop with no trees and no sidewalk. This proposal will be a big improvement for the appearance of the lot and bring street life to the corner and customers to local businesses. All in all, it will bring many benefits to the town and I hope the board will support it. Thank you. Thank you Miss wiener. The next person on the list is Jennifer Seuss. Or could you lower your hand. Yes, I can. Hey, thank you. So I very briefly I just wanted to say how excited I am about this project I Jennifer Seuss I live at 45 Kill Street. And I am right across the cemetery from this project so I'm there all the time. I'm going to go ahead. I'm especially excited about the addition of sidewalk and green space that I think is now about the sort of deeper affordability requirements and I'm sure many projects and just wanted to quickly note I was in the school for six years. We have about 185 fewer elementary school students than we had a few years ago so we, we do have, you know, extra capacity in the schools and that's not a reason to necessarily support or oppose a project that we want to welcome all people to our community including people with children, but, but just to say that it won't place an undue stress on our community. Thank you Miss Seuss. Next person on the list is Kate Casa. Hi. Thank you very much. Longing me to speak and for taking the time to review this project. My name is Kate Casa and I've lived at 62 Welliston Avenue for about 25 years. I am also a member of the real estate committee for the housing corporation of Arlington. I just wanted to say that I'm very excited about this project, seeing more affordable housing created here in Arlington is extremely important to me. The need is so great, both for our value community who are unable to stay here because the rents are crazy high and cost to buy a home is just out of their limits. And to many low and moderate income families across the Commonwealth who really just can't find a place to live, call home. I love Arlington and I, I, we chose to buy our home here and raise our family here because of this community values. And I feel sunny side in this development is reflects those values that we were attracted to 25 years ago. I really don't want to see Arlington become a town where only selected few can live here. A community with economic and social diversity is really vital to the heart of what this community has represented. I'd like to try to keep that or at least bring it back or something I mean we all know the costs are insane right now. sunny side is 100% affordable to low and moderate income residents thrilled about that it's a great location in my opinion. You know it's an opportunity for people to have safe quality housing, where, you know, there's an, you know, it's really a pretty eyesore site at the moment. It's been thoughtfully designed and it is, I think, quite suitable for the density that we're proposing that HCA is proposing. I think it's a beautiful building and I love the open space on the second floor and the way the sidewalk opens up and you know this idea of trying to have a front porch to the street. Proud of how the HCA has tried to address feedback from the community and I know they will continue to do that. I hope that you'll approve this project and I thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Mr. Couser, your testimony. The next person on our list is Jason Forney. Good evening members of the board. Thank you. My name is Jason Forney and I live at 545 Summer Street, three or four blocks from the housing corporations project at Downing Square which has been a good addition to our neighborhood. I thank the HCA and the designers and the project team for putting this project forward. In my view it aligns really well with the goals that were set forth in the town's affordable housing production plan, which was, which I think is widely supported and created with a lot of input from people who live in our town. It's a great project, a good place for density, a huge improvement over the current conditions, and I think it's a responsive and contextual design that would fit very nicely in this location and provide 43 homes for people who live in 43 new homes in a well designed and sustainable building. I really liked the way that the architects have provided parking but screened it well and it kind of led to the creation of that great outdoor space on the roof. I also appreciate that the majority of these apartment homes will be two and three bedrooms for families. With regards to some of the things that people have brought up tonight, I think that, you know, anytime you can redevelop and remediate a brownfield site or potentially dirty site. That's actually a good thing and a much better alternative to leaving it the way that it is. Personally, I'm not concerned about the size of the building, the increase in traffic, increase in shadows or the amount of parking. I'd be very proud to have this in my town and urge the board to approve the project as a great example of how Arlington can contribute and lead to the dire need for quality housing in the metro area. