[Doug Medvets]: Yeah. So, real quick I just, I want to introduce myself to everybody who's on zoom. We.
[Unidentified]: So we've already we have one. Okay, yeah.
[Doug Medvets]: Okay, yeah there's there's quite a few people on this. So, my name is Doug Medveds I'm the actual developer who's. who's working on the project. I, I've been in real estate development for about 10 years now. Prior to being a developer. I was, I was a lab scientist I used to work at Harvard Medical. along with my partner who will be here shortly. We did lab research for many, many years, undergrad, graduate school. We both have our PhDs in chemistry and we're originally from Ohio and moved out here for obvious reasons, to get the education, to get the experience. And throughout that lab experience we met a lot of great people a lot of scientists, but decided it was time to move on to something else so we moved into real estate development, but over the years we've kept in touch with many of our science friends, and a lot of them are now. developing or starting up biotech companies. And so because of that, you know, we've been having conversations with them and they sort of asked my partner Khadijah and I, if we would start developing biotech and lab space because a lot of the space that you know, has been built up until now. It's been great, but it's missing a few things. And so with our knowledge of the industry, we decided to start building lab space. We have a project that's been approved in Chelsea at 213 Everett Avenue. It's the old Foramo site. For any of you that are familiar with that, we are buying that site. No, they opened up, Yeah, Melrose, Malden and Wakefield and then there's some conversation about them reopening at the site after it's done being built. So we have a project approved there. We're going through a financing rounds. Things are looking pretty good. It looks like we'll start going through construction drawings and things like that probably middle of next year and hoping to start building early 2024.
[Unidentified]: Have you talked to anybody in City Hall here?
[Doug Medvets]: Yes, a few of them. Yeah, previously. Yep. Yep. Yeah, they Yeah, I think. I don't know if you can hear the conversation.
[Victor Schrader]: Sorry to interrupt, we can't hear.
[Doug Medvets]: Okay, so actually I'm gonna ask if we can just do our thing. Yeah, let's go ahead. Yeah, sorry. I didn't wanna be rude, but he was having some conversation about some other things. Anyway, so to continue on, we do have projects approved in Chelsea. We have some other projects ongoing in Chelsea. We're also working on a project in Providence, Rhode Island. So we are expanding as a team into the biotech space. But we also have a lot of residential experience. And I'm happy to share any of our experience with anybody if you have questions about who we are and what we've done in the past. Also with me is our architect here, Matt Juros. You'll hear his voice. In a little while, he's gonna go through the building specs and sort of what the building looks like. I give him all the credit for making the buildings look good. So I'm gonna give you just a brief intro about the entire team here, but I just wanted to say hi to everybody and let you know who we were and not just what our voice sounded like. I'll let Matt discuss more along the lines of why we decided to make the building look the way that it does. But mainly what I wanted to talk about were So, the team members that we've assembled to, to do these projects and we work. This is the same team we're working with and Chelsea this is the same team we're going to work with in in Providence so so we're building a team that just is working on each project together, so that we can make sure that we have. good quality, same quality. And so we're pretty happy with the group of people we put together. Verdant is my company. That's myself, Khadijah Hindi. Again, she's not here tonight. And we have one other partner who is on the call, Greg Nolan. So that's Verdant. We are the principals. We are the company who has the property at 243 Mystic Avenue, which we're talking about tonight. under agreement with the hopes that you guys will like what we have to present. Fishbrook Design and CI have actually merged recently and they are our architect and lab design team. Really great team. They make our job pretty easy and they're the ones that make the buildings look the way that they do and design them so that they're functional. DPR Construction is a is a national group. They have an office here in Boston, but they are a nationally known construction company with an arm that specifically works in the life science biotech fields. And so we've been partnering with them. They've been helping us or help consult through The construction costs, what to look out for how to plan the project from a construction perspective, as we all know there's a lot of issues with things being backordered so they've been helping us understand process, br plus a is a is a very well known. Boston based engineering firm. Again, they're consulting, and they're going to be our contractor when it comes to all of the HVAC and, and fire. engineering in the building. H plus O, they are our structural engineers. They are basically going to help us understand how much steel we need to use, and then how to build the building in a way that it's going to be sturdy and be able to handle the type of tenants that are going to go into the building. EPM is a company that we like to work with. They understand building code, so they help us make sure that our design team is designing a building that meets all the code. And then we work with a couple of brokers, Lincoln Property Company is one of them. They are helping us with leasing, understanding what we can lease the building out for, who our tenants might be, and things of that nature. So I'm actually going to let Matt start in from here and talk about the location. I'll have some thoughts on that as well. But I want to have Matt start in here on the rest of this presentation.
