 Okay, thanks Pam. So we're off. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of October 25, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I'm calling this meeting to order at 6.02pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken. This planning board meeting is being held in the town room at the Amherst Town Hall. However, this is a hybrid meeting. Members of the planning board and members of the public, pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and as extended again by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, may access this meeting via Zoom. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town website's calendar listing for this meeting. Or you can go to the planning board's webpage and click on the most recent agenda, which has the Zoom link at the top of the page. Be aware that the in-person meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual meeting unless otherwise required by law. Every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, please answer affirmatively whether you are participating remotely or in person. Bruce Coldham is not here. We do expect him probably a little bit later. At Hartwell, Jesse Major. I dug Marshall in present, Janet McGowan, Johanna Newman has notified us she will be absent, and Karen Winter in person. So in case not everybody could hear on the microphone or the recording, we are all here this evening with the exception of Johanna and Bruce at the moment. For those participating remotely, please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will hope to see your request up on the screen and call on you to speak after speaking remember to remute yourself. Planning board members who are present in the town room should also raise their hands when they wish to speak and the microphone will be passed to you. We have two microphones in the room, one at each end of the table. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware. The board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting if deemed appropriate by the chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited or raise your hand if you are present in the town room. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with the guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. So our first item on tonight's agenda, the time is 6.05, is public comment period. Do we have any members of the public in present or on Zoom who wish to make a comment? I do typically at this time I read the names of the people on the Zoom call. The public members, I see Jennifer Taub, I see Lily Bruce, I see Pam Rooney, and Susanna Musprat. There are a couple of members of the public present in the room with us. Okay, not seeing any hands from anyone of the public. We will go on to our second item, which is a discussion with UMass representatives Nancy Buffon and Tony Maroulas. Nancy and Tony, welcome to our meeting this evening. The purpose of inviting you here was to answer some questions that the planning board members put together and I believe sent to you in advance. And also we wanted to discuss how the town and university can work together to develop more housing. Now I will, I want to preface this by saying it had been my intention to step aside and let the vice chair or the clerk moderate the discussion. But neither of them are in the room yet, at least. So I will moderate if I, to the extent I need to, but I will express no opinions. So with that. Maybe the way to do this. We, not everybody who's listening probably knows what the questions were. And do you have Nancy and Tony, do you have answers prepared for each question such that it might make sense for you to read the question and then read the answer or do we, do you, would that make sense? Yes, I think we were hoping. Sorry, good afternoon evening. I think we were hoping for more of a conversation and we can. We'll have some specific answers throughout. OK, so maybe we will kick it off. Maybe I will read a question. You can start to answer and we can have a discussion. A little intro. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. So hi, everyone. I'm Nancy Buffon. I'm associate vice chancellor for university relations. I'm Tony Marullus, executive director of community and strategic initiatives. So together, Tony and I tag team, community relations, and we're really happy to be here this evening. So thank you for that invitation. We did get those questions ahead of time, which we really appreciate. And wanted to at least start by talking a little bit about the planning process on campus, because it seemed like a number of the questions were about how projects start and get approved on campus. And so I thought that would be a good place for us to kick this off. So we do have a planning department on campus and they are responsible for looking at what our campus needs are and figuring out how we can best meet those needs while also staying within the parameters of the master plan that was created 2012, believe it was. There is not necessarily one path that a project can take at the university. Projects develop through lots of different ways. Sometimes it could be, excuse me, a dean advocating to the chancellor and the provost that they have, they might need a new building to help meet the needs of the workforce in the state. That's in part how we got our computer science building, for instance. Sometimes we hear from campus support units that are trying to meet the needs of our undergraduate and graduate students and they can't do within the facilities. So that idea may come up through a certain vice chancellor, could come up in any number of ways. The planning department is also always looking at these things and trying to figure out how can we continue to advance the campus. And then projects go through a fairly lengthy review process. Ultimately, there's approval at many different levels on the campus and most of the projects also have to be approved through the board of trustees as well, especially when we're talking the larger capital projects. So it's a number of the questions really looking at kind of what is that flow and there isn't really one way that that happens. There's lots of lots of different ways and ultimately it goes up through campus leadership up to the system leadership and the board of trustees. I think some of the other questions focused more on some of the numbers around our enrollment and housing. And so I'm going to pass that off to Tony to which is great because Bruce just walked in right so the timing I think was really great because a lot of the questions that Bruce had up on the what would be good to know. We got it as a, I think a slide or you know something that was online but we also don't see the picture. Can I just interrupt you a moment. The time is 611 Bruce. Just walked in the room so with that Bruce I'm going to turn you this over to you to to moderate this discussion. Okay. Hi Bruce, how are you. So I'm going to hand out some 12345678. Let's just just pass these around and the last can come to me. So we wanted to break out some numbers for everybody. Some based upon Bruce's questions, what would be good to know. And then add some historical context to the UMass enrollment and bed count on this. And so you'll notice here that we were looking at 10 year snapshots starting in 1982. We would have done 83 had we known we were going to get the updated numbers on enrollment for 2023 in addition to what's on the back which is our off campus housing data for this semester. So let me kind of just start by noting a couple of things and the reason why we had to go back to 82 is because it's interesting to note that from a raw in person number of students that we had in the area at the time. We're really not far off historically to where we are now and I'll break that out because just because maybe this table might be a little bit confusing but going back to 1982 our in person enrollment was 24,939. We are pulling that from data that you'll see on the back all the sources are there from our office of institutional research and that office name has changed which and I don't remember it but Nancy can correct me a little bit later. As you can see, you know, over the first, you know, 1992 2002, there wasn't that much in the way of fluctuation with those numbers. As you can see in 2002, continuing in professional education which we're listing as online right there had 700 students that was really the beginning of what our UWW program has become now which is fully online with as you can see robust numbers starting in 2012 5600 to now 4,390. That of course affects our enrollment right so a lot of, you know, everyone is seeing our numbers go up and we're over 30,000 students but a significant number of them are online right so I can't remember the percentage off the top of my head some math whizzes I think are going to come up with this but 4,523 people, 4,523 I can't say and I was told by the nuns that taught me that you never say and but 4,523 students are completely online which means that they could be anywhere and they are, you know, professionals, they are perhaps homeowners and I bring this up because as we talk about this from planning board purposes the effect and the impact of those 4,500 is very different on our local population than our undergraduate number for example right or undergraduate in person so I want to bring that up. The other thing is you'll note we broken out the grad full-time and part-time students right and part of the reason for that is is that a graduate part-time student could be someone like me actually I am in a grad program right now right but I am a homeowner in Pelham so I will factor into these numbers here but I'm also a professional here that, you know, again I think that when we think about impact we're thinking about our full-time in-person student population and so that's why, you know, we've broken this out a little bit and I think from a historical context standpoint if you look at our full-time bachelors and full-time grad students those numbers are somewhat similar to the numbers that we had in 1982. I think that's kind of fascinating just from an in-person perspective so we continue to grow but those numbers are largely online and that will continue so our numbers will always creep up. As you can see, you know, I've listed the number of undergraduate beds that are on the side. Housing production was really quite slow until about 2006 and at that point we've had more than 3,500 beds I think when you total this all up it will be over 4,000 over here. Part of that has been new production with North Apartments in 2006, Commonwealth Honors College in 2012. We've done a lot with doing above design capacity within our current existing buildings. Our normal capacity is 13,500. We've found space through economy triples and converting lounges into about 14,000 beds as reflected in the 2022 numbers. And then just this year, as you know, the project on Mass Ave, which the Fieldstone Slate, that undergraduate apartment building, which is being managed by a third party, has about 624 units and there not all of them are occupied right now but it has the capacity for that, not units. I take that bed, 624 beds. Grad the Fieldstone Artisan, which will open, which is finished now but will open next school year, next academic year, has about 200 beds and then we have 300 beds for family housing up at University Village which has opened in phases starting last academic year. So with that total capacity we have gone up to about 15,000 counting our grad, undergrad and family housing beds. If you go to the back, one of the things that we're able to share with you and we're really excited about over the last couple of years since COVID, we've been able to better capture data from who's living off campus, right? This is something that prior to the last couple of years and prior to COVID, we had really no good data on. If you go back to the housing production plan that the town did in 2015, I think the estimate was about 4,500 students, undergraduate students were living off campus. Now we can give you better and closer numbers. They may not be 100% accurate, but I think that we're, you know, within, you know, two or 3%. And I think that's, you know, really quite important. So as you can see, we've broken this down by where students are living locally and given, you know, local, we've defined it Amherst and Pellum, Belcher Town, Hadley, Shootsbury, Leverett, Sunderland. Those in Amherst and Pellum in the 0102 area code, zip code that is, are 8938. I could tell you that there are only 21 that are living in Pellum. So just to be really clear what 0102 is here, it's really referring to Amherst, not my town. The undergrads living locally within all of those communities, 7251, and in Amherst and Pellum 6262. And again, take away 11 from there and that's the Amherst number. And some of those students are living at home. You know, as we know that we have a lot of students from Amherst regional high school who have homes that are here and they also get counted in this number. It's not a major factor, however. And then our graduate students living locally and that includes part-time students again like me, 3475, and in Amherst and Pellum 2662. So, you know, we hope that this gives you a better