 Oh, it looks different. Yes. It'll be okay. We'll get through it. Let's see. Good night to have a continuation. That was my thought. Do you think it's going to be short or is that just the curse of all time? Just think that. Okay. Let's see. It's up to us. It's Mr. Marshall. I see that it is 634. You have a quorum of the board. The meeting is recording. Mr. Malloy just joined us. You are the co-host, Mr. Marshall. I think we are good to go. All right. Thank you, Pam. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of March 20, 2024. My name is Doug Marshall, and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 635 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and extended by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, this planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is accessible on the meeting agenda posted on the town website's calendar listing for this meeting. Or go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda where the Zoom link is listed at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event, we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or 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, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and return to mute. Bruce Coldham. Yeah. All right. We know that Fred Hartwell and Jesse Peter will not be joining us tonight. They are absent. By Doug Marshall, I'm present. Janet McGowan. I'm here. Johanna Newman. I'm here. And Karen Winter. Karen. I'm here. Okay. Thank you. Board members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. To the general public, 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 general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the planning board chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. 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 these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. Okay, so time now is 6.38 and the first item on our agenda are the minutes of January 31st, 2024. Board members, I trust you had a chance to review them. They were in our packets and at this time, does anyone have any comments on the minutes? Janet? I was just going to move that we accept or approve of the minutes of January 1st. They were right. Thank you for the motion. I guess I'll go ahead and second it just since nobody else jumped up with their hand. Okay, so we now have a motion and a second for the to accept the minutes as drafted. Before we vote, does anybody else want to make any comments about the minutes? Okay. All right, in that case, we'll run through the roll call again. Bruce? I'm going to vote aye because there are only five of us here and I confess, I forgot to read them. I got long been to other things. It doesn't usually happen, but it did. I confess not having read them, the experience is that everything is always grand. There's only five. I am an aye. Okay. Thank you, Bruce. Janet? I'm also an aye. All right. Johanna? Aye. Thank you. Karen? Aye. Thank you. And I'm an aye as well. That's five in favor. No abstentions and two members absent. Okay. I guess at this point, we'll go to our general public comment period. And I see that there are eight attendees in the audience. The names that I see on the Zoom screen are Carol Lewis, Claire Bertrand, Heddy Startup, Jennifer Taub, John Kuhn, Mara Keane, Rachel Belanger, and Tom Reedy. All right. Members of the public, does anyone want to make a general public comment at this time on something that's not showing up later on our agenda? Okay. I don't see any hands from any members. There's one. Okay. Let's bring Heddy Startup over and let her make a comment. Heddy, if you could give us your name and then your street address, and you will have three minutes for your comment. Welcome. Hello, Doug, and everybody on the planning board. I'm interested in the item on the agenda. And I haven't got the agenda in front of me. I apologize, but I'm thinking that it's about 45 and 55 South Pleasant Street. Am I correct before? Yes. That's correct. And we're not taking comments on that project at this point. Oh, okay. I'll lead. What is it they say? I will yield my time. Okay. All right. We'll be there shortly. Thank you. Okay. All right. Any other members of the public about four comments on something other than the 45-55? All right. I don't see any hands. And then we'll come back around to opening the hearing later. All right. So the time now is 641. And we will go ahead to the third item on our agenda, which is the joint public hearing on 45 and 55 South Pleasant Street. This is continued from March 6 of this year. In accordance with the provisions of Mass General Law, Chapter 40A, this joint public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard. This public hearing is continued from March 6, 2024. So this concerns site plan review 2024-05 and special permit 2024-04, all for South Pleasant Street LLC at 45 and 55 South Pleasant Street. Joint public hearing to request site plan review approval under section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw to redevelop a mixed use building, including rehabilitating the existing mercantile building, or also called the Hastings Building, removing a rear L of that building, and the adjacent Brown building and constructing a new five-story residential building