[Matthew Juros]: Ron, come right in here, because we'll present to you on the screen here. We have one member of the public here in the room here with us. So we'll gather around the screen and present together. So I don't know if you can see our cursor here. I'm running right along Mystic Avenue. And the site that we're looking at is right on the corner of Harvard Street and Mystic Ave. And it's directly across, I think it's exit 22 coming on 93 South and Route 16 as it comes in from across the river. So it's currently a vacant site. It's a tight site, and we're looking at a building that's going to be up against the edge of the lot lines. It's just under an acre, I think. Doug has stats on that. So we can cut to the plans. And the left-hand plan is a lower-level plan. And I'm going to move this. there. So we have Harvard Street on the left, and we have Mystic Ave down here at an angle at the bottom of the plan. Science buildings have a number of logistical challenges, and they always seem to settle down on the ground floor. Strangely, you start the design of any science building with the loading dock and trash removal area. So we've got sort of an auxiliary or utility core right in here off of Harvard Street with loading dock and trash sort of at the end of that core that's directly opposite the utility elevator, which takes the science specific materials up to the upper level where the actual lab benches are and so forth. And then there's a storage room for those materials and then a mechanical room over here. You see the car pulling out of the parking area. And what we've got here is a very tight site. And Doug and Khadijah are going to talk about how we intend for tenants and users of the building to arrive, what type of modes of transportation. And it's not simply driving by car, because we really just two things sort of are coming together with a project like this with a population that's going to use the building like this. We'll use a car only if they have to, but we'll ride bikes and take public transportation if they can. This is, you know, we sort of learn this culture from our clients who are themselves scientists and So part of what we do is try to tailor the buildings to the people who are going to use them. And so this, this one we've, we've got a stacking parking system so folks who do end up driving would use one of the stacking bays and each of the bays that are here can stack three cars. And that's a 27 car total. So other features of the ground floor level, you know, so I'll sort of take you through the circulation. If you drive your car and park in one of the stacking areas, you walk through the door here into the lobby, which is adjacent to Mr. Gav, and you use the elevator or stairway to go up to the lab floors. We've got an electrical room here and a fire command room for the firefighters. That lobby that's adjacent to Mystic Ave is accessed if you ride your bike. We're going to have a stand of blue bikes in the front of the building. We also have a series of bus stops that are existing, and if I understand it correctly, there are new bus lines that are going to be coming through the area that we will request and hopefully get a bus stop on each of the two new lines at this building. So if you're using one of those modes of transportation, you'll likely come in at the corner of Harvard Street and Mystic Ave and the set of doorways here, and you'll walk into the lobby. The decor of the lobby is a series of bike racks, and we expect those are going to be mostly full most days, if it's like any of these buildings that I've spent any time and the bikes fill up. And so to make that convenient and, you know, there's an aesthetic to it that sort of, if you do it right and you make it clean and secure, you know, it's, we want to facilitate people being able to take their bikes, drop them right off and head up to the lab and get some work done. So that's sort of the ideas behind how we're working with the ground floor. And you see that that along the top of the site. You've got a solid wall here that's right on the lot line and coming east west, we also have a zero lot line we call it wall. As we go upstairs, we're going to follow those walls here on the right, and on the cross the top. And so those those walls, you know, have to be solid walls if you build right on a lot line, the building code requires you to expect other other properties to have buildings kind of in the vicinity and so you need to have fire rated walls on the exterior of the building so those are solid. For the most part, and. That's, that's sort of the data for the way the building lays itself out on Harvard Street and and and met and mystic have, we've got more glass and you sort of just following the curve of the site which gives us a nice sort of non right geometry and a nice, nice curve. curve at the corner and you know so we're going to just take that geometry and extrude it up and I think that really it can be an evocative and beautiful building form to take you through a typical lab floor. You come upstairs over here or using the lobby. And what you have is on the right, you've got toilet rooms and storage rooms, and then lab support rooms here on this side. And then as you move sort of towards the left, you've got more lab intensive facilities. So these are a combination of lab benches and workspaces, traditional office desks. So, you know, I'm not a PhD chemist, but with some coaching I could play one on TV. And what I've come to understand is that this type of work gets done both on the lab bench using, you know, doing experiments and using the the vent hood and the equipment that you find in the lab bench and in the lab support rooms. And it also takes place at a desk with a computer. And so we want to find a way of working out really flexible laboratories that mix the use of an office space and the lab bench. So we've got a core of lab benches, which are utility intensive, and they don't move as easily. But what we also got is a set of desks were imagining that they would be along the outside wall on this is subject to change but this is our first stab at it. And then we've got a series of sort of less formal work areas that the desk work and computer work could be done. And also there's there's a, you know, phenomenon in science and this is you know a research facility, there's going to be probably an array of many small startup companies that are going to be working here in a phenomenon that is really important for, you know, sort of fertilizing new ideas is allowing scientists to sort of rub up against each other and grab a cup of coffee or wait in line for the, you know, the food truck and chat about what they're doing. And there are, you know, it's sort of a well-known phenomenon that this is how good ideas are hatched and cross-pollination is actually a really important thing. So what we want to do is create spaces where scientists can mix. We've got a couple of phone rooms so people can go in and have private conversations along the bottom middle there. And then in the corner of each of the typical lab floors, we've got a traditional enclosed conference room. I'm going to skip to some of the exterior views now.
