[Alicia Hunt]: So welcome everybody this evening. My name is Alicia hunt, I am the director of planning, development and sustainability for the city of Medford. We're glad to have all of you here with us this evening it is a pretty big group. For staff this evening, I have with me, Victor Schrader, our Interim Economic Development Director, Yvette Niwa, our Economic Development Planner, and then additional staff in our office, Lily Wirth and Theresa DuPont. This evening we also have, this presentation this evening is actually going to be done by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, MAPC. They're the regional planning agency for greater Boston. They've been providing technical assistance to the city of Medford on this project. The MAPC team includes Chris Cushel, a land use manager and principal planner, who's been leading this process as the project manager. Alexis Smith, who's a principal housing and land use planner. She's been doing a lot of technical analysis that will be presented tonight, and she's also a Medford resident herself. Gloria Huangpu is the Community Engagement Specialist, who has been conducting focus groups and outreach to hear from community members. We're also joined by Abigail Bliss and Sarah Scott from the MAPC, who will be helping us when we move to breakout rooms later this evening. At this time, everybody is set to be muted so that you can't, if you want to speak, you'll need to raise your hand. There'll be appropriate times during The Q&A, when we'll have time for that, with 84 people, it would be a little hard to take questions throughout the process. So now I'd like to hand it over to Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn to say a few words.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you so much, Director Hunt. I first want to thank everybody that who has got involved over the last several months and over the last several years and your input has been invaluable. It started many years ago with a number of studies and the prior administration under Mayor Burke definitely took started this process, and we've been able to, with the help of MAPC over the last several months, thank you MAPC, and with the help of the planning, development, and sustainability staff, we've been able to double the size of that staffing over the last several years, and you really have taken this under your wing, Victor, Alicia, Yvette. and new member Lily, so we appreciate all you've done. We have a really great opportunity here for Medford Square to create more housing, more commercial space for our residents. We have a chance to revitalize our square, these three parcels, as well as the waterfront that we're working on. So we appreciate the comments and opportunities. We hear the seniors concern about needing that portion, specific portion for parking. You'll see that in the presentation tonight that we are hear you, we are listening, but we have a very exciting opportunity and this will end with an RFP. We are hoping for the summer, fall, but it will definitely be sometime in 2023. And that's a place that it's taken years to get to and we're just so excited. So we appreciate your input and thank you again. Turn it back. Oh, I'll actually turn it to Chris from MAPC to start the presentation.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: And Gloria, if you could please get the slides up for me, thank you very much. All right, thank you everyone. If you could go to the next slide so that we can... So, just generally speaking, why are we here tonight? Well, it's twofold. First is for us to provide information to you about, in more detail from everything that has been occurring as it relates to this process and to use that information for you all to hopefully help inform you because we also want to hear from you and help get your input that will help shape the final outcome of what is ultimately developed on these lots. And we're really focusing tonight on this notion of community benefits. So essentially, what can we get from to expect as part of this development that will go to help achieve a number of the city's goals. And we'll talk about that. Next slide. So I'm going to give a presentation, I will say it's a little bit of a dense presentation, so I'm going to try and go through it efficiently, but also cover everything. All these slides, if they're not already, they will be on the city's website, so there are some slides that might be a little tough to process right now. you can go back at your leisure and then go through them again afterwards. After I go through the presentation, we're going to break out for a little bit of time into some breakout groups. And so that hopefully we'll have a chance to have a little bit of a smaller group conversation and hear from each other. Then we'll come back as a group. We have an online poll that will explain, and then we'll have the more general Q and A session after that.
[Unidentified]: So next slide.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, so as has been noted, there's been a number of planning work that has been done over the years, specifically related to Medford Square, as well as to the city as a whole. For Medford Square, all of these studies essentially try to create a vision and associated recommendations that help create that thriving Medford Square that I think everybody here ultimately is seeking. Next slide. This specific project is one piece of that puzzle. So it doesn't solve everything. It's not intended to, but it is an important piece of the puzzle. And the ultimate goal is to have development on these lots. You can see them there where they're labeled A, B, and C. A is across from the senior center, B is across from City Hall, C is next to the Hyatt along 93, and to do so again as I've been emphasizing in a way that provides benefits beyond just the development itself. Next slide. Ultimately, the goal is for the city to create an RFP. That's a request for proposal. So an RFP is where they send out bids to developers. And within this RFP, there'll be a bunch of criteria. Some criteria might be things that you absolutely must have these are sort of minimum qualifications in order to for the right to develop. Other things are could be things that would be nice to have. or other priorities to weigh against. And again, really this is an opportunity to for us here tonight to think about what are those benefits that we want. We also want to think through what is the sort of a vision for the actual development if the land use program that we can then communicate to developers. And finally, it's really critical that whatever is required by the city is something that could actually be built that's financially feasible. So my colleague Alexis has been taken on that task to ensure that what is built is something that would be realistic. Next slide. So in terms of this process, this has been something that was started back in the fall and will be finishing up in the summer. There've been a number of engagement activities such as focus groups. We had an open house earlier today at the senior center. There'll be additional open houses after this tonight. So kind of throughout the process, we're trying to hear feedback. We also have an advisory committee of local stakeholders. We've been looking at a lot of the previous planning that has been done and trying to incorporate that. So I'll hit some of those highlights in a few minutes. And then coming through with some development scenarios to see what could be built that would be financially feasible. and provide some of the benefits that we've been hearing already. And then ultimately, at MAPC, we're providing the criteria that would go into the RFP focused on what those benefits are. After that, the city has its own steps where it needs to draft the RFP, it needs to surplus the property, and then actually issue the RFP itself. After that, so the process isn't done, once bids come in, there will be opportunities for the public to see what those bids are, we public, and then comment on those. Next slide. So the planning for this area, I think, from what I've been hearing, has been going back about 20 years. And there's been a lot of studies specific to Medford Square. There's also been more recent work related to Medford as a whole. I have heard some concerns that planning is always happening and things aren't actually being implemented. And I think that's really where we're focused on this project to truly get to that implementation point. And so we didn't want to start from scratch. And because all this work has already been done, but rather build on it. And I think this was that opportunity to do so. I'm going to hit a couple of highlights from some of the more recent plans. Next slide, please. So first the city completed with the assistance of MAPC several years ago, a master plan for Medford Square. This was fairly high level with recommendations and goals and strategies that would ultimately hopefully lead to the revitalization of Medford Square. And the recommendations included things related to things like land use, economic development, transportation improvements, and more. As it relates to this specific work that we're doing here tonight. There was a few, I think, relevant aspects. One is that that study specifically noted the potential for development, including mixed use development on lots A and B. It also noted that the additional housing that might go on these lots as part of a development program can actually help support the local businesses and that helps create the vibrancy that I think a lot of people are hoping to see within Medford Square. And then also there were recommendations related to improving the walkability of the area. and how to actually incentivize redevelopment of some of the, not just the lots themselves, but also some of the other areas of the city, of the square, I should say. More recently, there was a study that was focused specifically on lots A and B. This was, it tested financial feasibility. It also provided urban design principles. This is sort of, it was in many ways a very concrete starting point for us on this process. That study, as you can see the year, it occurred before the pandemic hit. So it's been several years. So some of the things related to feasibility might have changed. So that's why we wanted to test them. Again, we also wanted to put a stronger focus now to build on that work, but put a stronger focus on the community benefits aspect. So that work sort of doesn't go by the wayside. We're really building on off of that work.
