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[SPEAKER_02]: Would you let me. Yes. Yes.
[Collins]: There will be a meeting of the Planning and Permanent Committee on September 25, 2024. This meeting will take place at 6 p.m. in the City Council Chamber, second floor, Medford City Hall, and via Zoom. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Leming]: Present. Present. Present. Present. Present.
[Collins]: It's not him, so he's... Great, thank you. Four present, one absent. This meeting is called to order. The action discussion item for this meeting is, again, paper 24-033, Zoning Ordinance Updates with the NS Associates Team. At this meeting, we will be discussing a proposal for zoning along Mystic Avenue Corridor. which has been robustly discussed by this committee in various planning stages over the past several months. So tonight we're looking at a set of documents that are more baked than they have been over the past few weeks of workshopping this in committee with our zoning consultant, NS Associates. Before we get started, I just want to set the table for this meeting. We're getting a bit of a late start. I apologize for that. Had some delay getting everybody here and online. We are just gonna I think we should try to keep this to about if we can try and wrap by 8 p.m. I think that would be great. I think that that's we have plenty to Discuss but I think that we have some clear decision points this evening So I'm really confident that we can get through this in an hour and a half maybe even earlier because Councilors have had all weekend to review the documents that we're looking at before us tonight with some only some minor changes and I also want to note that it is our norm to have public participation at the end of committee meetings, so stick with us and we'll be sure to hear from everybody, whether you're here in the chambers with us or on Zoom, after the discussion between Councilors, staff, and the zoning consultant. Before I hand it over to Paola from Innis Associates to give us a presentation of what we're looking at tonight, I just want to say that Over the past several meetings the discussion of mystic corridor has been really central what we've talked about in this committee. We're kind of in a way splitting our work in rezoning between these kind of quarter by quarter approaches and global strategies for the whole city mystic has been a priority from the Council from the community. from staff, we know that we need to really make tracks to rezone this so that we get what we want on Mystic and not just what happens to be there by right now, that developers can utilize or take advantage of that might not reflect what residents currently want to see on Mystic and from Mystic and may not be giving the community all the benefits that we deserve and that we need. So I think that our main decision points that Paola is going to speak to are around doling up the land use for various parts of Mystic, particularly on the west side, where we have kind of a menu of options for how to deal with the zoning on the west side of Mystic, proposed included parcels, a question of setbacks. But beyond that, the documents that we're about to look at are the product of these many meetings of talking about What do we know that we want from Mystic Ave? What do our many studies and plans and community sessions over the past several years tell us that the community wants from Mystic Ave? So all of that feeds into the documents and the questions that we're looking at tonight. And, you know, from the chair, I'll say that my goal is for the end of the meeting tonight for us to be able to make some motions to give Innis Associates some really clear marching orders for how we wanna go forward so that two committee meetings from now on October 23rd, we can see a finalized proposal of this corridor zoning back and report it out of committee. But we'll have to make, we'll have to have a discussion tonight around those main decision points so that by the end of the evening, we can say, all right, this, this and that, we're gonna say yes on this, no on that. Here's what we want, please package it up. Let's look at it one more time. And let's get this moving onto the Community Development Board and the procedural steps after that. All right, with that table set, One minute? Oh yeah, I'd be happy to turn it over to Director Hunt.
