[Roberta Cameron]: I'm calling to order the meeting of Medford's Community Preservation Committee on Wednesday, November 30. It was posted for 6.30pm but we changed the meeting time to 7pm. I am going to read a very abbreviated preamble Pursuant to Chapter 22 of the Acts of 2022, this meeting of Medford's Community Preservation Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will have a video recording available upon request as soon as possible after the meeting. So back to our agenda. I'm going to save the approval of meeting minutes until the end. unless you have objections, unless you'd prefer to take the meeting minutes now. Then the applicants, I think that we, do we have folks here to talk about car park? Maybe we can take these in the order that they're posted.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, Amanda and Alicia.
[2kAt0v9zwyw_SPEAKER_12]: I am as well. I may be the only one.
[Alicia Hunt]: So Danielle, Amanda is prepared to present to the board on behalf of our projects this evening. And I'm here if there are questions that I can help with.
[Amanda Centrella]: Great. So with that, I'm going to share my screen here. OK. Are folks seeing a presentation slide?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Amanda Centrella]: Good. Okay, so, um, you guys know me from the committee, but for anyone in the public, my name is Amanda central. I work in the office of planning, development and sustainability in the city. And I'm very grateful for the opportunity to present a couple of projects coming out of our office to the committee tonight. So, first up is the car park pickleball courts. If I progress the slide here. So the committee previously granted funding for a planning and redesign process for car park, and many of you likely participated in the outreach and design conversations that happened over the course of 2021. And so we now have this finalized car park vision plan, which we're very excited about. And we're working hard to begin to implement, implement that plan. So, to do so we've broken up the larger vision into several phases, and we'll focus today on phase one, which includes our current CPA proposal, and of course if folks have questions about the other phases happy to answer about that. So the proposal is for four dedicated pickleball courts, and these would be the first fully dedicated pickleball courts in the city, for which there is strong community need and a lot of desire. Funding would go towards the design and permitting, bid process, construction, and there's some contingency built into that budget. The pickleball courts are a discrete portion of phase one of the renovation for Carr Park. Phase one more broadly includes two baseball fields being reconstructed, the clearing of woodland debris and evasives from kind of the northern woods area of the park, and an accessible loop path and seating and other site furniture, a path connection to Stowers Ave to the park, and drainage and utility work. And bidding out pickleball courts with the other parts of phase one would save the city significant costs on site mobilization. So let's see if I can forward the slides here. just to give you guys a sense of what we're talking about here. So this is the vision plan that emerged out of all of our community conversations. There's a lot of information on here, but I've tried to call out this area here where the pickleball courts would be, which is adjacent to the parking lot and off of the accessible loop path. We believe that incorporating the courts into this earlier work being done on the park makes sense for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's an amenity that we think the public would be particularly excited about having access to earlier rather than later. And I think as we'll hear from some community members tonight, there's a real need for dedicated pickleball courts in the city. Um, otherwise, or in addition to that, um, we talk about staff capacity. So staff is actually already going to be working on this project and managing other grant work and funding for this phase. And so it kind of folds in to work that will be already, um, underway. And we also, uh, want to be cognizant of not disrupting too many parks at the same time. So focusing this work here, um, we feel makes a lot of sense. And then really quickly, just wanted to give you a rough budget breakdown. So for the entirety of phase one, including the Pickleball Courts, we've secured grant funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund for $1 million. The debt that the city has committed $1.3 million in ARPA funds. And our ask tonight is for $402,000 from CPA to go towards explicitly the Pickleball Courts. And I believe that's all that I have. I'm happy to answer questions at this point.
[Joan Cyr]: I have a question. So we got Tom's letter of support for the pickleball courts. And he specifically mentioned at the end if there was a possibility of making six pickleball courts instead of four. And I didn't know. if that was possible, and if so, would that add to the cost that you're requesting?
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, so if it were possible, it would add to costs. I think that it would pose some challenges to add additional court space because of where the courts are located in the park and its proximity to the wetlands. We will be going through a permitting process with the Conservation Commission, as is, because it definitely it falls within the 100 foot buffer zone. And so I think that there are some constraints on adding additional court space. Alicia, feel free to hop in if you have any additions.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think that the one piece that might not be readily obvious when looking at this layout is it might look like, well, there's that big tree, just extend them under the tree. The tree has root, this is a very big old tree that we're protecting there. We're actually moving the loop path further into the woods to help protect the roots of this tree. If you walk out there now, The path goes very close to the tree and is very disrupted by the roots. And if you were to dig down as you would need to put a proper base for a pickleball courts under the branches of the tree, it would be very damaging to the roots of the tree. So we are trying to keep everything out from under the branches of the tree in order to protect the tree itself and its roots. We can ask our consultant to look at it, but when I eyeball this, I think it'd be very hard. There's a chance that you could maybe squeeze a fifth one in there, but I'm not sure. And it would definitely add to the cost because there would be additional materials needed. So, but how much we'd have to ask, we did only get the letter yesterday, so we haven't actually been able to get a feedback from our designer yet.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, and I and I would add to that there's this consideration of the baseball field space. So there's a required minimum of 200 feet for the outfield. It's like home plate to outfield line, which you can kind of see lightly marked off here. And that's kind of actually the minimum of they offer usually a range for outfield space. So it I think it's worth asking our consultant, but I could pose some might be a little tricky.
[Unidentified]: So I don't really have any other questions.
[Joan Cyr]: I can say that full disclosure, I know Tom, we've played pickleball together at the GMAC gym. So I know that there is a huge desire to bring permanent pickleball courts to the city of Bedford. And we've seen lines of people waiting for the pickleball courts. I don't have any questions beyond the one I already asked.
[2kAt0v9zwyw_SPEAKER_12]: Can I make a comment?
[Unidentified]: Sure.
[2kAt0v9zwyw_SPEAKER_12]: I think that Tom and Sue Falafel have done an outstanding job putting together this pickleball program. And I also think Kevin Bailey has been fantastic I've tried to help pick a ball to a lot of towns and Kevin has been one of the most receptive people. And, um, I think they need to be acknowledged.
[Matt Leming]: There are three people with their hands up.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry. Should I be calling on folks or, uh, or a committee member?
[Danielle Evans]: Usually Roberta does, but don't only do the board comments and then open it up to the public. OK, we haven't done that yet.
[Alicia Hunt]: Roberta has dropped off the call, I can go find out what's up, but maybe she's trying to get back in. OK, so one of you want to run the meeting?
[Danielle Evans]: Well, she's she's joining now about Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: Are there any other questions from the board or comments?
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, just one question, one comment. It looks to me like, even though that's beyond the outfield, is there a three-foot fence or something protecting? I'm just concerned about some future Babe Ruth hitting a home run and crashing into people who are playing over there. I have seen that before. I don't know if the desire to put like a slightly taller fence against the baseball side of the thing, just as a protection, as a safety issue. That's one concern I have. The other comment is that I really appreciate that there's a diversity of funding here, that it's not, you're not asking TPC to do everything. You've gone and gotten some money from a bunch of different pots. I really appreciate that because that allows us more flexibility to spend money on more projects. So thank you, Alicia. Thank you to your entire group for that because I know it's hard to find money. We appreciate you not coming here with a seven-figure request versus a six-figure request. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: I might respond to that. I will tell you that what we have here is the concept design. We've actually obtained linkage funds and we have contracted for bid documents. Details like the height of the fence is something that'll go in in bid documents. And that is absolutely something that I think we need to see at least, not necessarily all the way around the pickleball courts, but the area where there's that chance of baseballs of being very high, seven foot or something, 10 foot. Just as a protection measure. I didn't want to surround it in a 10 foot fence because that might make it look like a little bit like a prison. But on that side, obviously, but we that's the level of detail that the consultants working on right now. And I actually if you don't mind me commenting on the diversity of funding. This was something I was discussing with staff and our finance director strategically it's actually. makes our projects much more complicated to manage when there's a diversity of funding because of the reports that you have to do for all of these, the different bosses you have to answer for. We'd actually really like to do things like say Let's focus this project as a city with this funding source and this project with this funding source and not see five or six funding sources per project because it makes them very difficult to manage. Some of them, like the one we're going to bring in front of you next, Gillis Park, needs a diversity because there are certain pieces, certain funding sources you can only use for some types of projects. So you have to do the diversity. But when you don't have to do that, it makes it a lot easier to manage if you don't have so many different kinds of funding brought to the table. So just wanted to put that out there for the future.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Joan Cyr]: Any other committee members have comments? Not seeing any. Yep, Tom and Tom, let's see. Tom Lincoln's on the top of my screen, I don't know.
[Tom Lincoln]: Okay, I have a couple of questions about this and a couple of comments. First, my understanding is that this park underwent, I can see from this marvelous drawing, an extensive planning procedure. Was this part of the original plan for the park?
[Joan Cyr]: You mean the pickleball course?
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, yes, the courts are part of the original the vision plan that we collectively arrived at through the planning process.
[Tom Lincoln]: So my second comment is a little more philosophical. And I've discussed this with Alicia. I've lived in Medford for over 30 years. And I've seen a process going on in our parks, which I think is not a good thing. And that is they are being nibbled to pieces by the addition of more hard surfaces, more fences, more pavement, et cetera. And the original purpose of having green space is being vitiated by this syndrome. Alicia and I talked about the marvelous paving near the tennis courts over at Duggar Park, which has not been fixed, I don't think. And you look at this picture and it's another big chunk of paving right in the middle of a public park. And, you know, when does it stop? The Mystic River Bend Park, they've added two dog parks. They've eliminated the meadow effectively. They added the very large wind turbine smack in the middle of it. They put a boat ramp, et cetera, on the Mystic River. The park, I'm sorry, I don't remember the name of it, that's on Webster Street has gradually been paved over with a lot more paving, et cetera. I don't think this is what parks are for. I think they should be green space for people to relax in, to get away from the city. I don't think they should be full of pavement. I don't think they should be full of fencing. You're talking about a 10 foot fence here. Good Lord, what is that gonna look like? And where does it stop here? Nobody's actually looked at this Nobody has actually looked at the parks and saying, how are we gonna protect the green space elements here? Instead, what we have is a stream of projects that do exactly the opposite. I'm gonna look for some comments from Alicia on this actually.
[Roberta Cameron]: If I may, this plan is the result of a public process that took place over the last, 18 months that was funded in a prior CPA funding round. And the uses that have been incorporated into this park are uses that were brought into the plan through a tremendous amount of community input, people who have been looking for these types of uses. So I'll I'll allow Alicia to follow up and talk about the planning process by which we arrived at the proposal that we see here this evening for the pickleball courts.
[Tom Lincoln]: I just want to say, though, that's very well and good. But it doesn't seem to vitiate the trend that is happening here. And nobody seemed to be concerned about that. And if you have to meet every single interest for this group or that group, they want another court, they want another piece of paving, eventually you're not going to have any more green space in Medford Parks. That's exactly what's going to happen.
[Alicia Hunt]: So Tom, we may need to agree to disagree on this because I believe that the parks are for the people and that the people want to have active recreation in them and that there are uses that they'd like to see. This park has a large wetland and woods in it and one of the things we're going to be doing is cleaning some of the debris out of that and restoring that to its natural area, but people need places to be outside. They can't walk through meadows, like it sounds like a lovely idea, but everybody's afraid of the ticks. It's nice to have them, but Medford is a city and we need to be able to have people in our open spaces. And this is the uses that people would really like to see these are the uses that will bring people out of their houses into our parks. And we really want to support that.