at the rear of the site. The project to contain 22 dwelling units in combination with ground floor retail and commercial space, and a connecting structure containing a lobby and elevator and stair, and to request a special permit in accordance with section 9.22 of the zoning bylaw to allow a reduction in non-conforming lot coverage from 100% to 97%, and to relocate the non-conforming retaining wall and section 15.171 of the zoning bylaw to allow payment in lieu of affordable units. The project located on map 14A parcels 250 and 281 in the BG TC slash DR and MPD zoning districts. Okay, any new board member disclosure? Nope, okay. All right, so Chris, I know we have at least one member of the applicants team here. Tom, I guess you are here. I guess I'd like, Tom, why don't you go ahead, but I do want to make sure that we let Ms. Startup make her comment on the project this evening before we conclude. Go ahead. Sure. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, members of the board for the record, Tom Rede, attorney with Bacon Wilson, and AMRs here on behalf of the applicant. And so this evening we're going to be requesting a continuance to the April 3rd hearing. So we're not going to be presenting anything this evening, and we're just asking for the board to continue it to April 3rd, I think it's seven o'clock. I've got another hearing at six o'clock. I know your meeting starts at 6.30, so I'm hoping if set for seven, then I'm able to take care of my first hearing, and then you can take care of some of your front matter before, and then at seven o'clock we could hop on. So I'm happy to answer questions that you have about the continuance or where we're at in the process, but I just thought Ms. Presto can probably do that as well. Okay. Chris, go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to say that two reasons in my mind for the continuance, and maybe Mr. Rede has other reasons that he wants to talk about, but we threw a lot of information at you in the last day or so, and it's, you know, kind of a blur, and it's a blur to me too, and I haven't had a chance to draft conditions or findings. We also have two members of our board who are absent tonight, who are also absent last time. It's nice to have, you know, at least six out of seven hearing something as big and important as this, and we understand that Mr. Hartwell would be able to join you on April 3rd. I haven't spoken with Mr. Major. He's traveling right now, but at least you would have Mr. Hartwell, and I think I've spoken with a few others of you, and I believe that Ms. Winter, Ms. McGowan, and Mr. Coldham are also available on April 3rd, so if Mr. Marshall and Ms. Newman are available, then I would recommend that you continue the public hearing tonight to April 3rd, and don't take any testimony, and that would include public comment on this project, because then we would be able to have a clean transition to April 3rd, and we would be able to hear everything and discuss everything, and Mr. Hartwell would be here as well. Thank you. So you do not want me to take any public comment on this tonight? I would recommend against taking public comment on this project tonight. Oh really? Okay. Bruce? I think this is probably okay. Because you read the applicant, the official application, and it includes a percentage of lot coverage, and because I'm noticing the likelihood of the way the front area is done, it occurred to me to perhaps make sure that if there is a change in that, that it's done in a timely fashion, so that if it involves a practical adjustment to the introduction that you read, it probably would be good to have it in there. That's all I have to say. Okay. I will say that sometimes the introductions that we start out with, and that I continue to read after multiple continuations eventually sometimes gets sort of inaccurate in terms of how the project ends up going. So this wouldn't be the first time where the number that I say in the introduction ends up being superseded, let's say, by what the project is actually approved to be. Okay, so I see two more hands from board members. And Chris, I guess I'm taking your comments to suggest that we should probably minimize the amount of conversation we have about the project tonight, so that we give what you call the clean slate for the next section of the hearing when it's continued. That's what I would recommend. So with that in mind, Johanna and Janet, I'll call on you first, Johanna. I just wanted Chris to know that April 3rd works for me. I have that set aside, planning for you. Okay, thank you, and Janet. This is just procedural, like so I was just looking at stuff and it'd be great to have a list of what's changed since our first presentation. You know, because I have a whole new packet of materials and I was kind of waiting through it, and it sort of taxes my memory, but it'd just be great to have a quick, like, you know, a change in the parking, you know, that kind of thing. I don't know who would provide that, but it'd be helpful. Okay. And I guess I'm going to just, I guess, comment to Ms. Startup that on advice of staff, I am not going to call for public comment. And I will encourage you to come back on April 3rd or submit some written comments to us anytime, you know, anytime in the next couple of weeks. Those