[Hunt]: Madam Chair, we're gonna have the zoning consultant do most of this, but I just wanted to mention, particularly for the public, that we have set up a webpage. So if you go to medfordma.org slash zoning, we now have a lot of information about what's been going on with zoning, including information about the MBTA zoning, changes that were made over the winter and last year, And then residents can follow along with this process that we've been doing, including links to all the videos from the meetings we've been having and various documents. And they can continue to follow along with what we're doing now with the documents being presented tonight even. We'll try and get the PowerPoints up there sometimes in advance of the meeting sometimes right after the meeting depending on our timing But the materials that get provided to the Councilors will go up there Right around as they get provided to the Councilors pending our comms team getting them up the same day or not So, thank you, and I'll hand it off to Paula from in this associates I Thank you, Alicia, thank you madam chair I
[Ramos-Martinez]: I'm Paula Ramos-Martinez urban planner and designer from associates. I'm here with my colleague Jimmy Russia GIS specialist. So I'm going to show the presentation that I have prepared for all of you. I'm going to go very quickly through the agenda. We're going to talk about today only the Mystic Avenue corridor. We're going to talk about land use and we have some proposals. So we have usually two proposals for each of these topics. One is going to be the land use, so we will be looking at two different land use plans. Then two sets of dimensional standards and a table of uses. For the next steps, so that's what we will talk today. Next week, we will be going through the draft for a green score and the housing definitions that we bring last time. Sorry. And then we will, next week from that we will be looking at the Mystic Avenue zoning proposal and the green score proposal. So in the timeline today we're going to talk about the Mystic Avenue, land use, use table and dimensional standards mainly. October 9, the green score and housing definitions. we will be looking at the draft for incentive zoning. Sorry. Then October 23. We will try to, um we will bring the zoning proposal for Mystic Avenue and Green score. After that, we will be looking at the draft for incentive zoning and November November 27th. We will try to bring Salem Street. So any proposal and incentive zoning. We'll see for November 27th if that is So today we're going to talk about Mystic Avenue. This is something that we have already seen. I'm just going to go very quickly through it. The black lots in the solid black hatch are proposed to be added parcels to the boundary. This we agreed. Then we have some proposals that we wanted to add it as the part of the boundary, but we still need to have some more public communication to see if that is really possible. So the dashed line ones boundaries are still to study. We talk about the bigger connections and where we wanted the accents of landmarks and active ground floor and where the land uses came from. So if anyone has questions about this, we can totally talk about this, but this was already discussed. So I'm going to go quickly over. We have the land use of the existing. This is the current land use of Mystic Avenue. And on our boundary, what we have is a lot of commercial. This is the C2 zoning and industrial. That's the violet one. So mainly where we are is looking at those land uses. A lot of what we have right now is mainly auto-oriented uses, warehouses. It's not exactly that it's permitted, but that's what we are finding today. Um, the standards for the C two zoning. It's mainly, um The main things that we need to see is that the lot coverage is the 50% of the lot can only be built. That's a 50%. And we have two stories as maximum height. And that's what we see here. As well, we have 15 feet setback from any of the lot lines. So front side and rear setbacks are 15 feet. So this is what we have. And here in orange, you can see the important things that I would like you to really stay with this content to compare it with what we are going to propose. So this is mainly the existing conditions that we have in mystic in the left side of the image is this is where we start from Medford Square, and then towards the end is the Somerville. site. So what you can see is that also the street is going to change a lot. What we mainly have is auto-oriented uses, a lot of warehouse, mainly it's an asphalt landscape, so not very much sustainable, and not very active or nice and vibrant to walk in these areas. So what we are proposing, and this was something that we also presented last time, we had these four different sub areas in the Mystic Avenue corridor. And what we did is change a bit the last part of it. So the first area that is more towards the Medford Square connection that starts in Main Street, we wanted to have a very, like it was historically, smaller scale mixed use and very active ground floor. When we go to, and we will see these standards just in a second, so I just want to explain first the land use. Mixed-use, it means that we can have commercial, we can have residential, we can have even combined uses. Then we have mixed-use two, and it was also smaller scale, but a bit bigger than mixed-use one. That is the soft bioled area on the west side of Mystic Avenue. And then on the right side of Mystic Avenue, this darker purple-violet, this is where we want the bigger scale, higher buildings because we have the highway, so we have place to go really high, and we will see the heights that we propose just in a second. So the last part and this is where I wanted to focus because this is the difference between both of the land uses, and it's on the southern part of mystic Avenue towards Somerville. So in this case for these. land use option, we have as well mixed use. But it's