[Tom Lincoln]: Okay, I'll agree. I'll agree with that. But what I am not getting an answer on here. And we've talked about this before is is the nibbling away process that seems to be going on with these parks. And you know, there has to be some some sort of balance here, you know, If we have four pickleball courts, what's to say, well, let's double the number of courts in five years and take another piece of the green space. I mean, isn't that certainly feasible? I understand that pickleball is the latest and greatest thing. I think it's probably wonderful. I know lots of people- Thank you, Tom.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm going to give some other people a chance to speak up this evening. We have a lot of items that need to be covered on the agenda. Is there anyone else who wanted to make a comment about the pickleball? Yes, Tom.
[SPEAKER_12]: Yes. Thank you. First of all, the tennis court has had 10 foot fence around it for the last, well I've only lived in Medford for 20 years, but it's maybe 30 years, those fences are all coming down. So, they do need to be around pickleball completely certain circling pickleball because otherwise the participants are spending their time chasing out around the court, just like in basketball or tennis, the same is true with pickleball. At any rate, Tuesday, this Tuesday morning. There was windy, 30-degree weather, you may recall. And there was a delegation of state and city people who went to Duggar Park. And they went to look at the conditions there and the fencing and the access, the handicap access, and a lot of other factors. And of course, the delegation met in the street because there's no sidewalk. There's a guardrail that prevents people from entering the park easily from elsewhere. And that's where pickleball courts are also superimposed over tennis courts. the markings for pickleball courts. In order to play pickleball there, it is required that you pull out nets, set them up, and tear them down. The recreation department doesn't have staff. So Sue and I, my wife Sue and I, have been doing this for the last four years. We go too early to the courts. There's a locker there. We pull out bags of poles and nets and so forth and start setting them up. As people come, they help out and so forth. And then we're there from 8.30 to about 11 each day, every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, right through Sunday, even on Thanksgiving for that matter. And we end at 11. And so we're there until 11 because the equipment has to be put back in a lock box. And the only time that pickleball can be played is from 8.30 to 11, because the courts are not permanent. So you can't go down in the afternoon and play, because unless you've gone out and purchased for more than $100 your own net and are able to set it up. So it's really necessary that we have the permanent pickleball courts. But on this Tuesday, The tour was, Reggie Graham was there, the mayor, DCR was there, the DPW director was there, and so forth. And what they saw, among other things, because their concern was overall for the park, they saw some 30 people, primarily senior citizens, playing pickleball in this 30 degree weather with wind and so forth, as we do every single day. And because there are only room for five markings, that means 20 people can play at a time. 10 others are waiting, 10 to 15 others are waiting on the side to get a chance for their group to play or for four more people to play. So we take our turns. This morning we had 27 people despite the forecast of rain and that's the way it goes. Now, think, this is November, and cold weather in the summer, it goes, it's absolutely crazy. So it was great to have the delegation see firsthand. As someone said to me, I know you've told us about this, Tom, but it's mind boggling to see so many seniors out there in this kind of weather enjoying being social and having an active life this way. So we've kind of become the de facto leaders, my wife and I, of this because we produce a list serve. On the list serve is a list of 80 names of people who actively play. It's not a passing fancy. It's the fastest growing sport in the country, and it's for all ages, and we have people who are not seniors. There are a good many younger people as well. Our rules is we play as long as the temperature is above 30 degrees and the courts are playable. There's no snow or ice on the court or rain, or it's below 100 degrees. And then you'll see us out there and you're welcome to join us.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Tom. I'm going to actually ask to move us on because we've got a lot of things to cover tonight.
[SPEAKER_12]: Can I just make one more point? Sure, one more point.
[Roberta Cameron]: Go ahead. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_12]: The idea of 6 courts, we could use 6 courts because we're using 5 now, but I would have to say that if you are able to fund for courts, I think you might think in the future about when renovations are done in parks that you add to pickleball courts to parks. as a feature just like tennis courts used to be added to parks. So if we can have the four, we can work that out somehow, knowing that over time in the community, there is this great burgeoning need growing daily. And I don't wanna get into a debate with Tom Lincoln. I'm just speaking about seniors. Seniors have to be seen as a separate group of people who have individual needs for active outdoor life,
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Tom. I'd like to move on. I'm going to take Heidi's question. And then, yeah, thank you, Heidi.
[Heidi Davis]: Thank you, Roberta. I just very quickly wanted to mention, though, I'm glad there'll be a filing before the Conservation Commission for this work. I do want to note that the wetland contains a potential vernal pool. It's not a certified vernal pool. It's a potential vernal pool. and is mapped as such on mass GIS. And so just be aware that removal of debris. You mentioned, Alicia, that deadwood and fallenwood is important to reptiles and amphibians and should not be part of that debris removal. That's all.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Actually, we had a consultant go out and confirm that it is not a vernal pool last spring. But that we do have an environmental consultant on for mapping the wetland, there'll be a filing with CONHOM. And what I mean by debris has nothing to do with deadwood. There is asphalt and concrete and tires, and there's garbage.
[Heidi Davis]: Great, I'm glad to hear that. Broken glass, asphalt is not great reptile habitat.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Right. That's what appears to be sidewalk panels piled along the edge. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: So I anticipate that there may be other people in the audience today who are here to talk about the pickleball courts. And I wonder if you would be able to just put a hand raise on the screen if you were here to support the pickleball Or you can raise your hand if your image is here, if you were here to support the pickleball courts. I see Chris Donovan, Molly Frelick, and Peter Sullivan, Tom. So thank you. I just want, and Linda. I just want to acknowledge all of you. And I am hoping to not spend a lot more time talking about this subject because we do have a lot on our agenda this evening.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: But Julie, Roberta, if I could just throw out the Victory Park has a very active pickleball group community as well. So I see it in action. So a supporter of that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes. So I understand that there are other parks now that are striped for pickleball. And so I think it would be very helpful if that information I don't know which parks they are. So and maybe that information is already posted on the city's website on the recreation department. So if it's not, I hope it will be so that we can refer people to where they can find pickleball. Did I see another hand raised? Well, thank you all very much. I would like to move on to the next item on the agenda, which is Gillis Park picnic and outdoor fitness area. Do we have someone here to speak for that? Amanda.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, that is me. I'm just going to share my screen again really quick. All right, here we are. Okay, so Gillis Park picnic and fitness areas as part of a larger accessibility renovation. So, similarly to the car proposal, our CPA proposal for Gillis is kind of a discrete portion of a larger renovation. Let me forward this slide. So the design for the Gillis Park accessibility renovations was made possible again by previous CPA funding for which we're very grateful. We've been working closely with Medford Youth Baseball, which is the main permitted entity making very frequent use of their field of the field. And we've been working with them to understand and address the field needs and challenges. The funding request request would be for the design and construction of an outdoor adult fitness area and a picnic area at the field. These are spaces which would support the existing use of the field for organized youth baseball, but would also increase the park uses and expand the user base for other folks visiting the park. The full renovation for which we are not requesting CPA funds aims to make the field accessible, which it is currently not and reconstruct the field to correct drainage issues. So if I go here are the existing conditions of the fields for just a quick reminder for folks. It's kind of set In a basin so there's the street level and then there's a steep grade down to where the rest of the field and the amenities are and the current treatment at the field is not is not accessible. ADA compliant. There's a very, as I mentioned, a sharp grade, there's steps, so there isn't really a way to access or entrance an entrance to the field. And then different amenities along the paved area and rest of the field space are also not accessible. Here is the master plan as a result of the redesign. And the areas that we're talking about for CPA funding are the picnic area K here, and the outdoor fitness area. You'll notice that there's the successful entrance way kind of further up Fulton Street. That's part of the larger redesign. and a full loop path around the field. Bleachers have been relocated behind home plate and using the existing topography of the site are kind of dug into the hill and they will be accessible. Replacement of the concession stand, removing the dugouts and replacing them, creating an accessible pathway to the batting cages. All of these are pieces of the larger renovation. And quick note here about funding. So again, the larger project will be, we've received grant funding from park for $400,000. The city is dedicating $500,000 in ARPA funds and $300,000 in CDBG funding, which is going to be attached to all of the accessible updates to the park. And our ask is for $92,000 from CPA to go towards the design bidding and construction of the picnic area and outdoor fitness area. And I think those are my notes, so I'll leave this slide up and happy to take questions.
[Joan Cyr]: I have a question, Amanda. Yeah. Previously, in a previous round, the CPA funded a replacement fence behind home plate there. Is that being preserved in this construction?
[Amanda Centrella]: Oh, a place, a fence behind home plate.
[Joan Cyr]: Oh, is it the backstop?
[Amanda Centrella]: I that's a good question. I'd have to look at the proposal. I think actually, if I exit out of the screen share. I think that we may note that the backstop and the batting cages were in relatively good condition.
[Joan Cyr]: They should be there brand new.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, yeah. So I just want to make sure that I'm not speaking out of turn.
[Unidentified]: But does the new plan move the field at all? No.
[Chenine Peloquin]: No, OK.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, it keeps the same field orientation. We looked at different alternatives, and this felt like the most reasonable way forward.
[Roberta Cameron]: It would certainly be preferable, obviously, if you were able to retain the elements that we already upgraded.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, I apologize. I don't have off the top of my head notes about the backstop, but would definitely be open to a condition that asked for the preservation of the backstop and any other improvements that have been made already. Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: Okay. Other questions from committee members? The fitness area, is that for all ages?
[Amanda Centrella]: It is an adult fitness area. But we have conferred with the with Medford youth baseball and they felt that something like that could be used and incorporated with some of their youth program programming for some of their older youth. Thanks.
[Sarah Gerould]: I'm wondering whether there are going to be any trees incorporated into this new design. I'm sure that it would be much nicer to have a shaded area to do your exercise in the middle of the summer and likewise picnic areas is much better if it has some shade over it.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, thanks for the comment, Sarah. We do plan to have trees incorporated for the picnic area, so where you can see K there to offer shading. And we can explore, I think, so we're not at final design stage of this quite yet, so we could explore the incorporation of trees for the fitness area.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Janine?
[Chenine Peloquin]: Hi, as a Medford baseball parent and also a parent of a younger child who has to sit there and watch the games, is there going to be, or could there be a space, more of a nature play space, kind of in that northwest corner, similar to what's going, or what was proposed at Logan Park? with some stumps and rocks to jump off, very low intervention, but something. It doesn't need to be playground, but some intentional space for younger children who cannot sit and watch the games, where I would probably because I also cannot sit and watch those games.
[Alicia Hunt]: If I might jump in, the twofold. Right now, there's a whole area there that is fenced off and you might think is not part of the property, but it's part of the property that's overgrown. The more we make it intentional, the more we have to follow, as you're aware, like safety guidelines, and it becomes extremely complicated and expensive. And if we were to just sort of open up that area, and then children could play there under the trees and stuff without us being too intentional about it, then it would be, you know, parents and trees as you might wish. We hadn't planned a play space when we talked about young children. Honestly, we weren't thinking about children, siblings. We were thinking about the fact that this is one block from another park that has a full playground. Right. So it's not, we would never put something destination playground into this. Right.
[Chenine Peloquin]: No, this is really just like, where are the little kids going to play that would, that would engage them. And so I'm happy to talk with the team about like, how to make that nature space engaging and not intentional, but thoughtful.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure, we'd be happy to have you talk with the, oh, jeez, my- Orner Larson. Larson, sorry, on this project.
[Joan Cyr]: Get a couple of those stumps from the stump dump over at Brooks Estate.
[Alicia Hunt]: Exactly.
[Chenine Peloquin]: And if it's under 30 inches, then it does.
[Alicia Hunt]: I have some beautiful pictures of Joan with some giant stumps.
[Unidentified]: Back a victory practice plenty to. Thank you. Other comments, questions about this project? Then we will move on to the next project, which is the COVID-19 Memorial Grove.
[Roberta Cameron]: We'll be speaking about that.
