 The 2014 meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board, a short agenda this evening. First up, we have an environmental design review hearing for 1398 Massachusetts Avenue, which is Massaged Envy. I think the applicant is here. If you want to step forward and have a seat here and your name and address, who you represent, please? Andrew Layman, a representative of Sinar, and a secretary of challenge, we have all been asked. So what brings you here this evening? Massaged Envy is looking to add to their two separate channel letters underneath the switch and the spa. They have a logo that they're trying to, that they use throughout all their stores, and they're trying to update that. Questions from the board, Bruce? I have a question, if I may, to Ms. Kowalski, the director of planning, community redevelopment. Can you refresh us as to the maximum square footage that would be appropriate for a sign on this building? It's really up to the board. I mean, I'm sorry that I don't have my fingers to see what's allowed by zoning. This is not what's proposed is not larger than scientists on the building, but on the property and other storefronts. And since it is the subject of a special permit, the board is the discretion to. OK. So as I understand it, the only part that's new, Mr. Layman, is the switch and the letter spa with the little trademark. And their channel letters, those are the same as what the existing signs. They'll be the exact same, yeah. And the color scheme is going to be the same. In any color scheme, yeah. I think I noted in one of the notes that the lighting switches from purple during the daytime to white at night. Yeah, what it is, it's a purple-rated vinyl. It has holes in it, purple. So that it's mounted onto a white plexiglass. And then white lights inside the channel. And so when it lights up at night, it lights up more of a white as well. And that's what the top sign already does. OK. Those were all the questions. Let's have anything in addition, I don't think. So what is the surrounding? Yeah, yeah. I just took somebody asking if I can take some pictures of surrounding signs. This is on the massage envies to the right. Oh, yeah, right there. That's kind of helpful to see what's around it. There's definitely, yeah, I would always say that the signage is zippier on this paper. Generally, it's in that way. That's nice to see what's actually some of these other signs are very large. But Carol, I'll go with your indication that this is within the signage, allowable signage. It's roughly the same height as what is now on prior literature. Is the spa? Is that? Yeah, I say, OK, I can say. I just answered my own questions. If I look down at the gift card there, so this is all proportioned to your logo. Yes. Portion to clarify. The letter spa, that is 10 inches high? Or is it the switch that's 10 inches high? Can I say the switch? Yeah, I think the spa's got a little bit of twist there. I'll say it. I don't have any questions, so I think we can motion. I'm about to make a motion, but I'll just make one comment. I think that whatever the size of the sign is, the fact that there's so much white space for lack of a better term between the switch and the massage envie, it doesn't feel like a big block, right? It's sort of floating in space. So I think the dimensions are fine. So I'll move the board, allow the petition to add the switch and the spa beneath the sign for a massage envie. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Close. Thanks a lot. So what we'll do next is we'll mark approved on a set. We'll get that through inspectional services. Then you can get the sign permit from inspectional services. Very good. So I won't receive anything out of this. You can just go ahead and proceed with your sign permit application at inspectional services. But please give me 24 hours to get that to them. Very good. All right. All right. Thank you very much. Have a good night. Thank you. Good night. Next on the agenda is the Arlington 360 MPP fine discussion. The board recalls that there are fine money set aside, $26,250 in fines from the construction of the Arlington 360 and the Brightview. These fines are up to the board to determine how these should be dispersed. But in the Neighborhood Protection Plan, it states a little bit of description of the fines. And it says a $500 fine payable for each violation to a town of Arlington entity of the town's choosing. And it's agreement with the Redevelopment Board. So you probably recall that you would ask if I would check with Town Council. And Town Council said that there is you don't have to. It doesn't have to go to the town of Arlington. You can direct it to go to the Sims Stewardship Fund or to the Housing Authority. He, Town Council, commented that this is very vague language. It seems that you can just give it to anyone. But I would recommend that to be on the safe side, because it is a little bit ambiguous, I think to be conservative in your interpretation, I would recommend that you consider the Sims Stewardship Fund or the Housing Authority, because