[SPEAKER_16]: Okay, good evening, everybody. Again, Chris Shandor from the Davis Companies here, and it's about five after six. I'm guessing most people who are going to check in tonight are already here. So welcome, and thank you for taking time out of your evening. A little bit of housekeeping before we get started. Again, Chris Shandor with Davis Companies. I'm joined by a couple of members of my project team. Most importantly, John Harding from Cube3. But we also have representatives from civil traffic as well. We're going to go through an early community engagement meeting tonight. I'm going to start by just walking through a little bit of the project. How did we get here? What the goals are? John Harding from Q3 will present. some details on the project and after that, we will have plenty of opportunity for questions or feedback of any kind. If you want to give feedback, there's two ways to do that. Down at the bottom of the screen, you can either go to the chat bar and click on chat down at the bottom. You'll see that menu bar down the bottom and type your question in the chat or If you go to raise hand under participants, you can do the raise hand. Sorry, I'm having a little delay on my screen here. Under reactions, down at the bottom right, reactions, click on the raise hand, and you'll see this yellow hand come up on your screen. and you will be recognized and have the opportunity to unmute and ask a question and we'll go from there. If you could, in the meantime, please keep your microphones muted and your cameras off so that people aren't distracted. I would appreciate it. The last thing I will say is this is not an official meeting. There's no vote coming out of this. There's no decisions being made at the city level. that would result in any project happening or not happening or changing in any way. This is just an early community engagement meeting. This is something that we've been working on with representatives from the city that they have asked us to do. This is a project that's been in the works for a little while. It's been on hold for a while, and we wanted to have an opportunity to kind of remind the community of what's up. So with that, I'm going to ask John to put the presentation up on the screen and we will walk through the presentation and then open it up to questions after that. So again, Chris Shandor, I'm Senior Vice President of the Davis Companies and I'm joined by representatives from our project team. Next slide, please. There we go. So a little bit about the Davis Companies. We've been around for about 45 or 50 years, headquartered in Boston. Sorry, if we could just mute any background. There we go. We've been around for about 45 years. We are a real estate development company, owner, developer, operator of real estate. For those of you who are not familiar with us, We do a lot of office, residential, some industrial. We do some hotels. We just recently opened the new Omni at the convention center in Boston. Very diverse real estate development company with operations primarily in the Northeast, but we do have investments across the country. Included in that, we've done about 7,000 residential units, ground up development. And a total of about 12,000 units in our portfolio over that time period. Next slide, please. These are just a couple of representative images. Some of these are local. You might know them. Some of them are out of market. But they give you an example of the kind of the diverse range of residential work that we've done. Reserve at Burlington was a friendly 40B with the town of Burlington that was completed in 2020. Some of these projects are out of market, but you can see Telford 180 was a condo project in Austin-Brighton. The Mark in the East Boston, Long Island City you can see is more high rise. 1515 Comm Ave is one we've got in the works in Brighton. And then I just draw to your attention, one more down the bottom, lower right, One Cabot Road, that's an office building that we do own in Medford right now that we've owned for several years. And it is currently among other tenants, Amazon's in there. So next slide, please. This is an area context plan. The inner red ring is the site that we own, that's 970 Fellsway. You may know it as where extra space storage is located. It's a large site. It's almost eight acres. And the building that's on there is a mix of one and two story warehouse and industrial space, totaling a little over 300,000 square feet. So it's a big building. We acquired it in early 2019 from a long time owner family that had owned it since the 1960s. And it's a mix of old structures that have been built over many, many years. Some of them are a hundred years old. Some of them are newer. It's a real hodgepodge of buildings. You can see by the different roof lines that you see on there. The outer ring, which is the 400 foot distance from our property line in every direction, if you were invited to this meeting, at least if you received a mailing, you are probably inside that ring. So folks who are on this call are folks who are in the immediate vicinity of this site. And then you can see surrounding the site, Fellsway obviously going through the middle, running north-south. There's a lot of residential to the immediate west and north and northeast. And then to the south, you can see some of the more industrial areas, the Anheuser-Busch plant down there, there's a BJ's in the lower right hand corner. And if you were to go a little further off this plan, you'd find a stop and shop and ultimately the Wellington T stop. Next slide, please. So as we started working on this, what was interesting to us is the zoning map in this area. And as you can see, we just spoke about the different residential neighborhoods. You've got a single family and general residents to the west and to the north. You actually have some apartment zoning to the immediate north before reverting back to more of a residential area. And then the zoning to the south with a little pocket of residential right there in the industrial zone. And actually, if you look in some of the even in the light blue area, you can see that there is housing that exists in the industrial zone to the left of our site. The immediate left is Amaranth Place, which is condominiums that were developed about 15 or 20 years ago. There's some residential immediately south and west of that. Even coming across to the east side where it says zone one industrial, there's a new condominium project being developed over there. So definitely a transition zone. When we first acquired this site, We knew that we wanted to maintain the extra space storage operation in there. That's definitely a benefit for the community. Let's hold on to the previous slide just for a second there. Sorry, John. Thanks. But the buildings to the west, the older buildings, actually, you can go ahead to that slide. You can go ahead to that slide. Thanks. The older buildings that are in the yellow area, Those buildings are old wood buildings. They are not new state-of-the-art buildings by any extent. And we started looking for possible adaptive reuses for those buildings. In fact, back in that, before we acquired the site in 2015, there'd even been some roof issues with the snow loads on the roofs in there. We knew that the highest and best use for this site was probably gonna end up being a redevelopment. And as we approached the city, it became really clear that there are two conflicting goals, not just in Medford, we see this everywhere, and those are the desire to create more housing, but at the same time, preserve a commercial base. Because of the zoning in the immediate vicinity, we did think that this site was probably better suited to residential development, But because it was zoned industrial, there wasn't a clear path to making that happen. In the past, Medfors has granted use variances for residential. But in 2019, that practice was stopped. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea. If you want residential, you should zone residential. But in any event, there were still some avenues for proceeding with residential development, but it would have to be done through the 40B process. And that's a process where if additional affordable housing is delivered, you can still pursue that change of use. We did submit a comp permit in early 2020, April of 2020. You may have seen some notices from back then and forgotten all about them, and I don't blame you. At the time, the city asserted safe harbor, which was completely within their rights to do so. It's a procedural protection. And the project essentially from any public process came to a stop at that point. We've been having on and off meetings with the city since then. But with the passage of time, we have been encouraged by the city to reengage with the community really to see what everyone believes the community needs are here. There are a couple of city officials on the call tonight, I believe. They're just monitoring. And again, this is not an official public meeting. This is just a chance for folks to listen to our presentation and give feedback. So just moving forward from there. Reminder, State Harbor doesn't last forever. We don't know what's gonna come out of this, but obviously we're very optimistic about the discussions we've had with the city in the past and are anxious to represent this project to the neighborhood. So existing conditions that we're looking at here, again, our site is outlined in red. The extra space storage operation is shown on the right side of the site. That use is going to remain in its current form. And in fact, it's actually expanding a little bit in there. There's been some vacancy come available