kind of snapshot. Now one of the things that I think is interesting for you all to think about and I'm only bringing this up as a caveat is that, you know, the numbers while very similar in-person numbers from 1982 to now in terms of that in-person number, I think the geographic spread and where our students are living is very, very different, right? With the number of new units that have been put online by private developers over the last 10 to 15 years. I mean, going back to 2008 and I think Bultwood Place was really our first new development in town. I think there are about 1,500 units there. That has not necessarily stemmed the tide, as we know of the number of students that are living here. And in fact, I think that what we've seen is Amherst has added more, not only have they added more capacity, but more students are living close to campus, right? It's a proximity issue, which I think in some ways has cost towns like Sunderland that student rental business, right? And so it's surprising we were looking at our numbers today. Sunderland only had about 1,000 undergraduate, I mean, I'm sorry, 550 undergraduate students that were living in Sunderland and another 550 or so grad students. Staggering, considering the inventory in Sunderland. So Amherst is absorbing more, which also I think accounts for some of the things that you're seeing with regard to single-family homes, either still staying as rentals or, you know, in some cases, new conversions. So the other thing is one other thing I just wanted to mention was, you know, there's a lot of talk about demand on campus. We think that that is tied to a number of different things that we're seeing across the country. There are more students during COVID and post-COVID who wanted the on-campus experience. That has been a trend that has ticked upward. And then secondly, I think of note, is when the pandemic happened, when students were sent home from the university, university refunded a large portion of the residential life bill for that semester in which they were sent home. So there was a rebate there. And I think that, you know, there is, of course, the wise consumer that students and parents are now thinking about, you know, the safety of living on campus versus living off campus because that same courtesy wasn't extended, you know, by those who were in 12-month leases off campus. And we heard a lot about that during that period of time. So, you know, there is something that's also protective about that, you know, and that demand for on-campus living. So, again, just contextualizing a lot of what we've all heard. But, you know, we do know that, you know, we have a better sense of the numbers than we've ever had before. Yeah. I think that's where I'll stop for now. And I guess there will probably be more questions. I guess. Let's start with questions from the board. Let's try questions of clarification first just so that we rather than comments. Yes. That's all excellent, really helpful information, especially the numbers. I guess I'm wondering about the UMass's thought process if there is one about what's the right number of beds to be on campus. So, in an ideal world, would you house everybody? Or is there some target percentage that you go after? If I could interrupt. Jesse, what I'd prefer would be questions of clarification first and then larger questions like the one you're... I just want to make sure that people understand the data that's presented. And then move to the larger questions like that. Hold my question. Thanks, Tony. One question with the beds, the 3,500 beds, is that a net gain or is that taking into account for instance, Fieldstone, was any beds lost there? University Village is that, is this all new beds? Yeah. That's a net gain of beds. Here. So, it's a net gain because when the previous North Village was taken down, we lost those beds. We have added those beds now and there's more capacity at family housing than there was before. So, there was a gain there. So, we have about 4,000 that we've... 4,000 in terms of what we've listed here. Even if you take away the graduate school from Lincoln apartments and North Village, it's still over 3,500. This is just the full what has been added. So, that's a great question and we can clarify that a little bit more. Now, the questions of clarification. I've got a couple but I'll wait till the end. Maybe this is the end. So, when you said that there's 500 beds, that's when you put three people in a double or double bed, you put a bedroom in a common room, which I've had friends of mine that's happened to their kids and they've transferred. So, that seems sort of misery to me. But, and you know, I think I was at a meeting of the housing trust probably before COVID where 800 extra students accepted and there was a big question about where they come because they're first year undergrads and I think that happened again recently. So, what do you do in those situations when you get a lot more acceptances? Where do they go? Time to get questions of clarification. You'll get used to me if I ever do this again. This is the way I work. I have a couple. We'll be quick, it seems. We'll get to both of you momentarily. You said that since COVID there was a trend and more students wanted, I wrote down on-campus living experience that I understand that correctly. So, that means on-campus it just doesn't mean living in rental housing around town. It means on-campus. Is that, do we understand you correctly? I think what we're saying is that just in general there's just more demand for on-campus housing. It doesn't mean that we're not meeting it. It's just that we're hearing more students who say that they want it, right? So, we do house all of our first year students and about I think 83% of our sophomores are housed on-campus as well. And then after that it's a mix and there's I think a lottery system that goes into that. I don't want to speak incorrectly on that. But unlike in years past and if you go back to 2017 when we were at a capacity of 13,500 we did have a 3% vacancy and I'm saying that off at the top of my head and I'm 100% sure I'm right about that. So, there are trend lines and trend lines have changed around student experience and wanting to be on-campus and if they can't get there to campus what I was also making a point of Bruce just for clarification here the idea of Sunderland not having as many bodies as they may have once had compared to Amherst now taking having more it's because students want proximity if they can't be on campus. Can I just add to that in terms of the trends a little bit post in whatever I don't know if we're post COVID yet or not but I think the students who are on campus now have we're all affected either in college or high school by COVID and so one of things that we are seeing not just about housing but about a lot of things the students are looking for those traditional college experiences and so I think that's part of why there's this notion that we want to live on campus because they lost something whether it was through high school or their early years of college I've got two in college right now and I'm seeing that coming out in both of them in different ways so it's really part of it is that the financial piece of it and part of it is they think they lost something and so they're trying to have that experience so it'd be interesting to see what happens over the next few years as those students who are in high school and COVID hit what their expectations are for college you know two, three, four years from now Thanks Nancy So a question of clarification Erin So to look at the numbers I think what we're really concerned about is zeroing in the amount of particularly undergraduates that we have and the capacity of houses that you have and so right now it looks like you have almost 23,000 undergraduates for the bachelors and you have 14,600 beds so it's a huge sort of pool of undergraduates that are looking for houses right and that's and so we call this meeting I think so that's a clarification thing so I don't know if I can go on but that's what we really want to zero on is how can we solve this Okay Backing up I was starting to ask is there a target percentage that you must work towards like yes built 3,500 beds in that period was that with an intentional percentage or is it not that specific is it more just nebulous we have this opportunity to build new beds and the second half that question is if you had all the money and all the land would you try and house all the 12,000 delta between students and that's currently or is that not the goal So it's a great question so the number of beds that have been created since 2006 roughly is the number of beds that have been built for our plan for growth going back 10 years which was I think raising the undergraduate total about 3,000 so we've met that there's always been that gap and that's again one of the reasons why we've mentioned the historical data here two major things to keep in mind number one state institutions generally do not house all of their students and as a percentage of students that we house we house over 60 percent I think our number is between 63 and 65 percent in terms of what we house and I could be wrong because that is fluctuated over the years from 60 to 65 so as a percentage I think that we are in the top top 5 or 6 of institutions of our size and the number of students that we house the other aspect of this is that the housing journey is a continuum for many of our students and so living off campus is part of the experience the residential life experience is very important particularly for student success for first year students around the sense of belonging and bringing them in and so that is really intentional and then again most of our sophomores do stay on campus but the continuum is something that has always been a part of the public higher ed experience and I don't think that that's ever going to change as far as a target number these are conversations that we do all the time and Nancy jump in at any time I don't have to talk about this but I think the one thing that we there are many factors that come into play any new housing production will take a few years to come online no matter what we do so that's number one we have chosen on the Mass App Project to look at a public private partnership opportunity we've learned about our debt ratio I think we can't go above 8% and we had a lot of academic buildings that had gone up over the last decade or so to meet the needs of our students and their student success so the public private partnership was one option that we looked at and we did this last go around that took a significant amount of time to get off the ground and we had a lot of opportunities and we had a lot of opportunities in the sense that even by adding those units we were still not able to take off many of the older units that need rehabilitation so there's a lot to this so even if we expanded say tomorrow we did that if I can just add to that looking at the numbers the vast majority of our housing stock is older than it should be and it also is not providing necessarily what the students are looking for and so when we're talking about recruiting students what their living conditions are like is certainly something that's very important to them and they're going to schools all around the country and they're seeing lots of different options so that's a really critical point that Tony made that as we do add housing at some point we need to take down some of the existing housing offline and renovate so that we can better meet the needs of the students so it is going to be this ongoing challenge of how do you make sure we have the housing that we need to have and making sure that the buildings are where we need them to be and I just want to add having a son who's at Syracuse my daughter was at UMass every place is facing the same issue the housing stock at Syracuse is terrible it's really bad and that's an expensive school so I bring this up because I think that's one of the things that with the way that the trends in higher ed with the explosion of students going to four-year institutions many schools built a lot in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and now with this aging stock that they haven't been able to keep up on we're all facing some of the same trends okay, Janet and then Karen I sort of changed my question is there do you have plans to build more dorm space like in the next are there dorm beds in the pipeline and can you tell us those numbers it seems like your students want to be on campus they were intense demanding on campus housing so you have a plan and what does the next five or ten years look like in terms of adding beds so you know I think that everything's being looked at Janet but I don't think that I can give you a definitive answer on that right now and so there are options are being considered I think the institution is both taking a breath after the construction of both p3 projects the university village and then also fieldstone we have a new chancellor who has also just really come in although he's on the ground and running I don't think that he's been able to think that through yet with his senior staff so more to come on that but just on that note I mean one of the things