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Foyne. The next person on our list is Mary McCartney. Hi, thanks for having this hearing. My name is Mary McCartney. I live at 35 Michael Street, which would be right around the corner from this site. I agree that we need more affordable housing in this town. Absolutely. But I do have concerns about the height and size of this building. In my mind, it doesn't quite fit. That that that height doesn't really fit with the rest of the buildings in the in the area. And I would really encourage you to, if you haven't already, drive down sunny side at rush hour morning in evening rush hour. I think it is pretty complicated. I hope I guess one thing I would hope is you would consider having like a no parking zone right in front of the building and in front of the, the other building next to it, the corner because it's, it's kind of narrow, and kind of dangerous to try to exit out of that street. Anyway, thank you. Thank you for taking my comments into consideration. Again, I'm, I'm all for affordable housing. I just think this is a little out of scale for for the neighborhood. Thank you. Great. Thank you for your testimony. The next person on our list is Carol Kowalski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman Carol Kowalski 182 situate street. I am hoping the board will support this. I'm delighted with this project at this site, the way it's been designed, the way it's scaled. I am on sunny side and in this neighborhood, a couple times a week. And I think the way we experience height on a narrow street is more intimate than the way we experience a plan view on a zoom hearing. I think we'll, because of the very tasteful way that this has been designed, I think the experience one will have going down the street of this building will be very pleasant. I want to also say how fortunate we are that we have HCA doing projects like this for our town, making it real that Arlington welcomes all. We work for a nearby community where we're trying to advance housing opportunities and creating a housing trust and the community I work for is really behind Arlington and that's in large part because of the housing corporation of Arlington. They're tremendous partners. They've proven themselves to be tremendous partners for the town. I haven't heard anything this evening and I hope the board agrees. Haven't heard anything that's insurmountable. There. There are some comments that have been touched on and it sounds like the team is prepared to address them. So I don't believe and I hope the board agrees that there is no reason to scale back or to, to change anything substantively. It's very encouraging to me that we have HCA successfully securing this site because if this 40B were being done by a market rate developer, only 25%, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, at the beginning of the meeting, only 25% at most of these units would be affordable. HCA is making these affordable income 100% of these units will be affordable. And they will be affordable in perpetuity and that's a huge win as we're really trying to continue to be a welcoming community. So I hope the board will support this and I appreciate that HCA has met with the butters and the neighbors. And just to finish up, I think it's fantastic that a residential use is being introduced here to tie in with the nearby wonderful residential neighborhood. So thank you, and I hope you'll support it. Thank you, Mr. Squalsky. The next speaker up is Monique Chaplin. Thank you for taking my comments. Monique Chaplin 35 Michael Street, right around the corner from this proposed development. I also firmly support affordable housing in this area. I think it's a wonderful idea. So I'm concerned about the size of this building in this area, partly because sunny side is a very is a narrow street as it exists now. And the traffic has been mentioned several times about concerns about the traffic, but really it's it can feel unsafe in its current state in terms of sight line and visibility when trying to make turns and even just passing other cars on the street. From a positive perspective, I love the idea of having sidewalks and that we a terrific addition. But parking, I think it's going to remain a serious problem, both in relation to this project that you know the families that will be living in this project who may have more cars than parking spaces available, but also just the general parking issues in our in this area already are problematic for trying to access Broadway from sunny side. I didn't want to express my appreciation for the designers taking into account our concerns about the garage safety. Having a door to the garage seems like an excellent solution I'm curious how that will be managed is it like a key card system of pin numbers like is that has that been decided. Mr appearances like to answer that now sure. Yeah, I don't we haven't decided specifically but I can say from experience on past projects with similar conditions like this. They'll likely be, you know, a radio transponder like you would have for your residential garage. The residents that you know apply for parking stickers like Eric was mentioning will be given a device like that and we would also have a key five system for the building as well so there may be an opportunity to do both. I know there was also a comment from the board and their memo about some signaling devices for pedestrian safety into alert drivers and pedestrians to make sure everyone was in communication about vehicles entering and exiting the garage that's definitely something that's very easy to incorporate into the design and operation of the garage door. Thank you. Yeah. Very much. I had just a final comment. If it were possible to make this project work with even one fewer story that would be highly encouraged from my perspective because it's just a very, very large building and I think putting it in this sort of sets of