[David Blumberg]: Okay, well good evening. Welcome to tonight's meeting of the Medford Community Development Board, March 15, 2023. I'd like to call the meeting to order and as always begin with some procedural notices for everyone. This hearing of the Medford Community Development Board is being conducted via remote means know in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings as provided for in Chapter 107 of the access 2022. A reminder that anyone who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by accessing the link that was included on the meeting agenda posted on the City of Medford website. If, despite best efforts, we are not able to provide real-time access, we will post a recording of this meeting on the City's website as soon as possible. A reminder that, given the remote nature of the meeting, all votes tonight from the Board will be made by roll call. You should also know that project materials for projects before the board tonight and other nights can be viewed on the city's website, recently updated website. If you go to the section of boards and commissions, look alphabetically, you'll see Community Development Board, and you can click through on current CD board filings. As always, we begin with roll call. Roll call of all of our members. Good evening, my name is Dave Blumberg, Vice Chair Jackie Furtado.
[Unidentified]: Present.
[David Blumberg]: Christy Dowd.
[Unidentified]: Present.
[David Blumberg]: Emily Hedman.
[Unidentified]: Present. George Fischer. Present. Peter Kalbas. Present. And Ari Goffin. Present.
[David Blumberg]: Excellent. Um, let's say a special welcome tonight to official members, um, both Peter and to Ari. Ari is serving currently as an associate member, which is a new role here on the board. So welcome to you both. If you wanted to say hello, no, no pressure. Um, you, the mic is yours, Peter.
[Unidentified]: I'm excited to get to work.
[Peter Calves]: Nothing else to say.
[David Blumberg]: Excellent. We're happy to have you here. Ari?
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you for the kind welcome and excited to be a part of this.
[David Blumberg]: Awesome. I look forward to working with you. Amanda for the benefit of everyone but including and most especially the members of the public, could you note any city staff were in attendance tonight for us.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sure, thanks. So my name is Amanda Centrella. I'm a staff planner in the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. I'm present. Director of our office, Alicia Hunt, is also here. Our senior planner, Danielle Evans, is available. A graduate intern in our office, Rin Piazzecki. And later on the call, we're hoping she'll be able to join us, is Yvette Niwa. She's an economic development planner in our office.
[David Blumberg]: Excellent. OK, so on the agenda tonight. A couple of things we'll move a bit. We were going to start with the storefront design guideline review. We're going to move that to later in the proceeding, that discussion at least. We had a site plan review for raising canes. That will not occur tonight at the request of the applicant. So that means we can proceed to a discussion with Verdant Bio about 243 Mystic Ave. And before we turn that over to the Verdant team, just a reminder to folks that we had one informal meeting already with this team, and they've come back and wanted to present some more information and receive more feedback from us. So it's sort of take two, if you will, of our informal meeting from a few meetings ago. So with that introduction, the team of Vern, Doug, Matt, Jim, the floor is yours.
[Matthew Juros]: Thank you so much, David, Mr. Chair and members of the board. We really appreciate your time. It's a complex site and it's a complex project type, and so to be able to get your feedback as we're, you know, putting together our program and our design ideas has really been valuable to us. So you've introduced me well, thank you. I'm Matthew Juros, I'm a principal at CI Design, and with me are?
[Doug Medvets]: Doug Medvets, I'm a principal at Verdant, and I'm here with my partner Khadijah.
[v8aFu2OAn8o_SPEAKER_18]: Hello, principal at Verdant.
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: And Matt O'Connell, the other Matt. I'm a senior project manager of CI Design.
[David Blumberg]: Welcome to all of you.
[Matthew Juros]: Thank you. Thank you. So if I just go ahead and press share screen, that'll be opening up. Oh, okay. So let's do this. Let's go and we can start with generative material, but let's just sort of locate ourselves. So the site is at the corner of, let's see, I'm gonna do it this way. Harvard Ave and Mystic Ave. And so Mystic Ave here, going north, south, north is to the left on this drawing, and Harvard Street is in the middle of the image there with our site directly on the left, it's currently, it's vacant. And so we're looking at, that's the footprint of the building at the lot lines. So, and to kind of reiterate what the site sort of looks like in terms of transportation and other types of infrastructure, it's about 150 yards away from I-93 and one of the main exits off of 93 South and North actually. located on one bus route. We understand there's a reorganization of bus routes and there might be an increase of bus traffic. Blue bikes I also understand are coming to Medford and that we are going to hopefully be able to take part in that program and locate blue bikes adjacent to our property too. and we're within a 18-minute walk of two of the new Green Line T stops at Ball Square and Tufts Station. So that's sort of the basics. Let's see, I'll go back and the generative stuff, Matt, is at 13. I'll get this technology stuff right. There we go. So, just, you know, taking a look at some of the ideas that we've got pinned up on our bulletin board that we've been working with about, you know, how a building comes together, what the pieces look like, what the architectonics what might look like, we've got some images that we sort of gravitated to. And here is Fred in Ginger Building in Prague is sort of a building that has a corner site and it's got some sort of sculpted moments. And so it's, I think worth it to include that in the upper right-hand corner there. Skipping two to the left, The CRISPR building in South Boston has got a vertical orientation to its facade that we're really sort of attracted to how that was expressed and felt like that was an instructive way to organize opaque and translucent elements of the facade. I'm looking to the image to the left of that on the lower left-hand corner. the Seaport District has a similar approach to organizing the opaque and translucent portions. And the opaque portions are sort of formed and sculpted, chiseled as they go across the building. And this is looking directly up the building. And also the cube in Berlin is a building that has a real sort of dynamic approach to how the glass skin is expressed, which is also true with the St. Regis building again in the Seaport District. that we just took a look at it in great detail earlier this week. We also put up on the upper left hand corner, an image of photovoltaic cells that are intended to be incorporated into the cladding of the building and and that's something that we want to be able to consider as we're looking at different parts of the exterior of our buildings that some of that may not be able to be fenestrated and translucent, but still we need to attend to how they're going to look. how they're going to function, how they're going to look, how they're going to work. Let's see if I can move forward in the way I intend here and there. Starting with the ground floor, we can do this a couple of different ways. If you like, I can just go through our take-up on where we are with the design at this moment. I can pick up on some of the issues that were in the conversation the last time we met. Do you have a preference? Because I just assume sort of take you through where we are unless you prefer otherwise.
[David Blumberg]: It's really up to you. I wouldn't revisit a lot of topics that were presented and not commented upon in round one, but
[Matthew Juros]: Good, I think that makes sense too. Okay, so with Harvard Street along the bottom of the sheet and Mystic Ave going sort of along the right and towards the top, north is at the top of the sheet here. This is our ground level plan. And so the building is envisioned as a speculative life science building, so it's a lab building. It would be tenanted by, this would be all Skylight, I think, yeah. And so we'd have a single tenant who would then sublease out to small startup lab companies. And so we're working partly with their program and, Um, as envisioning this as, as being occupied by a series of, of small, maybe one, two, three, 10 person, um, companies that, um, are doing very speculative early work. Um, it gets mostly in the, the pharma industry. Um, the, so I like to say that the, the start of any design for a lab building starts with the loading dock and the utility elevator and the dumpster, because not managing your supplies of chemicals and waste, then it's not really gonna function at all. So our site, again, is a very small site, but it's kind of hard up against the intersection. So we took as our site access the point that's farthest from the intersection along Harvard Street. So here, I'm assuming you can see my cursor as I move up and down here. That sounds up. Thank you. So we would invite deliveries into the building here. There's a rolling overhead door that closes the building off to the street level, just inside there. And then deliveries proceed on past the parking area to the loading area. So where the cursor is now is is zero elevation where the words loading area are, is elevation plus four feet so that we can unload efficiently. Materials come off that vehicle and would go either into storage, which is also at four feet, or into the service elevator to go up to the lab floors. We've got an exit stair that serves this level as well and exits to street level via a mezzanine, not shown in this plan, it's just above this plan, but exits out to the street next to the lab floor. the vehicle access. And then waste would also come down the service elevator through the loading area, would be loaded onto the back of a dumpster. The waste removal truck would be able to drive into the loading and unloading area and pull the load the dumpster, you know, empty the dumpster into the vehicle and then proceed back out again. The ground floor level that we're looking at is 20 feet floor to floor. So we've got a relatively tall ground floor level. It allows us to locate the utilities that we need to. We have mechanical mezzanine above the areas where we don't need extra high space, which is basically everything except for the parking. So all of the transformers and wastewater neutralization and so forth is a split between mechanical space that you see in this plan and the mezzanine above. cars would also use the same entry and exit. We're providing spaces for 27 vehicles to be parked in nine, three cars, automatic stacking mechanisms. We've got, I think, a 24-foot turning and access parking area. People who do park, and we don't imagine that will be the majority of the occupants of the building, would then be able to enter into the main lobby and the main passenger elevator area through a set of stairs, or sorry, a set of doors that go from parking into the lobby through here. And then if we're arriving by bicycle, we can park here and we're going to provide a streetscape with a hardscape pavers and bike racks with a low planted section here. This is sort of a funny area of sidewalk that gets It's kind of pie shaped. It gets wider as it goes away from our site. And so we're imagining that we would keep a walk lane that's consistent close to the building and then use some of the extra space for green space and also bicycle parking. We have an indoor bike park by the storage area inside the floor. on the main floor there. So if you arrive by bicycle or by bus, or if you walk, you might come into the main entryway, which is right at the corner here. Directly to the left of that, we have the fire command room, which is, I've learned grudgingly over time to not leave that as an afterthought. They always need to be larger than you want them to be, and they always need to be close to the door. So this would allow us to have an unseated panel, fire alarms, and the fire department would be able to have access to this room in the event that they need to fight a fire. The lobby is pie-shaped due to the geometry of the site. along the main entry wall here. We've got an exit stair and a passenger elevator, which would be the main vertical circulation for all of the upper floors. We're envisioning a graphic mural along the Harvard Street um uh street level um facade where we're not able to do translucent or windows um because of the park behind it we think that graphic will wrap into the building and be joined by um an led display that um describes some of the science that's being done there that announces some events that that basically ties in um visually uh to the broader world of science that the work that's being done upstairs is really taking part in. Part of the Skylit Labs requirements and one of the things that you really need to be able to do to sort of play in this playing field with these tenants is provide food and beverage amenity right on site. And so we've got Again, it's a pretty tight space, but I think we've got a nice little urban coffee area that you can access either from Mystic Ave independently and queue up and get a baked good and a cup of coffee and head back out again or continue on into the lobby, or you can queue in from the lobby and access that. The idea is that that would be available independent of an operator. So I think those are the main points for the ground level. We've got some illustrations on the left of the types of parking systems that we've been researching. Upstairs, we're showing one of the eight typical lab floors. It's an eight-story building. So these, again, will be lab benches that are available a bench at a time or in groups of as many as you want. The lab room here can be subdivided if we have tenants that will commit. Um, to his particular size space and need it for a length of time, or they can be left as flexible, um, you know, and, and, and, uh, you know, combinable and in a bench or two at a time, each of these, these labs. benches require a support room. There's a couple of different types of support that this work needs. One is material and chemical storage. So that material comes up the service elevator. You remember that from the ground floor levels, shows up here in the upper floors. And we can go right into chemical storage and the other types of material storage. And then that material then is dispersed into lab support as necessary as it's going to get used. Lab support includes equipment that is more expensive than a company in its early stages is likely to be able to buy or should be buying with their early funding, but it's still necessary for the science that they'll do. Different types of microscopy, you can name the types of equipment that we have.