do get distributed by Chris so that we will see them in advance of the next conversation. But thank you for coming. Okay, so in that case, I guess I'll go ahead and make a motion that we continue this hearing to April 3rd. Actually, at seven o'clock, Chris, do we have enough to keep us busy for half an hour on April 3rd? Or at seven o'clock, are we going to be kind of, you know, twiddling our thumbs waiting for Tom to show up? Yeah, I think we will have enough to keep us busy. Potentially, we have the comprehensive permit for Belcher Town Road in East Street School submitted a project eligibility letter. And we can bring that to you and you can give us your comments because the town has to submit a comment letter to the state on that project. So I think we could do that in a half hour. Okay. Well, in that case, April 3rd at seven o'clock, that's my motion to continue. Bruce? Second the motion. Okay. Thank you. Board members, any comments on the motion to continue? Okay. I guess then go ahead and run through the roll call again. Bruce? Aye. Janet? Aye. Johanna? Aye. Sorry to be. Aye. And I'm an aye as well. That's five in favor. No abstentions and two absent. Thank you very much. All right. See you in a couple of weeks, Tom. Okay. All right. In that case, we'll move on. Time now is 6.52. Next item on the agenda is old business. Topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance. Chris, Pam, do we have anything? I'm not aware of anything. Pam, Nate, are you aware of anything? No. Okay. It is likewise for new business. Anything? Nope. Okay. Form A, A&R, subdivision application? No. Nothing. Nope. Upcoming ZBA applications. I don't know if my colleagues know of anything. I haven't received any transmittals and I haven't been in the office. So Chris or Nate, Ball Lane was approved. That's exciting. Yeah, that was approved last Thursday. That's the only thing I know. I don't know of anything to report on unless Nate knows of anything. Yeah, 98 fearing. They submitted an application to the local historic district in just this week, maybe even like today or yesterday to the zoning board to put a second structure on the property. So right now it's a three family home and then the applicant's proposing to put in a second apartment building on the property and taking advantage of the lot area in the zoning. So that's something that the planning board may request a review or have a presentation on. Okay. Do you want to say that now? Yeah, I suppose we could talk about it. I assume that we would come to the ZBA in the next month or something, right? April, I think if everything's deemed complete then it would be for, look at my calendar, April 11th possibly. All right, so that would mean we should probably discuss it on April 3rd if we have time to do that. Bruce? The question of Nate, I think, do I understand correctly that this would go to the local historic district commission before it went to the ZBA and perhaps even before the, I can't remember from Monday before the April 3rd. The local historic district application hasn't been, it's been submitted, the local historic district is going to meet and I think it's like April 29th near the end so it would be toward the end of April when the local historic district would review it. Okay, so I'm anticipating that the zoning board would take probably two meetings to review this. We wouldn't have to do it on the 3rd but we might as well try. I was just wondering whether Karen and I might already have a dose of this but the answer is no, we won't so that's reason for the question. Okay. Well, Chris, why don't we see if we can fit that on the agenda for the 3rd? And I don't know whether the applicant would want to come or they would just provide that you with the materials and you could describe what's going on. Usually the applicant likes to come to answer questions. Okay. We'll invite the applicant. All right, well then why don't we investigate that? Any other ZBA things on the horizon? I'm not aware of anything enough to talk about it. All right. Upcoming SBP, SPR, SUB applications. I think we told you about the Emily Dickinson Museum carriage house and other than that we have a little farm stand at 822 East Pleasant Street that wants to come to you and we're reviewing the application now and deciding whether it's complete enough to put it on an agenda. So it's just a little farm stand. Okay. I think maybe not as imminent is 422 Amity Street so you know Barry Roberts project down on the corner of University Drive and Amity Street was granted a variance and that would then come before the planning board for a site plan review and so you know I don't know exactly the timeframe but it could be in the next you know one to three months. Yeah, I assumed that he was developing his drawings enough for us. Right. He didn't really need very many drawings for the zoning board. Right. That'll just be a bigger project to review. Yeah. I do know of one other thing which is the tap tap and grill. I forget the full name of the place but it's on it's taking the place of the burger Amherst Burger Company and they're going to have live entertainment so they will be coming to you for permission to have live entertainment there. And why us rather than the zoning board because I know the zoning board reviewed