the Housing Authority is a town of Arlington creature, as is the Sims Stewardship Fund. Whereas the political version of Arlington, which is very productive in producing affordable housing, they're an independent non-profit organization. You could name some other organizations that are germane to the urban renewal objectives and principles. But I think my recommendation would be to try to be conservative and just direct it to the site, which is the Sims Stewardship Fund and Housing Authority. Carol, the Sims Stewardship Fund does that really qualify as a town entity? It's the fund that was financed for the management of the conservation restriction. It's already set up. It's not a town of Arlington. It's not an account that's, I don't believe it's an account in the treasurer's office. But it's for the conservation restriction that's managed by the conservation commission and the land trust. Who oversees it, the CONCOM and the land trust? And the land trust. Is that where we put the $30,000 or is that something else? There. Is that where the monies went? Sorry, I mean, I just wanted to make sure that that's where the $30,000, OK? That's where the endowment went. Yes. For the management and stewardship of the conservation restriction, conservation restricted land. So you could probably generate a list of other worthy causes. I just want to explore this stewardship fund a little more. So who has control over that money and who did it report to? I believe the land trust does. I'd have to look into this a little bit more to find out who it is. The land trust is in the town entity. It is not a town entity, but they hold the easement for you can't hold your own easement, as you know. So the easement, because it's the town of Rollington, well, that's not true in this instance. Yes, it is. It's conservation land. No, it's an easement. Sorry. I guess where I'm going on this is your counseling has to take the conservative approach. Maybe I'm taking the doubly conservative approach of housing authority. That's clearly a town entity. And in the event that there was some question about how the money was being allocated and spent, the housing authority has to report back to the larger town government. And that may also be true about the Sims Stewardship Fund, but I think it's a little hard for me to call a fund an entity. There's nothing that says you have to do this tonight, or there's no deadline for doing this. I'd be happy to get a little more information about who controls the fund. I thought it was important to try to consider keeping it as close to the Rollington 360 project as possible. Yeah, so I think. I think it would be helpful too. So Sims Stewardship, as I recall, I think the reason I'd be comfortable in doing that is because it was endowed with the 30th. This is the fund we're talking about. It was endowed with $30,000 because it has obligations that it needs to perform with respect to the conservation land over there. And I think I seem to recall that $30,000 was not going to last that long. And from my perspective, if I definitely understand the doubly conservative approach, but if we thought well enough of it, tendowed with $30,000 to begin with, I don't have any problem in saying, OK, we can kind of keep on keeping on with respect to that. And I think as long as that's the same thing, I mean that's, I guess, because I didn't know it had a name, I guess, is the point. And from my perspective, I think it would be good to keep that money specifically used for the site, if we can, or specifically for affordable housing if that too makes sense, although it's kind of handled over there. So I kind of like the idea of putting it towards the conservation land. But I'm also comfortable not doing this tonight. I mean, obviously, they have the $30,000 endowment. I don't think tomorrow, putting this in there tomorrow isn't going to make or break anything. So I think if we want to get some of these questions answered, it makes perfect sense. And I think the other thing I'd like to understand, too, because I don't know that we've ever had an estimated accounting of what the obligations will cost, is what's the length of $30,000? What does this add to it? Projected costs. Yeah, does this allow for it to go another 10, 15 years? Yeah, yeah. Good question. Seems like my gut tells me it'd be another five or 10. And I think that's great, because I think it will be difficult, to some extent, for that particular thing to raise money otherwise. Yeah, it's not going to really have a hole. I can get that information from the land trust. OK, nice. Sure. So it sounds like you'd also be interested in knowing how much more would this amount be able to allow for? That'd be helpful. Who receives that fund? I'm going to find out exactly. I'm pretty sure it's the land trust, but I'll find I'll get more detail on that for you. It's important. I should have found that for you tonight. Andy, did you have anything? I agree with all of you. I'd like to see the time to understand the entity is, the ministers, the length of the funds that are already