precedent for other extremely large buildings being built right on this street where with route 16 so close it's just challenging to have that many people in this area. Thank you for taking my comments. Next speaker is Ken garden. Thank you Mr chairman. My name is Ken garden I live at 8 Windsor Street in East Arlington. I'm also a member of the AC real estate committee and I'm I'm would like to give my support to this this building. I think it's, you know, really lucky to find such a large parcel and what you could you could put as many as 43 units. You know, as we heard earlier, I think has around 150 units right now so this is a significant increase in the number of units that they'll be able to offer to to low income families. And the the kinds of, you know, resources that Arlington is able to offer to, you know, to low income families are considerable. I mean, giving them access to high to, you know, to really well resourced schools here. Not only, you know, the local grade school, but also, you know, the, the Audison Middle School, the Arlington High School, I think is really great opportunities for, you know, for children and low income families. The fact that it's across the street from a grocery store to my mind also within walking distance of the CVS on Mass Ave in East Arlington, you know, to to parks, you know, to Waldo Park, for instance, to the park and playground available. Also the Thompson School, I think that, you know, that there are great, you know, amenities available there. I mean, it would be great, of course, if we could put buildings like this in, you know, neighborhoods that, you know, that are considered to be more frustrated in Arlington, but it's just impossible to, you know, to compete with private developers when those kind of parcels become available. And then also, of course, you know, this question of contamination is a serious one. But, you know, I also point out that the high school itself, I mean, they can't dig into the football field there because of contamination. And they wanted to put geothermal wells in, you know, to the current high school, you know, when they built the new building there but weren't allowed to do that either because they aren't allowed to, you know, to dig into the ground there because of contamination. So it's not like, you know, it's only, you know, low income housing that's being cited at places like this. I mean, also, you know, the place where my kids go to high school, you know, has those kinds of concerns. So thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Clark. We have no new people on the list, but Mr. Moore has raised his hand for a second time. And Steve, Mr. Moore. Yes. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being recognized for a second time Steve Moore Piedmont Street. In hindsight, it's unfortunate that I went first in listening to all of these comments. This is my first exposure to 10 sunny side. And I've been impressed by the comments that I've heard from the various folks have been given some testimony here. It sounds like this project has quite a lot going forward. And so I certainly appreciate what folks have added. I'm concerned about contamination is just, you know, just one thing and there's many, there's many things to weigh and consider with this project and it sounds like there's lots and lots of good points here as well. So I just wanted to take a take a moment to take a moment to have stated that as well. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Okay, we have nobody else on our whoops. Well, we, I think we have nobody else on our list. Yes. So we'll close the public comment period. And I'd like to turn for a moment to miss O'Connor to see if the applicant has anything further that that he would like to say in summing up. I don't think so much to handle him at this time we're going to take the comments from the memorandum we received from the director of planning and come back to you with some recommendations at the next meeting. Okay, so we now the public comment period is closed. There are some business items that the board needs to address. And that is in a form of a series of motions and things that that we need to do in order to in order to continue on to the series of hearings that that will be having in this case. The first is, and I'm hoping I would ask Mr. Connor she agrees with this that this is today is the first day of the public hearing of 180 day period. If it starts as of today, which I think it ought to would expire in in late October October 29. And I wondering whether the applicant agrees with my understanding of the schedule. Yes, the applicant agrees. Thank you very much. So I'd recognize, excuse me, I'd invite a motion from the board to to establish that. Mr. I would move that having received the send of the applicant, the ZBA affirms that the 180 day hearing period for the purposes of 760 CMR 5605 sub three shall be deemed to have commenced on May 2, 2023. Is there a second second by Mr. Dupont. Take the role on that. Mr. I would move that. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Seconded by Mr. Dupont. We'll take the roll. Mr. Klein. Aye. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Holi. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. Mr. Riccardelli. Aye. And the chair votes aye. The motion carries. The next item would be in addition to incorporate minutes from the meetings of various town boards and commissions that have been conducted with representatives of the applicant up to the time of the application. Mr. Klein. I move that the ZDA incorporate all minutes from meetings of various town boards and commissions conducted with representatives of the applicant up to the time of the application. Second. Seconded by Mr. Dupont. Take the roll. Mr. Klein. Aye. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Riccardelli. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Mr. Holi. Aye. The chair votes aye. And did I forget somebody? No. I will. Mr. LeBlanc. I had the sense that I was coming up one short. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. Thank you. So the next is simply an announcement of something that we'll do next time. The ZBA is going to eventually be requesting sums from the applicant under chapter 44, section 53G to prepare transcripts of these proceedings and may also request further sums under section 53G to retain such peer review consultants as may appear necessary and appropriate for the review of the proposed project. The board will determine in the light of this hearing in the comments received from the town, the applicant and the public what peer review consultants to retain in the scope of their service. The board intends to request the necessary funding under section 53G at the next session of this hearing, which is scheduled for May 16, 2023. So that's simply an announcement of something that will come up in the future. We'll be working out the scope of the application and the necessary assistance that the board needs over the course of the next two weeks. The next item is to request that council performs a completely review of the submitted application and provide a copy of the report to the board and the applicant within 30 days of this hearing. And the chair invites a motion to that effect. Mr. Klein. I move that the ZBA request town council to perform a completeness review of the application and provide a report back to the board and applicant within 30 days of this evening's hearing. Second. Seconded by Mr. Dupont. And we'll take the rule, Mr. Klein. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Not going to make that mistake again, although I could make an equivalent one. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Holy. Aye. Mr. Rikardelli. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. And I was about to forget the chair votes aye. The next item is one of the more important ones. It is whether the board should assert safe harbor in connection with this application. The board is in receipt, although hasn't held very long memorandum from the town updating the information that we had the last time that there was a 40B. The update of the information indicated that there was no change, that the town was not currently in a position to assert safe harbor and or any of the statutory requirements that the chair summarized at the beginning of this hearing. And therefore the chair would entertain a motion regarding the waiver or assertion of the safe harbor. Mr. Klein. I move that upon review of the subsidized housing inventory related town records and the department of planning and community development memorandum regarding the status of the general land area minimum. The board confirms that the board will not assert safe harbor protection under 760CMR56.03. Second. Seconded by Mr. Dupont. We'll take the roll again. Mr. Klein. Aye. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Mr. Riccardelli. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. Well, the chair votes aye and he has the feeling he's come up one short. Who is it that I didn't call on? Mr. Holley. I thought I did. Mr. Holley. Mr. Holley. How do you vote on the matter? Aye. Thank you. All right. There are two other motions. The one is that the board would like to have an onsite meeting to become better familiar with the site layout and connections to the community and would invite a motion to that effect. Mr. Chair. Mr. Klein. I would move to the board request the applicant to propose possible dates and times for an onsite meeting to review site conditions with the board, the applicant and their respective members. Second. Seconded by Mr. Dupont. I would almost love to say all in favor. Please say aye. That would get me off the hook. But instead I required to do a roll call. So Mr. Klein. Aye. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Riccardelli. Aye. Mr. Holley. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Okay. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Mr. Dupont. Aye. And the chair votes aye. And he thinks he's gotten everybody. Aye. All right. The final vote is. Yes. Mr. Klein here. Before proceeding on to the final one, I would like to have the opportunity just to, if we could just review with the board to make sure, see if there are any other outstanding questions the board has for the applicant to prepare for the next time. Okay. That's fair enough. Are there any other things that should be brought up for the board to help prepare for the next hearing, things that you would want the applicant to be considering. As we go forward. Mr. Chair. Mr. Riccardelli. I had done a couple of items. And I think, you know, not things that we have to enter now, but just sort of questions to the applicant. One, I think that a lot of care has been, you know, considered with the front design along studies that have that we're, we're seeing on the screen right now, but unfortunately or not. One of the main ways you see this site is actually kind of across the parking lot of, of. You know, the