[Unidentified]: Next slide.
[SPEAKER_11]: And then the final one I'll highlight, and I realize that this is a slide full of some pretty dense text. So as I mentioned before, this will be on the city's website and you can kind of read this in more detail after. But the city recently did complete a housing production plan. So HPPs provide analysis of the housing needs within the city and then strategies for helping to meet those needs. A few highlights to note Medford actually has some of the highest home price increases of any community within Massachusetts. You have a fairly significant percentage of the population is classified as low income there's a need for more housing overall. especially the types of housing that will help meet the needs of the current residents. And so, for example, you have almost two thirds of households just have one to two people, but only 16% of housing units are one bedroom units. And also within Medford Square itself, there is a high concentration of low income households. The HPP specifically puts recommendations for having affordable and mixed income housing development on the city's vacant lots.
[Unidentified]: Next slide.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, so everything I've said up until now has been essentially background information. So now we're gonna start thinking about the priorities themselves. And before we get into that, we kind of are starting from a base level of some principles that I wanna put forth. First, this is really a once in a generation opportunity. And so even though it might feel like this is taking a long time, I think that's done because the city is being deliberate in ensuring that what is done really takes advantage of this potential because once things are built, they tend to last for quite a while. The goal is not simply just to maximize a one-time upfront payment in exchange for maximizing the development potential from a private developer. If that were the case, frankly, there wouldn't really be much point to us all being here tonight. Rather, this redevelopment is an opportunity to spur the creation and fund a number of community benefits that have a recurring economic value. And that recurring economic value can occur through increased property taxes of the new development, as well as just the vibrancy that can occur by having more people concentrated in this area. All that being said, it's important to note that community benefits are not free. That's why we're here to think through not just what you want, but how to prioritize them, because there are trade-offs that will need to be made, as well as often some sort of public subsidy. The city has some ready-made levers, and I'll talk about those a little bit as well. So as we think through these trade-offs, I wanted to pause here to just give a sense for how much things cost. Cause I think that helps make things a little bit more concrete. Housing is very expensive, not just to buy, but actually to construct here. Costs are over $400,000 per unit. And that doesn't matter whether it's a market rate unit or if it's a deed restricted affordable unit, the cost is the same. Obviously, if it's a deed restricted affordable unit though the rents are lower, and so that in and of itself is a community benefit to provide affordable when I say affordable I mean deed restricted affordable housing parking also costs a lot of money. It's for structured parking or garage parking. It's about $40,000 per parking space. Yes, you might be able to get a little bit of revenue for people parking there but it tends to be very small and really does not offset the cost of constructing that parking. And then just as one other example we've also heard of interest in community space and so the cost for that. It's around $200 per square foot. It's not huge, but there's also the opportunity cost of what could have been built within that space. And so I'm not saying any of these things to suggest we shouldn't have them. I'm just helping to hopefully help crystallize the fact that these things all do cost some money. Next slide. So you can think of these benefits sort of along a spectrum. So at the one end, we have a number of benefits that are lower cost community benefits. And these are the things where the developer can just be expected to pay for as essentially a cost of doing business. And it happens all the time now, such as providing a certain level of affordable housing, street improvements, streetscape improvements to the public realm, things like that. And the fact that these are city owned property I think you can have even a little bit more leverage than than typical in terms of defining and pushing the developer to to provide those. As you move down the spectrum, there are some things that are going to cost more money or it's just more things that you want. So even if it's a number of smaller, lower cost benefits, they all sort of tend to add up. This is where the city does have some levers at its disposal. One is how much development are you allowing to be built? It's very different if you say you can only build two stories versus six stories in terms of what then you can expect in terms of the community benefits. There's also other levers related to how much they are charging for the land to the developer, because that in and of itself, if you provide a lower cost to the land, in exchange, you can get more benefits. At the far end then of the spectrum, there are higher cost benefits or if you're asking for a lot of various benefits. In here, this is where the either whether it's the city or finding additional state resources would be necessary in order for things to pencil out and be feasible. Okay, so what we've heard so far. One is the parking. This is kind of come through loud and clear and so we're going to spend some time talking about that the existing parking that's there today and in particular the parking dedicated to the senior center. We've also heard a lot of interest in affordable housing options. So I'll talk about those two. And then there've been a number of other ones that we've been hearing, maybe not quite to the same degree. One has been an interest in developing the park along the, what's called the Clippership Park off of Clippership Drive. An interest in additional community space, whether that's recreation space, such as another basketball court, For the youth or a more general we got we had got one thought about a more. holistic wellness center located right within Medford Square. Funding can also be used for traffic flow improvements. There are some big ticket things such as, you know, reconstructing or realigning the roadways, but there are some smaller types of improvements that can actually have a big impact related to the sort of state-of-the-art types of traffic signals that help really improve traffic flow. There's also been the notion that this is, we've been hearing, which I mentioned earlier, this is an opportunity for ongoing revenue, not just a one-time payment. We also have heard things of various types of retail that people have been interested, such as a small grocery store. We heard interest in some of the things that used to be in Medford Square, such as bowling alley, theater, bookstores. So again, often these things tend to be what are called lost leaders for a developer, and so they can be thought of as a community benefit. And there could be other things, and we'll want to hear what else the community is interested in. Next slide. All right, let's start with the parking. So there are two big aspects to the parking. One is the fact that you have an existing on these three lots, what is that, about 160 parking spaces or 260 parking spaces on these existing lots. So there is a desire that we've been hearing to replace at least some of those spots that are there today, especially the ones that are focused for the dedicated to the senior center. But also, any new development that occurs on these lots, such as new housing, has to have additional parking associated with that housing. or in the same case for any of the other uses that might be here.