there, what they will do, and what the extension of additional funds would mean, and have it in writing so we all understand what it is. Your next meeting is January 5th meeting, and then you have the January 12th public hearing. After that, I can check with Breimer to see if he might be willing to walk down the street. Yeah, January 5th. That would be nice. And just kind of put it in writing a little bit to what it is that we're talking about. Ahead of time, yeah. The approval of the Nets, some of you might. I didn't really have anything on these. I read them quickly. So I'm not contributing too much. Skim them, I'm just going to go through. I've also skimmed them, and I may be typos in there, but I think the content looks fine. My impression as well, having written them. And I wasn't here for that December 1 meeting. That's right. I have no idea. Yeah, exactly. I'll move to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Yeah, I was actually hoping, sorry, not new business, but before we adjourn or anything, we were going to bring up anything else. I'll say one other thing. Sure. So it should be important to note that our chair, Christine Sapinski, has resigned from effective December 1. She will be sorely missed by all of us on the board. I think she's done an excellent job, at least over the time that I've been on the board, and I know that that continues on. She will be greatly missed. She will. Thank you, Christine. With that, I will entertain a motion. Well, actually, could I just ask one other question? It goes back to the meetings. So you said we have one on. I was just hoping to talk about the schedule of meetings a little bit. I figured this will do it. Sure. I'm sorry. I didn't bring the draft. I put together a draft meeting agenda for January. I mean, for 2015, you have January 5th and January 12th. We don't have a hearing scheduled for the 5th. So at the moment, we don't have to meet the 5th, but you might want to meet the 5th, to just prepare for the following week's hearing. If Brian Rearer gets available to join us, that would be nice. That would be nice to be in the gentleman. Sure. When's the hearing? The hearing is the 12th. The following. We were supposed to get comments in by December 1st. Yes, we received, like, 90 comments and forwarded those to the consultant and worked a lot of them into the master plan. And what's the master plan advisory committee's meeting schedule with respect to those comments? Well, is it just going to go through the consultant and then in? Or I guess, what's the expectation on the January 12th meeting? What are we talking about there, the next iteration? The next iteration. I think the expectation is that their intent was to try to respond to the comments. So the next version shouldn't have too many surprises. And I'd be surprised if there were major changes after the January 12th hearing. But the hearing might produce some very compelling comments and then the consultant would revise the plan. And then that would be what's available for viewing before the town meeting endorsement. So any additional comments now would not get into? It would not get. Well, the comments were turned around to the consultants. So now we're waiting to get back the version that will be available for view before the January 12th hearing. Gotcha. If you had some comments, I could get them to the pond. But the committee won't be meeting again this month. So we have the hearing on Jan 12. And then, I mean, it's a hearing. So I'm not sure how much we're doing at it versus bringing people forward to comment and either say. I'm assuming that's for an intake mode for us. And that at one or more, and my thought is more, meetings after that that we'll be delving a little bit more deeply into the comments that we receive and making whatever changes we think necessary at that point in time. I would hope that the board could consider acting on January 26. I'll get to you. And what's the advantage of acting so early? Just I'm just trying to figure out. To have a version that the town meeting members could get acquainted with, to have a version of the plan that would then be going to endorsement. OK, but I mean. It doesn't have to be January 26. Yeah, in essence, that just needs to be by March, really, I mean, if we're going to start in April. True, but you want to allow enough time. We're not going to have 21 precinct meetings, but three, it would be nice if we could have three. So you want to allow enough time for those. Precinct meetings. To bring the plan out to the town meeting precincts. We'll probably have like three. So invite a number of precincts to one of each of those three. So they needed, we would approve it. And then they would go out to the, we're going to approve it on the way you've got it now on January 26th. More or less January 26th. And then you would have three precinct meetings. Leading up to two months or more, three months. Yeah, I guess my only concern is gen 12 to gen 26. Is that going to be enough time? I mean, it is one, it's going to be enough. But yeah, because, I mean, because