in the very rear of the site that is conducive for them to expand into. And we're going to be putting another couple hundred unit storage units in there this year. So look for that to come if you need some storage space. The yellow area is really the older portion of the site. And that's what we're here to talk about tonight. That's what we're proposing to be redeveloped. The program that we are presenting is approximately 289 rental units. And again, 25% of those, or approximately 73 of those units, would be deemed affordable. Everybody always wants to know what that means, so I'm just gonna address that right now. If you were to go to any one of the other similar residential projects near us on Cabot, Rivers Edge 1 or 2, or some of the stuff over by the Whole Foods, and check and see how much units are renting for in there, They're expensive. They're about $3 a square foot and up. So if you were renting a 800 square foot apartment, 1,000 square foot apartment, you might be expected to pay $3,000, $4,000 a month or more, depending on the size, the number of bedrooms, et cetera. The affordable units are targeted at people who are making 80% of area median income, AMI. What's AMI? Area median income, again, it's average household income or median income, not average, sorry. And that's a government stat. And that is about today, approximately $100,000 a year for a family. So if you're making 80% of area median income, you're making household income of approximately $80,000 a year. So certainly not super low income, but not, not high income either. It's really what we call workforce housing targeted to teachers, police, firefighters, folks who work at retail, maybe somebody who's working at a restaurant at Assembly Square, good working class folks who wanna live and work in Medford. It's also targeted to folks who are perhaps just starting out, not ready to buy a house. It's also targeted to folks who perhaps are elderly, but still very mobile. They're not ready for assisted living yet, but maybe they don't want to maintain a single family residence where they have to shovel their walk and weed their gardens and do all the household maintenance. Those affordable rents, again, the market rents today in this area are probably $3,000, $4,000 and up a month. The same product would be approximately $1,500 to $2,000 a month. So a fairly significant discount from what would be market rents. There's a qualification process that you have to go through to be eligible for those units. And if when we get to the point where we have a project here, that's certainly something that would be made available. Obviously, we have a long way to go before we're ready to talk about that. But again, these are targeted for working class folks making $65,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year on the affordable side. One last key note on the units that would be constructed here. There is no difference inside the units between the market units and the affordable units. If you were to open any door in any one of these projects that have this 25% affordability requirement, you can't tell the difference of the finishes that they're in there. All the finishes will be substantially identical. And that is a little difference from rental versus for sale projects. On for sale projects, there can be slight differences on the affordable units. On rental, they are all the same. So I am going to turn it over now to John Harding from Cube 3, and he's going to walk you through the project. And then when John's done presenting the project, we'll come back to me and we will open up the question and answer process. So John, if you're ready, take it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Chris. So as Chris just mentioned, the area we're going to be focusing on is inside of the yellow dashed line right now. and the new development that is being proposed and that was submitted with the comp permit back at the beginning of 2020. So the site itself right now, as you can see here in the yellow line, is mostly a very pervious site. It's mostly a paved parking lot and roof surface. And what we're trying to do here is really kind of bring back a life, a residential scale life to this area and bring back a lot more pervious and landscaped area to the project. So it's very similar view to what we're just looking at the existing conditions. You can see in the foreground along Myrtle Street. So Myrtle Street is running east-west here. Amrit is coming through kind of at an angle. Along Myrtle Street, we're looking to kind of replicate the the vision of what's going on on the other side, take some cues from those houses and just kind of the repetitive kind of stoop nature. And we're bringing in some lower scale, three-story townhomes along that edge. And in the back, further into the site, closer to the industrial uses beyond and to the industrial building that will remain, we're proposing a six-story multifamily building, five stories of multifamily over parking. And you can see that there's an access point further down on Amaranth here. We'll get into a little bit more of the site plan view in just a second. So looking at the site plan itself, you can see here, Fellsways to the right, Myrtle Street is to the north, Amaranth Ave coming through along our western edge. The townhomes along Myrtle Street that I was just talking about, so there's 11 townhomes along Myrtle Street. a grouping of six and a grouping of five. Most of those are two bedrooms. The townhouse one here at the end is a three bedroom townhouse. The main access from this for this area is coming through from the Fellsway. So you'd enter here, right in from Fellsway going south, across the front of extra space storage. There's a roundabout here in the middle of the site for for drop offs. The main entrance to the building is here in this, this kind of nub that projects in the Northeast corner of the site. We have a little patio space next to that. So there's a leasing and amenity space right inside there. So a little kind of outside amenity space at grade activating kind of what's going on in this back courtyard space down at the ground level. Further down past the townhouses, we'll have a little public pocket park and a top lot or a little playground for the neighbors. So these two features here will be open to the public. Next to that, there'll be a kind of a landscaped buffer to a fenced-in dog run that's for the residents of this project only. Sidewalks rebuilt on both Myrtle Street and Amaranth. Right now, there's not really a sidewalk along Amaranth on this side. So we'll have that sidewalk come all the way down and wrap the corner of the project. Down here in the southwest corner, at least back when we were talking about the project in 2019, there was some talks about a potential future rail trail coming through along the old Boston and Maine rail line that's along the back of the site. So at this time, we're currently planning on Uh, if that comes, uh, how we might address that and be able to create a public connection, uh, from there and also create a kind of a. Amenity connection from the building. Um, so you have some activity coming out of this corner of the building here on this block, um, with a crossing here, um, and then an access point to that trail. Um, uh, the idea of that trail is that it would connect all the way to Wellington station. Uh, as you can see it, just looking at the building, uh, it's kind of a kind of capital a shape building. Internal courtyard in the middle, an open courtyard to the south facing kind of a landscape buffer over towards where Anheuser-Busch is. There's a road that wraps all the way around. So that's mainly for fire department access and just to get some good continuity for the parking that is to our east. And speaking of parking, talking about just what we have in the project, there's 377 total proposed parking spaces. What that is is about 259 spaces that will be inside the garage, the ground floor of the multifamily building. You have a 50 spaces on grade next to the building so that's here shown in red. There's 23 spaces in the townhouses, about half of those spaces are in garages. So it'd be 11 garage spaces and then 12 surface spaces outside of that. And then with the extra space storage, we'll have 45 shared spaces. So that's what you see here in the orange highlighted area. So during the day, those spaces will be able to use by extra space storage for its tenants coming and going. We don't expect that they'll have 45 people coming and going on a daily basis, but we wanna make sure that we have ample, availability for them. And then during the nighttime, as people are coming home from work, they'll be able to use those spaces. So you get a nice shared arrangement between the industrial and the residential uses. Just going down to the floor plans here, I'm gonna try to go quick and we can, when there's questions and answers, I can flip back to any of these sheets if people have some more questions. You can see here, so I kind of rotated everything to the side. So Myrtle Street is now to the right. Amherst is at the top of the page. You're coming in, you see that drop-off space here in the bottom right corner. The townhouse is along the right-hand side, along Myrtle Street here in the blue. The red area identifies the resident amenity and leasing office, so where the main entrance to the building is. This is where the full-time leasing office is. You'll have a little bit of mail and coffee station and some stuff like that. There's a bike storage component right behind that. And then the rest of this floor plate is mostly for parking and kind of some service related uses as well. Moving