that we do Nancy and I meet with the town manager and the assistant town manager on a weekly basis we have other plug-in meetings with some of our staff from design and construction and facilities and some planning folks that are meeting with DPW and others so as these plans do develop we're talking them through in real time but at this time we have nothing firm that I can talk about Karen by the way the new dorm I think is very attractive were they pleased walking around it's great to see but Jesse's question was in the ideal world would you want to have a larger percentage of students living on campus would you want to I mean I realize that this would be like magic and every country is having I mean every college is having that problem but you see as you expand the number of students in order to get you know universities are growing the gap is getting bigger and were in some ways were wondering what needs to be done in order to address this what you can see and we can see as a stress on the town I understand perfectly what's happening I understand that you know the universities debt limit and things like that but who is ultimately who are the entities at the university that are saying this gap is too big we have to push for a dorm we have to get the senate or something that you know we have to have the funds for the people that need to do that so a couple things I mean one of the reasons why we've broken out the numbers this way and to show the in-person physical population is to show that the gap has not really changed in terms of physical numbers and percentage no and so if you again one of the things about the you know 31 750 number is that those online students because they're online and fully online they don't have the impact on the housing market in the same way as the in-person undergraduate students do right and so I think that that's an important distinction to me 22,813 are the number of undergraduates there are about 14,000 students that are on campus so we broke it out because I guess but that's always been the case so if you go back to 1982 our bachelor's program had 19,226 and we had about 11,000 beds we've always had a gap one of the things that I was mentioning before is that one of the things that we have seen is with more housing production in Amherst and then existing rental existing rentals never went away with more housing production some may have been converted back to single family homes but that didn't happen in a major way and there have been many more that have been purchased with the express purpose of renting them you're seeing more students in Amherst for sure so the geographic spread of those that are living off campus we probably have very few that are living in Northampton now but in 1982 I would bet that there were a lot more in Northampton there so yes there's always been a gap it does seem like the last 10 years it has increased some and you guys have made beds to make the same percentage which leaves the town to pick up that percentage too essentially which is really what we're talking about and I think a lot of our conversations that I've been involved in are really about the pressure now of housing being converted converted from single family to rentals that's really one of the issues we're trying to deal with but what I wanted to ask you guys and maybe in all the planning meetings is part of the discussion of the UMass planning consequences for the town of Amherst at all not only in student rentals but also issues like young faculty can't afford to live in Amherst I mean I've been here 17 years I could barely afford to live in town when we got here now there's no chance because of the rental market and so is that a conversation that happens so UMass is not going to solve that problem it would be great but that's not realistic I'm wondering if that is just part of the discussion absolutely and we have a lot of conversations around housing for undergraduate students but we have just as many conversations about housing for faculty and staff especially since the pandemic the way the real estate market has changed so drastically it is a real issue and one that we are looking at all kinds of ideas on so it is everything is on the table for that it's big talk and like you all we spend countless hours talking about this and thinking about this and working with our colleagues across campus and off campus as well around this issue there are a number of things that factor in and faculty and staff housing is incredibly important we are seeing a lot of different pressures coming on the market people that have moved here that are able to work remotely even a small percentage changes the pressures in a significant way but we do know from conversations with real estate agents and with our property managers that they are seeing more folks from out of town than ever before wanting to live here because they can and why not in many ways I think the issue with housing both from the student perspective and from those that are moving in that are helping to drive up the market is one of success and I mean that because people want to live here it's beautiful the cultural amenities that go along with that there's the opportunities to retire here in place there's so many different things that come into this so it is a conversation I can say and I don't think it's a secret because he's already said this at the community breakfast and other forums the Chancellor is thinking about this in a big way as are the other five college presidents so I do believe that everyone has a lot of pressure I will also say last week I was down at the Western Mass EDC developers conference when you know some young professionals that were in the early stage financing just about to move to the next stage who are here because of the university and because of the type of talented workforce that's attracted here they're struggling with the fact that they can't you know find the housing for the people that you know they want to hire and to move so we do have these struggles and I think we're aware of it and I also know that we want to be part of the solution to it it's just not an easy at this point I think I want to think about how to manage this conversation going forward I came in late I apologize for that I've also been away for five weeks and my head in a totally different place so this is a bit of a leap we have we have a time when we want to complete this meeting is there is there other business so Bruce most of these in-person meetings we've tried to keep to about two hours we do have a couple of items on the agenda after this one is probably a presentation from Nate and Chris to talk about the ideas for housing overlay that they have prepared for our request and then Fred was going to talk about some of the tax advantages to owner occupancy and subdividable dwellings so my in my head although I hadn't said it if we can finish this up by the top of the hour that'll leave us an hour for those other things and if we want to extend those I'm great but I hope we can get through this conversation in another 15 minutes that's what I'm after Chris I'm also note that we have five six people in the audience online and we've got three people in the room I want to give some opportunity to I think I do it might be in 15 minutes that we have to take that public comment or questions on this somehow separately but I think I would ask people to think now whether we have five or six five or ten minutes at the end between five two and five past the hour for public comment or public questions I'll see how that goes that will be my aim so that means we've got ten minutes before we go into that kind of format Chris so I just wanted to mention to Nancy and Tony that we are going to be discussing the possibility of rezoning some land on University Drive and we know that that kind of butts up against University land and so we'd like to open a conversation about places where the town of Amherst can help to increase housing stock that might be located near places where the University might also consider increasing housing stock and that's not only University Drive but it might also be North Pleasant Street as North Pleasant Street comes into the University so I just wanted to put that out on the table and suggest that you may want to stay for part of that second conversation or catch up with us later about what we talked about thank you so I think just because I probably want to go home but we will catch up. I think one thing to note on both of those locations going back to the 2013 town gown steering committee when you three advisors was hired by both the town and the University those were two of the four options for housing that were discussed and identified University Drive and where we at that time were calling the gateway Mass Ave was another and then also University Village so all of this I think those conversations I think were would be welcome I want to ask is there anybody in the public who feels they want to ask a question I'm going to give people 30 seconds for 45 seconds to ask the question if they put their hands up they have to do it right now but do it in the next five minutes and I'll know okay Elizabeth I will get to you it's just to note it helps me manage the remaining time that's all. Janet so I'm glad you mentioned the town gown committee because everybody talks about it but no one can say what happened to it or what it sort of seemed to have petered at but this isn't a formal ask but a lot of us have been on the planning board talking about ways to work with UMass about these issues and not just we appreciate you coming in but kind of a more you know detailed way so if there was you know one of our members esteemed members had suggested that if we did more housing on University Drive maybe UMass would build some more housing on the other side their side and utilize all those beautiful parking lots don't get used unless there's a football game and so maybe we could do some joint planning on what would that look like and so is that in the realm of possibility to sort of work with more planning professionals at UMass and say okay we're talking about this what are your ideas I also just want to throw it out because I know there's some people from UMass here is that I feel like students need to be part of any conversation we have about student housing and rezoning and things like that because there are stakeholders like everybody else but is there a way I don't want to revive the town ground committee which I think was 30 members but is there a way for us to work more collaboratively with in the planning professionals so Janet that's great question so a couple things I mean UTAC is a little bit different than the town downstream committee because UTAC came out of that yeah we don't want to bring that one back necessarily that was that was a little unwieldy but the within our strategic partnership agreement which was just signed with the town one of the things that is on the list of priorities is to have joint planning meetings so this is something that Nancy and I managed with the town manager certainly won't be the only people in the room the right people will be there and to identify priorities and ways in which we can work together that will be the place that that happens I don't know how that will work as it relates to the planning board you know it is this is more arranged around professional staff after priorities are identified but but stay tuned because I think that there will be formal ways in which that happens I know we have a list of questions here I think I'd be interested to have anybody members of the who feel that some of these questions I look at it quickly I see that some of them have been answered some of them are questions that don't need to be necessarily answered probably they simply a matter of who is the right person to talk to and so forth I think we answered a lot of those Bruce before you came in actually with Nancy's opening statement and then with our numbers thank you well in that case I'll ask seeing nobody here the on the sheet Tony that you've given over over 3500 beds have been added on campus I think Nate asked whether they knew whether it's a net gain and the answer was yes no what I said was that the to be very clear the net gain is north apartments Commonwealth Honors College the above the design capacity and the 624 beds for field stone and slate the 200 for artisan which is not open yet but is complete and the 300 beds at University Village are replacement for graduate students so it's still over 3500 the total that you'll see here is over 4000 slightly on the original north village and apartments so I think there is a little bit of a in the grad school and family housing and these five listed bullets are all housing developments initiated by that's correct yeah so we have other things that are happening around by private developers and that's correct okay I got some of those in my head I'm thinking this is a question I guess now about public private development collaboratives I talked to a number of I made a I am the process of trying to talk to people in your positions in towns and universities in about 15 towns around the country that similar to am so I'm halfway know on the court I've got some sense that some places