for instance the new spoke live. This is actually a restaurant that serves food which is makes it different from the spoke live and they are wanting to have live and pre-recorded entertainment but they are allowed to exist where they are in fact I think they're open already. They're allowed under site plan review and since there was already a restaurant there they were allowed under administrative approval by the building commissioner so the restaurant itself doesn't need site plan review but the associated live and pre-recorded music does need site plan review. Okay. You know I just continue to be mystified about how you decide which entity gets a project. I do too and I go and listen to my colleague Rob Mora and I try to learn from him and sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm not right. Okay. All right well we'll look forward to that. All right. Time is 7.56. I'm sorry 6.58. Planning board committee and liaison reports. Bruce anything on PVPC? Nothing in particular. I did the upcoming meeting is to review the budget. The budget was sent to me. I corresponded with GAC just to see whether there were any comments that should or could be made and Jack and I together thought we should just not worry too much about it. This seems to be fine and Jack says this is never a contentious thing so he thinks well of them so nothing to report. Okay. I have nothing to report on CPAC. There hasn't been any activity. Karen on design review. Yeah we had a meeting on Monday and we went over the common talking about the things like the furnishing, the walkways, the lighting, tables and chairs and one of the things that we requested. We approved everything that was suggested but we requested that the paths that the town looked into whether it would be possible to use oil and stone rather than asphalt for the walkways. That's one thing that I cared a lot about but we'll see what happens. It all depends on the budget of course and maintenance and things like that. Then we approved the signage for the Amherst College Store which will go in where Hastings now is and that's exciting that they I think want to start already in May to be in business. We talked about the street yeah and we talked a little bit about the new Dodson and Flinker work the town working together with them and we're all looking forward to what's going to come there and that's about it. It was interesting and we will meet again pretty soon. Okay thank you and then Chris anything from CRC? The CRC will be starting its review of the solar bylaw on I think it's Tuesday of next week and they made it 6.30 so I don't know exactly what's on their agenda. I haven't seen their agenda yet but they're going to be starting to talk about the solar bylaw. Okay all right I as chair have no nothing to report. Chris anything on staff? I have some I guess it's good news but we have three candidates for our planner position and we're scheduling meetings interviews with them and we have high hopes that we'll be able to hire one of them so that's good news. Good luck. All right anything else from anyone Janet? Thank you for saying that because I was trying to figure out where this would fit in our agenda, our very quick agenda. I was hoping that sometime in the next few meetings maybe on a lighter night if we could do an hour talking about housing issues kind of picking up our discussions not talking about university drive but different strategies like maybe some of Bruce's work and what other university towns are doing just like to spend an hour put it on the agenda so we can not lose all those good ideas and threads. Okay Bruce are you still trying to track down planning officials in other college towns? Yes but less energetically because what I had learned from the first five or six of my conversations with this that tended to be pitched towards essentially what we're doing in university drive so but I would like to continue with I've got another half a dozen or more towns and I've been very busy with other things but with Janet's suggestion and the board is interested I will continue to do what I've been doing and I'll be happy to circulate what I've done in advance and tell you what I've done, what I'm trying to do and what I haven't yet achieved. Well I think it'd be great for you to do as much as you think okay to do you know if the first five I have convinced you don't need to talk to anyone else and you're that's okay too from my perspective. No it's not that it's just that the when we had this was really galvanized by the thought that the housing solution was to follow Patty Angelis and Mandy Jo Hanneke's approach and I thought we really needed to see how that worked in other places and what they did in accordance with that and when that fell through and we did some other things the the pressure seemed to the pressure was diminished and therefore other things squeezed in in this place but I still think you know it was worthwhile I enjoyed doing it it was certainly helpful to me as a new member of the board to to be doing this so I haven't I haven't given up on it I've just relaxed a little that's all. Karen. I wish we would get I would like to follow up a little bit on pursue our having more communication with the university on housing I think that just having the town planner it's obvious