[Doug Medvets]: It's going to be very general early stage science equipment. You're going to have tissue A lot of data analysis instrumentation. Refrigeration. Yeah, absolutely. Things like that that are better off shared amongst a couple of different labs, as opposed to buying each one yourself, as Matt mentioned. None of those things are cheap. And so we are understanding from market research that that's what early stage labs are looking for. So that's generally what lab support is going to be.
[Matthew Juros]: so adjacent immediately to each of the lab pods. And then the other type of activity that goes hand-in-hand with lab bench work is data analysis and basically desk work. And we actually got the cubicles rotated here. They should be 90 degrees, so the way they are. But so we're locating all of our office function, quote-unquote, along the exterior perimeter where we've I've got windows and so forth and great views looking. This is looking south. Yeah, and as we sort of continue along the exterior perimeter at the corner, we'll look at this up within the exterior views. We're envisioning a sort of a dynamic glass faceted element at the corner that will go from the ground plane up to the to the edge that meets the sky. And so behind that, we'll have sort of informal workspace. We're showing cafes, tables there. There's a conference room, a kitchen area, phone rooms for people who can have private conversations and so forth, and then toilet rooms and so forth. We've also got mothering rooms and wellness rooms. from the laboratories. So that's sort of a rundown of the function of the building as we're envisioning it. We want to take a, you know, so we understand that this that we've seen in the past. So the Mystic, as it sits today, is a pretty low slung turnpike commercial corridor. But we also sort of have seen, you know, to understand the intention of the city in terms of master planning and so forth for this to be an area that is transitioning. And it's going to be more commercial industry and potentially lab and this type of use focused. And so, we kind of feel like today this building is, that doesn't have a lot of neighbors that look like it or do what it does. But in time, we believe that's going to change. Regardless of neighbors that are this height and this use, it does have an impact on sun and shadow and so forth. And so we've been working in using SketchUp software for our early massing analysis. And that allows us to do, a cursory review of sun angles and so forth, and we geolocated the site to exactly where it is, and we've given it the proper height and so forth. And so at the spring equinox, all of these four images are taken at noon because the helical event that's being recorded at solstice or equinox doesn't always take place during daylight hours. So we picked noon as a place to illustrate the difference at the different times of year. So in the spring, around midday the sun is generally coming from the south, and sort of tending towards the west just a little bit, and we get a shadow that extends just across mystic app. Summer solstice on June 21st casts nearly no shadow at all. As we continue through the summer and get to the fall equinox, we get another shadow that comes right back almost to where the spring equinox is. It's just a little bit beyond that. Summer solstice casts a long shadow as everything does at that time of year, and the shadow goes directly across. Um uh mystic have uh really given the the location of the building and the um the sun angles that we we expect there's no time when we're going to be casting a winter shadow into the neighborhoods beyond into the residential areas um which I think would be a different type of concern I mean obviously we don't want to cast a lot of shade on on um on neighbors who don't welcome it but I I uh um You know, you kind of, you imagine a building like this and you lay up the specifics of it kind of hold your breath until you to the sun study and the shadow study appears and I was honestly gratified by the modesty of the impact of. shadows in this cursory study. So we took a look at some of the generative material that we've been keying on. This is a view of the exterior of the building as we're hovering above Mystic Ave looking about due north. And so what we see is that the elevation along Harvard Street, it's got the access for vehicles, it's got the exit that we described from the stair number one on Harvard Street there, and that's as far as we can get from the intersection. The, door to the rolling overhead door that closes off the parking and delivery area from the street is set into the building about the length of a car. So at the times of day when cars are queuing and if people are going to be driving, entering and exiting the building during those times of day, when we've got a line of cars at this intersection, will be able to have a car pause inside the building outside of the driveline and get oriented and find a way into traffic or be able to zip in and get out of traffic as we're waiting for the door to open and take the car out of the traffic frame, which is undeniably pretty saturated in that intersection there. Other features that we see from this view is the opaque wall along Harvard Street. We're imagining some sort of graphic mural and the content is something that we're, you know, I've done this a number of different times and you sort of weigh into what the actual content is. But one of the ways we want to do that is assign a graphic job for the mural to do. And what we want is for the Harvard Street, which is sort of an artery into the residential neighborhoods and into the university campus beyond to have a more pedestrian scale and have a motif that's more inviting than not. And there's something about buildings that have artistic images on the side that it's, It's more and more common now, but there's a unique quality to that that I find exciting. And so that's the idea of how we would handle that facade. And what we would do is then we would take that graphic mural, a continuous mural, that wall folds into the lobby of the building and the mural continues. So as we drive along Mystic Ave, and I'm gonna say, okay, you see the blue and white of the mural beyond through the windows of that elevation. Um so you see that it's not actually the elevation of the building. Um you know, on on the commercial turnpike, but you see that that it's in the area beyond that, and, um, you know, there's sort of a nice mix of that that pedestrian scale residential neighborhood as it sort of folds into the. the commercial higher speed, higher traffic access on Mystic Ave. Other features that I want to talk about in these exterior views, the main expression of the exterior facade are windows and translucent and vertical opaque windows. I compiled last year for lack of a better word lined up in an array. where the cursor is here, and again, on the other side, on Harvard Street. Between them is a sort of a dynamic figured glass form. And when you have a site that's on a corner, the question is, what are you doing with the corner? You can't ignore the corner. You either downplay it, or you play it up, or you take advantage of it, or you make it do some work. really this view of the building getting off the highway and from the highway is sort of a signature view. And so what we want to be able to do, because we've got some z-axis here, and we've also got the edge of a building that appears against the sky. And so what I want to be able to do is give the building a signature. We can't make the whole building signature like the Berlin Cube, because we just that budget is a unicorn, and this is not our unicorn. So we're balancing a sort of a more modest, repetitive type of facade on the other four sides with a very dynamic and expressive idea about how we would do glazing at the corner. In this iteration, the glazing basically goes from that top edge of the building all the way down to the street surface at the corner, and we poke a, call it a wicket, right through the lower level glass panels, and that's our entryway. And so that's sort of the main signature feature. We should also point out that the elements The area above that are louvered panels, and that's all mechanical mezzanine. Buildings in which we do science, I like to think of them as basically they're giant machines that suck air in and blow air out. The mechanical equipment that's on the rooftop of these things is pretty extensive. We usually plan on a 22 to 24 foot high mechanical mezzanine. And so what I've done is I wanted to, you know, at this number of stories and this proportion, the building, although taller than other buildings around it currently, felt a little stumpy. And I wanted to try to accentuate the proportion and create sort of a more elegant proportion. And so I went ahead and grabbed that mechanical mezzanine. Sometimes it's set back from the front face of the building. Sometimes people try to hide it. And I said, let's take that and move it right to the edge of the facade of the building, and in essence, incorporate it into the facade of the building and allow that to be our crown. And I really feel like that gives us a nice sort of counterpoint to the composition on the ground plan. And it gives us an elegant proportion that I think really serves the building. While it doesn't have company at this height, it should have a presence that is dignified and deliberate. And so that really, I think is, and the other thing is that, We don't want to be, you know, it's such a tight site that we don't have a lot of room to push and pull the skin of the building in and out. So it needs to be a relatively taut skin. So, you know, expressing the building using the assets that it has, the shape of the lot, and finding a way to create an elegantly proportioned building in a very simple way was really what our approach is here. Here we are on Mystic Ave looking back towards the skyline of Boston, which would be beyond the horizon there, and we see see, this is the north-facing wall. I'm going to go back to the floor plan at the ground plane and describe what those walls, how those walls sort of worked out the way they do. So, that north wall is along where my cursor is here, and it is within two feet of the lot line of the adjoining neighbor. The lot line perpendicular to that, the wall along that lot line is a zero lot line wall. So, by building code, walls that are that close to the lot line need to either be fire rated or have a fire rated glass if