[Amanda Centrella]: That's me again. Thank you guys. All right. 1 more time. I'm going to share my screen. Okay, so this proposal is for a COVID-19 memorial grove. And here we go. So community advocacy group Trees Medford and the mayor's office raised to our office the idea for creation of a COVID-19 memorial grove within the city. The Memorial Grove is envisioned as a space for community healing to commemorate those who have been lost to the COVID-19 pandemic and to those of us living through it. The project will also advance the city's goal of increasing its tree canopy. mitigating the impacts of climate change and increasing the city's inventory of shaded passive recreation areas. The project was vetted in a public meeting in March 2022, so earlier this year, and feedback from that meeting was generally positive and the community seemed receptive. to the idea of creating a new passive recreation space. So in our application we did happen to highlight one area in Riverbend Park as a potential location for siting the grove. That said we recognize with the adjacency of the condo community on Ship Ave that this may or may not end up being the appropriate space or location for something like this. It will be very important to be sensitive to the wishes and needs of the greater Medford community when considering this project. So, the funding we're requesting will actually go towards a thoughtful public outreach process to hear from community on both potential locations and design of the space itself. And we intend to work with landscape architect firm CBA to evaluate viable locations based on community input, and also being sensitive to the environment that this space could be in. So we just take a look here, this was the location that we had highlighted in our application. So, I probably should have included a little bit larger context here but there's clipper ship, I would be. running through around here. And then this is the condo community that I think was mentioned in previous meetings when discussing this Duggar School over here. Actually, the recent labyrinth space is in this little triangle area currently. And just through a couple of reference photos, these are not these are you know just different locations across the states and just to kind of give a sense of you know what a space like this could look like. And wanted to briefly go over funding the budget for this so we would be asking for funding to go towards design services. This includes a contingency of 20%. And our ask for CPA funding comes to 28,000 total.
[Unidentified]: And that is everything. Thank you. Are there questions from committee members?
[Roberta Cameron]: I just wanted to throw out an idea briefly, which is to go further west along the Clippership Connector. I think that there's an area just east of Route 93 that isn't really landscaped currently. And I wonder whether there might be some area that, because currently the area that you're looking at like seem looks like it's intentionally a lawn and I wonder if there might be an area along the clipper ship connector that right now hasn't been treated at all that might be a good candidate for cleaning up along with making an intentional growth like this.
[Alicia Hunt]: This is the kind of thing that we can ask the consultants to look at. I will just tell you preliminarily that the rest of Clippership Connector from pretty much partway down that area behind those condos is state land. So it's not impossible for us to do projects on state land, but it adds a layer of complication that can make them much harder to do. So I just sort of caveat any thoughts of doing things on state land with that.
[Unidentified]: Thanks. Tom, I saw your hand first.
[Tom Lincoln]: I'm wondering if the city has been pursuing land and water conservation funding. That part of money has been permanently funded by Congress over the last few years. The last project I can think of under the regime of Clotis Stoker Long was the plaza down there by the cemetery on Salem Street or Riverside Avenue. But I know that the city has gotten a lot of money over the past. I think the Webster Park got water conservation, land and water conservation money. you know, it seems to me that there should be some opportunities there. I'm just curious if you're looking for that money and whether you're going to be bringing that money to some of these projects.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, Tom, thanks for raising that we've actually so land and water conservation fund. We were happy to or excited about accepting a grant towards car park for $1 million this year. And we are exploring their application period is open. And so we're exploring what our strategy is going into this this coming year. So having some recent familiarity with that grant and that program. And I think also we, the city- Harris Park.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, thank you. That's terrific. So we actually have been very lucky with getting those grants.
[Unidentified]: Thank you for raising that question. Sarah. You are muted, Sarah.
[Sarah Gerould]: Okay, I'm speaking for Therese Medford, and I have to say I'm totally thrilled that this thing is going forward, and we really look forward to seeing it completed. It's something that I think is a wonderful opportunity for the city, the mayor, And, and this fund to provide the kind of passive recreation that's needed in this way. for people who are grieving, people who have been feeling the effects of COVID, either directly through the death of a family member or by having their lives up to ended. Having a treed space that is calm, that is quiet, and that is contemplative would be really, really helpful for the mental health of this community. I would like to say that it's, I think it is important to be, to have a space that's not right next to a highway, a space that's quiet, a space that maybe can be walked to. I like the idea of having it near the, clipper ship connector, a place that can be walked to as a part of that sort of meditative space. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Any other comments or questions on this project?
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Roberta Cameron]: Then we will move on to the next on the agenda, which is the McGlynn University Accessible Playground Construction.
[Peter Cushing]: Good evening. My name is Dr. Peter Cushing, I'm one of the assistant superintendents at the Medford public schools here with my co chair of the McGlynn redesign committee, she named Peloquin Medford resident. And I just want to take a moment to thank everybody for having us this evening to hear our presentation. For those of you who may remember, it was prior to the pandemic. So a lot of people forget those times. Unfortunately, the CPC awarded us $40,000 to do a design study because we were looking to resurface with poured in place surface Two, nope, let me just think about this for a second. Two of the playgrounds, because the Roberts had already been done, at the Brooks and the Missittuck Elementary School. We replaced several play elements that were damaged and beyond their useful life. And then we were also planning to look at the McGlynn playground. The McGlynn playground is approximately 25,000 square feet in size. And currently the design from the early 2000s has about the entire space covered in poured in place. The Port in Place is definitely at the end of its life. And so we were looking to replace that. The cost estimates on that were north of $500,000. So that really triggered in us to really look at like, if we're gonna spend this much on Port in Place, what's the overall state of the playground? That has really triggered a really thoughtful and intentional approach to looking at our playgrounds within the Medford Public Schools. And in looking at the McGlynn Playground, we have conducted inspections, head drop tests, and have formed the committee that's now been working for about six months or so to really examine how we can make this a universally accessible playground, give kids real value in play. The current structure, it looks really good from afar, but it really has no play value other than kids running up and down and utilizing the slides, but it has extraordinarily limited play value. I shouldn't say no play value, but limited play value. And if we could move to the next slide, I would appreciate that. So our project goals as a committee were number one, to make sure it is fun, safe, accessible, and reflects the identity of the students. A considerable amount of work has been done by Shanine and by our partners at Copley-Wolf Design Group to get student input on this to listen to faculty and staff and to design a world class playground that will meet the needs of the students of Medford for years to come. So first we're going to meet the needs of the McGlynn school. If face construction is required. We're offering a range of challenges for all users. We're considering wider benefit to the broader community and something that can be maintained within the school and city's resources. One of the things that we've really noticed is that we need to do a better job making sure that we are properly inspecting and maintaining our playgrounds within the meant for public schools. I'd like to now turn the presentation over to Shanine for the next few slides. Thank you.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Hi, it's been a pleasure working on this and and really making sure that we get student feedback in particular on this. And we've heard really amazing things from the students, including like. 5th graders, including the boys were like, we want places to pretend that we're. Playing restaurant, we want drive-up windows and table service. And we want places to pretend that we're flying. And these are the older kids that I think that, as adults, we assume they're just going to play football on the side. But they really want opportunities for lots of different kinds of play. This is the current schematic of the program. I'm going to show you some elevation changes in a moment. But can you see my mouse? Yes? Great. The building is down here. This is essentially in the same footprint that it is currently in, which meets Tom's concerns about additional paving. This would not pave any additional space at that park. You come in here at the current gate and there would be a circulation path which meets ADA sloping requirements throughout without having it to be ramped. but it does have an elevation change. You come here and it goes up a little bit toward the top of a hill here, maybe a couple of feet high, just so it overlooks the playing field here and allows for some seating on this side. There'd be a small embankment slide, which is built into the hill. So it doesn't need quite the same use zone here just to add a little extra play value. It comes back down as you come over here. There's a musical instrument area here. And then the slope comes back up to the peak here of 4 and 1 1⁄2 feet. This is the 5 to 12 play area. It came to our attention that all of the preschoolers in Medford are currently playing on playground equipment that is built for 5 to 12-year-olds. It's resulting in kids falling off slides and just not being able to play with the equipment in a way that they would be able to if the equipment was sized for them. So while the Department of Education, DESE does not currently have guidelines separating preschool playgrounds, early education and care does. And the industry standard is to separate playgrounds for two to five-year-olds from playgrounds for older children. So we did that here. So this would be the elementary playground up here. And then this area is a developmentally appropriate area for the preschool that is housed there. Because the McGlynn is the school that houses the program for kids with significant disabilities, including physical disabilities, it was really important that this playground be particularly physically inclusive. So the structures reflect that and so many of the design choices. So this is a deck, I'll show you pictures of it, but it preserves the existing tree. The children told us that if, what was it, If we touch that tree, they will cry for the rest of their lives. So it was very much an important piece to preserve. Everybody wanted the white walls gone. So I apologize to anyone who has been in Medford a long time and loves those white walls representing the river. But they actually cause a lot of supervision hazards. They don't provide any shade. And nobody understands it out there about the river anymore. So we're moving on from that design choice. There is also an outdoor classroom adjacent to the school, which allows the teachers to come out and do hands-on science, have guest speakers in a really nice, quiet environment, do gardening, et cetera, and extend the curriculum in this space. Any questions about the general layout?
[Unidentified]: And I'll show you some precedent images. I can't see everybody, so Roberta, if you could tell me. I don't hear any questions. OK.
[Chenine Peloquin]: No hands. So this is a view. OK, if you're standing here at the corner of the building, this is where Freedom Way takes a turn right here. This is where this first image is rendered from. So you can see the elevation. There's a hill slide here, an embankment slide. And that accessible walkway comes up here, peaks here, and the 5 to 12 structure would go off this way toward the other playground. So I'm hoping that that makes sense with the elevation there. And then this is the preschool play area. And this is another view. Preschool play area here with its own gate. There would be a fence up at the top here to keep the 2 to 5 area separate. During the school day, but that the gate would actually be able to be open so that parents using it on off hours could supervise children on both playgrounds. The 5 to 12 structure that goes off this way, we're still working on the details of that, which is it's why it's kind of a placeholder right now. Is a ramp structure with slides and monkey bars as requested by the kids that meet all the safety standards. We have an inclusive swing, which is the only wheelchair accessible swing that you can actually technically put on a public playground and have usable by everyone, as well as an inclusive spinner and some really neat swings that meet the teacher's needs for supervision and their concerns about turn taking with the kids' need and their physical and developmental need to swing. It will also have a half-court basketball area, and the kids actually asked to make sure, the older kids wanted to make sure that there was a lower hoop for the younger children, so there will be a lower hoop nearby. This is one of the swings that's called, this particular model is called the Viking Swing, and it's a rope about six to eight inches in diameter that's pretty firm and kids can stand on. and multi-user. And then even the physical therapist was excited because she can use that for therapy with kids who are working on trunk balance and things like that. We'd have the turf field. And unfortunately, in a schoolyard, you can't use grass because the kids will just destroy it. It would have to sit for three years anyway to be able to grow. And then the kids would destroy it in a season. And any time it's muddy, it would just be a mess. So we did look at a lot of different alternatives. And turf is kind of what we have to do in a schoolyard, especially with 160 kids on it at any given time. And then this is an example of one of the spinners. And these are the inclusive features. So we're still getting the specs on this piece. We want to make sure that it's got head clearance. But it'll be something similar to this in the two to five area that a child in a wheelchair could access. This is called the WeGo Swing. The gaga ball pit would have an ADA compliant gate so that kids can hop in and out over the side if they want to. But if a child who uses a chair or walker wants to play, they can go in through the side gate. And this is the inclusive spinner. And then around that precious tree is a deck that has a kind of hangout spaces, but is also ramped for full access.
[Unidentified]: There you go, Peter. You're muted.