way he building that's directly behind. And because, you know, science, that's so narrow. The viewport that we're seeing in from Broadway is a lot. Actually more condensed than the one that you see from Broadway coming the other direction. So I wonder if the architect would, you know, provide some information on what the building looks like from that elevation, which seems to be much more of a, you know, more of a, you know, more of a sheer wall. I just want to make sure that we're considering that as part of the design as well. Not just the front delegation, which again, I think has been nicely considered. Mr. That's actually been raised by the planning department as well in the MMO and we will do that. Great. Thank you very much. Mr. You had something else, I think. Yeah, just one more question. I just wanted to ask that the, the transformer is located kind of along the sidewalk along. So I just wanted to ask the architect if. You guys are planning to screen that and how it's going to be screened or if, if there's, you know, a plan for that because it is sort of, you know, once you create a nice streetscape there is sort of right at the end. Okay. No, I think that right now we're just basically accumulating points for future consideration. Is there anybody else from any other members of the board who have something that they wish to put on the table? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dupont. So it was just that I was listening to one of the. Public comments. And I believe it was somebody who lived at Downing Square. I don't know if I'm not mistaken. And just a couple of things that she said. I thought were important to highlight. And I don't know to what extent to the process actually addresses these, but I believe she was referring to the fact of interior air quality issues. As a result of some activity on the site. So it wasn't necessarily at the time of construction. And then she commented, I believe that the bill that the windows had been. So I don't know sort of in the, you know, course of what people do in terms of engineering with those sort of after construction issues are addressed, but I did think it was something to acknowledge. And then of course the issue about trash. I think is really important as far as how that's handled, because if she, if I remember her comment, I don't know if that's what she was referring to. But I think that there's often trash on the sidewalk, five days a week. And obviously we would want not. To see that happen. So those are just two points that sort of came to mind. Mr. Thank you, Mr. Yes, who I'm sorry, I missed you to spoke. Mr. I guess just to echo Mr. Yes, I'm going to go to the public comment. Well, they're not the public comment. You know, one thing you typically we might see in some of these is a, is an interior trash shoot. So I'm just also curious of how the, the trash is handled by residents as well as maybe recycling. So it'll be something that I would look forward to hearing more about as we move forward in this process. Again, also related to that. So I'm just curious how that would work, especially with packages. That's a big thing that I see a lot. And also hearing back from some other people. That the people delivering packages necessarily don't take extra steps to properly deliver packages. And to maybe a spot that we would like to see. So I'm just curious how that would work, especially with packages that's a big thing that I see a lot. And also hearing back from some other people. And also hearing back from some other people to, to be able to deliver packages into maybe a spot that we have designated. So it's something to think about there. They kind of just get left to the most convenient locations. And my last thing is with the. PV panels. If that's something that's being incorporated as part of this project or as being. Having the infrastructure added for later installation. construction. We'd also like to see how that. Looks on the building as well as it, you know. Flat on the roof or is it raised on some type of. Angular. Donage. Thank you, Mr. Blank. So one of the things we had, I'd also raised the question about what it looks like when you do the. When you do the wiring. We're making, making the parking spaces wiring ready. It may very well be that it's a good idea to just to take a number of these concerns together in terms of both. Building envelope sorts of things and the kinds of things that relate to things like air quality, which are addressed by passive house and the other kinds of concerns that. Ultimately relate to. I mean, the solar relates to energy concerns and in general, the kind of conservation and. So. I think we might want to go into net zero or getting towards that zero considerations that were somewhat. Described earlier, but that we might want to go into. Has an ensemble and a little more deeply. Is there anything else Mr. Mr. Holy. Just to go on to people who have mentioned from the public about the building hype. there's enough grade variation happening. We'd like to get the height of the building on the average grade, which I don't think it's there currently shown, but from various sides. And also the height of the low roof versus the, you know, the high roof parapet versus the low roof and so on would help get an idea and look at it from the building height perspective. Okay. Mr. Klein. Thank you. The last piece I would just ask is if the applicant would consider putting together a shadow study just to better understand the impacts of the size of