[Unidentified]: There's a lot of parking that is needed there. Next slide.
[SPEAKER_11]: So the city has done some studies where they've looked at actual utilization of these three parking lots. Often what tends to happen is people have a perception about parking lots being never having space. when in reality most of the time there's space, but then there are certain times where things tend to get really busy. So this slide here shows the actual study utilization and each of these had multiple nights that were then provided a weighted average to see what the parking lot utilization is on these various lots. If you go to the next slide, I'll kind of hit what the takeaways are. Okay, so most of these lots are based upon this analysis show that they're actually tend to be underutilized. I think anecdotally we've heard people say that they often have trouble finding parking in in Medford Square. Sometimes this issue is related to sort of the way finding they just don't know where the parking is located. I will say for myself anecdotally, when I've gone during the daytime, I really have not had a problem finding spots in these three lots. But that being said, I don't want to dismiss the feelings of how much people do want parking. This is an opportunity and that's why we are here tonight to hear how important replacing that parking is. We'll show with some diagrams how that parking can actually be replaced on these three sites. And then the final point that I just want to make, which I think I've made, but I'll just emphasize it was one of the things we heard loud and clear from the senior center folks is it's not just having the amount of parking, but it's the location of the parking. So where it is located today, it's right on the ground level. It's right across from the senior center. And so I think that is sort of a critical piece that you can't just put all the parking, for example, on lot C, the parking needs to be to some degree distributed throughout the lots and that includes other types of parking like handicap parking. Next slide. So this format of the slide, we're gonna show a few times. So what we have here is on the left column, the types of benefits. In the middle, it's sort of tried to do a simplified version to show what the cost would be to the city to provide that. And related to that, what are the city levers to help fund what that is? So as it relates for senior center parking, there's really no cost to the city. We would expect a developer, they're relatively few spaces, a developer can cover that. That would be an expectation that they would fund those spaces. For parking related to new housing or whatever the other new development is on these sites, again, the developer has to provide that. Frankly, if they can't provide it, you don't want them trying to develop your lots because that is financially feasible. Now if we want to start replacing the existing parking, this is where it goes beyond what a developer will be able to do on their own. And so if you wanted to replace a hundred of those spaces, the city lever that we have at our disposal here is to essentially provide a lower land cost in exchange for providing that garage. If you wanted 300 spaces, that's actually more than what you have there today, but even the lower land cost wouldn't cover it. Even if you just gave the land for free to a developer, they would not be able to pay for that. I want to just be clear about the financial realities of how expensive building that replacement parking is. It would cost additional city, other types of resources in order to fund a full garage of that size. based upon what we're seeing from that utilization study, it's probably not necessary to replace every single spot. You can replace close to like half of those spots, and that would be feasible. Next slide. So that was parking. The other big theme that we had heard relates to affordable housing. So this is deed-restricted affordable housing. And this is based upon, there are certain income levels that are designated and that set the rents. And one of the kind of things is when we hear about just sort of typical housing, affordable housing, it's often at this assumption of it's at 80% of the area median income. Now, Boston's a fairly wealthy overall area. So 80% of the area median income is still fairly moderate income. That's really not serving low income people. Moderate income, this is people with careers like a firefighter or a teacher, just to give a sense for who that's serving. Medford already has what's called inclusionary zoning. This is a requirement for affordable housing, and that is at this 80% of the area median income level, and 15% of the new units off the bat have to be deed-restricted affordable at this level. Depending on again what the community wants there could be opportunities to provide deeper levels of affordability. So if you're going to lower levels such as somewhere between 50 and 80%. So whereas with the inclusionary zoning that you have you expect the developer just to fund that all themselves, they can do that it's financially feasible. If you're going lower than often there needs to be some other type of incentive such as like we talked about that lower land cost is one of the levers that the city would have at its own hands. You could also go even much lower and really serve very low income populations, such as people who are on social security types of and really have low incomes. And here there's also federal and state programs that really need to come into play in order to make things feasible. The cost of the city actually doesn't change all that much between those last two levels because ultimately it's the state that is funding it, but it does require some, I'd say, sophistication on the developer's part to kind of bring all this together. Next slide. And so here we go again with the same style where if we're expecting that that 15% at the 80% of the area median income, those moderate income folks, that doesn't cost the city anything. We're gonna expect the developer to provide that. When you're getting to more affordable units or when you get in or when you're getting to a deeper level of affordability. Here's where there needs to be a little bit of that subsidy and that's where the lower land cost could come in. And then if you're going to the very deep affordable or more affordable units, that's when you also need the state subsidies that would come into play as well as the lower land cost. The other thing I want to just note about all these priorities, it's not an either or in all of these situations, that there can be a balance. And that's something that we are going to try and get some of your input on to think about how to weight all of these.