[Peter Cushing]: Three years and you think I'd remember to unmute. All right. Thank you for your patience. So, our community outreach we have done significant on site events. We've surveyed all elementary families, because we'll be looking to do future work. At our other playgrounds so this is really our trendsetter and the model that we're hoping to set for other playgrounds within the school system. We've done significant, we've done staff survey where we received over 50% participation. great number of interviews with staff, lots of playground observations. Shanine did a significant number of those, but myself and assistant superintendent Suzanne Galussi also observed how kids were playing and listened to teachers. We specifically sought out the CPAC group, which is the special education PAC for the city of Medford, and sought their input for inclusive play space. We created a very diverse committee to inform this work. A couple of things here that were already mentioned, separate preschool area, developmentally and size appropriate equipment, 5-12 playground with challenge and inclusion for all, a flexible use field. If you're familiar with the Brooks flexible use field, think in that nature. And an outdoor classroom. So our budget numbers as they are right now. The 5 to 12 play area and some supporting infrastructure around it. comes to the total of $2 million. The preschool play area comes to the total of $250,000. The turf field comes to $250,000. The outdoor classroom comes to $100,000 and we are coming in for a total of 2.6 million dollars. We are there a couple of alternatives we understand after speaking with Roberta and Danielle that we could either bond this amount or break it into 2 fiscal years and return of an off cycle application. We're open to any suggestions of the committee and really appreciate your work and the citizens of Medford for their support to this very vital project for the students of Medford.
[Chenine Peloquin]: And just so it's clear to the committee, because the budget came in a little later than some of the other applications, we've met with the mayor about at least $500,000 from ARPA and potentially more We're looking at CDBG funding for both fiscal years, as well as linkage funds, and we're starting to explore grants from, you know, community banks and foundations that may be interested. And I'm going to be looking at the library because they just did so much fundraising themselves, you know, brick walkway type things. And the schools, that would be the PTO and the committee working together to secure additional community funds.
[Peter Cushing]: Happy to answer any questions.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you very much. And just since we had a meeting earlier today to talk about what the financing for this might look like and how the CPA funds could be brought into a scale that the CPA program can incorporate, I anticipate that for the benefit of the other committee members that we are probably going to need to wait to get some more information about the budget and the other funding sources over the next month to enable us to be able to deliberate. So we're short on information right now that we're going to need before we can deliberate on this project about the budget. Are there other questions from committee members before I open it up to the public? Joan.
[Joan Cyr]: I have a couple of questions. The application says that the CPA funding request is 900,000. So where is that? And I don't know if you guys have provided a budget yet, if that's what you're talking about, that they don't have a... Where did you come up with this money, with this price for 900,000? Where's your 2.8 or 2.6? And the other question I have was really also for Danielle. There was a mention here of the turf field, which I think Janine said was artificial turf. Right, and we know that that can't be funded with CPC funds. It can't be funded with CPA funds. So is that being pulled out of your request?
[Danielle Evans]: It would be funded by a different source. It can be present in the park, it just can't.
[Joan Cyr]: Right, we just can't.
[Peter Cushing]: I would also like for everyone to know that, you know, we do not want turf, but it's just, it is, until somebody comes up with a durable grass surface that can survive,
[Roberta Cameron]: 160 kids all day long. I saw how many times they replanted the Brooks field before they put artificial turf on it, so I believe you.
[Peter Cushing]: It actually, you know, where I went to high school, they replaced our beautiful grass field and it literally crushed every alumni soul that they made that decision, but it was understandable.
[Joan Cyr]: So the first question was, where did you get these numbers?
[Peter Cushing]: I didn't see a quote. So these are the numbers that have been presented to us by Copley-Wolf. These are the numbers that include approximately $2 million to the play area includes about $159,000 for the equipment itself. That's just the climber. The WEGO swing, I believe, is $51,000. Just as one example, Shanine knows some of the other numbers better.
[Chenine Peloquin]: The architecture team is working on more specific quoting right now. We're going back and forth with playground manufacturers. We're intending to use for any equipment from landscape structures, which is one of the manufacturers, we'll be able to use the state contract and purchase some equipment at a discount. HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : um but.
[Unidentified]: HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.:
[Chenine Peloquin]: : These numbers have been provided to us by the architecture team. HAB-Danny Teodoru, COB.: : These numbers in the application, am I missing it it's a very. HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : The numbers on the screen are not in the application.
[Roberta Cameron]: HAB-Masyn Moyer, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Before I mean, hopefully before our next meeting, but I understand that you may not have the answers yet by December. So it was December 10th. Yeah, so we'll definitely be going into January before we can really have a clear picture on this.
[Peter Cushing]: The just. I lost my train of thought, I apologize. We're also right now I'm working and establishing meetings to talk with the construction and craft laborers shop at Medford vocational technical high school to see about notice of mention in our afternoon meeting this afternoon, but for those of you who are here tonight. This is a great opportunity to engage our students if it works out and also hopefully have some cost savings definitely around demolition and then hopefully around construction. We have a very strong, very strong relationship with the Laborers Union out of Hopkinton, and our hope would be that a true partnership can be formed to give our students an amazing experiential opportunity where they're giving, many of our vocational students do anyway, but where they're giving directly back to their city.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Doug.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, it's more of a request independent of this project, obviously the city of Medford Scott, a bunch of requests here tonight, and I think you know what, and some of them are pretty big numbers I guess I want to understand. When it comes time for us to look at making hard choices, you know where this fits in the context where this fits in, you know, if we're doing design studies, what percentage of their of the city's budget is design studies for for this fiscal year. Same thing with construction costs so we can understand. PB, David Ensign — He-Him, He-Him. He-Him. He-Him.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Losa Julie Genevieve]: My question is not related to money, but it's related to the idea of because I've seen a lot of great idea with the presentation with the with the pictures that Dr. Peter provided. But it's so loaded with the space there is there. How are you going to be able to fulfill all these things that you all the ideas that you have to put into that project? with the space there?
[Chenine Peloquin]: Like is the space big enough?
[Losa Julie Genevieve]: Right. I've seen, like I said, with all the ideas that they have, it looks nice on paper when you're drawing it. But when you actually combine all these things, there's going to be enough space in between when you have kids running around in between spaces. from one end to the other. So that's my concern.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Yeah, well, one of the answers to that is these thin gray lines around each of the structures are the use zones that are required for each individual piece of playground equipment. So there's a six foot buffer zone that each piece, so like this is a spinner, it has to have six feet around it where there's nothing else in it. this swing has to have that same six foot zone. Slides have to have a particular, depending on how tall the slide is, there has to be free space open. So that's taken care of just in the design. And because, so right now, this is, it's actually an enormous playground that's terribly used right now. There's just a whole bunch of unused space. I'd encourage all of you to go down and check it out to see the existing playground right now, because it's in tough shape. But it is, It's actually pretty incredible how much play value we can fit in this space when we think about it in this detailed way. And it also preserves, the pavement also allows for plowing and shoveling so that these kids, this particular school has had so many flooding issues and no way to shovel out their playground that they've had indoor recess most winters. So this allows them to have some space for outdoor recess in the winter.
[Losa Julie Genevieve]: Maybe that's where I seen the space because of the way it is right now. Yeah, I've utilized it I take my kid there so maybe this is the reason why I see the space, and it may not be able to. police, everything. Thank you very much for the explanation.
[Peter Cushing]: Losa, also, I think you do make a really good point, but I just want to reiterate what Shanine said about how poorly the space is used right now. And when you observe the kids play, there's a lot of running around. We've added a significant amount of play value to this with the basketball courts and the gaga pits. And so like, there will definitely be the opportunity to run. There'll be the opportunity for walking. There'll be the opportunity for playing on the field now. There'll be the opportunity for the climbing structure, which exists. It will be smaller, but we have a significant amount of added play value to really engage our students. And a significant amount of greenery added throughout this as well and drainage.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Yeah, so we're getting shade and adding to our tree canopy. both within the playground walls and then all of these trees are actually outside the playground but would add shade. Existing trees are shown with this light gray dot in the middle, solid circle. New trees are shown with kind of this wavy edge and a thinner trunk.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. I want to, before I go back to Doug again, just acknowledge Alicia put into the chat that Um, she could share the parks project spreadsheet so that we can see the projects that aren't funded by this board. That would be extremely helpful, um, to be able for us to be able to see the context of how. The CPA requests fit into the city's overall capital improvements in parks this year. Um, Doug, did you, oh, I, I, you don't have another question to you, Doug.
[Unidentified]: I do not.
[Tom Lincoln]: Okay, Tom. The question, a couple of things here. The playground that's there now was put in with the school in 2001, 2002, is that correct?
[Chenine Peloquin]: 2001, correct.
[Tom Lincoln]: Yes. And so a mere 21 years later, that playground is completely shot. Is that correct?
[Peter Cushing]: Yes.
[Tom Lincoln]: And I would suggest that that's because, like many things in Medford, it was not properly maintained. That's correct. In fact, there are any number of maintenance issues at the adjacent Mystic River Bend Park, which I won't list here, but that's number one. Number two, I love all these fancy structures. Philosophically, I think kids should be allowed to run around a lot more than they are, but apparently every minute is designed to be controlled by the teachers or something. I don't really know. I'm not in elementary school and don't know the first thing about it. I would say, though, that It looks like a maintenance nightmare going forward in a city that does not do a very good job with maintenance. And it also looks like pretty attractive targets for vandalism, which has already happened at any number of parks in Medford over the years, although it's maybe better than it was 10 years ago, I don't know. So I don't know, this is a very big investment and I just wonder what it's gonna look like in five years given, you know, we're talking about $50,000 structures here that are out in the open.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Yeah. Playground structures are expensive, and the increase in cost even just in the past couple of years has been intense. But all of the structures are built with durability in mind. They're being installed in playgrounds all over the country that are being used in schools and various settings in parks, or various different park settings, urban and rural. I think one of the things that is hopefully changing with how the school system has been taking care of our playgrounds is that we just actually, with the help of the CPC, were able to do an assessment of all of our playgrounds to get an idea of what needs to be replaced and how we can think more about preventative maintenance and to have that become part of the way that we do business, both of our city playgrounds. I'm working with DPW there. as well as the school playgrounds, because playgrounds, period, are designed to last 20 to 25 years. That's just what they are, unfortunately. This one would have lasted longer if it had been cared for, but that's not how Medford had been doing business for a very long time. And so we're planning to change that going forward, and we want to make sure that we're budgeting for the maintenance and upkeep of it, as well as regular inspections, so that when something is starting to rest or there's a broken chain, that we're able to replace it and budget for it rather than having to tape it off like the Missitook was. They had a broken slide that got taped off for at least two school years because it wasn't planned for. But if there had been inspections happening, then we would have known that that slide was going to go and had a preventative maintenance budget.
[Peter Cushing]: This playground also, though, to address your comment about trying to have every minute of every day planned by teachers for kids, this playground is actually deliberately and intentionally designed to avoid that. It's to allow for student creativity. I mean, we have a stage that we've put in for not just play value and for students to use during the day, but you know, for maybe nighttime, for maybe having the kids come out and sit down and see a presentation or something along those lines. We're looking at putting in playhouses and other things to allow students creativity of play. If you could pull up a satellite image right now, as I have on my other computer of the existing playground, you'll see that there's essentially one tree in that main play area that is the one that kids said, if you take it away, we're going to cry for the rest of our lives. And the reality is, is that we're adding a significant number of trees so that kids can run in between, play amongst the trees, can hide, can, I don't know, play Robin Hood or whatever their minds, wherever their minds want to go, whatever it is. I'm an adult. I don't, unfortunately, don't play anymore the way kids do. And they're far better at it than we are. So we're trying to create something that will allow the student spirit and imagination to take off.