like Charlottesville for example have recently committed quite heavily to public private partnerships either by the various ways of course I think in Charlottesville the university is providing the land and then I think they are perhaps involved in the selection of the developer but the developer then is moving forward and so forth is that a model that's UMass has a history of working with has an aspiration to work with yeah field stone is a public partnership so the project that's on mass avenue and also the university villages of public private partnership there are different you know each deal is a little bit different with university village our residential life department is managing those apartments with field stone it's an independent operator that is that is managing it so those apartments there are being managed by a company called Raystar yes just to follow up on that quickly something that came up I think our last meeting that field stone rents are through the highest around and a big radius so my real question is in those arrangements does UMass have any leverage on that side of things so the price her apartment was definitely a conversation throughout the entire process from the very you know the original drafting of the RFP to find a partner and it's something that's very important to our trustee is this really focusing on you know what are the costs to the students so yes that is always been part of it the development company did set their own rates they also you know field stone the construction started during COVID and you know the prices were just very expensive to build during COVID so that is definitely impacting this I do want to point out that those rents include a fully furnished apartment all utilities included the students don't pay for anything else so it is you know the numbers I understand they look very big but they also include a lot of amenities so a comparison to other places you've got to look at what's included and you know what are the students paying extra for just quickly yeah I get that what I'm thinking about really is a comparison to other off-campus housing and that's way more I think than a lot of students will find in a single family house down the road on Lincoln and that's the real issue is that those beds don't alleviate pressure on those houses or the need for more conversions or the profitability of more conversions and so that's really what I'm thinking about if part of the conversation with private public partnerships can be oh we need to keep the rents similar to what else is in town obviously that's a pipe dream right no developer is going to do that but if that could be the goal that would actually help some of the problem I think the only thing that we can add to that Jesse is that I think that any future development that consideration certainly is going to be high on the list so I could just leave it at that yeah I heard that it's only 50% occupied is that kind of true so really the crux of the problem is that if the rents go up so much it's going to invite investors to buy the single family houses and amherst and turn them into student rentals because their profit will be very high and that means that no family can compete and yes we are a lot like the other flagship universities but we only can compare ourselves the flagship universities in small towns that are as fragile as amherst and that's why we want to work together with you and create situations where we can buy in places for the housing for the students but save our town from going the way it is actually in actuality now going Sunset Avenue, I live in the middle of town one house after another is sort of turning into a rental and you know the more that happens the more it's going to escalate it's not to the advantage of the university to have that happen or of any of us so that's why we have to work together to figure out how we're going to take care of that gap and I just want to say we agree as far as the occupancy of Fieldstone that has a lot to do with the completion date of the construction which was still ongoing because of materials shortages even as students were moving in so it was able to be occupied but there was still some work to be done we expect that to be fully occupied next year but the prices are high still remains and I think it's something on everyone's mind so thank you for that Pam can you bring Elizabeth Breiling Elizabeth we're going to try and get you into the room here hi Elizabeth you're like 36 Cottage Street thank you for having this discussion one thing I wondered about and I'm sorry I missed the first part of the meeting and that is the university is continuing to plan increase in enrollment just to point out that even as few as 50 more students is 12 plus for new four bedroom apartments and then I also wondered if the university could in some way help more in monitoring the off-campus housing stock that is occupied by students because all of this burden of the cost of monitoring of permitting of you know there are discussions about how this should happen how we should monitor stock so that it's up to code so that it's well maintained and all of this falls on the town budget and I feel that the university needs to take a lot more responsibility not just for the students they house on campus but for the students they're expecting us to house for them for the towns to house for them because all of the cost falls on the town I don't know if this is something that needs to be worked through state funding or some other recognition but I just feel that I don't see the university taking real responsibility for the fact that they are expecting the towns to just absorb the students thank you so Elizabeth hi just a couple of quick things we have broken down numbers again and you know that we provided to the planning board I won't go into those enrollment numbers again and hopefully I think this will be replayed on Amherst media at some point so you'll be able to see that but the question about our off-campus students one of the things that I just want to mention that we have added to the strategic partnership agreement this last year is money for the next four years starting with this fiscal year for support of the safe and healthy neighborhood program so that goes to either you know support the work of inspectors or you know the work that they do in terms of monitoring the permitting process etc so we have been very involved and we are very involved on a regular basis with our town partners there are jurisdictional issues but we often cross them and trying to find solutions and you know I can happy to talk at another time with you and you can reach out to Nancy or me over in community relations and we can give you a breakdown of what's going on and we're actually really quite happy to do that at any time just don't want to take up the time the planning board seems like it's a little bit out of the scope of that but thank you Tony thank you Elizabeth where at the point of stopping is to either any of the three of you in the room I'm not seeing any hands so at this point I think I'll thank both of you very much for coming and we hope we will see more of you or at least can talk to you being able to get through to you on the phone or by email with specific questions would be helpful I think certainly I'm feeling that personally I would just say call Nancy all the time okay I think I'm passing this now back to Doug thank you Nancy thank you Tony alright so the time is seven oh four and we can go on to the next item on our agenda which is University Drive potential housing overlay zone presentation and discussion about concept for an overlay zoning district to allow more housing with a mix of apartment buildings and mixed use buildings along with ideas for streetscape design so Nate or Chris to either of you want to introduce the topic so Chris is saying that Nate will introduce and he has some handouts which he appears to be handing out here and okay thank you Nate yeah the first few pages are repetitive and deal you know I was in the packet the last few pages there's some with red font and then there's a second page and so right so you know we had presented the idea of having an Overland University Drive for denser housing so there's a sheet with bullet points it's dated October 19th and then revised the 23rd and 24th yep and so we could walk through that and so you know I think the idea was to allow you know an overlay zone to have flexibility for different for denser housing so you know what we have here in this bulleted list is things that staff came up with you know allowing mixed use buildings and apartments but you know not capping the number of units in apartment buildings you know and in this overlay having mixed use buildings only required on the corners of streets and you know capping the non-residential space at 20% not 30% what it is in the BG in downtown you know we you know going down there there is a sidewalk and there's a tree belt along the road and we'd like to keep that and to do that we need at least a 12 foot setback so there's an access drive on the west side of university drive there's and you know honestly if we allow buildings to go right up to the setback it would actually most of those trees would have to be taken down because the property line is on the backside of the curb yes Shannon yep I forgot that we're do you want to keep that access drive until from the drawing well it's interesting is the property line if you on the west side of university drive the properties are right on the backside of the tree island and so you know the sidewalk is about two or three feet it's right near the road and it's crumbling the proposal would be to get rid of the sidewalk that's there now on the west side it's not functional and actually half of the access drive would become a pedestrian way have it be a 12 foot wide pedestrian way north to south all the way from you know route nine all the way up to amity and so so in essence it stays but it's function changes and you know and then we'd have to allow more curb cuts on university drive to access development and so you know the idea would be you try to take the cars off of it but it becomes a pedestrian way and so you know right now it's 18 feet 20 feet wide you know we're saying reduce the width but essentially keep it there have something there for pedestrians and you know you'd have to establish crosswalks in certain locations you know four story buildings a maximum height of 51 feet there'd be no footnote footnotes or waivers in the overlay we try to just accommodate everything with you know dimensional standards maybe some design standards and guidelines a few years ago we looked at having a BL overlay where we had some design standards for buildings you know setbacks and facades setbacks if it's so long and those are the types of things you would incorporate as we move this along but you know the bullets here are really things that could be incorporated as standards and conditions in the overlay so you know all utilities need to be screened from view and we're not prescribing how if they're on the roof you know you have to design a parapet or a trust system so they're not visible you know the design review principles would be applied and you know law coverage would be 90% you know so it's something different so essentially we're not we're combining elements of what would be part of the BG and BVC and you know putting it in this overlay so right now there's a few different zones that it covers based zones and this would be an overlay that would be voluntary to use and so you know the second packet that's in this handout is newer development around and it's taken most of it from Google street view you know there's stores, Connecticut there's Providence there's Worcester and so really this is to have the planning board look at this and consider you know are there elements here that we'd like to see as part of design standards you know are there things here that we don't we don't actually really like to look of and so I want to be realistic so I'm not sure if it's a historic downtown Portland, Maine or Amherst but we're not going to get the Hastings building again you know it's just not it's not going to happen so for instance on the second page we have North Hampton Mass it's the two new buildings the first ones live 155 and then the lumberyard and so you know the top building has it's difficult to see you can see it in the recessed part there is some back in the facade so there's some relief around windows they have a flat roof with some detailing along the roof line you know they have storefronts along the street with some awnings you know and so is that are there elements there we could draw on you know Portland, Maine has seen a lot of building in the last few years and so the next few pages are newer developments in Portland and you know some are in districts where they hadn't had a lot of height most of the three and four stories the second page in Portland is closer to downtown one is right downtown it's an all glass building you know right near historic buildings and so again it's just you know what what are we envisioning for University Drive and so you know what staff is thinking about with the overlay is that mixed use on the