you want to penetrate them you know be solid and fire rated or fire ready glass which is um about as expensive as as glazing with diamonds it's not something you that's feasible for for many projects so um what we did was we went ahead and understood that you know Those are likely going to need to be opaque walls because of the fire rating requirements. So we went ahead and located utilities on the interior against that north wall, especially on sort of leading along into the west-facing wall. And so that sort of sets us up, and you can see in this diagram the proximity to the neighboring lots and buildings. So that sets up a, you know, it's a four-sided building. And, you know, we sort of focus on the sides that you see out of first, but really we need to understand that the other two sides have a relationship to the balance of the building that, you know, it's basically the same approach to facade, the same vertical rhythm of opaque pie and on the streetscape, the interstitial space between the pilasters is translucent. And on our zero lot line and two foot lot line walls, which by the way, face the residential neighborhood in one of the directions, we're imagining a number of different types of treatments. And so, So, on the west facing wall, we could incorporate building cladding photovoltaic panels. So one thought, there's a certain aesthetic that those have that it's got an interesting sort of depth to it and light plays on it in an interesting way, but it would also be doing a job and sort of an intention about the building and what's being done here. Another approach is to simply do recessed lights along the edges of the opaque pilasters. And so, you know, around the front side of the building, when light gets low on the outside, during those times of the year when it's still occupied and sunlight gets dark outside, the glass is going to glow and you'll see insides. And so what we would propose at those times of day in the evening is that we have recessed lights along the opaque pilasters. And let's see, did I have... That showed that up. That's not in this version of the presentation. Oh, here it is. Yeah, so here's the detail concept for the streetscape facades, where we've got a sculpted opaque pilaster that's rhythmic. The shape of this is something that we really feel like we want to be working with and thinking about. It could be any number of different shapes, and we intend to play with a number of of different shapes if we go forward with this, to figure out how we can really get that facades to be dynamic and to be interesting. And then as we move around to the two foot lot line and the zero lot line, that same profile of the pilaster exists, but it would be interspersed by an opaque panel, which would have either photovoltaic cladding or a different type of flat panel cladding, and recessed at the edges of those with the profile that we're imagining here, we would be able to hide from anyone's eye a light source that's continuous and linear and goes the length of the building, top to bottom, and shines on the building these vertical panels between the thinner pilasters and gives a glowing element to the building that really, you know, I think, I mean, in some ways, this could be a more special view of the building than the other side. But I think when taken you know, as a three-dimensional building, as you drive past it or drive around it, and you see these different types of expressions, you know, it really, what we're trying to do with that element of the building's expression is have it be as dynamic and as expressive as the glass front and as the sculpted panels that are opaque and really have the building sort of move and be alive in that way. So that's where we've gotten to. That's part of how we've gotten to so far. This is very much a work in progress. We're very excited about this. It's, again, a site with lots of challenges, but I think some great opportunities as well. And I don't want to hear my voice anymore. I want to hear your thoughts and questions.
[David Blumberg]: Thanks for the presentation, man. Let me ask if there are board members who'd like to ask questions, offer suggestions, anything for the team. I don't know that I can see everyone on the screen. Gonna see if anyone has a hand up or...
[Alicia Hunt]: David, maybe we could stop sharing so we could talk. And then we can put images back up if necessary.
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: That sounds good. Thank you. I don't think we are sharing. Stop sharing the red. Go find the red. There it is. It's different on every platform.
[David Blumberg]: Peter, I see your hand up. Welcome and please go right ahead.
[Peter Calves]: All right, I'd like to thank the team for their presentation, and I had a couple things that I noticed. I mean, as you said, this is a work in progress, so just if these are things that have yet to be addressed, they're just things I wanted to bring up. I noticed that you talked about getting deliveries in through that garage entrance on Harvard Street, and I wanted to make sure that either you were looking or plan to look at turning radii for delivery vehicles going into that driveway. Because I know that that's something when you when you're looking at that primarily as a parking area for personal vehicles you're not going to be thinking necessarily about delivery vehicles and I want just wanted to make sure that that's something you're looking at. And I also wanted to Just looking at the facade, particularly the glazing along the approach on Mystic Valley Parkway, is there any thought to not wanting to blind people when the sun is reflecting off the facade? I don't want people crashing into the building because they get blinded by the sun. I think it's a cool design, but that is a factor considering you have people coming up the highway there.
[Matthew Juros]: solar flare and solar glare is a real issue and bring up a good one. Don't want to answer that right now. I think it's something we need to think about and look at the angles of the sun that are going to be likely during drive time. There's a number of different approaches that we can take to mitigating that if we need to. Surface of the glass, angles of the glass, but I think that's an excellent... Isn't there a color to the glass to absorb the... That's another approach to... mitigating that. Yeah. Um, thank you for that, Peter. Um, and, and just take a quick note here, um, to studies there and then, um, quickly, um, Papa, uh, should I go ahead and illustrate, um, our, our turning radiuses or, or just, I can take that on board.
[Peter Calves]: You can just describe that. That's fine.
[Matthew Juros]: Yeah. So we, so what we did was, you know, there's, there's sort of a minimal, um, in and out, um, set of lanes to get in and out of that part of the building and to access the loading and waste socket as well. And we've given extra width to the space that you turn into to get into the parking system. And then that's also the space that you back out of and sort of do the maneuvering. I took a look at similar types of parking setups with automated parking systems and they actually have a very minimal. turning radiuses and access. And what I did was instead of taking that as, you know, that's not an empirical way to sort of get at this. So what I did was I looked at the city's requirements for two-direction access in parking garages and parking lots and used that as my width, 24 feet. And so that's what we've got burned in there. It feels wide, it feels like we can get everything done that we need to, and I kind of feel like that there's a chance we may be able to neck that down after we get tighter into the design and start working with regulatory officials. It's basically as if it were a self-served parking area where you're driving in two different directions up and down the aisles of a parking lot.
[Peter Calves]: That's fine. I was more concerned about delivery and dumpster access. Would there be space for the trucks to turn around?
[SPEAKER_03]: No. They back in and back out.
[Peter Calves]: Okay. And they would do that from the travel lanes on Harvard Street?
[Matthew Juros]: Harvard Street, yeah. And we would need to restrict the times of delivery and pickup.
[Peter Calves]: Yes, that's what I was gonna say. If you're gonna do that, there should be hour restrictions. You don't wanna have a truck trying to back into the driveway at 5 p.m.
[Doug Medvets]: I think the other thing to, it's a great question and we've definitely discussed it and restricting hours is something we definitely will do. The other thing that I just wanted to point out, these are gonna be not huge sort of 18 wheeler trucks coming in there. They are gonna be sort of your smaller box trucks because this is a smaller building and smaller labs. But regardless, they're gonna be bigger than your average pickup truck or any normal car that's on Harvard. So that, yeah, when they back in, they're gonna take up both lanes. So yes, that's something we definitely have thought about.
[Matthew Juros]: And I also want to say that it is geometrically possible for a panel van to do a K-turn, given the space that we have with the automobile parking area. But I'm not entirely confident that by the time we get all of the overhead equipment in and the mezzanine and so forth, that that will remain. So I kind of feel like I don't want to hang my hat on that.
[Unidentified]: Does that answer your question?
[David Blumberg]: Yes, thank you. Yeah. OK, I see Ari's hand is up. Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you for the presentation. Very interesting concept and proposal. I also had a first reaction about sun reflections and just wanted to flag not just the glare to drivers, but also the possibility of highly localized high temperatures. if it gets into a sunbeam for you to research. I also was curious what research you've done on local noise effects with the equipment and HVAC systems, as well as any potential smells or other local pollutants. And my third question was about the mechanical parking, which may in many ways be a question more for the board, which is, are there any similar structures in Medford and about guidelines and safety? I don't have necessarily a question, just curiosity.
[David Blumberg]: I'm not sure we have an example of that in Medford, but I was also going to ask the proponent team if they could let us know if there's some examples, although I was thinking we'd have to go to Boston, New York or Philadelphia to find some.