[Chenine Peloquin]: And the other piece of that is that we ask the kids. And so much of this design came directly from 12 hours on the playground of me talking to every single grade.
[Roberta Cameron]: I just also wanted to point out that the reason for asking the school to undertake a study instead of the original request, which was just going to be to replace the the the play surface was in order to achieve more. cost efficient maintenance because the original design of the playground that's there now is very extremely expensive to maintain and keep in working condition. And so we asked that the first thing that before we invest in fixing this playground, that we design something that can be maintained more cost-effectively.
[Chenine Peloquin]: The biggest maintenance concern of this was the drainage and the groundwater, both the groundwater and the surface runoff is a problem here. So this design actually deals with that with rain gardens as well as sufficient drainage underneath. So you can see here the flooding marks that the flooding came all the way up at times to the foot of the structure. And because of the insufficient drainage, it caused the poured-in-place to fail earlier than it would. Poured-in-place rubber still only lasts 10 to 15 years. So on any playground, you're going to have to, in general, replace the surfacing before you have to replace the structures. We don't have to mow any of this. So there's not so much of that kind of maintenance. there's only the maintenance that would have to be done anyway of actually inspecting and replacing any parts, which should have been being done the whole time. I don't know. We don't have an estimate right now on ongoing maintenance for this particular design, but because so much of it is pavement that we don't have As much, you can see the difference in, well, let me get back to here. The difference here is that the poured-in-place is contained here and only under the structure. So poured-in-place rubber is not meant to prevent injury. It's meant to prevent critical head injury and death. So it's really only needed in places where kids might fall from a height. And that is where the place structures are. So it's only here and here. And then the turf field is, as we discussed, necessary for kids to have open space to run in a schoolyard. The rest of it is actually concrete or asphalt, which allows it to be more durable and not need as many repairs as well as being able to be there for inclement weather. So if you see the difference between that and the the amount of poured in place. So the actual, the rubber that's needed is in a six foot radius around each of these surfaces. But so the first thing one of the designers said was that this was clearly initially, oh, the inspector. The inspector last February said that this playground was clearly designed by someone who sells poured in place surfaces. Because it's not necessary, none of this in the center needed to be rubber, not one bit of it. So that is the piece that when it needs to be replaced, it will also be more cost effective in 15 years to replace it than it would have been if we had done more structures or a more spread out playground footprint.
[Peter Cushing]: I'd also like to say that the importance of a design study, this is really helping us get this right. And Shanine mentioned something that I just want to expand on a little bit. It's very easy to go to a playground manufacturer, fill in the blank of whichever one you want. You can get the names off the structures in any playground. they'll come out and they'll design it for you. But there's really no thought invested in that. There's no considerations of how does a student with autism, how does a student with a gross motor skill disability, how do students with any variety of disabilities, how does flow and supervision work? You have to invest in design studies to make sure that this work is done right. And if it is going to last for a quarter century, that we've done it right and that we do everything we can to make sure it lasts longer than that. But unfortunately, as we know, far too often with building systems and playgrounds and infrastructure, there are lifespans of these structures. So those new schools in 2001, they're not so new anymore.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. I'd like to ask Kalia Bachman if you would like to read out loud what you've written into the comments. I think it's an important comment, and I'm afraid if it's only in the chat, we're not going to remember it to keep it in the record. Are you with us? Or I could read your message.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, I can speak to that. Thank you. Sure. I was just commenting on the I had to exit because my video is glitching so now I can't see my chat anymore, but I was just saying that. So I'm a landscape architect, I'm not on the design team that worked on this particular project so, but I do know the firm. And I spoke to them about the project at the harvest your energy festival. I heard some comments about the cost of the project. I think that it's easy to kind of say, oh, that costs so much. Playgrounds are very, very expensive. It's not just the equipment, it's all the preparation that goes into it. And especially for a playground like this that has a very specialized location, you have kind of special drainage that you need to install and other mitigation measures there, as well as that accessible equipment. For some reason, in my opinion, is that it has specialized parts and other mechanisms that you don't see on all other play equipment. Accessible equipment is very expensive. I remember Shani mentioning a swing, I think that's like $50,000, that's not atypical. And that's not necessarily an installed cost for some of, I don't know about that specific swing, but some of those pieces of equipment are tremendously expensive without even being installed. So I just wanted to comment on that, as well as the general sort of construction cost climate that we're in right now, we've seen It's incredible how much costs have increased in the last couple of years. And it's completely understandable to me that this project would cost, I think it was $2.6 million or even more.
[Roberta Cameron]: And then you also pointed out that regarding the location, the site is very wet and will require specialized design to make sure it's usable as much as possible.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. Sure, yeah. And that ties into the drainage as well. And what Shanine was saying about the rubber deteriorating early, that the drainage failed, and everything else.
[Peter Cushing]: Do you know what's interesting? And Kalia, I really appreciate your comments. And as you look at the satellite image here, You'll notice, moving out from the school, you'll see the blue that mimics the river, then you'll see a lighter shade, and then you'll see a darker shade of green. I'm slightly colorblind, so I apologize, but you'll see a darker shade out along the fence. That's not a design color there. That's damaged from the oversaturation of water that thankfully we're not having right now because the DPW did a great job, but that is all where flooding and water has sat for years. For 20 years. Right. And so I want you to take notice of that. From a satellite, obviously we're zoomed in, you can notice the water damage to this playground.
[Roberta Cameron]: A very favorite story that I have, I went once to the library and opened up a drawer and saw an old map of Medford in it. And the area exactly where this playground sits today, where the school sits, is what used to be called Labor in Vain. This whole loop right here yep that's because that's the that that was the oxbow of the river that was filled in so the playground is sitting on an area that wanted to be a river. So that's why. we labor in vain to try to keep the playground operable in that spot. Maybe if you can incorporate, instead of incorporating the whole outline of the river, you could just incorporate labor in vain in the design of your playground.
[Chenine Peloquin]: To get at the earlier question about how to get all that play value in here, so just if we were to look, the two to five playground would be here. This is all unused space, essentially. So the kids play on the green area. Sometimes they run over here, but usually not. Usually there is a football or soccer game going on here, which means that to get onto the playground, you have to run through the big open game. The walls are preventing the teachers from supervising. But all of this space out here is basically unused by the kids during the school day. So we have the 2 to 5 area here, the 5 to 12 area here. This existing tree stays and the basketball goes around here. There's a loop path and the field takes over the space from the earlier structure.
[Tom Lincoln]: Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Tom, did you have something else to add?
[Tom Lincoln]: Another thing you should realize is that the school complex was built on the site of a landfill. It was a city dump for decades and probably closed in the 60s. I like the idea that you're going to get rid of these failing rubber surface, the name of which escapes me. I assume that's going to be some sort of a permeable surface, number one. And number two, I think you have an opportunity, maybe the other picture showed this, to add a lot of a lot of trees here. It's always struck me that the environs of the schools over there have remarkably few trees in them. There's a lot of grass, sort of dead grass areas, bordering the park that need more trees.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Are you seeing the new map now?
[Tom Lincoln]: Yeah, so there are lots of new trees here, yes?
[Chenine Peloquin]: Yes.
[Tom Lincoln]: And you're getting rid of the rubber, and so it's going to cost less to maintain, correct? That's right, okay, that sounds good. It sounds like to me that we ought to go back to the original designers and have them pay for this, the new park, the new playground. But hey, that was a long time ago, that money's gone.
[Unidentified]: Other questions, comments, Chris?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Hi, Shanine and Peter. Beautiful presentation, really detailed. Just hearing the word Missituk used in schools is great. And that area with labor and vein that you just talked about is really an asset to the community. But obviously, it's in disrepair, and you've done such great work trying to understand those new dynamics of kids play. But just a little shout out for maybe a pirate ship or Blessing of the Bay over in Somerville. They're planning on putting a children's ship there to play with. does any nod to our historic, you know, foundings in that area. Clipperships would be great, but you've done such great work. If you just kind of include a little bit of the river and a little history in it would be a big bonus, but great work.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Thank you. Yeah, it's been a tricky balance, particularly making sure that the teachers feel heard, they are quite concerned that this be a priority of a school playground. And when we talk about its broader use by the community, they're like, but it's a school playground. So we've really had to balance that. And the idea of this being even a destination playground gets a lot of heckles up among the staff and faculty, because they want to make sure that the priority is really for the school's use. But having the identity of the area present in this is an important piece. And we've talked about doing that with some sidewalk art or murals, et cetera. We actually saw a pirate ship piece today. And unfortunately, it tends to be a really boring piece of equipment, but it was a pirate ship. And I was like, that could be cool because of the shipbuilding. But it's not a very fun piece of equipment. So then it's moot. But yes, identity is.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Children first and good play, but history second. But keep in mind if you have a chance. Thank you.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Thank you so much.
[Peter Cushing]: We have another meeting this coming week. So we'll bring it up. Absolutely.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Kalia again?
[Alicia Hunt]: Hi there. It's Kayla actually. No problem. It happens all the time. I just wanted to add that another factor in the price, maybe, because this is a schoolyard, and I have this happen all the time at my firm. We do school year design as well. Every school in the state that's renovating their playground wants to do it between the months of June and August. So you have this very constricted timeline that leads to a lot of competition or less competitive pricing from a lot of contractors because they know that you're kind of under the gun to get that finished or get most of it finished before the kids are back to school. So that does contribute to the costs.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Thank you Kayla. Can you just tell people a little bit about like, what happens underneath the playground in terms of permeability?
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure, so the port and place rubber surfacing and the artificial turf are both permeable surfaces. They both have a layer of basically stone underneath that has gaps that water can go through. The rubber surfacing is, it's bonded, so you have a layer of like shredded rubber and then EPDM, which is a virgin material on the top. And both of those have, they're bonded together with a glue but they are permeable so water can pass through, as long as the ground isn't frozen, that's when you kind of get a little bit less permeability. The same thing with artificial turf, except it's not bonded, you essentially have a layer of of stone, drainage stone, and actually at a lot of turf fields, you can increase that layer of drainage to hold more water. So you can actually hold more water and let it infiltrate more slowly into the subgrade using that turf. And of course you have an overflow drainage. If it fills up, then there's somewhere for that water to go instead of having a big puddle. But you have the drainage layer, you have sometimes a kind of a padding layer And then you have the turf rolled out on top and the stuff that helps the, like the little blades of grass stick up on the artificial turf is called infill. That's, I don't know specifically what infill you're using here, but that's like a loose material. Traditionally, it's like rubber crumb, but most firms I know are going away from that and use like a sand.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Yeah, we're trying to go with a natural material.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, I know that Copley-Wolf has done a design with cork infill, so that may be another option that's coming out. But I don't know too much about the cork, but that's another option. So that's all kind of permeable, helps water sink down. So most of the surface that you see here is going to infiltrate water. Thank you so much.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Did you have a question or comment?
[Joan Cyr]: Just a quick comment to Shanine. When you chat with the teachers, absolutely, you know, this is for the students, but, you know, it's also for the community. And that's how we use CPA funds, because if it's just for the school, then the school needs to pay for it, not CPA.
[Peter Cushing]: It is not just for the school, it is for the greater community. It is first for the school, then for the community. And the children are the community.
[Joan Cyr]: That is true, too.
[Peter Cushing]: Thank you. Can I just make one more quick comment? One of the other big things about this playground is we're still going to provide fire lane access to the back of the building, but you'll notice up against the building, we're getting off the walkway. to have the general public not walk between the playground and our kindergarten and preschool classrooms that have direct access out to the playground. It's a safety and security concern and everything is being done to divert foot traffic away from the school and hopefully our other schools. We realize we're in an urban environment, but just wanted that to be noticed and on record.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. We have three more projects to get through this evening. So I want to move on. Thank you very much, everyone. I also want to make sure that we have the opportunity to ask the questions that we need to ask to get the information we need. So it's tricky. So the next is Isaac Hall House exterior restoration. So who is here to speak for the Isaac Hall House this evening?