as far as, I just want to make sure I understand this right. As far as the warrant itself, all we need is a placeholder article that says to consider and endorse the master plan as approved, or I guess it's not as approved. Well, OK, but I guess that's the question. So we're going to approve it before town meeting endorses it. That's right. OK. I hope you'll approve it. Right. I'm sorry, yes, that's correct. That's a little presumption of me. But yes, I guess that's right. OK. So you'd have a little placeholder with all matters related there, too. Yes. Exactly, the usual. The usual. OK. And then town meeting endorses it. What does he look? A lot of the actions that's required, town meeting action for documentation. So it's important for town members to be familiar with it. So I'll just ask the devil's advocate question, because I'm not sure it makes any sense for this meeting. But on January 5th, I mean, so if we accept the master plan, vote to accept the master plan, and town meeting does not endorse it, where will we left there? Because we're the governing authority. You know, if we. Everyone asks that, and it does happen in some communities. I can't think of any, but I've been told that it has happened. You know, you can do a couple things. Once a municipal planning board adopts a master plan, it is the policy. It becomes the policy instrument for planning in that community. You could then either proceed with it, or you could consider making some modifications if there were a little discrete area that was the one pinpoint of contention. You could make some changes to it, but no one's going. I don't think we would advocate that there would be a special town meeting only for the plan. If there were a special town meeting in the fall for another purpose, we would take advantage of that warrant opening, but thousands of dollars to have special town meeting. I don't think we would do that. But you could wait until the following year. I don't know. Well, turn it if you'd have, besides having. But endorsement is not required, regardless. It's not required. So if you made the changes in respect of what they are, I mean, you couldn't argue. That's why I think the meetings and the precincts are so important, because there's still a lot of, it's a pretty major undertaking. If you think of transportation, economic development, zoning, land use, housing, historic preservation, natural resources, open space, that's a lot. So I think it's important for us to make it as clear as possible about what the plan is and isn't, what it will do and what it won't do. I think there are still a great number of people who think that by adopting the master plan, we've changed our zoning. And that's just not true. The implementation table has many, many, many steps that will require town meeting action and can't be affected any other way than town meeting action. But a lot of town meeting members won't know that until we get an opportunity to bring it to them and describe its parts. Do you expect any other warrant articles to come out of this process for this year? No, I don't. That's not to say that there may be other reasons why... Something makes sense. Something might be proposed by 10 registered voters or... Oh, no, no, no, I'm saying specifically from the master plan exercise. I'm glad you're asking the answer, you know. Okay. The three months, I mean, the three precinct meetings, will they make changes that will then be put into the master plan? The intent is that this be more informative. This is, the plan has gone through many iterations and after public comment and hearings, this is the plan that's going to town meeting. So short answer, no. And so the 26th, if that's the date that we have the meeting where we may vote, what's the format for that? Is that in a bigger room? Is that with a wide audience? What do you expect? Well, the 12th is in the lion's hearing room. Oh, excuse me, it's in the town hall auditorium. I'm sorry, I said the 12th right, yeah. That's the 12th. And you will hear comments. You can opt to, based on how much comment you get that night, you could continue the hearing if you wanted to, or you could then just close the hearing and act at a subsequent meeting. So the 12th, sorry, I should have said that, I meant the hearing. Is that, who will present the master plan at that point or will it be presented? The consultant will be present at that meeting. And how will they handle that? Will they describe the kind of the process in general so that people have a context or is it just hearing is open, start commenting? There'll be some description. I don't want to take too much time for presentation because you don't want, yeah, exactly. You want to leave plenty of time. So there should be some short description of each element. Or maybe just the mechanics of it, as you described. This is a master plan which makes recommendations for implementation of various things. It does not change the zoning. Right. It does not allocate funds. It's a master plan, not a policy. Well, it is policy, but it's not legislation. It is policy, but