going to be a mixed use that is going to have more commercial. In this area, in this land use option, we do not permit any auto-oriented uses. in anywhere in Mystic Avenue. So the commercial parts that we would have it's more of kind of lab buildings. We also want some light industrial but that is a bit that is possible to have with residential and that means some makers art space that can happen with residential. So we will be having to add some definitions for what that light industrial means in here, what is the scale of those areas, and how it can be combined with residential. So a bit of more kind of very active, but working type of mixed use. So a bit different from the others. And then on the second option, what I'm going to show now is the dimension standards for this option for this land use. So as you can see, we have from smaller scale to bigger scale. from mixed use one, two, and three. Three is the biggest one. We have the building heights in this side is going to be mixed use one, four, and this is, I just want to remember that is in the northern area of Mystic Avenue. This is maximum six stories high. with having a step back on above the fourth floor. So we have four stories, then we have a step back of 10 foot, and then we have two other stories extra. For mixed use two, and that is this Western part of Mystic Avenue in the central area, that is mixed use two, it's also small. scale bigger than the mixed use one. And what we have is six, maximum six stories high. So remember that for now, the current is only two and we have 80% of lot coverage. And that was previously was, so the current one is 50. We're going to 80% coverage for mixed use one, two and three. And then the mixed use is the three is the bigger scale. We have a plinth of four stories high. Then we have a step back and from there we can have a tower kind of eight more stories. So in total for mixed use three, we have 12 stories high buildings. For mixed use, four is the medium to big scale. This is the most commercial and where we also want to have some kind of lab, um, lab buildings and light industrial. Um, so we have eight stories, uh, eight story buildings as maximum height, and we have a bit of less lot coverage in this one is 70%. These are the main differences from the existing to what we are proposing now. We have the second proposal. And so, as you can see, is the same from the north until the last and southern part of Mystic Avenue, where what we do is extend the Mixuse 3 all the way for the east side. And that is mainly because we have the highway and we have the buffer and the length and the depth on the lots to be able to go quite high. And so that's why we extended on the east side. And then on the west side, what we do is propose only commercial. So in this area, we wouldn't have the residential possibility is mainly, sorry, I had some, yeah, I'm connected. I had some issues. Okay, it's all good. So on the west side, it's only commercial. And in this case, we would be, permitting auto-oriented uses. Sorry? Yeah, I have some... Why do I have this? Yeah, I was logged off the Zoom.
[Collins]: That's okay, we'll get you back up there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just have to go back to the link and reconnect to Zoom.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yeah, I will exactly do that. Sorry, for some reason I was, my internet kind of went all over the place.
[Collins]: That's okay, let's take a beat and we're gonna get Paola's presentation back up. I'll take a question from Councilor Callahan. So I think Paola probably won't be able to respond for a couple moments.
[Callahan]: Oh, I just figured while we're getting the Zoom up, we could ask some questions.
[Collins]: Yeah, I think, yeah, I just want to give her a second to figure out her computer trouble. Okay.
[Bears]: I will share now. It's wired, so you don't lose Wi-Fi ever if you're plugged in there. It may be a solution for if we have Wi-Fi issues. Looks like we're fine now, but it was just a note if you wanted to present.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Okay, I'm back. Sorry. Yes, so in this area, we would kind of want to maintain these auto-oriented uses that are already there, wanted to phase them a bit. We choose this area because of the connections that we have with the infrastructure, especially southern part of Mystic Avenue, and because on the other side we had the possibilities to go higher, that's why we placed them on the west side, this commercial area where we can have also life science, some light industrial, no residential, and also be able to have some auto-oriented uses. So the dimensionless standards and what you're going to see here, the standards are very similar only for the commercial. What we have is that we add some further front setback that goes from zero or three that we had in the other option to 20 feet. What the other part that you see that is a bit more transparent, this is if we go for incentive zoning or not. So it doesn't have to do with the option itself, but it's more with the possibility of doing this with incentive zoning. And it's something that I will explain later. But mainly if we go with incentive zoning, the maximum height we will have for mixed use one will be four stories high. and that is, as of right, pre-incentive zoning. If we want to go through the incentive zoning, then they could add two more stories, and that would be the total six for Mixed Use 1. And as well for Mixed Use 2, we would have four. If we go for zoning incentive, then we could have plus two. And with the Mixed Use 3, it would go even a bit higher. we would have 10 for the tower-like piece, and then we could add four more. So in total, having 14, the store is high for the mixed-use three. And then the commercial, it would be six plus two. So this is only if we go for incentive zoning in Mystic Avenue or not. It doesn't have to do really with the option that we are looking at.