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: Well, and you raise a good point. So we've been meeting with a number of resources and consultants, and we discovered that Post Office Square in Boston has a 200 plus automated system. Not quite the same form that we have, but apparently the model of practice is, believe it or not, to use your phone. to help park your car, the attendants are going away. So we are gonna work with a number of specialists to evaluate that and probably go park our cars there and see how we do. But that is the next generation. And I would estimate that there are, you know, two to 300 spaces in Boston today. I was actually in a WeWork building a month ago on Boylston Street and had to give up my car to an attendant who went to park it in a multi-level space. which I'm glad I didn't see. But to your point, this is the next evolution of parking that we're going to be researching very carefully.
[Matthew Juros]: I think Ari brings up a good point about mechanical noise and scent and sort of things of that nature about basically exhaust air and how that's handled, what implications that has for a building of this sort.
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, this is ahead of us, but we would be performing a form of dispersion study for the building. a third party testing that simulates dispersion based on air flows. And so we would, that would be a document that we'd make available. It's a vertical version of a parking study, right? Or a traffic study.
[Matthew Juros]: Yeah. And we call it a wind wake analysis. Right. And so it's in a required part of the design of a building like this. I'm really, Honestly, this is a BL2 facility. The type of science that's done in a facility like this does not use a lot of quantity of hazardous chemicals or really any hazardous chemicals. But technically, we do have to have procedures in place and equipment in place to disperse the chemicals we're allowed to store here. And so, you know, basically what we do is we do a model where we plug in the chemicals and the fumes that might be exhausted at the top of the building, the concentrations that would be seen at their maximum. And then given localized weather conditions, direction of wind and so forth, the analysis tests different velocities of exhaust fans sending the exhaust vertical into the air and is able to map the direction and dispersion of the the chemicals in the air. The noise, you know, I don't have data on the noise of equipment like this, except, do you?
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, there's some basic level data that is readily available on individual pieces of equipment. Right. Both at, you know, full capacity and reduced capacity. Those are data sheets that we can also have evaluated by a third party to say, you know, these are the equipments, these are the residences. and have that evaluated.
[Matthew Juros]: Yeah, and we can get you a real answer for that. I'll say this, that buildings like this often coexist in mixed-use environments, including residential environments. That in itself doesn't mean that there's not a noise issue that people have, but let us get back to you on that.
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: And there's also a level of detail that we certainly pay attention to that is what I would call above spec. So, you know, much like your home, if you have an air conditioner, or you can imagine a window air conditioner, you just drop it in the window, it's gonna shake. But if you put it on your outside on a rubber pad, it's not gonna shake in the same manner, right? So I'm talking about the condenser. And those types of mitigation points are good, better, best in every commercial building. and we aim for the better, best.
[Matthew Juros]: Yeah. And a lot of what the, this type of equipment does is they're basically fans, you know, big fans, different speed fans, um, going different directions. Um, and turning motors and fan blades make vibration and vibration is anathema to good science data. Um, so there's, uh, I mean, we have acoustic assault consultants, um, that we, we will use for this building and others like it that basically look at how to make sure that the equipment is dampened, um, for the science, but that also has an acoustic effect for the ambient world around it. Um, and I'll just sort of do a core dump on, on, on, on the idea, but, but, um, Um, that's not to say that we have data about what that sounds like on the street, but let's, let's pursue that. Yeah. Share that information as much as we have it. I mean, the stuff has to be quiet enough so that it doesn't jiggle the beaker on the lab bench. Um, and if, if that's the case, it's just not that likely that you're going to hear
[David Blumberg]: Are there other questions, other comments to share?
[Jenny Graham]: May I go? It's Christy.
[David Blumberg]: Yeah, absolutely. I was just making sure Ari was all set. I'm sorry. Thumbs up. Thank you, Christy.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you for your presentation. I have a few questions, so just bear with me. So this is a speculative lab building. Is that accurate? Yeah. And how are you feeling? I guess, what is the timing? What is your target timing for developing this project? When would it come online?
[Matthew Juros]: Well, the similar timeframe to what we've been working for, we're working with the other one. Approximately 12 months of planning. We could probably cut that down a little bit. Probably not a 26-month construction period.
[Doug Medvets]: Yeah, I would say, Christy, I would say Again, depending on how long it takes us to get through zoning, right, there's always that sort of part of it that nobody can ever totally predict. Probably two years from, I would say, from full approvals from the city by going through construction drawings and things like that. I don't think the construction is gonna take nearly as long as Everett Avenue will in Chelsea. This is a much smaller building. So I would say from today, you know, maybe three years from today, we could be completely open. And if you're, I'll let you continue on with your question. I don't want to guide the conversation.
[Jenny Graham]: No, no, I'm just trying to get to, you know, feasibility, right? We're in a very volatile capital market. We've seen a lot of headlines about investment and money available for our lab buildings. And so I mean my question is sort of centered around that in terms of timing and where you feel the feasibility is really around that.
[Doug Medvets]: Yeah, I thought that's where you're going. So we are actively in the market. I think we mentioned this last time, but we used to be, Kadeesh and I used to be bench scientists. And so we have a lot of connections to the early stage companies. I think that's the reason we're focusing on early stage companies. We think they can withstand what's going on. And then they're also looking to increase their runway because of everything that's going on. So we all, you want to explain that what that means runway oh yeah how so when they raise their capital um how long that capital is going to last until they have to raise another round of capital right and so we're we're learning that companies want smaller spaces right they don't want to rent 10,000 square feet when they only need 5,000 so that their money can last longer. So those types of companies, and again, we know a fair number of them, are not necessarily having issues raising capital. What they're running into now is valuations decreasing and milestone changes. So a lot of these investments are in tranches. And so companies have to meet certain milestones before they get the next tranche. And so what we're seeing is capital sources just being a little more diligent and asking for a little bit more. And I think that's actually healthy for the industry. I think for a time there, valuations were getting a little crazy and corrections are always okay. We don't believe that the current market's gonna stay this way for the next three years. We think by the time these buildings come back on, from a company perspective, we'll be fine. Our partner Skylit Labs already has companies interested in coming on board. So we're not too concerned about that. I think the real concern is, you've also talked about construction financing. I think that's probably a little more of something that we're attacking because it's a little more right now as opposed to the companies who are gonna be coming in in two to three years from now. So we already have a couple of construction financing sources that are, I'm not going to say independent of the capital markets, but they're not traditional banks. Khadijah and I, from the beginning of this, have looked at it differently. And we're not, we weren't planning on using traditional bank financing anyway. We're going more private financing. And those investors are gonna be longer term investors. They're gonna be in this project with us for the long haul. So they're not as skittish, right? They're still gonna take advantage of the volatility and charge us more in terms of interest and call them riskier loans, right? But we have a pretty good capital commitment to, as you're aware of the Chelsea project, that's pretty much funded already. And We've actually been talking to Jumbo Capital. They're a Tufts-based, or they came out of Tufts. They do a lot of development in Medford. They really are wanting to partner with us on this project because of the location and the reason why, just the focus of the project. And so they haven't been as concerned about the markets again because these aren't coming online today, right? And so if they were coming online today, we might have to be a little more aggressive in our rents or something like that. But that's sort of the other thing that we really like is a market like Medford, we're not gonna be trying to compete with Cambridge from a price per square foot perspective. We're actually looking at it as a place for these smaller companies to come to because it's gonna be cheaper. And we think that's gonna hedge a lot of the issues that you're seeing right now.
[Matthew Juros]: put another finer point on that. Not too many months ago, the market was so sizzly hot that companies of all sizes really had to settle for the space that was available. And it was often more square footage than they needed. It was often at longer lease terms. uh than than they they wanted and you know a lot of times they had unused space a lot of times they would outgrow their space um before the lease was over by a lot and just have to to write that check um and that was the way the market was was was working and and um uh you know and and so that that was great but as the market has tightened up um What I was at a seminar not too long ago, and one of the presenters had this great turn of a phrase that I keep using again and again, companies that are moving at all now are cleaving to smart. They're looking for smart spaces. They're looking for smart lease rates. They're looking for spaces that suit them in the science that they're doing. And one of the things that Khadijah and Doug and I and now Matt have been talking about since we started working together is, how to tune the spaces to what scientists need, not to what the commercial real estate market offers and that's our competition and we want to beat our competition. We're going to go straight to scientists smart. That's been our concept since before the market was turbulent. That's another piece of our confidence.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. Thank you. I'm sure you can appreciate my concerns of where the markets are and untested, product delivered by Verdon. So just understanding, I think, when you think about all the things that are going on in terms of planning and zoning and the time our boards spend, this is a very significant corridor and really for the future growth and economic development of Medford. So it's very important looking at a project like this and what it could mean for the future of that corridor. Um, so anyway, I just kind of leave those statements there. Uh, what I'm interested in is definitely, um, making sure that enough due diligence is being done on the environmental impacts. I think a few of those comments were brought up. I would also add a wind analysis, um, on the shadow. Uh, the standard is usually nine noon and three, um, and six, then you would add six o'clock in the summertime. Um, So I would just be interested in seeing that. And the solar glare is a very good point. I think understanding also how you're balancing this new stretch code and what that means for the overall energy performance of your building, and then sort of stretch that out to what are your overall sustainability measures and goals for this project. And Let's see, I would like to see some more of the the pedestrian level view that the images that you shared tonight were very helpful. So I got a better sense, but maybe from like that five foot perspective and really understanding how you're treating the edges and the sidewalk and how lighting would be treated at that at that pedestrian level.