up to the second floor, this is where your main amenity is here in the bottom right corner. So a little bit of double height space as soon as you walk in and get that grand gesture, looking up into what that would be that active zone beyond. And then that connects over to the internal courtyard. One thing I meant to say earlier, with this project, we're going to actually be increasing the usable open space from 0% now to about 22% between these courtyards and the landscaping down at grade, especially around the townhouses, the pocket park and the top lot. So with these two courtyards, what you're going to end up with is kind of a more internal, quieter focus. Maybe you have some fire pits and grilling stations, a nice place to kind of come hang out on some lounge chairs and hang out, read a book, maybe some quiet amenity space here in this internal courtyard. And then maybe a little bit more active space with the pool facing south. So in this image, south is to the left. So we've oriented the building in this courtyard in this direction, primarily for the sun coming into this courtyard, but also as a nice buffer from the neighborhood that is up into the right from this image. So the building will create kind of a screened buffer for any of that active use for the pool. Moving your way up, so this is a typical floor plan. You'll see mostly just the units on the upper floors, levels three through six. Just talking about the ratio really quick. We have 28 studios, which is about 10%, 142 one beds, about 50%, 89 two beds, about 30%. We have about 10% three beds. And as Chris mentioned, 25% of that will be affordable. just walking you through into what this building could look like. So again, we're here to present a conceptual plan of the work that we were doing up until the comp permit submission. What we're here to propose tonight is just kind of a conceptual image of what this project could look like. Nothing in here is finalized as, as Chris mentioned earlier, what we're really here to do is get your feedback about what we're seeing. So this image here is from the inside of the courtyard. So you're driving in extra space storage is to your left, you see the rear of the townhouses here to your right, you see those garage entrances to those garage spaces. You see some bolt-on balconies here, so kind of Juliet-style. Looking back over the main entrance here, the main entrance to the garage itself further here in the distance beyond the main entrance. And so there is that little kind of drop-off space right here in front of the main building entrance. just talk about some facades, you know, these are pretty boring drawings, just some graphics here to talk about the materials that we're proposing. Nice high quality masonry base, storefront at the amenity entrance and at those amenity spaces as you get to the second floor. You see that kind of here in these foreground images. As you move up the building and further away from kind of the main view lines, moving to a lot more of a fiber cement panel and fiber cement siding approach. And in these next couple slides, we'll show you a couple of buildings that I've worked on personally in Medford. where we've done similar sized projects with similar quality of materials that you guys can go. You probably actually know some of these and you guys can go around the corner and check them out if you don't. But you'll see the same kind of quality of materials, same types of materials used as what we're going to be proposing here on this project. So over on Rivers Edge Drive, the image on the right is Rivers Edge, or the residence at Rivers Edge. So this is the side facing out on Rivers Edge Drive, you got this kind of courtyard at grade, a little bit of a landscape buffer you see the arbor right there at the edge of the courtyard space, you see brick used on the lower levels to create a nice base, some architectural expressions at the top with a hat, and some, you see the fiber cement panel is the white panel that was used on that project. Right across, literally across the driveway from that is RE150, kind of its sister project. A lot of use of fiber cement lap siding, some panel product. You know, you can really do some really cool expressions with like creating these frames that wrap corners or even bring in some wood tones down at the main entrance at the ground level. So the idea is to play with a lot of these different materials. You see the Juliet balconies, a little bit of metal panel in this project instead of masonry. So change it up just a little bit. This one was a much more commercial approach, whereas the residence at Riverjudge was more of a mixed-use, multifamily approach. So that's probably a little bit more closely to what we'd be proposing on this project. Just down the street, you have Modera Medford. That's at 5 Cabot Road, right pretty much right behind the project that Davis owns, right over there. So that's right at the edge of Route 16. So you've probably seen this from a different view than what you see here in this image. But again, you get the wood, you get some arbors, some aluminum railings, you see some of that storefront at the main entrance. Really kind of the same quality and scale of project is what we're proposing here, and then more recently and just recently opened right across from Wegmans you have Windsor mystic river apartments. with the big overhang at the front entrance. I'm sure you guys have seen that. So a lot of lap-siding approach here with some panel infills. So in these projects, you really see a good representative of what it is that we're looking to bring into the multifamily project, and then taking some of those same pallets, scaling them down a little bit, and making kind of a nice neighborhood complement to the townhouses. So here, again, just two quick views, and then we'll open it up for questions. On Amaranth Ave, we're standing kind of like right across from 32 Amaranth, which is this greenhouse on the left, looking down towards the project site. So you can see here the multifamily building as it touches the corner. The tot lot is right here in the foreground. You can kind of see a little slide going on right there. And that little pocket park is right there. The townhouse is just behind these houses to the left. And then looking down Myrtle Street, again, The goal here was really to create a nice transitional design from Myrtle, helping to complement and fulfill kind of what the streetscape should be, take cues from across the street with all the stoops and the stairs up to porches, and kind of bring that in across the street and make a really nice kind of three-story scale approach to the street, incorporate some lighting and some nice high-quality materials. And with that, we'd like to open it up. for some questions and feedback after Chris concludes this.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, John. And maybe actually, if you could pause the screen for a second. Again, just a reminder to everybody. There we go. Now we can start to see. This is not an official public process yet. This is an early community engagement meeting. So there will be plenty more chances for engagement further down the line, to the extent a project evolves here. We're here to listen, and I appreciate the vast majority of you all being polite during this process. Again, two ways to ask questions, and I can already see five hands have popped up, and I'm going to, we'll start calling on people one by one in a moment here. If you go down to where it says reactions in the lower right hand corner of the screen and click on that, you can see the click to raise hand and a little yellow handle appear on your screen like that. If you did that by mistake or your question gets answered, you can see where it just says lower hand and you can put your hand back down and we'll call on you. The other way is in the middle. There's a chat box there. You can type your questions in the chat box and we'll We'll try and do a little mix of both. I did see some questions pop up in the chat box. So maybe while people are thinking about their questions, I will answer a couple of those. Number one, this is a rental project. This is not a for sale project. So all units here will be available on a rental basis, much like some of the other projects that John was referring to. And somebody thank you answered my one of the other questions, which is the city typically requires 10 to 15% affordable. This project because the nature of the process would be increasing that to 25% affordable. The last question that was on there, actually I think there were a couple more but one was the construction timeline we don't have that yet obviously we're not sure when we'll get through the permitting process and finish our design. I would not anticipate construction starting here for over a year, depending on how quickly the permitting process and the design process goes. So conceivably, we could be starting in late 2023. Perhaps a spring of 2024 start might be more realistic at this point. But really, honestly, it's too soon to tell. And then I know somebody asked about traffic on the Fells Way. We do have, Vanessa is our traffic consultant. They're very familiar with traffic in this neighborhood, in this community. We've actually started the preliminary traffic study and certainly we'll be addressing all of that through the city process at the appropriate time. So again, other questions in the chat we'll get to, but I think right now I see about half a dozen hands up already and they're popping up kind of in order on my screen. So I'm going to start with Barry Ingber. So if you want to go ahead and unmute yourself and ask your question.