that we're really not getting much if we get only at one report an annual report when we invite him to our meetings it's just not enough I don't think we're doing enough to be in the loop with that and I think we should think about a way not to be you know a different entity I understand that that the town manager wants to talk with one voice but there should be some other way that we can be more in the loop and more involved and we should think about how we can do that. Okay, Janet. So Bruce I don't want to put you in the spot but so the towns that did the university drive solution did that lower rents and students left you know family neighborhoods and harmony was reintroduced and lawns were cut and partying ceased I mean because one of the things I drew from the international one was people built a ton of housing in these sort of student zones and it was it was really expensive still and so I if there's some success stories where rents went down and family neighborhoods became more or neighborhoods became more mixed I'd love to hear that so I mean so that's kind of I think that's the end point that I'm looking for so. I didn't have long enough conversations I got about 35 to 45 minutes with each of these people and plus what's on their websites and things like that so I haven't got to a final to the level of fine-grainedness that you're talking about but at least I have an opening if we wanted to pursue it with certain cities and certain guys for people who are more responsive than others then we could do that. Okay, thank you. Okay, no one has anything else. Time is 7 0 7 and I think we can adjourn. Chris, is there a report of Steph? Did I skip that? I think so. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yes. So I just wanted to mention two things. We have seen renewed interest in development and rezoning of East Amherst. Janet disappeared I think. She's still here. Oh she is. Something covered her up. I'm sorry. Anyway, yes. Interest in East Amherst from a couple of landowners who want to do development there so as soon as we finish up with the university drive I think we'll be shifting our focus to East Amherst and we may have some money to hire a consultant to help us with that and then the other thing is that Nate's been working with the historical commission on the historical preservation report update plan update and they would like to come and present that to you so potentially they could do that either April 3rd, although April 3rd sounds like it's getting full or April 17th and it's people from PVPC. I'm not actually sure that they would be able to come because I don't think there's enough money left in their budget but Nate and members of the historical commission could present that to you and then you'd have a chance to comment. I think we need your comments. Do we, Nate, in order to have the plan approved? Am I mistaken about that? Yeah, I think there's a few planning documents. There's the historic preservation plan that's in a final draft form that commission will talk about this week. I think the 17th of April would be fine for the planning board to review it and the housing production plan may soon be underway as well. And so the town's looking to hire a consultant and that will need planning board review and kind of actually a vote of acceptance or approval and then the open space and recreation plan is also underway the update to that and that'll need something by the planning board and so I don't think the preservation plan does but I know the open space and the housing plan both need planning board review and comments and a letter of approval sent to the state and that'll happen in May or June probably for those two plans. So for the housing preservation plan, is it mainly a question of presenting it to the planning board and letting them know what it's about? Right, for the historic preservation plan. Yeah, so we have a plan that's from 2005 and this is a, you know, we're hoping this will be a kind of a more concise action plan giving the commission, you know, one to five year goals. The housing trust is kind of doing something as well in action plan with more concrete goals and that could be presented to the planning board later this summer as well. And so yeah, I think some of it's just to see, you know, what TVPC and the commission have thought about and how that could dovetail with work of the planning board. So we'll plan to bring you the historical preservation plan on 17th of April. Okay. All right. That's it. All right, and anything else, Chris? No. I was going to mention the housing trust, you know, is updating its action plan with the help of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership and then the housing production plan and they've been talking about housing as well. So if you know in advance when the planning board might talk about issues of housing, you know, I could extend an invitation to trust members if they would like to come as well. So if we, you know, have a date sometime in May or late April or whenever I could just let the trust know. Okay. I'll try it again. Time now is 7-11. Unless anybody has anything else, I think we are adjourned. Thank you. All right. Thank you all. Good night. This is a record. Yeah, don't get used to it. No, no. Thank you. Bye-bye. All right.