[Collins]: I have a quick question on that. The incentive zoning that you just outlined, would that be for both land use option A and option B? It could be, yes. Okay, thank you. I just want to clarify that's not specific to option B. Yeah, exactly.
[Ramos-Martinez]: So now we get into the comparison. I would love to hear your opinions. So now I'm going to give the councillors the option to tell me what they think about. And this is not A or B, we can still modify it, we can still work a version that satisfies us, all of us.
[Collins]: Great, thank you, Pella. I'll go to questions and comments from councillors, and then I'm really eager to hear our planning staff's perspective on this comparison and this menu of options as well. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. So I have one, just a question for my own curiosity, and then I also have a suggestion. So I'm curious why the commercial is like 50% lot coverage and the other ones are 80% lot coverage. Is that like a standard thing, and is there a reason why that's so?
[Ramos-Martinez]: So this is because of the type of commercial that is at the moment there. They have this 50% load coverage that with the setbacks that they have, because it's 15 feet all the way, almost with the setbacks, you're already in 50%. So that's why they have the 50% at the moment. Um, we in these options in neither of these two options, we have 50 we go. The minimum is 70% because we really want to have a Continuous facade and give more.
[Callahan]: And I saw that and I'm curious about like permeable surfaces. If it's going to be 80% lot coverage. Do we have a recurrent just because I know in that area, we're really concerned about it being a heat island.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yes, and so for that, we would go through the green score option that we will look into next time. And especially because in this area, what we also want is to create that more full facade to be more active and vibrant. We need to go to other types of solutions. And that can be, for example, we required a 30 foot setback from the highway. So that can be really green buffer to help us clean the air, but also be a stormwater management area that can count towards the green score. Green or blue roofs that will help us so that we can really have different elements that can help towards the management of stormwater.
[Callahan]: My final, oh, did you?
[Hunt]: I actually just wanted to add on that, that there are both, for this particular corridor, the city, well, for the whole city, the city has stormwater regulations about how much stormwater must be treated on site. So by having less open space, they will have to still treat it on site, and so then they have underground storage tanks that open into the ground, so it'll funnel into there, and then it'll drain in. that way. So there will be requirements that they'd have to meet, and they'd have to meet it more with structure rather than like just pretty trees. The other is that MassDOT has stormwater regulations about what you have to treat and hold and capture on site versus what's allowed to go into the road. So those will play in, and as we're developing the green score for the citywide, we'll need to take a look at what our stormwater regulations are to make sure that we're at least as strict as those. But then also we'll know that DOT has some rules around that. So I figured I should add that in.
[Callahan]: Thanks. My final kind of suggestion was, because I live down there and I'm, and I, my kid goes to the method took looking at option B. I wonder if, rather than that sort of southwestern portion being all commercial, if it's possible to split that and have commercial. Right on the road and then having those back parcels be mixed use or something else not have so much of the audio auto usage close to the school and the park and also this public housing there. So having you know a little bit nicer usages right butting up to those those three would be great.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yes, I think that's a great suggestion. That's why we also do the first option. But I think that that could complement very well the option B. So thank you.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears.