[Barry Ingber]: Hi, thank you. I know there's going to be a lot of opposition from folks who don't want to ever see anything change and want to freeze time, but I want to express my wholehearted support, both for the concept and for the location. I think that it'll be a great improvement to the neighborhood, that it's close to public transportation and it's a good use of space. I do have two questions, comments. One is that I would like to see at least some of the units at a deeper level of affordability. I think that, people at the 80% AMI income range are having a really, really hard time right now. But I think that people below 50 or 60 are having an impossible time right now. And I would like to see at least some of those units be at a greater level of affordability. Um, and, uh, my second, uh, comment or question, uh, or somewhere in between is, um, that I hope that you're planning to be in compliance with the city of Medford solar roof ordinance. Um, I have a, uh, particular interest in that as the person who first formulated it and, um, I, and I'd be happy to talk to you all about it offline. If, if you want to do that, you can find me through Alicia.
[SPEAKER_16]: Great. Thank you very much for your comments, Barry. I appreciate them. Um, uh, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna take everybody's comments here. Um, so I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, uh, try and answer one at a time, unless it's just a simple clarification. I'm not sure about how to do that. I'm sure it's something we can negotiate with the city, but I will have to look into the affordability levels. But I think it's a great question and we will definitely look into that. The solar, yeah, that's a requirement. So we'll have to figure that one out too. Thank you, Barry. I will go to Alison D'Agostino. You're welcome.
[SPEAKER_11]: Hi, thank you. Great presentation appreciate it guys. A little bit of a two part question but am I correct I reviewed the proposal, initially, you do not your property line does not include all of Amaranth have sufficient to create an access point for as far as like travel, right? Like as far as like basically the only two access points out of this property would be onto the Fellsway and Myrtle Street, is that correct?
[SPEAKER_16]: Right now we have access to Amaranth in the back. But you're right, a portion of Amaranth is a public street and then a portion of Amaranth as you get further south becomes effectively a private way with the lot line being right down the center of the street. But currently we do access Amaranth in the back corner.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, so I, you know my initial, you know, I'll be very brief I know there's a lot of hands so my two major concerns, access. Again, we're on the fells way route 28, again I appreciate that you've hired know, and going to do your due diligence. But quite frankly, I can barely get out of my driveway. I live on 1024 Fellsway as it is now on a morning. If you're putting that many units, I'm sorry to say, I really don't think that that's going to be an easy thing for anyone in the neighborhood to be able to drive and access. And the secondary is, if I remember correctly your proposal didn't include any infrastructure upgrades right for as far as you know again it's zoned for commercial right so there's no um you know electric plumbing all those sort of things thinking of that many units on top of the parking and I appreciate the number of parking spaces I think someone said I agree still you know essentially you're you're limiting to one maybe one and a half per unit uh I would hope most folks will utilize public transportation. And I love the spaces that you've done, you know, down a few streets. But as you know, the traffic and parking situation is vastly different. I mean, we're on route 28. So it's a four lane highway, essentially. So those are just my major concerns. I just wanted to comment. But again, appreciate your time. Sorry, someone packed into your presentation. That was a little messy, but thank you.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, Allison. We know traffic will be a concern of a lot of folks in the neighborhood. So it's certainly something we're prepared to work on. So thank you for your comments. Matthew Leming was next in the queue.
[Matt Leming]: Hello, thank you for a very good presentation. I have one of the simpler questions. So you threw around a bunch of numbers near the beginning of the talk, especially around the affordable housing. Would you mind if I just repeated and asked for clarification on some of those just to make sure I got everything right, because I was writing those down.
[SPEAKER_16]: Sure, I'll just go over them again. But if you have a simple question, go ahead.
[Matt Leming]: Sorry, 80% are very medium income to qualify for one of the 25% of the 289 residences in the building. Correct. And area median income in Medford is about $100,000. Then you said that the average per square foot rate for something in Medford is $3. And what is the average per square foot rate for one of the affordable units?
[SPEAKER_16]: So the average market rents that we're seeing, and again, these are average. They can vary. But the average market rate for new Class A is probably about $325,000 to $330,000 per square foot. The average affordable unit would probably be around $2 a square foot today. And those units would be, you know, for the same exact unit, you would just have to qualify based on income for the affordable units.
[Matt Leming]: And so I saw in the news, a news article that the land acquisition for this costed 25 million. What are the total costs been thus far for development, if you're allowed to share that?
[SPEAKER_16]: We don't need to get into that right now, but it hasn't been much because we're just very early in the process. So. All right.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much. Yep.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, Matt. I'm going to look at a couple of the questions in the chat for a second. because I think we said we'd bounce back and forth. Rachel Blumenthal says, wondering if she might be able to work with the city to create safer pedestrian crossings around the project. We already have issues with Amaranth-Lawrence-Myrtle intersection, adding this many new people and cars to the neighborhood will only make it more dangerous and probably wishful thinking, but getting a walk sign to cross the Fellsway at Myrtle would be incredible. Actually, The improving the crossing at the Myrtle Fellsway intersection is something that's on our traffic engineers list of potential improvements to the neighborhood. So that's not as far fetched as you think, Rachel. I think that's something that, you know, as we go about working on this project, there will be traffic mitigation and most of those mitigation opportunities are gonna be in improving pedestrian crossings. So that's a good question, thank you. The next hand in my window was Paul Terenzi. Hi, how you doing tonight? I'm good. Thank you, Paul. How are you?
[SPEAKER_10]: Good, thanks. So one of my main concerns is when you start construction, underground water flows to least resistance. So when you start putting walls up, support walls, that water underground needs to go somewhere. And my concern is that's going to end up in my basement.