[Unidentified]: That would be me.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Chris.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Just have one of our advocates on the line, if I could just give him a quick text. He'll be dialing in. Hi, everyone. My name is Chris Donovan, and we're promoting the Isaac Hall preservation plan today. I saw the presentations earlier, what beautiful graphics and presentations you're all done. I wish I was a little more caught up on that one, show you something. But it was basically just trying to restore the windows at the Isaac Hall House as part of a preservation plan to bring that building back into good repair. So that's what the ask is today. It's $60,000 for restoring the windows at the Isaac Hall House, part of Paul Revere's first thought. Another $15,000 for consultants to analyze that and and $10,000 for contingencies, which was asked for in the bid. So it's an $85,000 ask for that project. And we're basically replacing or restoring the windows in the Isaac Hall House. We have a historic preservationist, New Boston, to take care of the windows. They're one of the best companies in that profession. And we're proud to have a bid and a quote from them, old Bostonian, Anthony Greenwood. Anthony may be on the line with us, and he may jump in for some of the questions of the actual details of that. So I wish I had a better sort of presentation but it's a really kind of straight ahead. Ask it's it's restoring the windows and Isaac call houses part of historic preservation, because we have some great stewards in the eyes of call house right now. It is the Islamic cultural center of Medford the ICCM has taken over that building for their own purposes. And, but they are great stewards they come in to be in asking what they could do to keep that building alive and and keep that story in part of Medford's historical legacy and I think they've done a great job with a few. anyone saw Patriot's Day last year. It was a great event. We had so many people there from the community as well as the Islamic community and they were so excited to be part of our community and to steward that building. So that's the Aston. I think Anthony's coming online He's our expert on window preservation. We also have a historic preservation architect as part of that bid that we're looking for to look over the building and decide what may be available for future renovations and restorations for that building. So the ask is $85,000 for restoring the windows at the Geyser Call House. And I think Anthony's on the line. He's welcome to be available for questions from the committee if they have any questions.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Doug.
[Doug Carr]: Chris, great project. Obviously, this building is very important building. We've funded similar products to this one. Do you have, I don't have the application in front of me. Are there, historical drawings or sort of photos, I mean, what's guiding your restoration? Or can you just give us a little background on the architect and the context here?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Sure. One of the things we're getting caught in is how much work do we have to do before we start to do something. That's what part of the ask is as well to get a historic preservation architect involved to go under the hood. But the simple ask is for the window repair, and Anthony's on the line. He's gracious enough to be at the end of a phone to answer some of the questions on that, to find out how you take the building apart. Without taking the building apart, is it still a functioning building? but we do want to further restore it. So Anthony, if I could ask if you could answer that question for Doug about how you would kind of go about handling that process of restoring the windows, which is the specific ask here. Anthony's still muted. Hang on there, Anthony. Anthony's driving home. We're lucky he has been on the end of a phone for quite a while. Anthony, you're going to have to unmute yourself. Can we unmute him? Is that something we could do remotely? Roberta, it's Anthony Greenwood on the line. That's okay. Hang in there, Anthony.
[Danielle Evans]: I think we can only ask.
[Matt Leming]: I think he's like driving and trying to unmute right now. So let's see. He's talking.
[SPEAKER_20]: Sorry. I just actually, I was at my office for a couple hours. I just pulled over. I'm in a Walgreens parking lot.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thank you, Anthony.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Sorry, go ahead. You can answer the question, that'd be great.
[SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, so basically what we do is as window restorers. We're trying to restore the windows without damaging the structure of the building. So windows are designed to come in and out from the inside. So there's an interior trim that we pop out. We take the windows out. We're going to go to our shop, restore them by stripping the paint, taking the glazing compound out. checking the sashes for repairs, repairing them, reglazing them, priming, painting them, and then reinstalling them with either proper weather stripping, chain, or whatever components that they're on. When I looked at this building, I believe that they had vinyl tracks. So what I told them was, we will replace them with the same vinyl tracks. However, if we pull the vinyl tracks out and we see in the frames that there's the original pulleys that have the weight pockets, we would like to go with that route instead, because it's more historic.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: And from what I've heard on the building there's a couple little knickknacks here and there all throughout the building that have some kind of historical component but the deep dive into that into the answer your question Doug is to get a historic architect or preservation architect in there to, you know, pull off some of the vital sightings look inside those those window and find out what we need to do sort of next. So Anthony knows his particular facet of the install, but we're looking to find out more for future purposes to do a larger scale renovation of that building.
[Doug Carr]: Sure, Chris. Again, along with Mr. Lincoln, we've been through this at the Brooks Estate where we did 70 windows restored. I think Chevalier did it, we funded it a couple of years ago. I think a couple of key things, you're a preservation architect, whoever it is will know all this, but we want to make sure that, because we're restoring the window, you know, if it's got glass that is inappropriate, it's probably going to be re-glazed with glass that is appropriate. Same with the window color. it might have 10 layers of paint on it on that window. We'd want to have it restored to the original paint color, I think. And I don't know what that is. Maybe historic photos, or maybe what we did was we scraped and found out that it was a green color. We had no idea, so we did that. So there's a lot of steps that will precede Anthony's work, obviously. And you're well aware of that. I just want to make sure that you've got, because we're restoring things, we're following the National Register.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: uh standards that's kind of things your preservation architect will know chapter and verse what that means so as long as you follow that direction we should be good to go and if people haven't known i've done some some uh due diligence on some other historical preservation architects and all they all love anthony and um old bostonian he's got quite a reputation in the industry yep we're glad to have you thank you appreciate that
[Roberta Cameron]: HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : question that I have is whether. HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : A concern is that we would need to have a condition assessment on the building first so that we have confidence that. HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : That the windows can be restored, and you know that there isn't a need for additional carpentry in order to be able to accommodate just the restoration of the windows. So I would hope that the first step would be to have a preservation architect do an assessment of the exterior of the building. We can break the exterior and the interior into separate phases. And right now the concern, especially with the CPA funding is to have an assessment of the exterior of the building before we begin to work on the windows.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: That's exactly right. Roberta is to try and get a better feeling for the building, but to do that is takes a little bit of work and that's what the ask is for for the historic preservationist portion of that. The $15,000 to do that due diligence behind the scenes to to get the building looked at for any of those pitfalls that may be present, but we can't see.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you very much, Tom.
[Tom Lincoln]: I'm curious, I don't. I know this building a little bit. been by there many times. The building is privately owned at this point.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yes, it is correct.
[Tom Lincoln]: And are the owners chipping in on this process?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: They have a $10,000 proposal to add into this, and we're just at the beginning of this time, I think there's a plans and there's been talk with the Paul Revere Museum in Boston to try and make the Isaac Call House. Nina Zaneri over there, Tom, if you know Nina, has been a great advocate on the phone. She's the executive director of the Paul Revere Museum, and they've got quite a reputation nationally. and we're going to try and get the Isaac Hall as Paul Revere's first stop and have it become maybe a visitor center, Tom, in the double doors, which we know is Gaffey's entrance. They're excited stewards to bring that to Medford, but step one is here on the table today. But that's the excitement to get Paul Revere's first stop, Isaac Hall. When I tell people Isaac Hall preservation plan, no one gets it. When I say Paul Revere's first stop, people get a little bit excited. We want to try and bring that excitement to the public.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I also want to make a point that where we'd be putting public funds into a privately owned building, we'd make a condition that it has to be permanently protected. So we'd be looking for a preservation restriction as a condition of investing the city's money in the preservation of the buildings. And there have been a few projects in the past where the building was already in a local historic district. And we considered that to be commensurate with the amount of funding that we're putting into it. But I think that the two private organizations that we have on the agenda this evening would be breaking new ground in the amount of a investment that we'd be putting in a building that doesn't already have some form of protection.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: understood, and I did a terrible job of presenting because this was supposed to be presented by someone from the ICCM, our great friend Hominyad Morshad is not with us today. He had a death in the family, but he is a jewel in this community for the Islamic community as well as in Medford. He's a He's a great resource, and we love him to death, but he's not here because of family commitments. But I think they're very in lockstep understanding their role as private-public partnership and realizing that Isaac Hall House is one facet of that building that they want to maintain. So I definitely understand the private-public.
[Matt Leming]: Just as a comment, I think that your presentation was just fine. I did tell the committee beforehand about that situation. The previous presentations may have seemed a little bit intimidating, but that's primarily because they're open space projects, they're proposing new constructions. This is a historical preservation project, so I don't think that most of the applications had those detailed 3D designs and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_16]: I was very impressed with them regardless. They were great. Thank you, Matt, for saying that. Thank you.
[Tom Lincoln]: Can I ask one more question? Are you bidding out, assuming you get the funding, are you going to bid this out for competitive bidding?
[Danielle Evans]: It's not a public project, so it's not subject to public procurement.
[Tom Lincoln]: Oh, I know that. But I'm just saying, in terms of getting the best price, it's a pretty sizable job. We did windows at the, we're a private organization too, when I used to work at the Royal House and Slave Quarters, and we did all the windows on the mansion, and we put it out to bid to get the best price. We are obviously qualified bidders.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Sure. I definitely understand that, Tom. We'll take that into consideration. I think we're really lucky to have Anthony be with us for so long. He was there pre-COVID and maintained some pricing that was there. I think there's been some expansion of that because of today's pricing, but I think we've got a good thing. But I definitely understand the idea of to have multiple bids on that.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Any other comments on this project? Let us move on then to Shiloh Baptist Church.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I see a couple of you here who is going to be speaking for Shiloh tonight.
[Unidentified]: Cliff, you are- Hello, how are you doing? There you go, yeah. Who else is on with me? It's McIntyre, Pastor Bill. Hello?
[Roberta Cameron]: We can hear you. Mr. McIntyre, you are muted right now.
[Unidentified]: Yes. Oh, OK. Well, I thought, Brother McIntyre, what I don't know, you can just jump in. Is that all right?
[Singleton]: That's the way it would work. Yes, that would be good.
[Unidentified]: OK. Well, can I? I'd like to start with talking about the members and how important this church is to the members of our congregation. We have a small congregation at Shiloh. Our church is big, as you can see. But on average, we maybe got on each Sunday about 20 people on average that physically come to church. Because we got folks online. on Facebook and Zoom. And most of our members, they're seniors. And then we got young couples, not young couples, young mothers with their kids. But this church means a lot to us, you know. And it's an old church, but it truly means a lot to us. And especially to the seniors. I mean, some of them, you know, during the summertime, they walk to church sometimes. And they love this church, you know. But our membership, we just don't have the financing to keep up with this church. But the church has been a part of this community for so many years. And I'm pretty new to the church. But I'll tell you how much I feel about this church. I come to this church. The church is closed during the week. But I'm here at the church at least three or four times in a week because there's obligations that have to be met. And on Sundays, just to warm this church, I have to be, the church service starts at 1130. I have to be at the church between 830 and nine just to start the furnace, just to get the building warm, because we got an old heating system. And then during the summertime, we only got three ACs and some fans, and it takes a while just to cool. get the building cool, because everything goes out those cracks. Everything, you know, even the heat during the winter or during the summer, the cool goes through all those cracks or holes on the window. And basically, we need help. You know, and this is totally new to me. I'm being kind of choked up here. I'm going to let Brother Mac start.