[Unidentified]: Next slide.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, so I think I covered this. So just to be clear, affordable housing can be both the number of units as well as the level of incomes that they're serving. All right, so I'll just kind of touch on a couple of the other things that we've heard, although I will say we haven't heard them to the degree that we've heard about related to parking and affordable housing. But one has been an interest in improving the open space within this area. The city has done, has hired a landscape architect and has started doing conceptual plans. And so one of the questions is could the redevelopment on these lots help fund that? If you go to the next slide. So I don't want to get sort of too into the weeds here, but the city has a concurrent process occurring right now to create something that is called a District Improvement Financing District in Medford Square. I know that's a mouthful, but what this does is it essentially takes additional tax revenue, such as that would occur from this new development, and keeps it within Medford Square to fund various types of infrastructure and public improvements. So that could be a good use for this Clippership Park on how to fund the construction of some of these ideas related to Clippership Park. This diff revenue could also be used for other things, such as these transportation improvements, which I mentioned earlier, related to these new signals. And I'm raising that because it sounded like what has been rising to the top has been this issue of parking, as well as affordable housing. And so this is a way to not lose some of these other benefits. But again, depending on what we hear tonight, this could be a primary benefit that people want sort of done upfront. Next slide. Okay, this slide kind of brings everything together just to have this comparison. These dots, just so you know, they do correlate to actual costs around like $2 million per dot. But we just want to provide a summary to show sort of what the general cost is to the city, kind of summarizing all of these things that I had just noted. So the bottom third, those are the new ones. So, you know, the Clippership Park, the grocery store types of thing and other types of retail or recreation space, all of that essentially could help be subsidized through the potential for lower land cost.
[Unidentified]: Next slide.
[SPEAKER_11]: And this land cost, this chart is a bit old. It breaks down the way development costs are. And like you can see, this is as of 2015. So the percentages have probably changed a bit recently. I think especially construction costs, I think we all know, has gone up and probably takes up a bigger portion of that pie. But the general idea here is that land acquisition is a significant factor of the costs. And so, and this is the area where the city has at its own lever that it can adjust what it is to to help achieve some of these community benefits. The other aspect has to do with how big you're allowing buildings to be. I mentioned if you're only allowing two-story buildings, you're not going to get any benefits at all. Based upon the way that construction and building code works, the maximum you could really do is six to seven stories of construction. If you try to go higher, you actually then need to go to steel construction and the costs shoot way up unless you're doing a huge tower. So we're sort of looking at it from the perspective of maximizing to what's realistic.
[Unidentified]: And you can go to the next slide.
[SPEAKER_11]: All right, I have a handful of final slides I'm going to go through. And I'm calling this an illustrative plan. This basically it builds off of that previous study that was done in 2019 of development potential. And we at MAPC then also took everything we've heard so far, and we kind of came up with it's not a development proposal. It shows one way that development could occur and include a number of the benefits that we've been hearing. And I think the idea here is one of the things that some of the feedback we got was it helps when people can kind of see something, even if it's not fully baked, but it helps give a sense for what development would be like and what we can expect and what we can dictate to developers that you must have. So next slide. Okay, so here, this is the diagram. This shows, you can see where lots A, B, and C are that we've been speaking about. And if you go to the next slide, this shows one way that development could occur on those lots. You can see to the right where there's the apartment tower and the Hyatt, these buildings would be lower than that and sort of essentially just kind of step down towards the smaller buildings that are further west on that image. Next slide. So, what we sort of did, and this is based on a number of assumptions like what is the bedroom mix how big are the units but it is intended to be done in a realistic fashion. We got that the total number of housing units. would be around 225 housing units on these three lots and actually the housing would be all concentrated on lots A and B. The level and the number of affordable units that would vary based upon what the community desires for how much affordable housing to provide. The parking space for the new development, so that means how much new parking is there related to these buildings, white buildings you see, would be between 220 and 260 units. And that, again, is based on both the number of units, but also the types of affordability levels that are there. The amount of replacement parking on these diagrams varies a bit because that's where there's the big trade off, especially between how much affordable housing you're providing and how much replacement parking you're providing. The majority of that would be in lot C. We did estimate some commercial space on the ground floor. And as I noted, we wanna hear your feedback, but if we're hoping to maximize the community benefits, we really do need to try to get to that six, seven story of building height in order to do so. Next slide. All right, so this is just gonna kind of take through each of those lots. So here is lot A, you can see where Clippership Drive is, there's the existing, that's mostly medical office in that existing commercial building. Next slide. And so here, there's the potential for some of that ground floor commercial to be there across from that medical office. And that could be whether it's grocery store or other type of commercial. It would essentially create what is additional vehicular circulation by having a cut through to Clippership Drive. And that we estimated there would be about two levels of parking on the ground floor, except for this one sort of portion that that is kind of fronting that commercial space. And if you go to the next slide. Yeah, this is just a ground floor image of of that space and next slide please. I think this is probably a more. more important slide so you can see where the senior center is and and this is where I really trying to emphasize that that ground floor parking, you can click the next slide actually. that ground floor parking can still be deeded to the senior, or dedicated to the senior center parking. Right now, I forget, there's in the neighborhood of about 20 spaces, and that could even be bumped up, especially during the daytime, we could bump that up to 30 spaces. So we can actually increase the amount of parking to the senior center. Either way, the importance here is that it is easy and visual. It's on the ground floor and it's accessible to the senior center right across the street, right where it is