[SPEAKER_16]: It's very valid concern, Paul. Thanks for that question. We're not proposing to do any large scale excavation here. The parking will not be below grade. We know that digging in this area, like a lot of areas that are close to the water, creates issues just like that. This project will be slab on grade. So other than excavation for standard spread footings, we will not be doing a lot of digging here. So I would hope that there would be no, I'm sure you must be close. I would hope there would not be any impact to your basement because of that. And if there is? If there is, we'd have to find out what the cause of that was. Again, I would suggest that during the permitting process, that's something we'd have to look at. We would typically go out and survey neighbors before any construction starts to make sure we know what the condition is before we do any work. But I you know I honestly because of the nature of the construction being all above grade I can't imagine that there would be any impact on your property. What's the location of your what's your address. 132 Myrtle directly across the street directly across the street. Okay. I'm going to make a note of that. And that's certainly something that we would be very careful about.
[SPEAKER_10]: So is that, and everybody else already touched on it, the traffic coming down Myrtle Street? I mean, we can't get through now and there's only four houses. You put all those houses and all that additional traffic, I just don't see that working, unfortunately.
[SPEAKER_16]: Understood. We hear you on that. So that's definitely something that we will have to get through. So thank you for those comments. Thank you. Sue Fitzgerald, you're next with the hand up.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you. I wanted to thank you for the presentation. I'm also an extrema butter. I am in the corner condo right across from where you're going to put in a park. And I would have no screening. As a matter of fact, because of that exit road on the back of Emirates, I can't even have a six foot fence because it's a corner and cars come out of there and turn onto Myrtle to exit. both directions. So that's a concern for me. So that's the two separate condo townhouses on the corner. I like the fact that you're putting those three-story townhouses on the Myrtle Street side, but I will be staring at a six-story building, which is challenging because this is a neighborhood that's not like River's Edge. It's not an open, unused, barren area of warehouses that were already torn down. This is smack in the middle of a mostly residential area. And although I know that Amaranth Place was the old waterworks site, again, having this many houses and, you know, single and two-family houses, and then having a six-story building sort of plopped in the middle with most of your green space and amenities inside a courtyard. So although you have a little pocket park on the corner, that doesn't mitigate, you know, the extreme shading out of everybody else, you know, who's backing up on the property. And then my last point has to do with, we know these are crummy old warehouses. My concern is also demolition that we worry about, you know, rodent mitigation and things like that, because again, Those critters are out there now. We also have wild turkeys and possums and all sorts of other critters running around the area. So again, it's just something that has a bit of concern. You know, I have one of the few condo townhouses in our development that has a backyard. I don't see being able to enjoy that quite the same if there's a six story building. So I do think that's an issue for us that, you know, six stories is just too high. I appreciate that you have your ground level parking. If it was a bit shorter, it would probably be more palatable, but obviously you wouldn't make your, you know, you wouldn't make back your money on the development. So just wanted to put that up there. Thank you very much for the time. And again, I'm also sorry for whoever the bozo was before. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, Sue. All good comments. I appreciate them. So I'm happy. We'll be sure to stay in touch. I'm sure. Thank you very much. I'm going to do Paul. Paul, did you go already? How about Michael? I see Michael there with your camera on.
[SPEAKER_16]: Hi, Michael. Good. How are you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Good, good. I was having dinner so I didn't get to hear all the presentation. But did you say it's not it's still commercially zone and it's not been approved for residential buildings that correct.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yes, the sites in an industrial zone that is correct. Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when is there a meeting plan for that scheduled already with the city as to when that might take place and when you're going to argue for that.
[SPEAKER_16]: This public engagement process is really the first step in seeing what the next steps with the city are.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a lot of my comments mirror what the previous caller said on Amaranth Place. I think this project is way too big for this neighborhood. Not only that, the proposed structures is not in conformity with whatever, with the existing houses that are above that road, you know, Myrtle and Amaranth now. I'd be more inclined to be in favor of something that's like a townhouses just like on Amaranth Place throughout that property. Because what I see happening is that once you, if this gets allowed a six story, then what people don't see is right next to you is extra space. And extra space owns, I guess, the other part of that parcel, right? Yeah, we're the owner of extra space storage. So that's what I see happening is that they'll want to petition down the road to demolish that and build one of their skyscrapers like they have on the rear beach parkway. Because if you're going to bring in like close to 300 units with maybe up to 900 people in that type of a complex, then they're going to need some storage space. And so we'll see more development there. Again, there's traffic problems as they're currently now without any development at all. I don't know where you live. but I've lived here for more than 30 years plus, and there's traffic that's backed up all the way to like where that bus stop is on a good day, like in the fall, when everybody's trying to get to Wellington and park their cars and get into work and everything else. I just don't see how any traffic study that's legitimate will say they can alleviate all those problems. Unless you have, like designs for streets within your parcel, then that might mitigate it if there was another access point onto Fellsway, which I think there is one now in front of.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, there's a curb cut directly in front of Extra Space Storage. Just to answer that one question, the majority of this traffic will be through that intersection. Sorry, please continue.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I know other people are going to use the Fellsway to then take a left onto Central Ave and take a left down to Kenmare, which is where we reside. And there's enough traffic going here through the day that's going to make Kenmare Road look like a freeway. And there'll be backups because there's backups now on Central Ave as there is now. There should probably be a of traffic study done on Central Ave and maybe a light put on Central Ave so you can get into Kenmare, because sometimes it's blocked. You can't even get down. I see that happening. People are taking a left. They can also take a U-turn right now. That's not illegal right now to take a U-turn and head up to Fells Lane and go down Myrtle. They could do that or straight into your lots. But it's just going to be a nightmare, because people are counting just the people that are going to be living there. but you know take take factor all the deliveries that they're going to get ups and and the post office and everybody else federal express you know time multiply that number if there's 300 cars there by by two with with all the traffic during the day and all the different utility companies with the cable companies that are going to be coming in or the or Verizon and everybody else trying to service these customers. And I'd really like to see an owner base. I'd like more people have ownership of their property instead of renting. I think that'd be much better to take care of the property and have a vested interest in the community here at large. So I'd rather, instead of seeing rental, I'd like to see ownership. And similar to the townhouses in our Amaranth, I think those would be acceptable uses. And something that we would not, that I wouldn't oppose.
[SPEAKER_16]: Okay, all good comments. Thank you, Michael, we appreciate that. Thank you. Ron Vining, you're next on my, on my queue.