[Singleton]: Well, the thing is that this is an old historic building that was run by another Methodist faith early on. We took that over about 50, 60 years ago. And they put quite a bit of money in this church, renovating it as the congregation slimmed down. So have some of the funding slimmed down, but the overall condition of the church is good because we continue to have these planning sessions where we're putting new this uh the kitchen and the bathrooms have been refurbished uh a number of things where there's so there's an investment that's going on within the church for the number of for the number of members that we have there but the one big clutch that is we face is that presentation to the community as well as These windows, the windows, as you can see, are stained glass with a palladium on top and all the side lights. And we'd like to address that. That would save us, energy-wise, a significant amount of money, as well as it's a safety issue to make sure that they stay in place and meet the historical criteria that would be necessary. And I think that one of the things that we look at doing is hiring architect to look at what we have, conserve that, make the proper restoration with the right contractor and put us back into a condition where when people drive by in the community who lives by will be impressed with our building in the community of Medford, we'd be substantially happy with what Minority Church or Black Church substantially is doing with the funds that it gave to the church, as well as what the church is doing for itself. And I think that if I'm reading things right, that we would be able to put a small amount of money towards that restoration effort is that we're looking at a period where we want to get this done within the next couple of years. And it's particularly important that we don't want to let things slide to the point where the, as you know, if you don't fix your car in an opportune time, then the cost of more money. And we're sort of at that point where we've sort of stood off and not been able to address this major effort because we've had these windows evaluated by the person that did Trinity Church some time ago. And he's since passed on and there's another individual that's doing a church in Springfield that looked at this church. And we'd like to narrow that down, get an art detection place and ask the city of Medford through its capital funding what they may be able to advance or grant us to make this a real edifice within the community of West Medford. Historically, this church has been around about 130 some odd years, and we'd like to be around another 50 to 130 years, but right now we wanna make sure that we have a nice edifice and that those people who visit us have seen what the church looks like inside. It's very nice. It's just when we look outside, we don't know what we're gonna see inside because it's so expensive to address these windows. So I'd like to just leave it there. And anyone else has some other questions, we'd like to address those questions.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Are there questions from committee members? Let me stop the share so that I can see you all.
[Doug Carr]: Sure. I think there's a lot of comparisons. First of all, this project is a great project, obviously. I live three blocks from this church. I walk by it almost twice, three times a week. It's a work of architecture. The windows are a gem. It's really, but the building itself overall is also worth preserving, you know, and I think there's a lot of comparisons to the last project with the Isaac Hall House. You know, it's kind of limited in scope, but we also want to see the big picture as well. There's a lot of, this whole exterior needs to be restored, and I know we don't have the money or the request is not for that, but ultimately I think that needs to be part of Some longer term, you know, you're missing obviously that big. That big canopy on the on the tower that's been gone for decades. That used to be a whole different look to the building. That's in your, in your. Application is really important, but that's not what this. But so it's, I think, again, you're on the right track here. I think it's a great project. I just think there's a lot of. It feels like it could be a million dollar project, not a $150,000 project, given what I see on the exterior and the needs. But I know you need to start somewhere. So starting with the windows is the right approach. I agree with that.
[Singleton]: Thank you. Because we've been trying to address that issue, and we have conserved with some of the older windows in the back that needed attention. We make sure we winterize. One of the big things with these churches, they need to be winterized. You've got that huge auditorium there that you have to heat. And windows are a prime problem where if they're not properly glazed, then you're losing a significant energy problem. So we would be able to hit not only this one stone, But two stones, when we close the church up, winterize it better, it would afford us opportunity to maybe do a little bit more fundraising because that's something this church can do.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, and again, from experience here, your architect or whoever gets involved in this will have a better idea of this, but usually for windows like this, one of the things they try to do is put a A second window and interior storm or some other way to preserve the heat, but still keep the historic look of the building on the exterior, which adds cost but is is is done a lot on historic buildings, even though these are really really big windows and our custom shapes obviously so. That's a detail you'll need to get into once you start attacking the problem from a design perspective. But I think that alone, that will also, not just glazing, one layer of glass is not going to do a lot for the heating, but two will. And I think that will get you halfway there.
[Singleton]: We do concur.
[Unidentified]: And structure around those glass also. that need the interior and the exterior that needs a lot of work. And like you say, 150 really ain't going to address it, but a million will be nice.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I'm thinking like, you know, right now is the preservation project funds, which I'm sure Danielle and Roberta and others are aware of. I mean, you are a prime candidate to go for half million or more to apply for that, too. I think a historic African-American church like this one would be very attractive on those kind of state-level grants that we got one 20 years ago for the Brooks State to get us off our feet. In some ways, you're in the same position. So I think there's an opportunity there as well to go after multiple funding sources. Thank you for the direction.
[Roberta Cameron]: And it might, it might actually be helpful to get the assistance of the historical commission in this because a hiccup is that this church is not actually listed on the state registry yet, which is a criteria to qualify for the state grants. So maybe that's a conversation that can be had is what is a, what's a strategy that we could pursue that the most quickly and easily within our means to be able to get them listed on the state register so that they can apply for the state funds.
[Singleton]: Okay, I wasn't aware of that, thank you. Yes, Cliff, didn't you visit the Historical Society?
[Unidentified]: I had a meeting with them. Go ahead. Well, they designated shallow. as a historical significance on the Zoom meeting. It wasn't a visit, it was a Zoom meeting.
[Roberta Cameron]: At the local level for purposes of this grant, but we need to have it designated at the state level too.
[Doug Carr]: I'm actually not familiar with that process, but we could certainly. I'll speak to my commission members. We see them next week or the week after. We'll talk about it then.
[Roberta Cameron]: Great, and I can share with you an email about it too.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Are there questions, comments about this development, this project? Thank you both very much for your presentation.
[Singleton]: Thank you. Thank you very much for having us.
[Roberta Cameron]: And we have one more project left on the agenda this evening, which is walking court, who is here to speak for walking court.
[Unidentified]: Hi.
[Ciccariello]: Good evening everyone. The director of modernization in procurement with the Medford housing authority. It's nice to see you all this evening. I also have Jeff Driscoll on call with us who's our executive director and Margaret Donnelly Moran and Natalie Jansen who are both with I'm sorry, the Cambridge Housing Authority. And the Cambridge Housing Authority is assisting us as a development consultant with the redevelopment, the future redevelopment of Walkman Court. So I have a presentation, a brief presentation that I'd like to share with you all. Am I able to share my screen?
[Unidentified]: I think so. Try and see if it lets you.
[Matt Leming]: Do you see anything? No. Yeah, click share screen on Zoom. Oh, hold on.
[Unidentified]: Yep. How about now? It's going. OK. Great.
[Ciccariello]: All right. So Walkland Court, it's an existing 144 units of deeply affordable elderly disabled housing. It is the Medford Housing Authority's sole state development. Our other developments are all federally funded through HUD. And because it's a state development, it's severely underfunded. It's historically been underfunded. So we're looking to try to get this housing from out of the state's portfolio and bring it under the federal portfolio. I'm going to show you like an aerial view of the site for those that aren't familiar with it. So, the walking court is consisted of nine buildings. They're all two-story walk-up garden flat style buildings. Each building has 16 units. And because they're walk-up buildings, they're not ideal for the elderly population that they serve. The buildings were built between 1963 and 1965, and they have not been comprehensively modernized since. All the plumbing, electrical within the buildings, it's all original. And there is a small community center towards the, it's towards the north of actually towards like the south part of the site near the railroad tracks. And it's a fairly small community center for 144 unit elderly development. But it is used as a polling place. It's nice that we have a community center there. We use it a lot. We have a lot of resident meetings there. But due to the size of it, when we do hold resident meetings, especially for kind of this upcoming CCCCO, Rm 630, Jack Scott Conference Room): redevelopment, we need to hold two separate meetings, because of the size of our meetings are very well attended by our resident community. CCCCO, Rm 630, Jack Scott Conference Room): So for each meeting where we need to kind of break up half the development, at a time in order to to meet with our residents. This is a, actually, let me just talk about the site a little bit more. For those that are not familiar, towards the south end of the site, it's bordered by the railroad tracks, and there's a large scale of mid-rise, kind of six-story building behind it. Towards the west part of the site, you have the Whole Foods and Starbucks. So, you know, retail area. And then on your north part of the site is a few residential homes. And then you have the Mystic River, which is a great amenity, great open spaces, fields, walking paths, and the Condon Shell is a short walk. And the east part of the site is where you get your typical two single family and two family Medford residential neighborhood. So this is just a picture from a courtyard in between two of the two-story buildings, that mid-rise building that I was talking about across the train tracks as dead center. And then again, the site, it's in a great location. It's within a three-minute drive to the West Medford commuter rail line, 13-minute walk. You have the whole foods grocery right next door, which is a great amenity. And again the mystic river walkway and T assessively of the bus routes on Boston out that are highly used by our resident community. And so what we're looking to do here with the with the redevelopment so we're looking to replace the 144 obsolete senior disabled units. And we're also looking to add 54 deeply affordable senior disabled movement so. We're breaking this up into two phases phase one is the replacement of the senior disabled housing, and also increasing that by 54 units so for 100, it'll be 198 new units of deeply affordable elderly disabled housing. Since we're changing the building massing from two-story walk-up garden flat buildings to mid-rise buildings for the seniors with elevators, it frees up a fair amount of space on the site in which we're looking to add in a phase 2, 40 deeply affordable family housing units. And within those 40, we're looking to put in a mid-rise family building with elevator access so that we could house some families with, you know, that have handicap accessibility issues. We're also, we're looking to build a community spaces that's adequate for the 200, 198 unit elderly disabled room. So a larger community space, it's easier to access for our residents. All of our residents need to go outside now to get access to the community space. So this community space would be within the mid-rise buildings and also to create sustainable and a resilient community.
[Unidentified]: So kind of reiterating what's possible.
[Ciccariello]: The phase one, we have a couple of screenshots here. Let me go back to this picture here is just kind of a feasibility study of what's possible. It was shown the two mid-rise buildings towards the rear of the development along the train tracks. just to the north of that would be the mid-rise family buildings, and then the townhouse-style buildings that more closely kind of fit in with the surrounding neighborhood on North Street and Auburn Street. So, again, phase one would be the 198 deeply affordable senior disabled units and phase two would be 40 deeply affordable family units. So our current status, we received a $15 million grant from DHCD, and we were one of four housing authorities that were approved to submit a grant to DHCD. And out of those four housing authorities, we were the highest ranked applicant in the state. And we were the only housing authority in the state to receive a $15 million grant. And the $350,000 grant that we received from the CPA last year really bolstered our application to the state. You know, we can't speak, you know, we thank you guys for that and that was, you know, really huge and us with, you know, with our applications in the state that bolster that significantly. And where we're at now, we just onboarded an architect in late September. The architect is called Dietz & Company. We received seven really great proposals from architectural firms, and Dietz & Company is an amazing firm. They have a lot of experience with undergoing and designing what we're looking to perform at Walkland Court. So we're looking to seek full zoning approval for the whole site for the elderly, portion and the family portion in the spring of 2023. So the community engagement process, as I stated, we onboarded the architect in late September. We've been meeting with our residents, since September of 2021. And since then, we've met with them in March of 22 September 22 had about three meetings with them since we've on boarded the architect. The end with the community since we've on board of the architect, we've had a direct butters meeting was the first one and then we've held two larger community meetings. One to you know we had one November 1 and one November 16 and we're looking to schedule another one in mid December. So to get down for what the CPA ask is, so for the phase one for the elderly disabled development, it's a $2.4 million ask. 800,000 of that we are looking for in 2023 to support pre-development activities. Our pre-development budget to closing to what's called the financial closing is at $4.2 million. So we're asking the 800,000 to assist us with pre development costs, and then 1.6 to support construction activities which will take place in 2024 and 2025. As I discussed we received a very generous award from you guys of $350,000 in 2021. So the total CPA from 20, the total asthma CPA from 2021 to 2025 is 2.75 million. So that's a 2.41 we're coming to this evening on top of the 350 that we were awarded in 2021. And that would be, so we broke it down what the per unit would be from CPA, it's about $13,889 per unit for the 198 elderly disabled units. and would look for a letter of commitment from the Community Preservation Committee by September of 2023 so we can secure the remaining federal and state funding to financially close in June of 2024. And that's when construction would take place soon thereafter.