corners and then we could have infill with apartments so right now apartments are capped at 24 units of building in the overlay we wouldn't have a cap you could do an 80 unit apartment building you know that it's really what are the site constraints down there there's parking there's wetlands so what what could a site handle we're proposing at least a half space per unit ratio of parking you know that's something to consider is that do we want one parking space at least per unit that would really limit the density we get just because of you know lot size and everything else and do we want everything to be paved is this a location where it is okay to have fewer parking spaces because of proximity to you know bus transit you mess and route nine and other things you know so what the list is what you know there's a few notes on the back of the of the bolted list you know you know we wouldn't have new classifications of housing you know we could you'd fit it into the use residential use classifications we have now a mixed use building our apartment a question is do does inclusionary zoning apply do we require affordable units down there we could have it be an opt out maybe we have a payment in lieu of that's different than what we require now and so you know that's you know that's kind of the basis of this and so you know I seem to at the previous meeting most of the planning board members were enthusiastic about looking at university drive and we're developing some site concepts but it's really using what's in the bullet list here so you know a 12 foot setback along the streets four stories you know mixed uses only on the corner and you know what what really would a site look like so if you take you know where the rotc building is and the bicycle exchange you know and say someone the property right national guard the national guard what could happen there is it 80 units is it you know in units is it is different you know so a few years ago it was three and four bedroom units were being built and now it's studios and ones right and I think the average size of a unit has shrunk so you know what we're seeing is probably an average size unit might be five or six hundred square feet because it's mostly studios ones and a few in some twos there's not a lot of three bedrooms do we have a requirement that there has to be a certain percentage of three bedrooms in the overlay if they do something I mean you know buildings over 50 units maybe have to have a certain percentage of three bedrooms so those are the kinds of things that we could put in the overlay that you would be at site plan review so it's still be there be a review process you know and it's just kind of building on you know if we want to see redevelopment there how can we incentivize it through zoning so right now it really isn't the zoning doesn't allow for much and so someone could come in and do maybe a few units with more parking but it's like is that a missed opportunity if this is the location for denser housing to allow it with an overlay current yeah I'm this is so exciting I like your ideas I especially like the idea not to require so much parking there because my my hope is that this would really develop into a bicycle friendly corridor to the university and this this Wolfford street for living I also like that I've experienced that in Berlin it's a really safe way to bicycle and people can be out there I think the most important thing is to get the setback as as much as possible and they've already done such a beautiful job with planting those trees it's already a lot prettier than a lot of the pictures that you see that have no green between the house and you know the street and think of yourself as somebody that wants to spend time there it's only inviting if there is a big setback if there are places to maybe sit in the front if there's safe bicycling not some bicycle thing that's crossed off on the road but really it should either share the sidewalk or it should be something because I picture this as the place to live and to bicycle everywhere it has easy access to the bicycle thing but so many of your ideas I think are wonderful and exciting really just quickly I wasn't envisioning changing the roadway so it's a really wide right of way it's 100 feet but on the west side it's about 12 to 18 feet from curb to back of to the drive aisle and so really I don't think that's wide enough so right now if we have a 12 foot setback and then the buildings are right on the setback line it's anywhere from 25 to 30 feet from curb and so it's setback quite a bit from the street and so even a four story building it's not that close to the street so I'm envisioning university drive would be relatively narrow with narrow shoulders and there's no bike lanes on the road it would be off road bike lanes and sidewalks and so as opposed to what happened on route 9 where you have a travel lane a shoulder, a bike lane and the pavement itself is really wide the university drive would say a narrow pavement okay, Jesse yeah I'm also pretty excited by most of this a couple really questions out of ignorance one is currently it's a ton of green or base there and I'm wondering what are the zoning tools to plan in a park or two green spaces so it doesn't become just a wall you know solid developed area instead it just makes it that much more attractive to live I think that are overall I don't know what those tools are if we need to designate up front here's going to be a park you probably have answers for that the second question is also about the mix use or commercial space just on the corners is a requirement what do you mean by corners do you mean with each developed building or do you mean are there going to be curb cuts and that's what you're calling corners follow up on the commercial space how do we incentivize that as a priority also because to be frank I have not been impressed with what's happened in town with the commercial space in terms of adding to our town felt like it really added very little from the new buildings and I'd hate to see that happen here such a great opportunity with tons of smaller stores cafes with that yeah so I think the mix use question is a really good one you know so what we've heard from developers is right now we require 30% there's no waving of that so you have to be at least 30% and in any part of town where you do a mix use building whether it's downtown or in village centers you know East Amherst wherever you can do it and oftentimes they find that that's an impediment that they actually they will build a building knowing that the residential units will subsidize the non-residential space for you know for years even until they can find a tenant and so you know some of it would be if we require 30% on every building that's built down here we have a lot of empty space and so the requirement was say only on the corners Amity and Rue 9 it's not that you couldn't build a mix use building anywhere else we're just requiring it that on certain locations and it could be mid block too maybe there's we have a distance that every so many feet is required that you have a mix use building but right now the reason why people build mix use buildings is there's no cap on number of units right so in an apartment building it's 24 so they build a mix use building so you can put in whatever 50 100 units you know we think that here it could be okay to have apartments on the ground floor and it doesn't have to be you know mixed use along the whole stretch and so but I do think that's a really good consideration you know is there a distance requirement where we want to see certain amount of retail or non-residential space as we're calling it and so you know that's something that you know or do we have a requirement that there be a minimum and as you know in every building but maybe it could be waived and we have to what are those requirements to have it be waived something more strict than like oh I can't fill it you know give us a reason you know show us a you know a pro forma a budget pro forma whatever it is we could you know have some standards there in terms of open space sometimes we do it by property and then you know or we could again as an overlay do we designate some places where we'd want to have community open space it doesn't make sense for every development to have his own little dog park or whatever if we could have something else and so again what's nice about an overlay is it's flexible in that respect and so maybe we could consider how do we how do we have standards and conditions for that too. Janet. So I was I thought this was really interesting and I I didn't have a question about green spaces for people I just pictured this wall of kind of dull apartment buildings and everybody you know getting on a bus or walking somewhere I just I just thought it doesn't really fit the fabric of Amherst and think about where it could be green although I do appreciate the line of trees I also am somewhat afraid of the Dutch concept having tried to walk around it and constantly being like knocked over jumping out of the way really fast bicycles usually like parents with kids in the back so I would like to see some sidewalks maybe that people can just walk on I also had the idea of taking the access road and just covering it and making it kind of a covered walkway and it could be you know place that you know kind of a thorns marketplace like an outdoor indoor marketplace and then you know I just started to riff on all sorts of ideas I think what we're trying to do here is probably what we're trying to hopefully trying to do in other parts of town is to create a community and you know and so I've talked to people who live in the PRP the apartments that are in the research part and they have a terrible time getting across they can't go across the street it's too dangerous they have to get in their car to go to stop and shop or the big why and the stop and shop is part of this kind of university drive village center and so I thought to me it was like let's instead of doing an overlay district why not we just do some university drive village center planning and you know involve the arbors and the people who live near there and the people own properties and and the people who all the people across the route 9 in the apartment complexes and just say you know what do you want this to look like and then we have a vision what we want there we change the zoning to make that happen and so I think this is a great start to sort of a larger vision I mean people who live in is it amity place the place that you lived dug you know they I'm sure they have ideas of what you know and the people you know about what they'd like to see happen in there and make things more walkable for them so I would I was that this is a really exciting beginning and I've actually talked to people who live in the apartments and they really want that whole area to be kind of become more alive and better Bruce I agree I this a couple of times in the course of the day trying to think well what would I change or what would I suggest how can I be clever and and I couldn't I just kept reading and I thought this is interesting this is actually exciting and the only thing that struck me in the course of the conversation the past few minutes is that maybe there's some things in here that we could create as discretionary because I personally rather like and I think when I was interviewed for this position I said so that I rather like dedicate empowering planning boards with discretionary powers now I imagine this downsides to that I mean it's probably giving a board I'm guessing discretionary powers means more work for the staff because they have to advise council I'm guessing that that's a thing that planning staff might not ideally want to do I may be wrong so the question is would there be and I think I highlighted on this idea of this the the piece related to concentration of provision of the non-residential space on the first floors and should it be 100% should it be 30% should it be a corner should it be this should be that indicates we don't really know it's the thing we're learning about and it struck me that that might be a good candidate for a discretionary capability or a discretionary power of the board and I thought in something is wonderfully wonderfully nuanced is all of this it might be placed for one or two discretionary capability or requirements of the board rather than trying to guess the right number or the right percentage or the right motive do you want to respond to that I have comments too yeah I mean I think you know Bruce those are good points I you know right now I think my thought would be if we didn't require mixed use buildings at some point they just wouldn't be built if we changed apartments to have no cap on the number of units because the housing market is so strong that a developer would just keep building apartments they wouldn't build a mixed use building and so perhaps we require it in certain locations whether it's a distance or wherever but then the percentage is discretionary right so I maybe it's a little bit of both I agree I think it's hard to have a firm number even like what percent of open space for instance on a project when there could be so many site constraints that a lot of it's green