the building on the surrounding buildings. Mr. Connor. We can look at that. Okay. Thank you. So one of the things that I think was lightly mentioned earlier that certainly needs to be addressed and that we will be talking about later on has to do with the possibility that Mr. Klein raised about some sort of a crosswalk mid block that would enable to have a, that would facilitate a safe movement of pedestrians from one bus stop to the next. And that also, I think, particularly with the decided stress that transit has in the transportation picture of this, given the parking, the relatively small amount of parking, it would be particularly useful to make sure that the interface with the transit system operates smoothly and safely. And the other thing is that it was mentioned earlier, the, by Mr. Klein, the Safe Streets Alliance for the Broadway Area and that is headed up by Vince Boudouin, who's a Tom Meady member from Precinct One. And it would probably be desirable to consult with them. They are deeply involved in this and the general issue of Safe Streets in East Arlington and in this area. And I'm sure we'd have a lot of interesting things to say in a conversation. Do we have anyone else, any other members of the board? Okay, I do want to comment that I have not been recognizing in this point after I closed the public hearing, additional speakers from the public. We just don't do that after it is closed, but there will be others. And I welcome everybody to come back. Hopefully to say different things next time, but we're going to be working through various issues that have been raised by the town, by the citizens and by us. And we will welcome your input at every stage along the way until we get to our final deliberations. So is there anything else before I entertain a motion to continue the hearing? Can I, if I could just ask, will we be for those of us who live in the neighborhood, do we, will we get notified as to when the next meeting is? You'll get notified of it almost immediately when we continue to a certain date, which is May 16th. Oh, May 16th, okay. But no, there's not going to be new notifications except in so far as you can follow up, these things are all, you know, scheduled on the town website and through the town system of notices. Okay, thank you. Right. So the, the next, the next motion, the final one that in this long series is the adjourning the tonight's hearing until Tuesday, May 16th, 2023. And that a schedule for future hearings be developed at that time for a presentation at this hearing. Is there a motion to that effect? Mr. Klein. I will move that tonight's hearing be continued until Tuesday, May 16th, 2023 at 7.30 p.m. Second. Seconded by Mr. DuPont. Mr. Klein. Aye. Mr. DuPont. Aye. Mr. Holi. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. Mr. Riccardelli. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. And the chair votes aye and hope he's gotten everybody. But if he hasn't, he's got a majority anyhow. Thank you all very much. Good night. Thank you. Before you jump off, we have to do it, we have to move to adjourn. That, that didn't, that didn't just happen. So the chair will entertain the motion to adjourn. Well, first of all, is there any comment or anything anyone wishes to raise before we adjourn? I would just mention the board on the, this comprehensive permit application for 1021, 1027 Massachusetts Avenue, that after consultation with the board. So at our previous hearing on April 25th, the board voted to close the public hearing on that application. The board is moving on to the phase now where we discuss and delivery the final decision on that. The board has 40 days from that, that date to complete it. The first session for that deliberation will be Thursday, May 11th at 730 over zoom. These are these meetings of the board are not hearings. They are public meetings. And the board is not able to take additional comment as the public comment period has been closed. So there will be the public is invited to watch and attend, but the public may not actively participate in those meetings. Thank you, Mr. Klein. All right. Well, thank you very much for participating in the meeting. It has been productive and welcome. I would like to thank Ms. Lau who is here and Ms. Ralston who has been able to manage this, manage the technical aspect of all of this. The only person who's completely flubbed up on the technical aspect of all of this is yours truly. And so someday they're going to have to figure out a way of keeping the list of participants from changing every time you vote. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. It's, it becomes very hard to follow who you've already dealt with, but we'll, but we'll get this better as we have, we'll get more experience with it. So. The chair will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Moved by Mr. Klein. So a second. Second. Seconded by Mr. Rick or deli. Are you in favor of the vote because we have to Mr Klein? Aye. Mr. Richard. Ellie. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. Mr. DuPont, I think the reason he didn't second me very well be left. I think so. All right, the chair didn't leave not yet anyway. And he's going to vote. I think I can think I got Mr. Mr. Holly, are you there? Not this. I am here, yeah. Okay. All right. So it's unanimous. Thanks for your indulgence, and we'll look forward to seeing you next Tuesday, actually, I guess, or next Thursday. I know. All right. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everybody.