[Unidentified]: Thank you for that.
[Jenny Graham]: That's kind of all I get right now.
[Doug Medvets]: Okay, that's actually great. That's really helpful. I always appreciate sort of one asking about what our thoughts are on where this building's gonna be because these buildings don't get built in three weeks, right? So it is a commitment. And we understand the commitment from the city too. We understand that there's a time commitment, there's community meeting commitments and things like that. So we always appreciate any feedback so that we can present these buildings the best way possible. And again, we're coming at it from the scientist's perspective. but we also understand that there's a city perspective to this as well, and this has to make sense from the city, because we do see, as Matt mentioned early in the presentation, we do see this as a growth corridor. So I definitely understand where you're coming from from there. And this, for us, This isn't a one and done building in Medford. We think Medford is actually a great market for biotech for a variety of reasons. It's very accessible. The cost that we will be able to charge these companies makes sense for what they're looking for. And so we definitely don't want anybody on this call to think that we're just popping this building in and this is the only thing that we want to do. This is more of a proof of concept for us um and and our our tenant partner skylar which is which is going to run an incubator they love the location so um just sort of wanted to put that out there as well thanks uh doug can we alicia you have your hand up maybe was on a roll with the board members but go ahead if you i want to ask a question of the board to respond to okay
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure. When we looked at this in the office, some of the things that we, what I would really like to hear the board reflect on particularly are the setbacks and the height. And I understand everybody's been asking questions of the applicant, but I'd really like to hear what the board thinks about those, because I would like to get some second opinions beyond my own.
[Jenny Graham]: Glad that you brought that up. Well, my last question was going to be around what the height of the building and that it's on a zero lot line, which really is not the best planning principle. And what does that mean for zoning variances?
[Matthew Juros]: We have an absolute height. We do. Do you want us to respond to that or do you want to pick up Alicia's strand or how do you?
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: Well, the question was to the board, so we didn't want to take your time.
[David Blumberg]: Are there other board members, I guess, before we ask Doug and Matt and others to respond? Are there other comments from board members to Alicia's question or invitation to comment?
[v8aFu2OAn8o_SPEAKER_18]: I have a comment. I can go ahead and jump in.
[David Blumberg]: Thank you.
[v8aFu2OAn8o_SPEAKER_18]: I was actually considering the, you know, the initial proposed height. It does say the overall height of the structure is, you know, over 150 feet tall. But considering, you know, as I was looking at the site and the adjacency to the highway, I felt like, you know, it does provide some buffering towards the, you know, the highway, 93 kind of noise and traffic pollution. And, you know, considering that it's closer towards the Mystic Ave side, I did feel like, you know, there's an opportunity to kind of step or transition to building massing to meet the neighborhood scale further down Harvard Street, if you will.
[Unidentified]: So that was just my two cents, Alicia.
[Peter Calves]: I also, looking at the height and looking at the corridor as well, I think PB, Harmon Zuckerman. He or Her. it might be less out of place with what this corridor is looking to be, just in what I'm understanding. And I also do think the zero lot line is a concern for public realm, for sidewalk and streetscape type of things. And that's something that will have to be done conscientiously through the development process, but I think that is something that can be done.
[Doug Medvets]: or are you more concerned about the zero lot line on the sidewalk or the abutting properties? Because obviously we have two different things going on here on a corner lot, right? So I guess a little clarification.
[Peter Calves]: I was thinking more I was thinking more about the sidewalk space.
[Doug Medvets]: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because you're gonna have obviously the pedestrian experience there more. Okay.
[Jenny Graham]: I agree with that too. I also think when you get back to the wind, like it would be the shape of the building might help you there, but it will be important to sort of look at the wind impacts at the pedestrian level. I think, and I would say to Peter's point about, and George's point about the height, I'm not like in any way offended by the height because I'm thinking about the future of the corridor, but it's just making sure that we understand what is asked for zoning variances, because now this trigger a precedent and just being very strategic and comprehensive how we look about, look at the future of this corridor. and the environmental impacts, right? So it's really just being very informed and being clear about what these things are.
[Matthew Juros]: you know, one of the things we're doing is watching what other developers are proposing in this corridor and across Mystic Ave, and as we sort of gauge our asks, we're looking at what the other asks are as well, and sort of imagining that we're, all of us together, other developers and us, are going to find sort of the Goldilocks, you know, height, um, for one thing. Um, you know, I think it's an open question, because clearly, as zoning stands, um, you know, with the new ordinance not fully in place yet, this requires some
[David Blumberg]: For my part, I would concur with what you're saying. I think if I were to look at this in another format other than an informal discussion, I'd want to see how it matches up with other proposed developments, other existing developments, just to get a sense of the proportion, what the precedents are in the area.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely. We're paying very close attention to that at all.
[David Blumberg]: Other, George, did you have some other comments? You had the floor there for a moment.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[David Blumberg]: Alicia, I don't want to cut you short. Was that your item for us?
[Alicia Hunt]: I really like this is about the board expressing their thoughts on it. And I just, it's very important. It's when I've discussed this project with other people and looked at it here, that's where people focus in on. And I just wanna make sure that I'm hearing from the board particularly about the height because it is, it would be perhaps the tallest building in Medford. So I just wanted to have that awareness, and how does that play in.
[Jenny Graham]: Well, what does the city think about the future of heights along that quarter, because there is like that balance of, okay, it makes it makes sense if you put some taller buildings along the quarter and you can make that argument that it protects the residential behind it but The counter argument is what are the impacts of that building from an environmental perspective, both wind, shadow, and all those other things. So it's kind of hard. I know the comprehensive plan is like talked about, you know, so bigger concepts, but there hasn't been, I think a more tangible plan of that quarter.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, we haven't done that. We are looking at combined properties, which is gonna be Catty Corner to here, is looking at about 120 feet, which is about this height, about 100 feet. I think, is that right, Amanda? Do you remember? We haven't gotten it in yet officially, but on that order of, but it was across three buildings and large and up against the highway. And the thought of, the what height against the highway, and then what height against the neighborhood, and that this is against the neighborhood. And when asked about the zoning, I just throw that away right now because it's two stories. It's not right. Like every one of us on this call agrees that that is not the appropriate height for what should be there. But then you start to say, but what is? And I don't know, it's standing all by itself. Yeah, it's the future, it's the precedent. It looks like a building in downtown Boston. And those were some of the precedent issues, images that, I mean, I had not seen those precedent images before tonight. So I've just said, so I kind of wanted to get the feel of whether this was too high on the neighborhood side. I do really appreciated the little bit of shadow studies we saw because it does show that the shadows would not fall on the neighborhood. If it would, that would have been kind of a showstopper for me, but we already knew what its orientation was.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, you still should check the other times, but I think that's the whole point is like the, if it's on the neighborhood side, Like there almost needs to be some modeling by the city if you mask that, right? And you said all these buildings consistently would be around that height on that side. What would that mean?
[Alicia Hunt]: And I'm having a hard time when I picture that I see buildings of this height across the street. I'm having trouble seeing like big buildings this height on that side of the street. But I'm not trying to unilaterally here dictate the planning of the city. And we haven't had a chance to do the study on this area yet.
[David Blumberg]: Yeah, unfortunately it seems like we're on the road towards sort of an ad hoc development of the, of the area and that's, I think, unfortunate if we had more. Maybe you guys have plans in the works, but if there's a way to have more of a city wide view on this thing it would be great. invite more height. I mean, anything that would be wider in its scope or have the political backing to say that this is a reflection of the community's interests would be great because if it's just up to us, we only represent so many folks in so many aspects of the community. We don't represent everyone.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we do have a we have a grant right now that we're getting ready to put out to bid for consultant to look at the Wellington area, because that's where we really saw the target for the the biotech. And that's where we've been hearing from other biotech companies. I will tell you that the city council president and I are working on the scope to hire a planner and a lawyer to work on the zoning. with the idea that somebody would be hired jointly by the council and by our office to do this. We just keep getting sidetracked by everything else getting thrown our way. So hopefully that would happen soon, but we're working on hiring the consultant, not partway through the study, so.
[David Blumberg]: The only other thing I can think of is that when this the there was a proposal for this quarter, a number of years ago, and I wonder what the height that was recommended at that time or was proposed at that time was. And I know that there were efforts that went toward kind of a master rezoning of the quarter that didn't come to fruition but. there might've been some good thinking that went into that that would be worth dusting off to remind ourselves where we were thinking of going at least at one time.
[Alicia Hunt]: I can tell that look on Amanda's face. I know that that study is on our server. It looks like she's looking for it, but I also started to poke. Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: What are the comprehensive plan? Like what was the details? Like how, how far did it get in details of, how the Mystic Ave corridor should look. I know they didn't write the zoning, but our zoning should be implementing our comp plan. And what did the comp plan say? Because that came after the Mystic Ave study.
[Unidentified]: I have to look.