[Unidentified]: Let's see if I can get this to work. Go away. There we go.
[Matthew Juros]: So here, here's an exterior view and the concept text of the buildings around it are have been sort of abbreviated so we're not seeing those. But we're standing with with Mystic Ave to our right and Harvard Street sort of right in the foreground. And so you see the utility and vehicle entry here on the ground floor on the left and then typical lab floors and we're facing to the south right here, glass and window treatments above that. Along the in the facade along Harvard Street we're imagining that we would have An exterior that has, you know, something that that's that kind of offers culturally to the street is more of a pedestrian streetscape and more pedestrian activity sort of as you move west along Harvard Street, and we expect people to be walking migrating down towards Mystic Ave. on foot on bikes and, and, and so we want to, you know, sort of acknowledge the streetscape and the pedestrian nature of the uses there. So maybe the type of expression that that piece of facade gets on the street is a painted mural by a local artist, something along those lines, that has, you know, a scale that's comfortable for people, that's not such a, you know, sort of a large scale thing. Here we are sort of in our drone looking in on the scientists doing interesting things in the conference room there. And so at the intersection of Harvard Street and Mystic Ave, maybe we're coming from Route 16, we're looking into the corner entry, we see on the left the blue mural, and this is, you know, sort of an imagined depiction that the colors and the content of the mural is really something that we're going to develop as time goes on. We're really open to suggestions. You see it comes along Harvard Street and folds in along the axis of Mystic Ave and then becomes one of the walls of the elevators and stairs inside the lobby. On Mystic Ave, we have a more sort of traditional Boston expression, you know, with red brick and sort of acknowledging the fact that we've got traffic on Mystic Ave, it's more of a sort of a go-go atmosphere, it's not as much of a pedestrian experience there. And so, you know, we think it's an appropriate thing to have a different type of treatment there when it's a little bit more robust one that sort of acknowledges that, you know, maybe pedestrians will walk down Harvard Street and they'll walk into the lobby. So the mural wraps into the lobby, and there's a, you know, a brick facade against the traffic on Mystic Ave. As we kind of flying in our drone a little bit still, we're kind of along the Mystic Ave axis here, and Harvard Street is around the corner. We're looking at the expression for one of the zero lot line walls. And so these are obviously going to be solid walls and fire rated. And so what we expect is that we would do in this iteration, you know, some sort of composite panel on the exterior, and we would do a pattern that, you know, I kind of like the play of these vertical rectangles. And we could, you know, there's the opportunity to do something clever, like mimic the type of graphic that you see in DNA sequencing. And sort of embed that into the skin of the building and if you know what it is then then you know what that what's on that building and if you don't know what it is, you know, it's my job to make it interesting and beautiful and you don't have to understand that the content of the genesis of it. But so it's an opportunity that I think is a lot of fun. And then, you know, just to sort of skip back here, sort of a general conversation about what lab buildings need, you know, and how they sort of lay out is they are air and ventilation intensive. And so I like to joke and say that lab buildings are really just machines that suck air in and the sides and blow air out the top, which is basically what they do. And it takes a lot of equipment, and the equipment is traditionally in buildings like this up on the top floor. We've got a lot of shaft space in the plan. There we go. Yeah, so there's a lot of vertical shaft space incorporated into the floor plans along the right-hand side. And we've got a big equipment mezzanine that's often, you know, say 20 feet high on the top of the building. We're setting the screens that screen the equipment back from the exterior of the facade. And what we're, let's see if we've got a view that looks like shows it. Yeah, and those screens are following the curve of the building. And so you can see that we're really, you know, sort of appreciating the geometry of the site and taking you know, that as an inspiration for the curve that's sort of the iconic feature of the building. So that's sort of the beginning of the conversation of what the building looks like in concept as we put it together and, you know, sort of worked out how this type of research could be done in a building in this location with the utilities, parking, and so forth. So that's what I've got to sort of add to the conversation that I didn't introduce myself entirely at the beginning. I'm Matthew Juros and I'm a principal at CI Design. And so I'll turn it open to Doug and Khadijah if you want to add some more or field questions as they come up.