it's not legislation. It might be valuable to let those who are coming to it because you could get a wide range of interpretations of the purpose of that hearing. It's happened before. Like with any hearing we do, you have to explain the purpose of the hearing, the process that will follow after the hearing closes. Right. And the scope and limit of what's being heard. And who will do that? The co-chairs, the consultants, and actual media. Great. So you're in a role where you're hearing, you're holding the hearing, but you're not going to be asked to interpret or explain the plan. You'll get as much information on the plan as anyone, really. You won't be put in a position of having to present it. So in terms of sort of facilitating and running the meeting, would it be the chair of the ARB that sort of decides, okay, I think we've heard enough comments. Yes. We're gonna move from this element on to the next one in the program. That's right. It's your show, so to speak. You're holding the hearing, but you're going to be really leaning on the master plan advisory committee, co-chairs, the consultant, and planning staff to present the content. But you're not expecting to bring people up by section of the master plan or anything, because that's the same, so that might be very... No, no, I think we want to be responsive. It's kind of like what you had said, so... If there's a lot of question on a certain element, we'll go into that detail to inform it, answer questions. Absolutely. But... I just don't want to, I think you could get, you know, people coming up again and again, depending, you know, if you're crying. So, okay, now we're on this section. Who wants to comment? You know, you're gonna get a lot of the same people, probably best to keep them on. Any changes to the previous document that was viewed, any major revisions should be reported, too, so that people who have followed the iterations will be able to at a glance know what the changes were, up to 12. Thanks. Didn't mean to hijack it. I just wanted to make a motion, but do we want to adjourn? Or do we want to, you know... Yeah. We know. This is what Bruce is good at. Yeah, well, among other things. Don't get me wrong. No, it's about the only thing we're good at. I think what we want to do is we want to... Recess the meeting and reconvene. Reconvene, yeah. So, I'll move. Yes, go ahead. So, I'll move at the December 15, 2014 meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board going to recess. Oh. These women are here to talk about the Arlington 360, which they said was an agenda for 730, is that true? Yes. It was, it was. We finalized what we didn't decide. Thank you, Laura Thomas. What an amazing, can you just review, or I will just review. The board did consider some recipients of the fines. They did not act yet. They asked for additional information on some potential use of the fines for the Sims Stewardship Fund. And we are hoping we can get someone from the Arlington Land Trust to a January 5th meeting to answer some of the board's questions about how those funds are administered and how far the funds would go in assisting in the stewardship of the conservation land on site. Is that all that's being considered for the money to go to? There were some suggestions we had for being considered. There was some discussion of the funds possibly going to the Arlington Housing Authority. The, I had recommended to the board at the board's last meeting that the fund, they considered using the funds for affordable housing and on site open space in, because that would be consistent with the original goals of the Sims project, the Sims Urban Renewal Project. But they haven't decided anything yet. We were told that the funds were to be used to help rectify any issues that were remaining after the project's completion. So some of the issues we've talked about were lights shining into our yards. And we emailed the board, I think all of us. Yes, Snack contacted us and said, you guys had asked for inputs from Snack. So since we are the closest, we gave some suggestions and we don't know if those have been considered or not. The board did receive some information about the neighbor's interest in having the funds used on neighbor impacts. The understanding I have is that the Inspectional Services Department is still working with the developer to get the lights fixed on Sims Road so that those will be changed out. And my understanding is that they haven't issued a final certificate of occupancy. So if those funds are used and that situation isn't fixed, then those funds will be spoken for. Or do, if the lighting situation is not fixed with Arlington 360's current plan, are you planning on spending the funds? I think we were told they were gonna be allotted today in a final way. Is that not happening? No, the board hasn't. Okay. We haven't acted on that. Great. So we'll just need more information. Board. Who will be having further discussion on that next meeting? Whatever you will. Okay. Do you mind if I get your names for the minutes? Sure. I'm Polly Ford, P-O-L-L-Y. And 