today. Next slide. Okay, so here's lot B. This one, because of an existing building, it's kind of a little bit of a trickier sort of lot to develop. Next slide. So this would probably have one level of parking as opposed to two here, and that's on account of because of this the shape. If you try to do multiple levels, the ramps would take up most of that space, it wouldn't be very efficient. Next slide. So most of the uses here, again, it could be ground floor, it could be dedicated to some degree to some commercial space. Most of the ground floor would be parking and then above that would be homes for people. And then finally, here's on lot C, because it's right next to the highway, this really is not a good location for housing. There's just environmental issues with the particulates that would come from the highway. So we would try to keep housing away from there. There are ways to mitigate that, but this really seemed like the best location to put that structured parking, to consolidate a lot of the parking that's already there today. in this one place, essentially across the street from where it is today in a lot of cases. There's a little bit of challenges because even here, the parcel is a little bit of a funny shape. You can't maximize it as easily as we might hope, but we still couldn't fit a fairly decent-sized garage, I think, to cover the needs. Then you can click the next slide. This could also be a space where there is that room for that recreation space if that ends up being one of the desired community benefits that's provided. And that could be, like I said, rec spaces such as a basketball court, which is sort of what's shown here. Or it could be something that's some other type of wellness space. All right, so I'm going to hand it off to Gloria for a minute. That's I know that was a lot of information that I really went through. So this is going to be an opportunity, I think, to take like 10-15 minutes, maybe. Gloria, I'll hand it off to you to explain this section.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure. Thanks, Chris, for taking us through all of that information. Like Chris said, that was a lot. So we just wanted to take a minute to go out into breakout rooms and let everyone take in and digest what you all just heard. We'll probably take between five to 10 minutes in our breakout groups. You can ask any clarifying questions you have from staff. Again, just really digest and take in what you heard, and then we'll come back and do that interactive poll that Chris mentioned to really just get a pulse of where everyone is feeling with all those different community benefit options and then have a little bit of a comment session and Q&A after that. So with that said, you'll again have about five to 10 minutes in these breakout groups. I'm going to go ahead and click open on the breakout rooms and that'll send you all into those groups, and then just be ready to have some thoughts about how you would want to prioritize these community benefits when we get back. Yeah, so welcome back from the breakouts. Hopefully it helped just help process all of that a little bit further. just wanted to, now that we've had a chance to reflect a little bit, get a pulse of what everyone is thinking. And so to do that we're going to use a tool called Mentimeter, and I'm just going to share my screen again here. So this is a digital tool that you can access using a web browser. If you have if you're on your computer or on your phone, you can use a smartphone to do that as well. And you're just going to go to this website listed on the screen here. And I'm just going to put the website and code in the chat. And once everyone is in the Mentimeter, there are a couple of questions that we have for you. So I'm going to go to the next page to show the questions, but the website and code are at the top here. So the first question is, again, hoping to get a pulse on how you see these community benefits prioritized. while keeping in mind the trade-offs and the different costs and city levers that Chris talked about earlier. So once you've gone into the Menti, you'll see this list of the development priorities that we just went through. And in this app, you have 100 points to allocate among these different community benefit priorities. So I see someone already in there adding in their thoughts. What you see next to each of the options are some dollar signs to indicate the costs, again, reflecting what Chris just talked us through but just include those there as a reminder. And you can allocate your 100 points across these community benefits as you think they should be prioritized in this project. And we'll give everyone a couple of seconds to just put in their thoughts and figure out this app. But as you can see on the screen, we'll start getting a sense of what's gonna get prioritized by the group here.
[Unidentified]: Give it a couple seconds to start loading.
[SPEAKER_04]: So seeing ground floor retail or grocery store at the top there. Clippership Park is floating to the top. Lots of interest in a combination of moderate, low, and very low income affordable housing.
[Unidentified]: Awesome. Seeing things are stabilized here a little bit.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great, so once- Florian, do you want to give people just a minute to think? I see the number on the bottom is up to 33. That's the number of people who've submitted, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, exactly.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, we can take another couple of minutes here. anyone is having issues with Venti, feel free to message us in the chat. Awesome.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so it looks like things are starting to stabilize a bit as our responses are getting up there. Okay, let's see. For anyone who's not able to get into the mentee, you can try this other link that I'm putting in the chat and it'll stay open. So you're welcome to continue putting your thoughts in here, but just for the sake of time, so we can get to some more Q&A and discussion. The next question, if you submitted this trade-offs, response. The next question is just, you know, as Chris mentioned at the very beginning, if you have any other thoughts on priorities that we haven't discussed in today's presentation, you can go ahead and add those ideas on that next page. Not seeing any here just yet, but it did look like there was a note on childcare in the chat.
[Unidentified]: So anything like that, definitely feel free to add those in here.
[SPEAKER_11]: And Gloria, this will stay open, is that correct? So people can feel free to add thoughts afterwards.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mm hmm. Yep. So this will stay open for a little bit. And then there will also be a other digital engagement tool that we'll talk about in just a minute. But just to to read out some of these things I'm seeing show up here, the childcare show up a few times, many areas for families to gather trees and greenery. Lots of thoughts on bars and restaurants, coffee shops in the square, incubator space for businesses, thoughts on bikes, transit, bike hub.
[Unidentified]: Great. More bars, breweries, a lot to say on traffic improvements.
[SPEAKER_04]: So these are all really, really great and helpful for us. Like I said, I do wanna tell you all a little bit about the other opportunities to provide input as we wrap up this session. So I'll just stop sharing for a minute and switch back over to slides.
[Unidentified]: So, um, yeah, so like I said, feel free to continue putting your thoughts into the mentee.