[Alicia Hunt]: I want a hard copy on my desk, or I'd have the answer already, but we haven't printed them yet.
[Danielle Evans]: Because right now, one thing that's strange about our zoning ordinance is we don't have height limits for the district as a whole. We have height limits by the youth. So right now, you could build a small hotel at four stories in this zone, but you can only build a two-story other permitted structure. So no residential and I guess this lab building. It's our zoning is ancient and doesn't make any sense. But it seems like four stories would be the minimum that the zone should go, considering we already, certain uses can be four stories already, just not this use without a variance or other permitting paths.
[David Blumberg]: All right, well, maybe we'll have some more information discussion on that topic. We're all quite interested in it. Let me make sure to specifically invite Emily. Emily, do you have some feedback for the team? Or- Hi, David. Yep.
[Emily Hedeman]: Sorry, I'm a little under the weather tonight.
[David Blumberg]: No problem, no problem, no pressure.
[Emily Hedeman]: But I really appreciate the thorough presentation. As an architecture major and undergrad, I always love a good precedent study. I echo other board members' comments. I'd love to see this presented more in context, especially from a pedestrian point of view. you know, what is the actual street users or, you know, our user or, you know, blue bike users experience with the building. I think that would be really interesting. And, you know, help us kind of further envision the future of this corridor, which, you know, differs from other corridors in that, you know, there's a lot of commercial potential here. So it's definitely an exciting project.
[David Blumberg]: Thank you, Emily. And last but certainly never least, Vice Chair, Jackie Bertetto.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Chair. I actually, I've been listening to all the comments. I got a little excited with this because it can definitely have the potential to be transformative for that area and for Medford in particular. But then I started to hear all the environmental implications and things like that, and the staggled studies and getting, starting to, You know, looking at the serious impacts and then Alicia hit us with that. Well, does it, what do you think about the height and so I guess we really need to know how it interacts and Emily said it well, pretty much we need to know how it interacts at the ground level. whether we're looking for ground level views from the buildings that are adjacent to it or the user experience from the ground resident and how it relates to like residential areas or something like that and how like cars, bikes and pedestrians would interact with the area. But overall, it's an exciting project. I thank the proponent for the actual presentation and I hope that we're able to revisit this again. Because all I can think of right now is like a, you know, a what if, and I don't know what if without all the components together, but it can definitely prove with well thought out planning, it could definitely prove to be an asset, a transforming asset to that area. And that's all I have.
[David Blumberg]: Thank you, Jackie. I just had a couple of comments to share or questions. The mechanical mezzanine, that's all concealed at this point in your plans, right? Correct. OK, thank you. I heard speculative, I heard Skylit Labs. Can you just, is Skylit Labs working sort of with you and then?
[Doug Medvets]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry if it wasn't clear. Skylit Labs is a partner. They're actually a committed tenant to the building already. They are colleagues of ours from our science days who have been running an incubator sort of piecemeal over the last few years, and they've decided to centralize it. And so we've been working with them over the last six months, getting a lot of feedback from them on sort of how these buildings should be built and how the lab floor should be. So it's spec lab, but it's very detailed and very well understood. We're not just sort of throwing things together. We're really thinking about how it's going to work for the scientists. So that's where that all comes from.
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: Can I also, I mean sort of a question, but I think it's a leading question. My understanding as we're planning the building is you'll have one tenant. in this case. Skylight is, yeah. So just to clarify that there's a one, it's a one tenant building. What Skylight does was sublet at small scale. So in a sense, and for this specific building, it's not speculative.
[Matthew Juros]: That's a clarification I wanted to make. Yeah, that's right. Obviously, we don't have the lease written with Skylit. Even if the market is something completely different than any of us thought, there's speculation there.
[aCJcADLEqaY_SPEAKER_00]: But Vernon's not going to be signing seven to 20 leases. They'll be signing one lease and let Skylit do the interaction. Does that clarify some of the context?
[David Blumberg]: We got it. That works. I appreciate the, the improvements with the mural and trying to do something nice there in the corner, and I think the west facing and north facing walls, although you know your, your renderings are. I don't think this is the wrong way, but rough at this point, right?
[Unidentified]: You're not giving us kind of- Yeah, there's actually, yes.
[David Blumberg]: Yeah, okay.
[Unidentified]: I don't know what it is.
[David Blumberg]: But it's certainly an improvement over the blank wall. And so that's, thank you for continuing to think along those lines and looking to improve those images. I think that's it. My other items have already been addressed by other board members, so.
[Matthew Juros]: Thank you. Thank you so much, all of you, for your time. This is really valuable to get your responses this way. I know it takes a lot of time, but don't take it lightly. We appreciate it.
[David Blumberg]: Okay, great. Well, I think we appreciate having you here, and thanks for informal session number two.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you.
[David Blumberg]: Thank you very much. All right.
[Unidentified]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[David Blumberg]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. Great, thanks. I understand that you'd like to present on storefront design guidelines for us. We are all ears.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great. Thank you for having me. I won't take up too much of your time. I know you've already been going for an hour and a half now. So just a little bit of background about, you know, let me share the first page with you. Oh, Amanda, do you mind making me a host, please? Recording stopped. Oh, I'm sorry. It moved when you made me pause.
[Unidentified]: I'll resume. Recording in progress.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: All right. So the Medford Storefronts Facade Improvement Program is a grant program that we started about a year ago. And we're using a mix of funding from a community mitigation fund from the casino. We also got a grant to bring on an urban design consultant for this first year of the grant program. The consultant, most of his work has been working with our grantees. We have 35 storefronts that we're working with this year, over two rounds of the grant program. And the urban design consultant has been working with most of the grantees to come up with designs for their storefronts that are you know, good design practices. Part of his work, other than that, has also been to come up with this draft or this design guidelines document. And the intent here is that these would be accessible to any business owner in the community or commercial property owner looking to make improvements to their facade. It's not just for, you know, participants in the grant program, but The idea is that this would be a resource to help people get started. I believe Amanda sent these around on Friday. Would it be helpful to walk through these really quickly?
[David Blumberg]: I would suggest whatever you know, I know you're looking for some feedback as I understand it from the board members. So if you want to highlight some things like wherever you need us to weigh in or help you, please direct us.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great, thank you. Yeah, so that's right. And I think if you don't mind, I'd love to get your feedback in general on the document, general reactions, impressions. And then specifically, the document highlights different elements of facades and improvements that can be made to them if we're missing any elements or overall if there are any gaps. in this guide, anything that we should be laying out and giving guidelines on to our small business owners. So I'll just go through really quickly. We won't dwell too much on each page.
[Unidentified]: All right.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: So we have an introduction and letters from Mayor Brianna and Alicia. beginning kind of how to use this guide. And so, this here is kind of an overall diagram of the different storefront elements that the guide speaks to. Or, yeah, so, particularly down here on the, on the ground floor level we're looking at lighting awnings blade signs sign band windows, window boxes, items like that and I'll note very quickly that this first year of the grant program. The only eligible. activities or improvements could be made were to lighting, signage, awnings, window displays, and painting. So there's more of an emphasis, I think, on guidance around those items in this guide for that reason. But certainly, I think we'd want business owners to be able to use the guide to look at other types of improvements as well.
[David Blumberg]: Yvette, if you're designing this for the business owners, I think it's really good. I thought that was super helpful.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Okay, great. Thanks. It's helpful to know that we're speaking to the right audience.
[David Blumberg]: Crystal clear.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great Okay, so the guide walks through some of these elements kind of you know, giving a description, this is the awnings page recommendations on materials. Different configurations of the awnings do's and don'ts. where possible, the guide also notes, you know, the permitting requirements through the building department. And then at the bottom kind of gives an example, a conceptual graphic of, you know, what best practices awnings could look like. So this is actually a concept that we drew up for Bistro 5, one of our grantees.
[Unidentified]: And so, similarly, we have that for sign band, wall signs, projecting blade signs, lighting, window treatments, window boxes.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: And then, finally, there's a section on case studies, and so these are all examples from our grantees in these first two rounds. I want to note that these are concepts that the design consultant created for each of these businesses, but it's not necessarily what will be the end result, what they do end up installing and what improvements they do end up implementing is dependent on the cost and personal preference too. So don't go out there and expect to see this or confront any business owners when they didn't put up the the blade sign we said they were we recommended to them. But the case studies will show kind of the existing storefront, outline the proposal, and then the concept graphic that the design consultant prepared for the business owner. And then the business owner would typically take that out to vendors to work with them.
[David Blumberg]: Yvette, I'll say that, and I flash these case studies to everyone else in my house, this one was, eh.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I agree. I think it's not the strongest start. There are better ones after.
[David Blumberg]: it would be an improvement, no doubt, but, but then flip to the next one.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Yeah. I was hoping you might like that one. So this is, um, Medford brewing, um, our first brewery. And this is the, that would be the concept.