[Unidentified]: That's all I have for the presentation.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. I'd like to go back to your numbers for a moment before you, before I open it up for questions. So, yeah, you show the total CPA ask is 2.75 million, and you divide that among 198 units. The CPA funds can only be applied toward the new units, not the replacement units. So we would. Oh, and and so what we would actually it's important for us, I think you said that the total cost of pre development is four million and we need to make sure that I'm sorry, did I. HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : yeah 4,056,030 is what I see in the budget, so we have to make sure that we do the best that the percentage of CPA of CPA funds going into this stage. HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : cannot be more than the percentage of new units to the total units at this stage. or at this phase. So 54 into 198 is the maximum percentage. So the 2.75 million into 4 million, we have to, our ceiling threshold is 27.27% of what what the CPA funds can go toward pre-development. So I just wanted to put that out there so that we make sure that we have the math aligned. So the total amount that we could offer, I think is something a little bit less than what you're asking for, for pre-development. It's off by not much, but I just want to make sure that we put that out there.
[Unidentified]: Are there other questions, comments from committee members?
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm sorry, I'm going to take that back before I open it up for more questions and comments and just point out that we, together with Danielle and members of the Office of What is your office called? Planning, development, and sustainability. That is never going to implant in my brain. That we're looking for more information about what alternatives, what options are available to support pre-development and what funding alternatives could contribute to this so that we can be able to support it in the best way, in the most effective way that we can with CPA funds without overwhelming our CPA program. I think that it's going to probably take another few weeks at least for us to be able to generate some more answers in our end and to work together with the housing authority to work out some questions on the budget. I would consider the budget that we see here, just as it was with the McGlynn School, that this is still preliminary and we need to continue at the drawing board to know exactly what we're going to be asking of the CPA and what approach we'll take, whether we consider bonding or if there's a way to break up the ask into smaller pieces that we'd be able to handle with our CPA program.
[Unidentified]: back to the committee. Doug. Roberta, do we have a copy of this PowerPoint?
[Doug Carr]: It's a really good presentation that covers it. I don't know if that was submitted or if not, we should get a copy if that's possible, even PDF form or sign.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, I can get that to you, of course.
[Doug Carr]: I mean, I'm thrilled to see such an investment in public housing. This is a great site. If the Green Line, which opens a week from Monday, gets extended to Route 16, this would be literally a two-minute walk from that station, which we all are going to wish to have happen in the long term. But I think there's some great work here. The consolidation on site, the buildings makes a ton of sense. The quality of the buildings look very professional, so I'm pleased with what I see so far. So I'm very enthusiastic about this so far, but thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Don.
[Roberta Cameron]: I have had the opportunity to participate in some of the neighborhood meetings so far, and I think the neighborhood has been generating some feedback on the design of the development. And also I think housing authority will continue to work with the city's office of planning and sustainability. So that we can come together on the design.
[Joan Cyr]: I just kind of a comment. I know that you've mentioned, and I was going to bring it up anyway, the $350,000 that was already approved by City Council to prove support for this program. I, for one, would love to see the CPA funds being spent on construction now going forward. But, you know, I understand that this is a very complicated process and appreciate any, you know, finding of other funding that you can so that we can spend CPA funds on actual construction.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, we are.
[Danielle Evans]: I did the math.
[Unidentified]: Go ahead, Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: So if we get the 54 new units for the senior development, that portion. We can our maximum so that we could possibly give for that phase of pre development is another seven fifty six thousand two ninety seven and fifty four cents, so not quite eight hundred. But that's you know, equals 27.27% which would be proportionate for the CPA percentage based on the new units. So just to keep that in mind.
[Matt Leming]: Would that be money going towards pre-development in this project period or potentially if any more money were requested for pre-development in future years, would that
[Roberta Cameron]: So if they were able to continue with phase two, then phase two would be entirely new units and we could contribute pre-development toward up to 100% of the pre-development costs. So our percentage has to be at each phase of the development process and no more than the percentage of eligible units that are eligible for CPA funding as part of the whole. So I'm not quite sure how to make that come out any clearer than I just stated it. But yeah, so we could contribute toward another phase, but that would maximize what we can contribute to this phase. And it would mean that they couldn't reduce the number of units, of new units, without having to give some of the money back. If we were to give them up to the penny of the percentage at this stage.
[Matt Leming]: I'm trying to remember exactly what was on that option A, B, and C papers that we saw for the proposed designs. They all had consistent numbers of units, so.
[Roberta Cameron]: There were different site designs. So Matthew's referring to, we had conducted a site walk inviting members of Housing Medford and the neighborhood and the development to meet together to walk around the site and to get an idea of what to advocate for, for this site, what would constitute a site plan that would be helpful for the residents. also fit in well with the neighborhood. In their process, the housing authority and their architects had provided a presentation to the neighbors of three different scenarios of potential site design. for the neighbors to discuss and we took those scenarios and used them in our site walk to talk about the different aspects of the site design. So we're looking at different scenarios of how to fit the same 198 units and as well as the family units around the same.
[Unidentified]: Other questions and comments. Is the.
[Matt Leming]: This is me asking as a relatively new member is the letter of commitment something that the CPC would feasibly, like, be able to do those on a previous slide.
[Roberta Cameron]: I could go back to the slide that mentions the letter of commitment.
[Matt Leming]: It was just like a letter of commitment to be able to provide more funding. And the future is that that's like something the CBC has done before.
[Roberta Cameron]: So a letter of commitment, the question is how much you are looking for the C bar to be committed at that point and by whom? I think earlier you had said 2.4 million for phase one. So we can't materialize 2.4 million before September 2023, short of bonding. That's the only way. And we can't bond pre-development. So that's something that we, when I say that we need to work out the details of the budget and what the actual ask is going to be, and what the sources of funding will be. This is what we need to work out within the next month or six weeks before the CPC can really fairly determine what to recommend for this project.
[Danielle Evans]: Gabe, so what is the letter of commitment Like how, like, can it be a soft commitment? Like we support the project and invite you to apply future rounds and it conceivably is available because the only thing is, is we can't. Yeah, because the city council can't, they appropriate the money and we can't appropriate money for funds that haven't been collected yet. And that's why the idea of bonding for construction would be the only way that we could give you an actual commitment. But I guess I'm just trying to better understand, you know, how what is the letter of commitment? How like how specific how Natalie, could you? Yeah.
[Qf7XgUqJFIM_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I can I can speak a little bit to that now. So essentially, what this would be required for is when you go to apply for the state funding, they essentially look to see that the other sources have been committed. And so essentially, my understanding is it could be a letter that would say that, you know, the city of Medford will provide X amount of funding to the project. It doesn't mean that those funds have to be in place at that point. You can say you'll provide it when it closes, you know, in 2024, 2025 to pay for construction. So it's not that the, you know, by committed, it doesn't mean that the funds have to be there ready at that point, but rather that, you know, you're forecasting ahead that those funds will be provided to the project.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay, because it is, it's not possible for the Community Preservation Committee to forecast ahead. We, our only options are to appropriate the funds that we have on hand right now, or to bond. So we cannot commit ahead. But the city can, I think.
[Matt Leming]: I mean what a letter saying something. Again with that word that term soft commitment, a letter saying something like. The CBC has previously been very favorable towards this project and we see no particular reason that we will not commit the funds in the future, because it does have to be voted on.
[Joan Cyr]: I would hesitate on doing that. You can't predict what we're going to do in the next year or whatever.
[Danielle Evans]: For the city council, because the city council are the ones that
[Joan Cyr]: Right. I mean, I can't predict whether or not I would recommend it. And we certainly can't predict whether or not the city council would approve it. So, who knows?
[Unidentified]: Not this year. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: So that's, I think that the only possible way then to be able to get to the number of 2.4 million by September, 2023 is going to be looking at bonding. which is something that I think this is a project that would merit bonding of CPA funds. But I think, I'm not sure whether it's even possible, but it's certainly, I don't think, responsible to talk about bonding pre-development money. It has to be, it needs to be construction, for the purposes of construction for CPA bonding. Unless we're able to find other city funds to add, I mean, so I'm speaking about the availability of CPA funds to fulfill that amount, going to the city to put together a package of funding that includes funding from other sources available to the city might be able to expand what is possible by that time.
[Danielle Evans]: Can I ask a question gave the so the 2.75 million that you're requesting that's that's not all pre development that you're asking for that was revised down correct no.
[Ciccariello]: Right so we've received the 350 or received the award of 350 already we're asking for 800,000 to support pre-development.
[Danielle Evans]: And then the future asks get us to construction were to be for construction funds.
[Ciccariello]: Yes so the the remaining 1.6 would support construction in 2024 and 2025.
[Danielle Evans]: So that's that's bondable but you would you would have the
[Ciccariello]: The 1.6 should be bonds.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, but you would just have the $44,000 shortfall based on our cap. The pre development funding cap. Okay, maybe you could shift your budget around to build that.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, a lot of these, a lot of the issues of pre development and construction could they be could they be solved by yeah taking money that has been seen that the much more substantial state and federal grants that already have been received and dedicating those towards pre development instead of CPA funds. Is that like a thing you can do or is that.
[Ciccariello]: So yeah, we received the award of $15 million from the Department of Housing and Community Development. Out of that, we can use about 1.5 for pre-development. But as you see, our total pre-development is at 4.2 million. So we are going to use housing authority capital funding towards that. So we're using everything and whatever we can in pre-development. So we're foregoing, of course, any modernization work there. So we're trying to put everything we can towards pre-development. But as I stated, we don't have healthy reserves because it is an existing state development. That's why we're trying to get it out of the state portfolio because the federal HUD developments are just, it's a different ballgame. It's funded a lot. more significantly.
[Roberta Cameron]: And are you setting aside or have you identified a way to maintain a supply of units that are not, that would be available to people who are undocumented? Is it my understanding that state units right now, they can be eligible for but not federal units?
[Ciccariello]: Right, so that is, I believe that's correct. And I don't believe we have any undocumented current residents at Walkman Court. So all of the existing residents at Walkman Court would be eligible to go into the new development.
[Roberta Cameron]: But we would no longer have any units that could be offered to a household that's undocumented?
[Unidentified]: I don't believe so. But I can confirm that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Because I'd be interested to know if there's any way to make some of the units be subsidized using some other source of subsidy that isn't bound by the federal rules so that they'd still be available in case we have households with a need.
[Unidentified]: I can follow up. Yeah, I can definitely get back to you on that. Thank you. All right, are there any more questions and comments?
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you to everyone who has stuck through all of these presentations this evening. We do still have a little bit of committee business to take care of, which should take us five minutes.
[Unidentified]: So with that, thank you for attending. Thank you, everybody. Have a great evening. Yes, see you tomorrow.
[Joan Cyr]: Can I make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from September 13, 2022? You can.
[Roberta Cameron]: I will call the roll.
[Unidentified]: Matthew? Aye. Losa? Aye. Heidi? Aye. Joan? Yes. And Doug? Yes. Myself, yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. And then we just need a motion to close the meeting.
[Matt Leming]: Motion to close the meeting.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Then again, Matthew?
[Unidentified]: Aye. Was that seconded?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes. Yes. Joan. Yes. Doug.
[Unidentified]: Oh, yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: And myself. Thank you everyone. Have a good evening. Sorry for such a long meeting. Bye bye.
|
total time: 2.47 minutes total words: 201 |
|||