[SPEAKER_04]: After this evening, the Menti will close, but then we will have this other digital engagement tool that sort of mirrors what we just did in the Mentimeter that you're welcome to go ahead and add your thoughts to. You can sort of do a similar thing of rating the benefits that you think we should prioritize and then adding comments like we did just now. And I'm going to go ahead and again put the link to that in the chat so you can open it up now.
[Alicia Hunt]: I did that for you, Gloria.
[SPEAKER_04]: Excellent. Thank you, Alicia. And the other thing I just wanted to mention is you can see we have office hours coming up on Tuesday at the Senior Center in Medford Square and then on Thursday evening at the library. So if you want to keep the conversation going or if you have friends or neighbors who couldn't join us this evening, please feel free to invite them to attend one of the office hour sessions and we'll be able to share the information we went over today and get more input. So with that said, let's go ahead and move into the Q&A session. Since I know there's already a lot of conversation going on in the chat, just some quick ground rules going into this part of the discussion, since we do have a really large group tonight. If everyone could please use the raise your hand function in Zoom, you can see a screenshot showing where that is on your Zoom screen on the slide here. We'll go ahead and call on you to speak, and we'll go one at a time just to be respectful of everyone's voice and time. if possible, if we could try to keep our comments or questions relatively brief so that we can hear as many people as possible. And again, feel free to continue adding your thoughts on those different digital engagement tools, even if we run out of time today. So with that said, excited to hear from folks and I will stop sharing my screen.
[Unidentified]: Great. So Sheila, looks like you were the first to get your hand up. Go ahead. You might need to unmute yourself first.
[Alicia Hunt]: Gloria, you have to give them, we turned off the ability to unmute yourselves. So everybody will have to send them the unmute message.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I did just do that. But looks like Sheila walked away from her.
[Sheila Ehrens]: Oh, I was on my, my big computer as opposed to my laptop. Can you hear me now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, we can.
[Sheila Ehrens]: easier. Um, so I've got a lot of comments I'll try to be brief. Once we do this, it's here forever. So I think we need to really think this through very carefully. I think the design of all the buildings and the quality of what the buildings look like are very important. I see construction going up now that within a year or two, the facades of the building look awful and we want to create a beautiful place that people want to come I think green space is incredibly important and and having a walk along the river all you have to do is go to assembly square and see how people are drawn to the river there, or even at con and show I mean it's just a great place to be so I think that that's really, really important. And as people said, the first floor commercial space, grocery stores, little shops, things that people really would like to go to. I think that draws people and also events. I hate to keep bringing up Somerville, but that's why people are drawn to Somerville because of all the wonderful events that go on. I'm delighted we're gonna have a Medford Porch Fest. That's really exciting. So we need to fund the arts council so they can hire staff to do all these cool events. But anyway, I think murals, sculptures, anything that has to do again with creating beauty because that's what people are gonna be drawn to and wanna come and support the businesses in the square.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you, Sheila.
[SPEAKER_04]: those thoughts. Definitely love the idea of supporting the arts and see a lot of agreement in the chat for your points there too. Richard, I'm going to go ahead and send you the unmute notification.
[Richard Orlando]: Just one quick point off of what Sheila talked about in terms of the quality and look of the buildings. Uh, as we move forward with this, I think having the city needs to have some design guidelines or developers that mirror what, what is attractive for the city of Medford without that, then it's kind of left to whatever the development, um, techniques are.
[Unidentified]: So design guidelines, and that would be, I guess, for OCD to figure out. Yeah, thank you for that addition, good point.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great, looks like David is up next.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, I know we've touched on fixing the traffic problems in Medford Square, but I want to reiterate that if Medford Square continues to be treated just like an off-ramp from 93, whatever we build will be useless.
[Unidentified]: And I'll leave it at that. Thanks, David.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, definitely saw lots of comments in the Mentimeter as well as the chat on traffic and traffic flow. So potentially a bigger question than what is immediately at hand for us in this particular conversation, but definitely noted. Mark, I see you have your hand up. Are you able to unmute yourself now? Yep. Great.
[Mark Curtiss]: Good evening. This is a great presentation. I am just super excited about this effort. I think there is so much potential to Medford Square. It's got many of the amenities that you would want for a really vibrant, successful square already, but we haven't capitalized on those. So I just love the direction this is going in. I want to, earlier in the presentation, you had talked about, you know, maybe a cost constraint being the size of the building and that we might not be able to go above five or six stories because then you get into steel frame construction and it gets a lot more expensive. I just want to challenge that a little bit because I think if what we're trying to do in the square is we've got a great list of community benefits amenities that we're looking for. And I think that density appropriate density is going to be the key that unlocks as many community benefits as possible. other large buildings in Medford Square that are 12 to 14 stories tall already. And I just don't want to rule out the possibility of a building of that size, especially on one or two of these lots where it would really fit in very well with the context around it. As a way to get to maximize those community benefits, including affordable housing, which I think is a tremendous need, and it's only by. having more units able to be built on these parcels that we're going to be able to maximize the affordable housing opportunities here, and also mixed use. So that ground floor commercial space is really important. Maybe some additional public or municipal space. All of that, I think, is unlocked with more density. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: I guess just to respond to that, I think those are really great points. You know, I think it's worth kind of kicking the tires on that notion of how big can you build, I will say that part of the kind of first phase of the work that we had been engaged in was talking to developers to understand the market and the potential and what they would be willing to build. And I think pretty unanimously they were suggesting that that would kind of be that max that seven story type of building. I think you know these parcels are also they're not huge so it might be hard to build a real tower, even if the city wanted to there. But that being said, I think it's worth looking into and before we go to the next question, Alexis just to put you on the spot is there anything else you want to add to what I just said.
[81H3OXzw2Ec_SPEAKER_31]: No, I think we've spoken to a few developers who said that that was kind of what the market in Medford Square could bear right now. But that doesn't mean that we can't look into higher densities as a possibility. Ultimately, it's going to come down to developers responding to the city's RFP with what they think they can do. So certainly don't want to rule anything out at this point.