[SPEAKER_05]: We live on Myrtle Street. We live on Meryl Street and one of our concerns is the traffic on Meryl Street. Meryl Street is a narrow street and has a decent number of children, especially little children. And some of the houses go back to 1850, which means a lot of movement traffic wise creates a problem structurally. We're concerned with this number of vehicles in the going in and out of Myrtle Street added to what's already there is going to create a serious problem for us. What are you doing to avoid Myrtle Street from becoming a thruway more than it already is. Also, during the construction, are there going to be vehicles, commercial vehicles, coming down Myrtle Street, which means they're going to be heavier vehicles as well, creating, again, additional problem structurally wise, as well as safety. And what are you doing to help alleviate the traffic downwards to.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, Ron. All good questions. And obviously, we're here in the community loud and clear on the traffic. We do, and we'll continue to have direct access to the Fellsway, even if this project and extra space storage become two separate projects. Because they're in common ownership now, we're going to make sure that the folks who live in this community will primarily access this community directly from the Fellsway so that they won't need to rely as much on the residential back streets. I think we've got some work to do, and I don't have all the answers right this second, but it's something that we definitely hear you loud and clear, and that's what this meeting was for. And we'll be working on that with our traffic engineers as we go through a permitting process. I'm seeing some stuff popping up in the chat that I want to try and get to here. This is good back and forth actually. pedestrian walking. Sorry, I'm just I'm sorry, I'm scanning through the chat. So I'm trying to do 10 things at once. Why don't why don't we? I'm going to go to to KD for the next question.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, hello. I live on Myrtle Street. I've been here 39 years. And I live down towards the end towards Spring Street. This street cannot accept any more traffic than what we have already. This street is a cut through from people on the Fellsway going to work, and when it's backed up on the Fellsway, they turn down to Myrtle because It's the cut down street to get out of the area. Because once they start coming down the Fellsway, once they get over the little hump there at the bridge, there's no other turnout until you get down to the end. So they know that, so they cut off onto Myrtle. We are inundated with traffic flow right now. I mean, there's kids here. This building is way too big. Six stories is way too big. You know, where it's more traffic, I don't know what to say. I mean, other than I'm really in opposition of this.
[SPEAKER_16]: Okay. Thank you. I totally hear, I totally hear your concern and we've heard a number of residents speak up about that. And obviously our traffic engineers are going to have their work cut out for them on this one to, to make sure that, that, you know, that we're not doing, additional harm to the traffic in the neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_08]: Well, I don't see any way that it will alleviate additional harm other than if you have an entrance and an exit on the Fellsway.
[SPEAKER_16]: Well, we will have that. You're not having them come down Myrtle at all. We do have that today, and we're going to be maintaining that so that residents can continue to access the site directly to and from the Fellsway. So that we will have.
[SPEAKER_08]: And one of the gentlemen did say, and I was in agreement with him, the apartment buildings or the townhouses that are there, they look nice in the area, but what you're proposing, I just, I'm not for that. It's way too big for this area. We have all single and two family homes here. So, I mean, Again, it's the traffic that I'm concerned with. And another thing I'm concerned with, which was the woman said, is the rodents. We're inundated with it now. What's gonna happen when this opens up?
[SPEAKER_16]: I certainly understand that. I mean, that's something that, you know, during any demolition project, we have to have rodent control in there. We'll obviously be extra vigilant about that to make sure that That's that's controlled during the construction process. So that's a that's a very valid comment.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'll be listening. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_16]: I see Michael and Rachel still have their hands up. Did you have additional questions or
[SPEAKER_02]: Michael, did you have an additional question? I think I saw the original plans and were you still proposing a bike path where the tracks are behind the property?
[SPEAKER_16]: That is something that the city of Medford, I understand, has a desire to see happen. There is an old rail spur that runs behind this property and it would provide the ability for a walking, biking, multi-use path that could get people Safely to to Wellington. That is something that we would see as a as an amenity, not just for our project, but for the whole neighborhood. We're not something we can execute by ourselves because there are other property owners along the way. But that's something that we would definitely like to see happen for the benefit of this immediate area.
[SPEAKER_02]: So aside from the scope of the project being a problem, if you get permits to build, let's say, townhouses or whatnot, then some of the concerns can be alleviated if there's a bike path. I don't know if these train tracks still run to Wellington. Maybe some sort of shuttle that could go from there all the way down for people who can't ride a bike or walk that distance. And that would, you know, get people on the orange line, and into the trains and also help people live on American Myrtle maybe they can save on gas, and want to walk there and take a shuttle if that's a possibility like a monorail or something like that. or biking as well, or walking. But during the cold weather, when it's raining, we all know people bike less and walk less. So I'm just trying to be creative. I don't know if other than the bike lane option, but that'd be something that would be appealing. Maybe you could work with the city to try and make that happen, no matter what goes up there in the future.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thank you. I think it's a good suggestion.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's all I had for now. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I do apologize for coming in late. I had some family things I had to take care of. Was the bus to Wellington that's on the corner of Myrtle and the Fellsway, was that addressed as to how the development will affect it?
[SPEAKER_16]: It will certainly not have any negative impacts. We want to maintain that stop right there where it is. One of the questions that came up earlier was potentially improving that Myrtle and Fellsway intersection so that it would be safer for people crossing the street when the bus is headed northbound. But we absolutely want to preserve that bus stop and would have no intention of seeing it go away.
[SPEAKER_06]: So my concern is more during construction that you're going to be building, if I read the plans correctly, you're going to be building a row of townhouses along Myrtle Street, along that side of Myrtle Street. And while those are being built, that street is already difficult to walk down because the people who had the property before don't trim that hedge along the fence, things like that. It's very difficult to walk down that street. It's also already, I think several people have mentioned, it's very difficult to drive down that two-way part of Myrtle. There's enough people living on that block who, you know, because we are in such a transit desert, except for that one bus, people have cars, people park on both sides of the street. It's going to get even worse if people from this, I mean, I don't want to take any of your parking lot away because I certainly don't want more people parking on Myrtle Street. But I live also right behind, I live in Amaranth Place. And so your six-story building is going to be making it so there is pretty much no sun, as far as I can tell. Because at my corner of Amherst place we already have very little sun. And I'm just, I don't object to there being more housing, especially since you're putting in a lot of affordable housing. I just, I want to make certain that during construction and that we can get to our bus stop, that we can get to the Fellsway as so many people have been talking about that, you know, sure we can exit, we can exit Amaranth Place, go up Myrtle Street, go over to Park Pinkert and then the Fellsway, but that's going to be very difficult, especially for the people who live on Pinkert.
[SPEAKER_16]: I think those are all fair comments. We obviously don't have a detailed construction management plan, but we should be able to build this project without the need to do any work on Myrtle, with the possible exception of making some new utility connections and improving other infrastructure in the area. We're not going to have trucks unloading on Myrtle Street at any point in time. I certainly understand your need to be able to get safely to and from the MBTA stop, and I don't see any reason why that would be impaired by construction. So those are all good comments. Thank you. I'm just reading some of the stuff in the chat here. Yep. Question about reducing the amount of parking to discourage so much driving to the site. It is a balancing act, obviously. We want to make sure that we provide enough parking on site so that nobody from this project tries to park on the street. That's important to us. I think our parking ratios will probably be pretty similar to some of the other apartment projects in the neighborhood. There's definitely a school of thought that says if you don't build it, they won't come. In order for that to really be effective, work well, you need to be very, very close to subway commuter rail stations. So I would be hesitant to under park this site. Just again scanning through the chat here. As you own the rest of the property, would you consider having a back road behind the building go behind extra space storage to the Fellsway? It's difficult because the extra space storage is built into the hillside that is the bridge over the tracks. So it's not really possible to get, we do have to have circulation around the building for fire safety and such, but to get directly to the Fellsway, because we're bound by that railroad track and the bridge, the Fellsway going over the tracks, it would be difficult to get a road back there with the way the building's built right into the hill. So, but that's a good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chris, there's a couple of questions about the parcel that you don't own on Myrtle Street and the opportunity to develop that.