[Doug Medvets]: Yeah, I think it's a good time to start opening it up to questions. If you have specific questions about specific slides, I can pull those back up. But I always like to try to talk to people and see their faces and know who I'm talking to if possible. So let me work on... Getting everybody back. I'm going to... If you, let me see if there's any, I'm just gonna check the chat real quick to see if there's anything in particular. We don't have anything in the chat. So if you, I'm gonna unmute everybody. Actually, I don't have it muted. So if you're muted and you have a question, feel free to introduce yourself and okay, there's actually something in the chat. So somebody asked, As a lab facility, will there be a water treatment utility? I'm gonna let Matt explain that better than I can, but what I can tell you is yes. So there will be a pH balancing system. All the water coming from this building has to go through a treatment before it can go into the facility. into the public system? So yes, the short answer is yes. Matt, do you want to describe the water treatment a little better than I just did?
[Matthew Juros]: So in buildings like this, we capture every bit of water that comes from the waste system. It's segregated. Typical potable water that goes into a drain is handled into the sewage system, all other water. and chemicals that go down drains go into a neutralization system that will be located on the ground floor in one of those utility rooms that we've set space aside for. So, and there's a series of different types of neutralization processes that we accommodate. The building codes are very sort of prescriptive about this, so we tend to, you know, look at exactly what the use is going to be, follow the code and provide for the you know, acid neutralization and other treatments that are required. It takes a lot of space. It's complicated equipment that needs to be maintained. And so that's, you know, part of the mission of the building is to handle that wastewater.
[Doug Medvets]: Thank you. I think there might be another one. Will there be provisions for live animals? Not in this building. The space is already small this is going to be a building that centered around very early stage companies. We call this incubator space, you're looking at companies who are anywhere from. two employees to maybe 15 to 20. And most of those companies are focused on very early stage basic science, a lot of cell culture, a lot of very, like I said, early stage. So no, there's no plans for any live animal work in this facility. Any of that work will be contracted out by these companies to facilities who do that full time.
[Unidentified]: All right. Anybody else? Feel free to unmute yourself and talk too.
[Doug Medvets]: That's perfectly fine. I'm okay with that. If you don't want to type it in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Doug, I'm Peter McNeil, I'm representing Anna Butter. And I did have a question in terms of green initiatives. So I worked in facilities before where they had water reclamation, rainwater. or some ways to involving like our sister and to use the rainwater for toilets, or what kind of environmental benefits can you bring to the table? That way, we all want to have a better, cleaner Medford. So what can we do with a brand new building that's going to be innovative for the area?
[Doug Medvets]: Yeah, it's a great question. Matt can answer that much better than me. So I'm going to let him answer that. But it's a very good question.