[David Blumberg]: You're talking about an impact that that's awesome.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. I'm also a big fan. From what I understand, they have some work to do on these wood panels before they can paint over them, but they like the design too. And then some additional case studies. So this is a good example of Maze Cafe, initially very ambitious at the start when we were working with them. And then, you know, looking at costs, I think they're gonna tackle this more piecemeal. So what you'll see in real life is the new sign and the lighting, but they'll be keeping the existing awning for now and not installing the blade sign just yet. We've got a concept for Fiore Italy and then the two neighboring businesses. And then, at the very end, we we have some information on the application process for the grant. Just kind of steps for that. You know the caveat is is that this grant program isn't rolling so it occurs at specific times in the year we'd hope that people would use this guide, regardless of whether they're. applying for a grant or not. And then. just some more information about the grant program eligible activities what the application looks like. And then a link to the code of ordinances. yeah so oh sure Emily.
[Emily Hedeman]: Hi, this is absolutely amazing. I ran the, we call it the CPIP program in Somerville, the commercial property improvement program. I ran that for a couple of years. And this is an absolutely amazing resource to help prove the value of this program. So I want to commend you for a really, really job well done on this. I do appreciate it. Yeah it's I mean super important work. I have two questions and apologies I wasn't able to review your guidelines in depth but maybe there are more comments but I think it would be great if there was something in here about the Like the the value to the business that signage presents, you know, I think there is there's value to the community and the aesthetic improvements, but I'm curious if there's any data in terms of, you know, Adequate signage results in, you know, X percentage of increased sales or increased foot traffic or just something to help like show a benefit to the business of the business, rather than just like the aesthetics. And then the other question, just coming from my experience, we always had a lot of trouble finding contractors to actually execute this work because of the wage requirements. Are you guys also subject to the mass prevailing wages or Davis-Bacon?
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: So I, I think the way we're getting around that is this is a reimbursement is structured as a reimbursement so the grantees will actually go out, and we have a list of vendors that recommending but they'll go out and pay for the work and then the city reimburses so they actually, there's not required you know under any procurement law or prevailing wages.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, our program was also a reimbursement. But it was strictly using CDBG funding. So I know you mentioned you're using casino funding. But yeah, you know, I like the idea that you guys have a list of vendors to hopefully, hopefully help businesses, you know, find contractors that are willing and able to do work that might be, you know, kind of small potatoes for them, for the contractor, but really big impact for the business and the community. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for your feedback. Appreciate it.
[David Blumberg]: Thanks, Emily. George.
[v8aFu2OAn8o_SPEAKER_18]: Hey, I just wanted to first say, you know, similar to Emily, I really think that there's a lot of really great information here. So I'd really commend you. I think this is really nice a nice document to guide business owners. I think my one comment is just, I feel like maybe graphically, it feels a little bit confusing on some pages. And I just wonder if there's like a graphic solution, you know, just kind of organizing and getting like a hierarchy of the information. There's like a couple of different fonts that are used and on some of them like I just wonder if we could put a little more thought into like what font style is used. I know it's like super nitpicky but just make you sense.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: I appreciate your keen eye and keen attention to detail. That's definitely important of consistency.
[v8aFu2OAn8o_SPEAKER_18]: Yeah and I mean there's just so much awesome information. I think it's really great that it's available and I think it's a good thing.
[Unidentified]: Thanks, George. David, I... Sorry, go ahead.
[David Blumberg]: Yes, Jackie, please.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Hi, this is Jackie, Vice Chair. And I wanted to just reiterate what Emily has already said about the, you know, where there are studies and it's not really my forte, but working with the state at the state level and trying to get small business development and things like that and dealing with grants with them. And our new community One Stop for Growth, Mass Development actually has a component where they do placemaking And things like that help in small businesses and in nonprofits and things like that pretty much turn signage into profit, so it is a real big thing that Emily I want to just wanted to emphasize that so if there was some way that you can implement that into your already awesome document and just showing the actual benefits of how you can. You know, it's like an economic opportunity that signage can present. And it's not just for the aesthetic value, but it does align with the whole idea of placemaking and in bringing the customer to a customer experience kind of thing. But other than that, I think it's great and and I didn't really, I thought the document was overall cohesive and I like the way that you have the, you know, the case studies at the end and you pretty much have like this color coded design process, but then I thought about it sometimes content, it could be a little bit too much heavy. when people are looking to follow a process. So thinking about what George has actually said, maybe it is, maybe you could go back and just try to align it more with the font. I'm not sure exactly what it needs, but, cause I thought I was able to follow it, but I'm also a grant administrator. So, and I see a lot of those kinds of steps, heavy steps like that, but from the grantee point of view or from the business proponent point of view, maybe it could be a little bit more, eye-friendly or user-friendly, but other than that, I think it's a great job.
[Unidentified]: Thanks, Jackie. Appreciate your feedback.
[David Blumberg]: And I had, I had kind of a thought, and I'm not going to articulate this as well as I would like to, but when I was looking through it, I felt sort of a tension between there are things, some things that are recommended, and then there are like parameters by the city ordinances. And I didn't, I just didn't, as I was interacting with the document, I didn't know where those two screens were. I didn't know which one I was in. So I almost feel like if you had, I love that, that, that first thing is for a non architect, non-design person like me, it was great. Cause now I know all the terms to use for the different signage. That's awesome. Maybe if I had a page on each one of those and like, I don't know, is there a bubble that says this is what you can do. And then it's filled with recommendations of we love these materials and we love that material. And here's an example. Um, I don't know if others had this same kind of reaction to it, but to me, the way my brain works, if I knew what I can do, and then I have some great ideas within it, it'd be easy for me to digest.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: to like a differentiation between there's like, you know, text over here that says it's the recommendations. And there's also texts that's kind of about city requirements and graphically a differentiation between.
[David Blumberg]: I think so. I think that'd be helpful. You know, and it's, I guess it's, you know, you want to present it as like what the city allows, you know, I don't know what it restricts, but what it allows the city will allow you to do this. You know, here's some examples. And if you're, if you're going to put a window box up, the city allows window boxes of this size. Okay. If you're going to put up a window box, here are some great features and choices of materials. And here are three photos of samples.
[Unidentified]: That makes sense. All right.
[Ari Fishman]: I'll piggyback off of that, I think this is fantastic really well done. I think this will be such a great resource. And in terms of providing that sort of primer because this is a resource for business owners, many of whom will kind of have piecemeal expertise on the things that they've had to do. Instead of having to replicate it, I'm a librarian, there's probably excellent resources that are already being maintained. And if the consultant perhaps can suggest maybe a few primers or like here are some excellent websites or books that cover, you know, signage 101, that could be a useful recommendation or suggestion to business owners.
[Unidentified]: Good idea. Thank you.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I appreciate the comments and feedback from all of you. Some really, really great, great feedback here. So I'll definitely take that back to the consultant and make some tweaks to this document before we set it loose upon the world. If any thoughts jump into your head after tonight, please feel free to reach out. I can leave my email in the chat and you can also email Amanda. She should be happy to forward those along.
[David Blumberg]: One thing off the top of my head, is there any way, because I think signage is always much more effective when it's concentrated, you know, you have those signs that are perpendicular to the building, you see four or five men around, you know, you're in a shopping area, like it's so much more impactful than just the one off. Is there a way for folks to be incentivized or the city to match or if three businesses on this block all go in together, something magical happens?
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: That's a great idea. And honestly, not something that had occurred to us, but I think that's a great idea to get people to. We've been doing it's been very piecemeal, with the exception of one project we're working on now is six storefronts in the same building, but I've had the same thought that it would be nice if we could, you know, have that consistency.
[David Blumberg]: And I know the city doesn't have unlimited resources so it's not like they could just put all the resources into West Medford and have the rest of the city be be mad that square got upgraded if no one else did but it certainly has much more impact when it's concentrated.
[Alicia Hunt]: Absolutely. Maybe that we could follow up on that with um if there are any of the other business any of the businesses that are looking at adding the blade signs where their neighbors would be good candidates for even just that one thing that we we think we approach the neighbors and see about can we add these as well I'm curious what that would cost, right? Like, is that an item that we say, you didn't apply, but we would do just the blade side just to match the whole row? Depends where you're looking. Honestly, I don't remember where this round of grants, where they ended up, so.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, that's a great idea.
[David Blumberg]: Okay, Yvette, have we helped you?
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Oh, immensely. Thank you, everyone. I really appreciate it.
[David Blumberg]: Well, thanks for your time and all your efforts. Okay, moving on to the next item, we have some minutes that are up for approval or discussion. There are three sets of minutes on the table today. January 18th, 2023, February 1st, 2023, and February 15th, 2023. Amanda's hand is raised. Yes, Amanda.
[Amanda Centrella]: So I did get two additional adjustments to the minutes, which I think make a lot of sense. But I guess, Jackie, would you prefer that I just read out the adjustments, or would you like to speak to them? Sure, if you can read them out. I am. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Okay, so, um, I guess, maybe I'll save. There's two comments for two different sets of minutes, and if we maybe just focus on the first. So January 18. minutes. There is a section that reads, Vice Chair Furtado, as a steering committee member, congratulated the city on the creation of this plan. Vice Chair Furtado stated that the plan aligns with the community's values, goals, and preferences with, and here's the adjustment, local regulatory requirements, i.e. zoning, as in what can legally and feasibly be done.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And originally it said that I had that it was regulatory requirements from the state and gosh, we're not dealing with route. So it's like one of those things where I didn't want people to think that I was implying that because it's aligned with the state. It's good. I wanted to just say that it was more aligned with our zoning ordinances.