[SPEAKER_16]: If it were to come available, it's something that we would look at. Because of the way we're developing this site, we're really trying to nestle the residential buffer along Myrtle Street right into that so that it kind of restores the fabric of that street. So it's not a site that we need to have for this project. If it were to come available, we would certainly look at it, but it's not something we're actively pursuing at the moment. Thanks, John, I didn't see that question. During construction, how will vehicles get to the site since they are not allowed to go down the Fellsway? There are restrictions to vehicles using the Fellsway heavy trucks as a thruway. If there are vehicles, and I know that we have 18 wheelers that come to the site today to make deliveries, if there are vehicles that are coming to a specific location on the Fellsway, they can get that use. Obviously, it's something that we need to be aware of in a DCR road. But most of the vehicles that will be coming to this, except maybe when we're delivering wood trusses or something like that, that would come on large flatbeds. Most of the vehicles that would be coming to this site during construction won't be huge. So I'm sure that's something that we'll be able to work out during the construction process. Fire pits not allowed in Medford, that's something that we'll certainly have to check on. If we did do them, they'd be gas. I'm not sure that that makes a difference or not. That's something that we'll absolutely have to look into, John. I'm not seeing any other hands up other than Michael and KD who had already spoken. I don't know whether you guys had follow on questions or whether you just hadn't lowered your hands. Other than that, I'm not seeing any other hands right now. Just take another look in the chat here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a question from Andrew Hoffman about the length of the building compared to the existing building. This building does go about, the leg closest to Amaranth is about maybe 20 feet longer than the existing building. And then the courtyard pokes out a little bit further, probably another 20 feet or so.
[SPEAKER_16]: That's a good question. And thanks, John. I would have asked you to answer that question anyway. So yeah, the footprint hopefully is very similar in scale to the footprint of the existing building that's there. It does become, as John said, a little bit longer and thinner because we'll be tearing down space in between extra space storage and this building to create a drywall. So good question. Thank you. I see a question here that says if Myrtle Street becomes one way, what happens to those coming down from Lawrence Street? Would they be forced to go down Amherst to get onto the Fellsway? I'm not aware that anything we're doing would cause Myrtle Street to become one way. I don't think we're talking about changing any traffic flows in the neighborhood like that, but that's something that we would certainly have to look into with our traffic engineer. Another question here from Sue says, would there be no commercial space such as a convenience store or things like that for the residents or neighbors? Many of the other developments have some commercial. I think it's a good question, Sue, and it's something that we can definitely look into. It's not something that we've programmed today. I know that some other projects that are in more developed areas have been able to do that. I think it's a good question and something that we can look into. I just don't have an answer to what that might be today and how we could locate that most effectively on the site. But I think it's a great question. Allison, did you have another question?
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, sorry. Just one really quick thing. Again, just really touching upon you know, to be frank, you don't own the access to Amarants to create a rear exit, right? So your only two access points are Myrtle Street and the Fells Way. And I don't care how many access points you make to the Fells Way, it's only going one direction. It's a two lane, you know, two lanes south, two lanes north. So again, I know it's been said quite a lot, Um, and, and I said in the chat, you know, infrastructure, period schools, all these people, I mean, I would assume they're going to have children. Do we have the, the, you know, capacity for schools, you know, the, uh, utilities, obviously Davis. And quite frankly, I work in finance. I know you guys very well. You're not paying that we as taxpayers are, um, unless you will. And that might be something you're going to take to the table. Um, which is fine, but. upgrades would need to be made for the capacity of the six story building. You know, I'm not even concerned about the dust and the rodents of construction. I'm concerned about the actual infrastructure, you know, that this project would strain. So again, I think, I just don't think you have a solution because you don't have ownership of that rear access point and with Amaranth. And that's my biggest concern. Just wanted to make it vocal. Again, I think you guys should absolutely, I mean, you're free to develop. You've made beautiful properties in Medford, certainly, and went out to eat at the restaurant that's over on that river's edge. So I certainly don't begrudge you for making those efforts. But I think there's a lot to do, a lot that you need to think about. That just wasn't in your initial proposal, which I was very happy that Medford safe Harvard to protect. Again, we're a neighborhood so I think no one's here is trying to say you shouldn't develop the area I think would be great, but I just think this property this proposal is too large to straining and just needs to be reworked. But again, thank you very much for the presentation. I thought it was really well done and really appreciate your time and obviously going over time, answering all the questions. So thank you.
[SPEAKER_16]: Sure. Thanks, Allison. And believe me, all good comments that I know we'll have to address over time. I will just comment on a couple of them. We do have access to Amaranth at that location. There's a curb cut there today. It's right at the five points intersection.
[SPEAKER_11]: But it funnels back to Myrtle, correct?
[SPEAKER_16]: It does funnel back to Myrtle, that's correct.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_16]: Well, that's my point. Yeah. Fair point. But we do have access to Amaranth along the west side of the property there. Again, the primary access that we want to encourage everyone is to come in directly from and leave on the Fellsway. The one other thing I will say, obviously, we have a lot to figure out with this project. No question about it. I will say on the schools, we did some research on the city website, and we know that school enrollment's down about 10% from 2018. That's not unique to Medford, by the way. That's happening in a lot of communities around here. So from that standpoint, a project this size would only add a very small number of schoolchildren projected to the school system and certainly nowhere near what capacities dropped in the last four or five years. But all of your points are very, very good. We do have to figure out the utilities. Our civil engineer has done some preliminary investigations, and we believe that the capacity is in the area. If there's stuff that needs to be upgraded to support this project, it's us that would be paying for it. It would not be the city and thus the taxpayer that would be paying for it. But all of your questions are very thoughtful, and we certainly appreciate them, and we will absolutely have to address them. So thank you for those. I see a new hand from Alex Leffenhop.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Yeah, sorry but I had to drop out of the meeting for a little while and so I apologize if anything that I've said is duplicative of what anyone else said but I was looking in the chat and seeing a lot of people sort of saying that this was too many units and too big, and my biggest priority is affordable housing and I'm really excited to see the larger percentage of affordable units, and I just want to remind everyone that every time you You lower the number of units in a building like this you get fewer affordable housing units because it's calculated as a percentage. So I would just, I would just really urge everyone to remember that when you're thinking about, you know, fewer units and smaller and I think we need every unit of affordable housing, we can get in Medford at 80% 60% 60% would be am I would be awesome. I'll take 80% just really maximize that number of affordable units and that means That means more units, but that's something that I think is the most important thing to think about in Medford. So that's all I wanted to say.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, Alex. I appreciate that comment. And that's something that is very important to us to try and deliver more housing. I think everyone's seen what's happened to rent this year and inflation in general. So I appreciate your comments. And it's something that we're going to continue to try and deliver on. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_15]: I see a couple of thank yous there. I'm sorry, I'm just reading. All good comments, all good comments that we've kind of talked about.