[Unidentified]: Thanks. Awesome, looks like Matthew is next and then Eunice.
[SPEAKER_08]: Hi, I wanted to submit an idea about using potential ongoing revenues to subsidize a high frequency transit connection to the green and red line to bring more people into the square from the broader city and also to improve accessibility to the city from the square.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Matthew. I will definitely note that down. Eunice, go ahead.
[Eunice Browne]: Hi, thank you very much. Regarding parking, I think that there's not a whole lot of draw to Medford Square right now. We have one restaurant who is, two restaurants actually undergoing renovations and opening shortly, and two more coming down the pike within the next three to six months. And heaven knows what else will come after that, hopefully good things. And if you're going to be adding storefront retail and shops and grocery and whatever else, which are all good things, you need to be planning the parking, not for what is there now, but for what will be to come when it is a more vibrant epicenter. And granted, you're putting housing there, for people to patronize these places that they can walk to, but there are plenty of people in Medford who can't or don't want to walk, bike, Uber to Medford Square. And, you know, yes, we know that there will always be handicapped spots for those people that qualify, but there are a lot of people who may not qualify for a placard, but still need close parking to the places that they want to patronize, or may have children or, you know, shopping or something that, you know, they don't want to be traipsing all from one end of the square to the other to go out to eat, not to mention the fact that if it's going to become a fabulous epicenter, you're going to be bringing in people from other communities to dine and do things and they will need a place to park too. And as it is now on Chevalier nights, you can't get a spot in the square to go to the places because people come in and at five o'clock, They sit and dine for a couple of hours, they go to the show, that's another two hours, and then maybe stop somewhere for a nightcap. So, you know, they're taking up the parking spot for five, six hours. The locals can't, there are plenty of locals who don't want to walk, bike, Uber, whatever, and we need the places too. So please listen to us as well. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thanks, Eunice.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, definitely, definitely point well taken. I think something we've heard in previous engagement touchpoints, like in focus groups with some business owners in the square who echoed sort of what you're saying there, as well as the seniors that Chris mentioned, we spoke with as well. But thank you for raising that point again. Any other thoughts or questions. I'm seeing a lot.
[Unidentified]: Oh, Magdalene, let me go ahead and unmute you. Are you able to unmute yourself now?
[SPEAKER_16]: Let's see.
[Unidentified]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_16]: Oh, great. Yes. Hello. Hi, my name is Magdalene Perez. I live in Riverside Towers, and I am a former grocery store activist. When I say grocery store, I mean a supermarket. And so I am very much interested as a senior, you know, I mean for everyone not only for myself before the community for the Commonwealth of residents here to have a supermarket, because we need to go we go to wagons we go to stop and shop. And even though we take the ride, even though we take You know, other vehicles that may take us there from the senior center, we would like to walk to a supermarket and purchase our groceries, and not only in the morning when they are when these transportation vehicles are available to us but during the day, during the evening. We also need a hardware store. here closest to a hardware store that I know of is is it is in Medford, we have to take a bus to get there. And it's, you know, if we could have one here in Medford Square, that would be wonderful. The supermarket would need ramps. They would need a bench. I would love to see benches inside so we could rest and leisure and have conversations with our neighbors, our friends. Ramps would provide the comfort of the option to walk up a ramp, not only for the older, not only for seniors like myself, for everyone, families and children to make it just simply easier. I would like to see to create a great, a larger diversity of businesses like Spanish, Puerto Rican, and there aren't any Spanish restaurants in the area. I would love to see, you know, Latin, a Latin restaurant here, Creole, a diversity of cultural cuisines in this in our community Medford square. Also the business residential and the businesses residential and commercial to provide climate sustainability development practices. Of course, we all want that and need that. Both businesses, a hardware store, residential businesses, commercial businesses, to build non-combustible materials for the developers to look into building strong structures for these developments, for these commercial ideas, endeavors, for these residential, to build strong because we see so many fires. in Massachusetts, one after another. I see them that I sometimes I turn off my TV, because it's hard to view. We need strong construction. One company that is unbelievably strong has been in business for 50 years is insulated concrete forms. They build with non-combustible materials. They are fireproof materials. They are stormproof. They are floodproof. They are hurricane proof. They are the strongest company I know that will prevent a fire in your residential or business, commercial location. And that's it.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_16]: Oh, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. I love Medford square, but I've lived here for four and a half years and at Riverside towers. And, um, I started a petition four years ago for a supermarket and I received a few, I received substantial signers, but, um, yes, we do need a supermarket. We need a hardware store and the residential, um, endeavors, I absolutely applaud, and the parking with all the signers that are here. I appreciate heart, with all my heart, all of your answers, suggestions, and support, and help, and ideas. Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it looks like you have a lot of agreement as well in the chat and in what we saw in the Mentimeter. I'm gonna go over to Alexander next.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Hi, yeah, I know this came up in other meetings, but I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't say that it, these parcels are a really, really great opportunity for affordable housing. I feel confident that's being considered but and I know there's always. trade-offs with these things I personally would be in favor of maximizing the number of units over a percentage and also just because these are city-owned and we have that lever to try to get some of those lower levels of affordability like the lower AMI units just because that is such a rare thing to see in the Boston area, you know, they're almost always 80%, 100%, which, absolutely, I'm not complaining about getting below market rate housing, but this is a great opportunity to get some deeper affordability. And I think that we should try to go for that here. So that would be what I would say. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, looks like you have some agreement in a Mentimeter. responses that we got earlier. So appreciate you bringing that back up. Jennifer, I'm going to go to you next.