anyways because it's wetland or stormwater management right and so it might not it's not going to become a big block of building if you know most of the say between properties is wet and so I think um yeah I think there could be an opportunity to do that you know to have something that's required but we're not prescribing it in a way that you know it's a finite number it's something that the board can then work with the an applicant on Jesse maybe it's totally unavoidable but something else my family talks about is you know what we lost in the carriage shops that didn't come back in terms of commercial spaces the I mean the stores that were there that did not come back to town right and so I'm thinking about this yeah there's only a handful of smaller businesses that are there is there anything we can build in for them also I just don't know did you want to respond or yeah I mean I think that's a that's a tough one I think in the carriage shops I think the you know the owner had kept the rents low right so there was it was affordable for those businesses you know once there's new development and there's costs you know that someone would say well it we don't the construction costs justify a different rent and so you know I'm not sure you know there's probably some programs or you know there's there probably a space to deal with it but I think it's hard to require it I think the idea would be how do we incentivize it how can we incentivize small spaces how can we incentivize smaller rents and some of it would be I'd say well allow more residential units to subsidize the non-residential space so I had a couple of reactions to this first of all my sort of theme had been that you had store fronts along the whole University Drive frontage so you know limited misuse you know those places where the apartments come right to the ground are they going to kill the street so I didn't know that I actually had hoped we could just we could we could ask for a larger percentage of commercial so that you know the CVS is which is there now moved into the first floor of you know some building with residences on top of it I was surprised by the four stories and not five because we've obviously got experience now both downtown and at the University with five-story residential with with mixed which might be a way to incentivize you know you can get to do five stories if you build the first floor as commercial because that that'd be net the same amount of apartments so that that was another reaction I was glad to see you you thought a little bit more about parking because that hadn't been in the first draft that we got and you know I don't know if half a space is right but there's no doubt that even if you Monday through Friday ride your bike to work on the weekends you probably want a car and you're either going to rent it or you're going to garage it somewhere now maybe maybe the you know maybe that that's up an incentive for somebody to build a separate garage and then the other thing yeah I guess I wanted to I wanted to ask you could you clarify because I'm actually a little unclear on where you're saying the property line is is the property line on one of the curves of the drive aisle or is it on the curb of University Drive right so know the right of way ends 12 feet off the you know the curve on the road so if where the red maples are there's a if you're looking south on University Drive there's a like a three foot sidewalk and there's a line of red maples and then there's the access drive yep that first curve of the access drive is the property line okay so the eastern curve of the access drive okay great yeah I guess that's all I can think of at the moment yeah I mean I think Doug your idea of allowing five stories but having requiring mixed use is something that would be is worth considering and so I think you know the whatever percent we could come up with is a minimum anyone can always do more right so even in our mixed use buildings now everyone could fill the whole first floor with a tenant and so we're not you know the difficulty is when we're saying if it's a 30% minimum now in the BG that seems like it's fine but in BVC and a lot of village centers we're hearing from developers saying we actually have a hard time getting 30% same thing with parking there are some developers who want one space for every unit right they'll want no matter what the requirement is if it's less they'll always want to have at least one space per unit that's a great if I can do less I'll do less but there's probably some who want to at least have one space for every unit just for their tenants and so again that's going to drive the site design right so someone might want you know if you could do a half space maybe you could get 100 units on a property but the developers like actually want to do one space per unit and I'm going to get 50 50 units and he you know changes the formula for that for that design okay I think Janet you were next and then Karen Karen so when we were changing the zoning on the parking requirements and mixed use buildings downtown kind of a very busy summer 30% was the lowest amount of commercial space of the towns we studied so everybody else was like 50, 80% and if we're going to increase the density of you know if you go up to four stories every one of those properties becomes more valuable so there's they've increased some property value and so if we're going to five stories much more valuable if we decide we don't have to do we do less on the first floor for mixed use or lift the cap on apartment buildings you know it's much much more valuable and I think what as a board and as a town we asking for 30% commercial space is the least of all the towns that we studied and so I think that we need to make sure that if we're sort of getting an increase in value we're encouraging development that it's what we want and so if you want to say you have to have a whole bunch of space for small shops like the carriage shops you'll always find those filled up over time you know look at you know pot line village is filled with small shops you know root nine is filled with small shops east Amherst is filled with small shops it's the big you know the places down in Amherst center that did not fill up or one really big expensive space and you know I just like I think that we can we can put in requirements if we're giving something and increasing the value and the profitability the future profitability we should say yeah we want green space and green space isn't just a wetland because you can't walk into it when you can't walk into you know what the stormwater you know drain system and so you know you'd say yeah we want to park we want some place where kids or people can just sit and so I think we can but I think this is planning I think this is what we want to see there what kind of housing I would suggest that if we go to four stories that they be peeked through so it sort of fits in with the character and not just look like stories Connecticut which is kind of an appealing so I think that we have to do a planning process and decide what we want to what we want to see but it's not you and me I think it's the community and I really do think we have to go into a formal planning process and I don't know if we can do it as a board or delegate it to a task force but we have to talk to the community and we have to say this is what we want to see and and then if we're going to give increase the value of properties and future development values money profitability we know there's some very deep pockets who want to come to Amherst and we can ask them for something what we want what we want to do. Yeah I do agree a lot of people have a lot of good ideas. I was just walking through downtown with my friend from Germany and I said you know all these parking places why is it we have all these pedestrian places in German she said it's because we have garages we build parking underground she said why don't these big apartments have underground garages and on university we could say for example we could keep or we could try to put it out there with the community that one option would be that this would be a place where you could have a big parking garage and the benefit is you have you don't pave over all this land and you have that green space that we need. Yeah. So I actually kind of disagree with a couple of the comments I'll just put that out there I'm really surprised to be talking about green space in that area because I don't really think of it as potentially being a family area I think of it as being students and young professionals who you know just move to town this is their first apartment and they want to be really close to the work or downtown and walk to the supermarket so and I realize that that group doesn't want to have a park but they can also go up the hill to Kenrick Park and then I'm not convinced that we need a lengthy broad public process you know I think we have enough expertise at the table and with the staff to put forward some ideas about how the zoning should change and that we are we've been empowered to do that by town council by having us appointed you know I mean we can put a vision out there if we don't have a vision then we don't really need to put anything out there but it's clear Nate has some measure of vision because he's put it down on paper and we have reactions to that so I don't feel the need partly because the people that are out in that community are busy living their own lives already and they're not you know they're not really thinking about what could be across the street so there may be a few things you get out of that but I you know we can easily put a vision to town council and then that might draw people of the public including people in the community to make comments and then maybe it changes yeah I mean I think the I think the purpose of the overlay is something to consider so you know originally when we spoke about this the other week I said you know students only and Doug said well why couldn't it be someone else and so you know it could be that this is just a student housing overlay and you know we can be more restrictive about who lives there or we say it's just an overlay and it could be whatever the market demands and I think the market will probably be mostly students so I think but the purpose of it is important so you know what are we looking at here is it you know are we trying to densify it and say you know my goal I said I think was like I'd love to see a thousand beds down here in the overlay and maybe we start to change the housing equation a little bit you know it's going to take a magnitude of you know that to do something it's not going to be you know a 20 units here a converted dwelling here or something it's going to be you know something much bigger and you know hearing Tony and Nancy tonight I kind of agree that probably students are moving to Amherst or they want the proximity to UMass is important now probably more than ever and so you know I as a regional housing is a regional issue but I think if we had 5,000 more beds and there was 5,000 students living in 20 minutes away from UMass or half an hour they're all going to come and live closer because that just makes more sense I think you know so I think it's a really hard problem to solve but you know I think if we densify East Amherst and we allow East Amherst to be bigger and denser it's going to be mostly students and so it's really hard zoning can allow for things it's really hard to regulate the end user and so you know we try to get creative with inclusionary zoning or doing certain things but the market will kind of bear that and so we can try to make it look nice maybe we try to incentivize things with you know we have to have a percent of three bedrooms you know what can we do to try to get to the group the end user we want but I think it's really difficult through zoning so even to the point of like what kind of commercial space do we want we could say a percentage maybe we want so much glazing on the storefront or doors every so often but that doesn't mean it's not going to be one big space with five doors even if we're thinking it's going to be five individual spaces it's really hard to get into the interior layout of it and so right I mean it's like right it'd be sad to think we're going to have you know a lot of new buildings here and have a lot of vacant real you know non-residential space retail space commercial space at the same time I'd say if we had that we probably have a lot more square footage than we have now if this gets built out and we have 50% of every new building is new non-residential space it's probably more space than we have now that's there I mean so it's just how do we even feel that you know I think if it was a student housing district it would be a different to me I think it's like what do we want to see there and so the idea is okay it's a student housing district and what do students want what would meet their needs you know we're just looking for beds that UMass isn't providing or maybe UMass decides to put continue the beds in the other side like I'm fine with that I'm not fine with not telling anybody in the area about it and I'm happy to go and knock on the arbor's door and just say we're thinking about adding 1,000 