[David Blumberg]: Okay. Thank you for your attention to that, uh, Jack clearing that up for the record. Any other comment? This is January 18th. Other than Jackie's update, if not, we could entertain a motion to approve the January 18th minutes. If someone would be so inclined.
[Unidentified]: So moved.
[David Blumberg]: Okay. There's a motion on January 18th. Is there a second? seconded oh peter thank you so much um now we'll have to go through the step here of roll call we'll call on january 18th and i'll start with vice chair jackie vertato yes uh emily headman emily had to leave she had to leave okay no problem christy down yes george fisher yes Peter Galvis.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[David Blumberg]: And I guess in the absence of others, we could have Ari vote. What do we think? Is that fair? Ari?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[David Blumberg]: Okay. And I'm a yes as well. Excellent. So that's one set of minutes down. Second is February 1st of 2023. Amanda, do we have any hot off the presses updates to share?
[Amanda Centrella]: No comments on these ones.
[David Blumberg]: Okay. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. And I'm a yes as well. Excellent. Now to our third set of minutes for approval. And I imagine something tells me we might have a couple of updates on the February 15th, 2023 minutes, Amanda.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, so one update from Jackie, and so it originally read vice chair for title requested clarification on the comments from our main a boy as john in response miss central stated that she has spoken with our many boys john and explain that about his notices were sent out two weeks prior to the meeting in line with the public procedure and appropriate noticing guidelines. It should read, or is proposed to read, and here's the change, Vice Chair Furtado, seeking confirmation that the proper procedures were followed in informing abutters, requested clarification of the implication that Armene Boyevgian's comments would have on the site review process, and then followed by the rest of that text.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And even that was incorrect. I didn't mean site review process. I meant special permit.
[Amanda Centrella]: Special permit.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.
[David Blumberg]: PB, David Ensign --"Okay, so our amendment then, as proposed by Amanda, is what Amanda said, but it's as to a special permit, not site plan."
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes. Originally it said that I was asking for clarification of, um, the, the body's comment. And I wasn't just asking for clarification. I was asking for confirmation that her, her actual comment was taken into consideration and that we had followed the proper procedures in, in response, Amanda clarified that. And I just wanted that for the record. Um, okay. So just reducing it. So I was asking for clarification. I was, however you want to reword it. I was just wanting to just clarify. I was doing more than clarifying. I was confirmed.
[David Blumberg]: I remember when I remember when you did that.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yep.
[David Blumberg]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, John Gerstle. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, John Gerstle. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. Amanda, this is usually when I turn the floor over to you for any miscellaneous updates, if you might have some for the board. If not, we'll move along.
[Amanda Centrella]: Right, I'll be quick, but I a couple of unfortunately just scheduling updates. So, so far we have nothing on tap for the April 5 agenda. So, I'm waiting for just some confirmation from the raising canes applicant team that they won't be seeking to be heard that evening. We should get that confirmation in the next couple days. And if that's the case, then I think, you know, we can assume that that will be canceled and I'll let everybody know. When we were looking at scheduling some staff in our office realized that the meeting following that on the 19th of April is actually during school vacation. And so we'll have some stuff that won't be available that week. You know, I didn't want to assume didn't want to assume that all the board members could make it. And so there were three or so projects that we're trying to, we're vying for a spot that evening and thinking that we'll recommend first splitting those up and having maybe two projects on the agenda following and perhaps, you know, one on the one after that. So anyway, we're working out the minutia of that. I just kind of wanted to sanity check that strategy with you all. and and see yeah if others felt like no we really should should be meeting or you know would people be unavailable anyway so yeah uh will folks be away for the school vacation week maybe um okay christy will be away i will i will be away for that week it has nothing to do with school though okay
[David Blumberg]: All right, so it looks like it would be a little bit more of a challenge than usual for us to meet as a board as well that week.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, OK. I think we'll confirm a couple of things with all the applicant teams, but I'm feeling like maybe it does make sense for us to just cancel that one as well. So I'll keep you all posted on all of that.
[David Blumberg]: Excellent. PB, David Ensign --"Any other items, or we could move to, oh, Christy Dowd. Yes."
[Jenny Graham]: COB, Cindy Spence --"Sorry, I just want to remind you that my term does come up on the Community Preservation Committee, so at the end of April."
[David Blumberg]: So if that's at the end of April and we may not meet in April, then we probably should make sure that we have another successor for you.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. And it would be good if they have a decent transition onto there so they can talk to people beforehand. I'm happy to talk. I know Danielle can and Amanda, but It's always easier when they can like shadow a meeting and then take on full representation.
[Danielle Evans]: Our annual public hearing will be the April meeting. So we invite anyone to come and talk about the goals and priorities for funding for how to spend the CPA funds next year. So we welcome any boards and commissions to come and it'd also be a good opportunity to see how the committee works and whether you might want to have Christy pass the baton to you.
[David Blumberg]: Yeah. Is that something that Peter, Ari, George in particular could consider? I mean, I could say Jackie too, because you still have term on your term, but I feel like you're, I think you're also involved in other boards and organizations in the city. as it does have to be a current member of the CDB to serve this role.
[Alicia Hunt]: Do all of our new members know that this Community Preservation Committee, part of the state law is that there must be representatives from certain boards and commissions. And this is one of the boards and commissions that must have be represented on our Community Preservation Committee.
[Danielle Evans]: So one thing I was hoping for is like when these, so there's five city boards and commissions that have to sit on this, on the committee, the community preservation committee. So I hope that when appointments are being made, it's being the new appointees are told that this could be something added to their plate because everyone's got to take turns. It's another one of the obligations of serving on city commissioner board that has a statutory member on this committee. So I feel like it's not being shared and sometimes it comes as a surprise, like to the parks board. Some of them don't realize someone has to sit on it and then it's pointing, you do it. And we barely had a quorum last night, so we really need people that.
[Jenny Graham]: That was probably my fault, because I was stuck on a plane.
[Danielle Evans]: But you definitely get a pass. I'm glad you made it home safely.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, I'll say that I definitely did not realize that that was kind of an additional role. I still would have taken the role, but I would agree that it would be helpful to know that in advance. Can you remind me the length of those terms?
[Danielle Evans]: They're three-year terms and they're staggered. We meet once a month. We cancel meetings if there isn't anything to talk about. Like usually one of the meetings in like August usually don't meet, July we don't meet. Like when you're between funding cycles, it gets more intense when we're deliberating on projects because there's presentations and all that. And we have been meeting exclusively remotely and I think we'd continue that if, you know, the state allows that.
[Ari Fishman]: And how long are meetings? That's coming.
[Danielle Evans]: We try to, like, so we start at 630. And then last night was 830. We're all like, time to go. And that was a long one. So usually we try to end by eight.
[Jenny Graham]: I'll be out. I will critique and say there's an opportunity to be more efficient and faster with those meetings. But yeah, I think Danielle does try to wrap them up.
[Danielle Evans]: It's kind of like I'm texting Roberta in the background, like, hey. They can drag a little bit. I'm losing people. Do you want people to want to come on this committee?
[Ari Fishman]: I don't know that I actually have the time for this. Can I give a, I'll talk to my spouse who will probably try to talk me out of it, but I'll think about it.
[David Blumberg]: Well, you're not individually obligated to do this. So our board needs to have one of its members on the committee.
[Danielle Evans]: So Christie's term is expiring. And so it's somebody else, anybody.
[Unidentified]: When's her term expiring?
[David Blumberg]: Peter, are you asking when her term expires on the committee?
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. End of April for CPC.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, I've spent three years. Who's COVID? I know.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, expiring off this too. In June.
[Ari Fishman]: So can I ask a question if there's any like possibility of like one year terms? I know.
[Jenny Graham]: I don't know the answer to that, but I would just say one year terms probably don't give you enough incentive. I think what makes you better as a committee member is having been through a few and you actually have lessons learned and improve the process and I think add more value to recommendations for the applicants.
[David Blumberg]: Peter. I'm sorry, I thought you were trying to get the floor there.
[Peter Calves]: Oh, no.
[David Blumberg]: All good?
[Peter Calves]: I was asking when the chair ended, but I'm spoken for at that point until I finish my licensing process for work.
[David Blumberg]: Okay, well, I guess we can try to talk about that offline then. It's supposed to hold the meeting up.
[Jenny Graham]: Oh yeah, and I didn't mean to hold the meeting. I just wanted to let people know it's there, you know, it's hanging out there.
[David Blumberg]: I meant to put it on the agenda and I forgot, so I really, I appreciate you bringing it up. Okay, so at this point we could entertain a motion to adjourn. If there, someone was so inclined.
[Jenny Graham]: I'll make that motion.
[David Blumberg]: Second? Second. And roll call on adjournment. Vice Chair Jackie Vurtado?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[David Blumberg]: Kristi Dowd?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[David Blumberg]: George Fischer? Yes. Peter Kalbas? Yes. Ari Goffman?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[David Blumberg]: And Emma Yes as well. Again, welcome Peter and Ari. Great to have you participate in this evening and look forward to seeing you all at our next meeting. Be well.
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