127 Brattle. If you need it. And Susan Driscoll, 121 Brattle. So one thing I'll mention is, I think that the wording of the documents and what happens with the funds from the NPP really talk about the fact that it needs to go to something town-related. So I think, I don't want you to, I don't wanna speak for the board at all, but as I read what it says the funds are to be used for, I don't think that type of remediation is really what the documents say they can be used for. So I'm not exactly sure who's headed or whatever else or what have you, but I guess I just, I don't want you to kind of think, oh, this is part of that for remediation and they're just not doing it. The documents talk about it in terms of going to a town entity or fund. And that's why the census conservation land and that's why you're hearing us talk about these things. And I have to apologize. Our first agenda item went so quickly. I didn't notice that we started this item before 730, so thank you for speaking up. Okay, yeah, I guess we got misinformation because SNAC sort of said, it was suggested to us that we were, we should give some input for how the funds would be used to deal with this particular issue. Light pollution may be something. It's not a town entity. It's a conservation, it might fall under conservation, no? It's not the conservation land is the problem. But it really, I think maybe what happened in the miscommunication might be wrong, but it was like, oh, SNAC, you're thinking conservation land or you're thinking, it just kind of got blown out into something bigger without those kind of handcuffs, I think that we have on among other things. I'm not sure what the board would do in any way. Frankly, so I'm not, but I think there is that secondary level of what the agreement says. But is it related to the permanent occupancy permit? In the sense, is it on the list of things that has to be. We would know that we're not the enforcing law. That's Director of Disfunctional Services who's right now looking at photometrics and he's been working with RL2360 to get the lights to meet the as-built plan for what the foot candles that are put out by the lights that are on site and to get them corrected to what they're supposed to be. So he's still working with them. Okay. And he has not issued the final certificate. If it's not resolved to our satisfaction, is what's our, yeah, what's our recourse? I mean, what can we do? I know you guys approved the plan back in 2005, but who do we go to if we're still living in the next to something that's just way too bright for us? If the photometrics, if the lights are not meeting the photometrics that were approved in the lighting plan, there's a distinct possibility that that would be a violation, but that would be the zoning enforcement officers. Mike Byrne, he's the Director of Inspectional Services. So it would be tonight. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Two bites of the apple, right? So there's that, and then there's a bylaw now that with respect to light leaking. Dark sky. Yeah. Right, but when this plan was approved, that predates the bylaw. So there could be a break. Is that right? I think so. Okay. I think so. I could be wrong on that. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I think the answer to your question on recourses like any zoning violation if there's a zoning violation, they can be brought to the attention of the building inspector for my force. Okay. How is it, how do you look at it since the 2005 plan was approved with townhouses where the assisted living facility is so that the lights are totally different? I mean, before we would have had townhouses between our house and the parking lot. Now the parking lot is scooped directly to our house. So how do you sort of equate those two? I mean, it's really sort of difficult because we would have had this barrier of townhouse between us and these lights, which are now just there. The Brightview Photometric Plan is what prevails on the Brightview site. But both, my understanding is that both the Brightview Photometric Plan and the Arlington 360 Photometric Plan overlaid has to be met by the lights on Sims Road. Don't take this for gospel. The interpretation is that of Mike Byrne, the director of the Inspectional Services, but that's my understanding from conversations with him. I know he's working on it. I know he's being very diligent. He and I talk about it every week. I have faith. I know you've been putting up with this for a long time. And so. Yeah, it's been over a year. We've been complaining about it. So it's been long. I recognize that. And I apologize again that I didn't observe the clock on this agenda item. And I do thank you for mentioning the speaking up. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, so I moved that to the December 15, 2014 meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board going to recess to reconvene in approximately 15 minutes. Trist for the annual gathering, holiday gathering, which time no business, no ARB business will be discussed. Second. All in favor. Aye.