beds in here what do you think I mean you know I will just wind up doing that because it's my personality but I think it'd be a nice gesture for the planning board to speak to the community I think this is just a normal planning process I see in every other community so I hope it's not a shocking suggestion I think it is more interesting as a student housing district I was on one of those national university housing crisis I don't know I can never remember the name and there was this Canadian city that had three colleges and universities in a triangle and they just decided to just zone the hell out of the middle and make it a student housing area they went to like 14 stories or they built 14,000 units and prices went way up and the vacancy rate was really low and it didn't solve the rental problem in the area and so you know so I think in the way I look at this whole process I keep on thinking about a three legged stool we build more student housing we build increased density in the village centers hopefully more mixed housing the university builds more housing and then we have to put some controls in to protect the neighborhoods the mix of too many students in the neighborhood is very negative and we had to figure out some way to regulate that and make it more of a mixed experience more integrated so I'm totally in favor of making university drive a student housing district it does change the way I look at it instead of thinking about it as a village center but I think we have to be clear about our goals and we have to consult the people who live around there. Thanks I was just going to add I guess perspective sort of halfway when I was thinking about green spaces or a park and smaller commercial spaces I'm also thinking selfishly yes I think it's a great place to try and convince lots of more student housing and that's what developers will build but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who goes down there three times a week and I want to keep doing that and I'd like that oh there's a new sandwich shop I'm going to get a sandwich and then go sit in the park and eat it I want that to be an interactive place maybe not as much as a town center that we're designing but if we don't put that opportunity there it definitely won't happen because there's no commercial space needed for the majority of that stretch it won't happen because of what you just pointed out they're just going to build beds because that's what's most profitable right now I do think we should structure that in as best we can to make it an attractive addition for people who live here not just students Yeah I've said this before at planning board meetings I for one am alarmed at the disproportionate reliance of Amherst on residential occupancy in its tax base and so I look at this yeah it's a great opportunity for adding student beds I get that but I don't want to lose sight of the opportunities presented here for commercial space especially on the first floor and anything that we can do it'll be marginal but if we can do anything that will pay enormous different dividends in terms of the financial stability of the town okay Chris I see your hand we're getting to the point where I'm wondering if we're going to be able to wrap up soon or not that's what I wanted to address we had a tentative date of November 29 for a fourth in-person meeting to talk about housing I wonder if you want to consider that as a means for continuing this conversation we have plans to go back and come up with some plans to show you how big buildings might be both in two dimensions and possibly in three dimensions if we can get around to it but would you consider having another meeting on November 29 to continue this conversation so is that the Wednesday after Thanksgiving yeah and I think the images of the buildings I'm not sure that was in the packet you can always email Chris or myself with comments and so that was they're really in here for that to start a conversation honestly I put stores in because often people say they don't like it they're tall buildings they're big buildings do we like five or six stories I don't want to show my hand it's like we can't show everything that we think is nice anyways go through the packet if there's things that you like or you think are missing those can be part of the discussion I will say on a different topic we have the request for proposals for downtown design standards is out there to seek a consultant and the proposals are due at the end of the month the hope would be that by the end of the year we have someone on board who is starting a process to look at downtown design standards and I think that what we come up with through that could be adapted for here the timing may not overlap but I think we could get a sense for what they're looking at in terms of design standards for downtown alright, Shannon I think Jesse brought this up at the last meeting talking about the ways to protect neighborhoods and I think maybe the 30th we can do half of it talking about this and the other half about the different mechanisms making sure that neighborhoods just don't flip and I get a daily email from Northampton Realtor and Amherst Realtor and every week it's like investors take note in Amherst but they don't say that in Northampton even when they're two family houses and so they're pointing out the occupancy and everything so I think that we need to talk about that and I think we have to come up with some very firm recommendations okay Jesse I was going to bring that up as well and if we have a date for the discussion I'm trying to assemble some of the rental data by neighborhood for us to talk about too so if yes, that's the date I'll make sure I have something ready to share with the group well we don't have much of an agenda yet put together so we can put that on the list Karen we can email you some of our wild ideas and our imagination I can picture this whole thing being geothermal doing the whole street geothermal having really wide sidewalks keeping those beautiful trees that are having green space along between the street and the sidewalks that's aesthetically so much more inviting than the pictures you showed which don't have that at all cement there are few spindly trees there that aren't very big yet but I think it can be done better and one cautionary thing is we just can't have it look anything like King Street you know great I'd welcome the comments one thing is interesting we're most of the building and so we're getting a lot of utilities a lot of compressors a compressor for every unit that's something that we hadn't considered a few years ago but I think moving forward what is the utility where are they what does it look like I know you said geothermal but I think solar heat compressors heat pumps where does it go I think that's really important if you have an 80 unit apartment building where do you have 80 compressors so all right so time is 749 maybe we'll go ahead and go to our next item on the agenda Fred you're on this is a discussion of owner occupancy and subdividable dwellings presentation by Fred Hartwell and discussion of the benefits of owner occupancy and subdividable dwellings thank you you should all have and it should also be available on screen a redacted copy of an actual tax return before I get into that I want to talk a little bit about owner occupancy on multifamily the this is this was part of the packet and it's also it's also been arranged so that it can be projected as part of this meeting before I get into that just in general about owner occupancy the the rental picture changes significantly with owner occupancy my wife has a saying that I very much agree with in that as you pay or you pay but I found after 51 years in this business is that it pays and we choose to pay it definitely pays to rent below the market often significantly below and it means that we increase the quality of tenant and that's a business decision that we choose to make and that is something that often happens in an owner occupied one or two family or three family either one because you're creating a neighbor and just naturally there's going to be a calculation that goes into that that is different if from a this the same number of units managed by a corporation somewhere it's just natural and we also know that the incidents of noise complaints are almost vanishingly rare from owner occupied apartments as opposed to ones that are not so there is an enormous benefit to encouraging owner occupied rentals and I I think people are generally aware of this and I think they are generally aware that there's something to be gained in terms of having rental income that but what I found is that most people don't understand that not only is their income but it is enormously tax advantaged and so I thought I would go through and as I said that we have these it's redacted but this is a schedule this is the same form that I've been filling out as part of tax returns for 51 years this is schedule E schedule E 51 years ago and it's still schedule E today and if you look at column A that is a three family owner occupied and you see 30,000 for 70 I can tell you that 30,000 is rent 470 is the orders that go into the coin operated laundry which was put in again to increase the quality of tenant because of tenants that you want tend to be people who would prefer to do laundry on premise somewhere you don't have to drive to a laundromat so again this is a business decision but 30,000 in rent and then you look at line 7 cleaning and maintenance here's the way that works this is a three family the owner occupied part of this building and the two apartments are about 60% of the building the way IRS treats this that means that for general maintenance activities for example mowing the lawn 60% of that is deductible in effect because it goes in this line and anything that's on line 7 is going to come out of the income this is the way this works homeowners insurance 60% of that shows up here on line 9 the legal and professional fees that's the rental registration fee the repairs that's when I repair something in an apartment that's 100% because that has no general property taxes 6,215 that is 60% of the property taxes due to the town of Amherst now I think probably all of you are aware that as of the 2017 tax changes which are major nobody is itemizing deductions anymore which means in effect you lost the ability to write off property taxes you got a higher standard deduction but you don't write off property taxes well 60% of these of these property taxes in this case are part of the business operation so yes there is a deduction here on line 16 and I'm going to just mention something here if you look at line utilities that's 17 that's obvious and again in some cases it depends if it's the owner's meter for the that deduct 100% of that if it's propane for the laundry deduct 100% of that and so forth that this is just things change I do everything defensively I've been audited three times so far the IRS is up $1.14 and they tend to leave me alone for example when I have the gutters clean well I did a rough measurement turns out that only about 30% of the gutters are over the rented part and so I only did what goes into this equation is only 30% of the cost of the gutter clean it's everything here has to be defensible in an audit and it's just that the depreciation here is zero and we're going to talk a little bit more about that but so if you took at the rents and then you look at you do deduct the expenses and you're down to $13,261 so that you know $17,000 right there came off and $13,000 appears to be taxable but it's more complicated than that if you go to the next handout which is the depreciation record which goes back almost 30 years and and you'll notice if you look over here and this is just the north whitney street this is you'll see the current depreciation is almost $8,000 well how does the depreciation get to be $8,000 when line 18 is zero well line 18 is zero because depreciation is a passive loss and there's a there's an IRS form which I did not set up but I'll just show it to you this is 8582 passive losses have to get tested on this form before they become deductible I will tell you they normally are and so then how does this get reported well this house is actually in a trust and so the trust issues a K1 this is a K1 is how you get these things reported it's kind of like a W2 form but it's for business and you'll notice that the amount of in block 7 here you'll have you'll see the that's where the income flows and then in block 9 you see code A and code A in block 9 is depreciation so if you take the depreciation now this and by the way this number is of the total because my wife and I both receive a K1 and we are both equal beneficiaries of the trust so as you can see the the $30,000 number becomes approximate in our case in combination with another property this turns out to be closer to $1,000 in actual taxable income and I have to say I got into this 51 years ago not knowing exactly what would go forward but I kind of had a conversation with myself about I don't know what I want to do when I grow up I was 25 years old when I had this conversation I said I know I'm going to figure out what I want to do eventually but I don't know what I want to do right