[Jen Sullivan]: Hi, I'm Jen. I grew up in Medford, so I've seen Medford Square go through many incarnations. I really do appreciate everyone's positivity towards this. I think I'm excited about Medford Square being a little more intergenerational again. you know, I loved the idea of having the child care there so close to the senior center where I know, like, I just, Medford Square just reeks of isolation, you know, even before the pandemic. So the idea of, you know, what if tough students started to hang out in the square? Like that, that has never been a thing. They go straight to Davis. You know, how can we have a university in our city and we don't see them? So I think, you know, housing and vibrancy and access. I just think, you know, I'm always a little skeptical, again, because I grew up here, but I'm really excited at the idea that, you know, we'll all sort of get to interact a little bit more in what it has the potential to be a beautiful square.
[Unidentified]: Thanks, Jen. Looks like Richard has his hand up again. New hand, Richard? Yes, just a few things.
[Richard Orlando]: Maybe this is more for OCD. This is all going out and playing out the existing property owners, particularly on Riverside Ave with all the one story buildings. This might create some churn over time to cause some different kinds of work with those buildings, maybe replace those buildings, maybe add stories, who knows. So engaging the existing property owners I think is going to be important over time. engaging with the chamber of commerce, uh, and to have them look for businesses that we desire in the, in the square. I think that's a definite program that should be done actively. Uh, also there's inventory of community and recreational space already in the city. We've got the new library, we've got the schools, they've got all kinds of spaces in them. So I think we just need to think about how we use those as well before we start building. possibly building new recreational spaces. And the last item is I think our downtown on the existing businesses can be improved if some of the city ordinances were enforced, such as the amount of coverage on the front glass of the building. I think it's down supposed to be only like 20% and some of those buildings you can't even see. And I know when you go into other towns and you can look into the buildings and the property and the businesses and see, people shopping, there's a vibrancy with that that we don't see in Medford Square right now. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thanks, Richard.
[Alicia Hunt]: Laurie, before you go on to the next, I just, I don't want, I can't respond to all the various comments, but I do just want to actually share that in the past two years or so, the zoning board has actually approved a couple of times additional residential units on second floors and third floors in Medford Square. And some of the other property owners have noticed that. And some of them have actually raised the idea that they would like to build additional floors on their existing buildings. And we've started to talk to them about that and what the zoning allows what zoning would need to be changed. The biggest problem they all have is that they don't have parking. And so that would be having to approve apartments without associated parking in Medford Square. And so that is something that we are, as you can hear from tonight, we're struggling with this conceptually and, and is zero, an acceptable number. So I just want you to know though that those conversations are happening. We've not heard from all of the owners. There are some buildings that I would really love to see considering additional units on top of their buildings. So if you know any of the owners, I know some of them live here in Medford, encourage them to reach out to us, because we're open to having these conversations with existing property owners. So thank you. And if they wanna redevelop, we'll have that conversation happily. We can't make anybody do it, and we own these properties, we don't own their properties, but we're happy to talk to any owner in Medford Square who wants to revitalize or anything.
[Unidentified]: Thanks, Alicia.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we can share contact information again at the end, but just keeping an eye on time and wanting to be respectful of everyone's evenings and maybe dinners, William, I'll give you the floor as our last speaker for this evening.
[William Navarre]: All right. I mainly wanted to, actually what Alicia just said goes well with that. I mean, you guys mentioned that there's going to be a stepping down of the heights as you go west from, in terms of the lots you're developing, further west, I guess you're going to try to like step down to the level of the existing buildings. And I would say that a lot of people would probably agree that the existing buildings are really quite low for being in the center of town. And maybe we should consider, you know, not stepping down as much because we actually anticipate that in future we'll be able to get taller buildings there, you know, that sort of match up. And this could be a way of, you know, leading the way in terms of that. I also just want to say in terms of how to spend the community benefit, I think that trees throughout the Medford Square would be really good. I know there's a plan for a new park, which is good, but I also think that in the existing parts of Medford Square where there's already businesses and stuff, you go there on a sunny day and it's kind of just sun bleached kind of situation. So more trees like that. And I agree with what Alex said. I hope we can prioritize the number of affordable housing, especially deeply affordable, but market rate is good too. And so we should focus on the, not on the percentage, but on the amount of that affordable housing we could get. Thanks.
[Unidentified]: Whoops.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, William. Great well with that said this 730 so just wanted to say thank you to everyone for joining this evening and alicia Chris or anyone else have any last words before we wrap up.
[Alicia Hunt]: I wanna thank everybody for coming. I really appreciate this. I really appreciate the engagement, the feedback, the passion about this. We will save the chat and Gloria, you guys do that automatically and as part of the process here. And the Menti meter will stay open. I'd actually love to, I don't know if I can do that easily. Can you Gloria drop the Menti meter and then the Padlet, which is what we call the other one, into the chat again, and we can also Think about we're gonna share this video off our website and we'll try and share information. We'll need to close those at some point. People won't understand them later, but we will leave them open. I think we're thinking in a couple of days so people can drop some thoughts in here over the next few days if you want. My office's email address. It's great. I'm happy to hear what everybody has to say, but I have wonderful staff and we have a number of staff. So you can always reach us via email. Our general address is the letters OCD. at medford-ma.gov. And then one of the staff will get back to you. And if they need to forward it to me for the answer, they will. And you can call us. Our phone number is, tell me if I get this wrong, 781-393-2480. And you don't have to speak to me, I'm always in meetings, I'm super hard to reach, but some of the staff can talk to you, can figure out what the questions and thoughts are, and if you need me, then we'll make that work too. So I just want to share that with everybody, because we really do care what people think, and we'll be keeping people informed about next steps. If you didn't hear about this from the city's robocalls, the mayor does regular robocalls more than once a week with things like this. You should sign up for that. Reach out to us. We'll tell you how. And our office sends out a newsletter every three to four weeks about events like this and other things that are going on in the city. If you don't get it, please email us and we would love to add you to our newsletter list as well.
[Unidentified]: So thank you all for coming this evening. Anything else good night.
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