[Matthew Juros]: Yeah, and thanks for that. You know, honestly, a lot of the scientists that work here, they, I don't want to say they require that there's a, you know, sort of green Profile to their facilities but it plays well with the tenants that that you know honestly that we're, we're looking to attract so it's an important part of our, our pro forma. In addition to being the right thing to do. So this sort of a dual bottom line or a dual reason to do this so specifically this building where we're. They didn't plan the greater water reclamation you're talking about is a system I would love to do. We're not able to do that with with the water and chemicals that are going to be coming from the lab benches the majority of the liquids that. get used here and sent into a waste system, have to go through the treatment plant, and then they're not eligible for Great Water Reclamation after that. They have to go away. We're going to have, obviously, roof drains and roof leaders. What we typically do with this now is we take water that comes from, let's say, a parking lot or from the roof of a building, and create a subsurface drainage system so that all of that water goes into, rather than going into the sewer and right out to sea and not soaking into the soil around us. There's a type of reclamation system so that we put underneath the building or underneath the areas adjacent, if they're available, not in this case, so that rainwater can go ahead and just soak right into the soil. And what this does is it prevents subsidence of what we're finding in different places at South End and Back Bay and Boston and all over the country. buildings and structures are starting to fall and, you know, sort of lean and it's because the groundwater has been taken out of the soil and hasn't been replaced, it's been put in sewers and sent out to sea. So that's part of the package we're doing. All of the lighting is LED lighting, all of the heating and cooling is electric and, you know, being my age that isn't necessarily, you know, the reflexively thinking of that as a green, but using the electric grid is really the greenest way to power buildings right now. We'll put as many solar panels on the roof as we can fit. We've got a big mechanical mezzanine and it's not clear at this point whether that mezzanine is gonna be roofed or not. More extensive mechanical mezzanine get a roof. And if it's roofed, we can put panels up on top of the roof. If it's not roofed, we will look at a mounting system that spans across the open space and puts panels on the roof. What else? We didn't have plans to make this a LEEDS building, but what we're going to do is, you know, typically, I don't know if people are familiar with the LEEDS program, but it's a process that you go through during design and construction that ensures that the greenest methods and materials are used and then baked into the building the way it functions for its life. And the LEEDS system itself requires a lot of documentation and it's got a long tail that needs to get wagged to get the certification. And so what we like to do, we're doing the LEEDS building in Chelsea for these guides. That's part of the program. What we're envisioning for this one is what we do for many buildings, which is follow all of the leads procedures without doing the documentation. So the building should be as green as sort of technically possible at this point. And that's what we're envisioning at the moment, but this is a topic for us that we've got a lot of skin in this one. And so we're open to that conversation, suggestions, and we'll trumpet our successes as we commute.
[Unidentified]: Did that answer the question? Yep, as best you could.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[Doug Medvets]: I appreciate the question. It's a good one. Matt said that really well. But yes, as a scientist, these are things that we think about, and these are things that you know, the companies who want to rent in these buildings, they think about these two because they have to pay utility bills and they want to have their bills be as cheap as possible. So yeah, we're always thinking about how we can make it as efficient as possible. So very good question. Let's see, I got nothing in the chat and anybody else. I mean, feel free to ask us anything. I can ask about our past projects, you can ask about anything. This is a community meeting, so you guys can get to know who we are as well.
[Matthew Juros]: Maybe, Victor, do you think it's appropriate to give sort of a municipal view of your thoughts on the process so far, sort of a general conversation about the type of work that we're thinking about here?
[Victor Schrader]: Sure, thanks Matt and Doug for the great presentation. Victor Schrader, I'm the city's economic development director. So, you know, we're very focused on on attracting life science developers and companies to the city. I think folks on the call and in the community have heard a lot about life science activity in Medford recently, and that that's a really good thing. And so we're excited to to be here tonight learning about your project. A property like this, from the public process standpoint, there'll be a number of meetings that folks can tune into and learn more about the project as it develops and weigh in and provide your feedback. So this is really just the start. We're asking developers To present their projects before they apply to the city and this is the pre application meeting so we you know we appreciate them taking the time to show their concepts and the community to learn a little bit more about the project before it starts to go through a public approval process so. you know I think based on feedback they're receiving tonight they'll be formulating their plans and finalizing an application for site plan review and likely variances for this building and that'll go before the Community Development Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals. So I think just I want to let folks know that they'll be able to find information on the application once it's filed on the city's website. This meeting will be posted on Medford Community Media for review and notices will continue to go out as those public hearings happen and the project moves forward.
[Doug Medvets]: I don't see any other comments in the chat. I'll open it up one last time for anybody who was here or listened to, you know, the initial presentation. And I know, Victor, I'm pretty, I know that I shared my contact info on the letters that I sent out to everybody. I believe that it's probably up on the community sites as well, because I think you just put the same letter up there. You know, if you have questions about things or, you know, I know questions come up after these meetings or after you've thought about it or talked with people. My email is on there. Shoot me an email. I'm happy to answer questions, even if it's, you know, Khadijah and I are probably a little bit different in terms of developers because we do have experience as scientists. So we do get a lot of questions about science and, you know, what type of science happens and how it works and things like that. We're open to answer questions like that as well. We want to make sure the community understands more about what life science means, what biotech means, what we're talking about when we're bringing companies in. So I'm happy to answer any of those questions at any time as well. So don't be shy. We like to talk, and we're happy to share whatever you need from our perspective. So I think... Sounds, seems to me like we've answered the questions that are there. Again, I'm sure there will be more as we go along, but thanks everybody for coming. And, you know, we'll be chatting more, I'm sure.
[Matthew Juros]: Yeah, thanks for your attention and do channel your questions through doggone. I'm happy to weigh in as appropriate. We're better with your input and so we welcome it.
[Unidentified]: And thanks for attending tonight. Yep. Thanks everybody. Thank you.