[SPEAKER_16]: Rachel, Michael, you guys got your hands up again.
[SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, just a question for me. Sorry. I was just wondering how we could ensure that we got notified about future meetings because I had just heard about this one by chance, but I'm within the little red line that was on that early slide and I didn't get a mailing or anything.
[SPEAKER_16]: Well, apologies for that. I mean, we do our best to get the mailing list out of the city. It may be if you're a new resident or something. I don't know why that would be. Right now, there's no next meeting planned. We have some work to do with the city to see how to best move this project forward. And again, this is not part of a public process. This is an early community engagement meeting. So nothing is being decided tonight. No decisions are being made. No votes are being cast. and there'll be plenty of opportunity for feedback in the future. The best suggestion I can give you is to monitor the City of Medford website. They're very good about posting notices and calendar and stuff there. What's your address? And I'll check our mailing list.
[SPEAKER_12]: 37A Amaranth Ave.
[SPEAKER_16]: I will check on that and make sure, and I know everyone who's joined this had to put their emails in, so I should be able to find you and we'll make sure you're on our mailing list.
[Alicia Hunt]: Chris, can I just jump in for a quick second about notification?
[SPEAKER_16]: Hi, Alicia. Yes, thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Hi, so I'm Alicia Hunt. I'm the director of planning and development for the city. And I am, as Chris had mentioned here earlier, just on this to hear what the comments and stuff are. But I did want to mention, I occasionally run into people who are not aware that the city also has a system to do reverse calls. If you are not getting approximately weekly phone calls from the mayor, then you probably should go on the city's website and subscribe to our notifications because we have a lot, we regularly provide information about COVID, et cetera. But this meeting, I am fairly confident there was a reverse call about this in the abutters area as well. So I just wanna mention that. And if anybody has trouble subscribing to the city's phone calls or emails, You're welcome to email my office. It's very simple. It's letters OCD for Office of Community Development at Medford-MA.gov. We're happy to help people get signed up for these kinds of notices.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, Alicia. Much better answer than I would have given. Thank you. Maybe put that email in the chat just in case anyone had trouble writing that down. That'd be great. Thank you. Tom, I see your hand up as a new hand.
[SPEAKER_15]: Nope, not there.
[SPEAKER_16]: Tom, we'll come back to you in a sec. KD, do you have another question?
[SPEAKER_15]: Nope.
[SPEAKER_16]: Michael you're the, you've been, you've been chatting with me tonight and I see your hand still up. Do you have another question.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, I was listening to Mr. Wilson Hall, talk about affordable housing edit that is important. However, just to make everybody aware if they're not there's there's a whole bunch of more affordable housing that's gone up a lot and the Wellington circle area that's going to be going up on route 16 they're going to be some high rises there. So we don't need, you know, 300 units in our back door here that we've been living with, you know that. that's going to create a traffic nightmare and also pollution wise more people more pollution. You know how's that going to be rectified for years to come when we're all here and. I'd like to see home ownership, people to own their own private homes instead of renting, because there's going to be a different population moving in that's going to own it versus renting. And they're going to have more care and concern about their neighbors in this immediate area than if they're just moving in for a few months or a year or two, then moving on to some other community. But a vested interest in this community and this neighborhood would be appreciated if you consider more of the townhousing concept Because I don't know if you own the other building like you said extra space. You might want to create more general housing there you know, and it's kind of hard that like you said I agree you can't get on. getting everybody onto Fells Way is just gonna create another parking lot. And I see that now, even with just what's here today. But I wish you luck and hopefully you'll take everybody's comments to heart. And I know everybody wants to make a profit as developers, but to consider the community's concerns that they've raised today and reducing the scope of this project as well, should you be allowed to build on this land. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Michael.
[SPEAKER_16]: Tom, I'm going to come back to you because you're the one with a hand up. I want to see if you got your...
[SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, my issue was when I look around, all your buildings are really nice and this one looks beautiful, but I can't think of any others that are surrounded by two and three families. You say it's a multifamily, but I think of multifamily as two and three, even four, but this is just, it's an apartment building. I know it's multifamily, but it's just so different from where you've built your other ones. you know, like on River's Edge and, you know, even the ones on, they're all out in the area where they're not surrounded by housing. You know, this is completely, on two thirds of it, it's wrapped by, and it's the Fellsway, which is considered a pleasure road. The reason there were no trucks on it, it was marked a pleasure road. There used to be trees in the middle from, you know, till some storm took them out. And I know, The storage is kind of a buffer. By leaving the storage there, it's kind of a buffer for you guys. You're not putting your building right on the Fellsway, which I think would be a bigger concern. And the bus stop, I used to take the bus. And when I was at that stop, I very rarely got a seat because the bus stops way up at the end. So if you have even 30 people trying to get on the bus, you may want to think about having a shuttle for your own. you know, just take them over to Riverside Avenue, Riverside, they'll be on the shuttle at River's Edge. But that's all that was my only comment that I just don't see it fitting here. And I think anything over three stories is just too high, because that's what we have. You know, three store, everything's three stories, all of a sudden, it's going to be double, that's double, you know, just, I mean, I know you have the state approval probably already, because it's 40 B, I don't really realize how much input the city has on what they can, what they can do what they can't. But That's all. Thank you. Thank you. It was a great presentation and I'm glad to hear from everybody. And I live right next to Mike.
[SPEAKER_16]: So thank you. I appreciate your comments. We don't have our approvals yet. So that's a process that we're working through with the city right now. So there will be more opportunities for feedback and all good comments. Thank you. I think that's about it. I see a couple of more comments in the chat. I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. I think this was actually a really good meeting. I appreciate the turnout. For one, I can tell you I actually like the opportunity to have these community engagement meetings virtually because I think it gives a lot more people the opportunity to participate rather than having to perhaps leave small kids at home alone get a sitter or whatever to find their way into a city hall type location. So I want to, again, thank everybody for coming out. I want to thank the team for their efforts in putting this presentation together. And Alicia, thank you for chiming up there at the end with some helpful information to the community. We will make sure our mailing list is as current as possible. If there are no further questions, again, thank you. I want to assure you there will be more opportunities for comment going forward. This is not a project that's baked. It's not a project that's starting tomorrow. So I'm sure I'll be seeing several of you down the road. Thank you very much for your time and have a good evening.
[Unidentified]: Good night, everyone.
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