now but I want to be able to afford to do whatever the hell it is I decide that I want to do and I know that I'm pretty good with law and I know I'm really good with my hands and I think I can be a landlord and that's when I bought this and now 51 years on there isn't a day that goes by that I don't look at this and I say this is the best thing since sliced bread I have a fixed income I'm on a fixed income this is a five figure rent and it's totally taxed I mean how do you and I think people don't understand and particularly since the 2017 tax law changes that meant that we no longer could recover a lot of this stuff by itemizing deductions we're not itemizing deductions anymore well you know that's so this is what I wanted to put this out because I don't think people understand just how incredibly powerful this model really is in terms of being advantageous to the people who do it and you know the I want to say a little bit more about subdividable dwellings because the dwelling that we're in has technically not a subdividable dwelling because it didn't come out of the ground as such now I'm the guy that invented subdividable dwellings I created that bylaw back in the 90s and I wanted to and that was the first time that the bylaw actually specified owner occupant and so part of that warrant article was the creation of the definition of owner occupancy that was part of the same warrant I invented the whole thing back in the 90s and you know this is why I did it and I thought you know it would be nice to have this come out of the ground well it hasn't happened much but my solution going forward on this is not to abandon subdividable dwellings but rather make that process available for existing housing stock because it has worked incredibly well you know I have four children that were born where I am now and they grew up and when they grew up and got older but before they left they took up a lot more space and so I at one point did not renew the leases in the rear townhouse apartment and put a door through on the second floor and a door through on the first floor and that part all became single family and I didn't have to move anywhere you know I didn't have to pay a real estate commission it became suitable for you know for family for children and then after a number of years children started to leave I went back to the zoning board of appeals got another special permit recreated the townhouse apartment in the back I went back to being a three family those doors are still framed they're behind fire code sheetrock but when things framed the electric is set up so that in about a half an hour I can transfer the entire load in the in that apartment back to the main house and then go back the other direction and there's no reason why this has to be limited to something coming out of the ground it could apply to this instead of being a special apartment and it is enormously useful and again it promotes owner occupancy which has all sorts of other benefits to it so I wanted to try and put that out there in a systematic way and thank you for your time Fred can we ask questions how please do okay because I have I just to understand what you're using your primary plan yeah you had 17,000 and expenses that you wouldn't have had if you didn't own this larger dwelling so you netted 13,000 and that 13,000 is highly taxed advantage because it's only like a thousand dollars that's actually taxed yeah because I can take depreciation out of it right and so that 13,000 is really your nest golden goose is that big well yeah but the we make major capital improvement we're constantly improving the property okay which means you did spend the money 30 years ago to residential rental is a 27 and a half year straight line so it's it's not the most aggressive depreciation deduction out but again if you look at the depreciation you get a pretty good idea you know it adds up over time and then that is a gift that keeps on giving for 27 and a half years okay great Janet I too have experienced this miracle so I we've lived in a two family house in Somerville and so depending on your percentage whatever percentage like your roofing 40% is you know it's part of your expenses, lawn care all that kind of stuff and also your mortgage so you're paying your mortgage interest and so you know it's all you know so if you buy a house and 40% of the expenses are you know paid for but you're also getting rent and so you're getting the person's paying your rent and so you're paying your mortgage or whatever and then you hit this depreciation schedule I used to say to my account and I understand because you know I know what I'm taking home every month and why is this $700 and it was because the property is constantly being depreciated even though it's constantly going up in value or holding its value and so you know it's it's a great way to get ahead and I think you know I don't know how to promote the word you know owner occupancy is a way of really getting neighborhoods kind of in better shape under control more community you know I just I think it's a great thing and people understand the tax implications you know and we weren't cheating yeah one other thing the you'll if you look at let's see here line 12 is mortgage interest that's acquisition debt there's no acquisition debt column A yeah I had a mortgage when I bought it and that mortgage went away a long time ago but column B is another property and there is acquisition debt for that and I collect rent on that and so that $4300 in this case is 100% deductible that results in a tax loss on property B which is why the the way I was describing it doesn't quite add up because there's a tax loss in B that all goes together when at the end but it normally you know someone with a mortgage would be very common for someone with a you know a two family or something they're probably paying a mortgage maybe a 30 year mortgage or something at this point I've owned the property 51 years that the acquisition debt is gone but if I had mortgage interest well 60% of that would come out of here just like property taxes because we're not deducting mortgage interest anymore well yeah I can deduct mortgage interest so again this is a I think it's the best thing since sliced bread okay Bruce Prince explained this to me previously so I got a second bite of cherry tonight and I think then as I do now that I agree with you friend and I've practiced some action of this but I also agree that this is not fully appreciated and in order to get this more fully appreciated it sounds I used to give courses in MSSE I don't know whether that still happens but the town used to provide opportunities for people to to propose courses that they might teach and this would seem to be an extremely appropriate one because it's not just elevating the opportunities for private citizens to do I don't know whatever interesting art project or something that might add to their life this actually could stimulate positivity in town from a development from a civic life point of view so I don't know whether you're inclined to do this but clearly the next step in this is to solve the problem or to work towards solving the problem of lack of public appreciation and I know we had a conversation in the earlier part of the year about enabling the duplexification of houses and so forth in other words basically creating the opportunities for inter occupancy rentals that received some positive response from members of the board it just was coupled with a lot more complexities that of course did not be recommended to move forward however something like this in tandem I think would be a good thing and thinking about how the public appreciation of this opportunity might be broadly more broadly made manifest is something that I encourage you to think about we do have the ADU I mean ADUs are allowed pretty broadly right now so for my single family house I could go build an ADU get a mortgage on it and charge rent and a lot of schedule E every year yeah yeah yeah I just I wanted to just add here that we spent a lot of time talking as we should talking about affordability of rent in this town and and in the creation of housing and if you create housing out of existing buildings on existing lands you know that's the least expensive form of housing creation it is possible to create so that's just another reason why this is very much something to look at as an objective just you can add to your course for the town that yes owner occupied very tax advantage works perfectly well for non-owner occupied responsible landlords as well can be beneficial for the town and the investor bringing us full circle so I own a couple houses I couldn't afford to do another one now in Amherst because of this same issue the costs have just gone up so much so if you're house it doesn't make sense anymore so again just bring us back to this whole conversation of trying to keep the housing market of how where it is and my sense is totally driven by the conversion to rental keep talking about Janet so when I was in Somerville I think there was like a tax break of like 18% on property taxes and so that was really nice and then it's up to like 30 or 35% if you're on for owner occupancy and so the tax the city is trying to encourage it by lowering your tax bill you know quite significantly so another another way of getting to there okay do you see any hands on the zoom I think we're pretty much done with the board conversation about this at the moment for tonight and we have two members of the public on the zoom left if either of you want to make any public comment about the tax advantages of owner occupancy please raise your hand or anybody in in the room okay all right we don't see I don't see any hands I see one hand Chris I just wanted to confirm that you all have agreed to meet on November 29 is that correct I think that's true have you agreed to meet on November 29 to continue the discussion about housing yes I believe we have good thank you let's see any objections and we canceled the last meeting this month the previous meeting we could talk about these things over zoom too I mean we're kind of getting to the point where we're not quite so focused on a big map in the middle of the table so if it fits in the agenda we could think about talking about it before November 29 just to comment so in other words meet on November 29 well let's plan to meet the calendars and and then you know I mean we don't know how much conversation we're going to need to get to wherever we're going that's right well Nate had suggested earlier today that we could do this and possibly do it better on zoom especially if we had images that we wanted to show you so perhaps as we move through this process and we start to create images we'll let you know whether this is going to be in person but I'm interested to hear that you're not committed to having it in person and one yeah I mean what I was thinking was like our next meeting you're probably not going to be ready to talk about this again in the next meeting but like our regularly scheduled meetings could include some of this in the agendas that provoked a couple of hands Aaron and then Bruce I think at the in-person meeting one of the prime things that we should zero in on is what is the purpose of the university I think that's a big one what we who's the target who is the targeted population that we want to encourage there that's something we should all think about and that's good to discuss in person that would be like a big one okay Bruce I just wanted to see whether we're talking 6 o'clock because I'm having trouble remembering to get here at 6 well meetings are normally at 6 30 and I thought the this one I had two different times so our in-person meetings have pretty consistently been at 6 I would be interested not I don't like overlays I think we should just fix the zoning and if it's going to be a university housing district and so I would like to see an option where you just look at the kind of ugly BL and say we'd like to rezone it to allow the things we want to see and not just put something on top of something because I think our zoning bylaw is so complicated and just the idea of another layer of complexity so what would it look like if it was just being re-zoned is kind of my question yeah I mean I think one issue there might be that then anything that wouldn't be allowed in the overlay becomes non-conforming it could be a 9.22 so it could be expanded to a special permit and so an overlay allows you to focus on what do you want to incentivize with the overlay so what's there now could still be allowed whatever the underlying zoning allows but you're trying to incentivize something or acquire something with an overlay and so I actually think re-zoning it depending on the boundaries becomes difficult because you know there's five or six different zoning districts and so an overlay is allowing something that we say want to happen but there still could be something else so you know I guess as a consideration for the planning board we want to make this a base zoning I think in East Amherst for instance changing the base zoning makes sense but a university drive it for me it doesn't make sense okay time is 8.21 any objections to adjourning none noted we are adjourned thank you all for coming