[Bears]: Thank you, Madam Chair. To Councilor Callaghan's point, I think maybe the easiest way to move in that direction would be to do mixed use one on those parcels that are kind of on that leg of the, I'm a pro option B, I'm pro incentive zoning. That would be what I would move for. But I think that's a well taken point. And maybe that leg could be like MX one, and maybe it's even MX one with no incentive zoning. So it stays at four stories. Either way on that. But I think that might make sense for like, just those parcels that are almost southwest of the park line, if that makes sense on the map, kind of that dog that comes out of that district. So that's just my suggestion there. I think on the lot coverage question, I think the stormwater and all that and the green score is great, but I also just think the open space minimum. Minimums are really good too. I think we'll, you know, even with increased building size, we're going to see increased green space because right now, even at 50% lot coverage, it's 100% impermeable. So that's kind of where I think we'll get a benefit there. And then maybe even additional benefit from incentive and green score. I had a question about the maximum setbacks, especially in the mixed-use two and mixed-use three, and even the mixed-use one. It just seems like a lot to allow a 20-foot setback in addition to when we're already gonna have to have an 18-foot street setback. And I'm just wondering if that might make it look disjointed or affect the frontage that we're trying to create. So I'm wondering what your thought was on that. It's like the three slash 20. The minimum makes sense, the maximum seems really big.
[Ramos-Martinez]: So, yes, and that is depending on. in what you have to do. That is something that I wanted to talk at the end. So these minimum and maximums, what we want is that whenever they go towards a maximum, it's because they are giving something to the public realm. So they are doing a plaza or they are building something that it has to be active or landscape for stormwater management. And that's why we if they can do it because there are some in mixed use two and mixed use three especially that are very deep lots where they could go to that 20 foot. We don't want more than that because we don't want to have a disconnection between the building and the street, but we can let that happen if it is a very active front building, front yard.
[Bears]: And I guess my question with that being, If we just write that in as the setback, could they just do whatever they want, put a parking lot in there?
[Ramos-Martinez]: No, no parking lots are available, would be possible in the front yard.
[Bears]: And we're gonna write that into the performance standards for the district? Yeah. Okay, great, because that's just my concern with the 20 foot. And I know we're gonna talk about the other front setback, street setback thing later, so I won't go into that. I just also think, I mean, and maybe Danielle could speak to this a little bit, the proposed additional adding in the parcels, it looks like we've agreed, and I think we may have voted on including the stuff between South and Thomas Street in the MX1 district, so that's why that's in the map, so that's good, that's like on slide four, it's the black shaded parcels, so that's, we've already agreed we wanna include that. dotted line areas. Danielle, it sounded like you had gone out a little bit in the neighborhood. Were you able to go out in any of those parts of the neighborhood? Okay. My inclination would be to say, just leave the ones with mystic affrontage in and at least for now, it might just simplify our process if we were to say for now, let's just leave the Mystic Ave frontage things in and we can come back when we're doing the neighborhood zoning and decide if we want to put some sort of like step up in those dashed areas. Just because it's, you know, those are the places where it's most abrupt. And I think that's why we've, we're like, do we do it? Do we not do it? I could see an argument for the like Hancock Street, Crescent Street, Mystic Ave block, maybe more than the next block on Hancock Street. And then the Bonner Ave one is, the Bonner and Alexander one is just tough, right? It's what, eight or nine or 10 like residential houses that are just right there, whereas on the rest of the corridor, that was not allowed to be built. That would be my suggestion for those. I think we could talk about it later. I'd be willing to make it in the form of a motion to just include the yellow highlighted parcels in this first round and we can come back when we look at the neighborhood zoning around the dotted line ones. But I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say and what the planning department's thoughts are on that especially.
[Hunt]: All right, Madam Chair. So one way of looking at it is it doesn't impact the people who currently live there in terms of what their houses are and what they have. It would impact who they could sell to. So it would basically, in theory, make their houses more valuable that a developer might want to come by them and build something bigger there and aggregate a bunch of parcels. because it would already be in the zoning area. So there'd be an incentive to that. But I do also see that it can be concerning to the residents who live next to it, because then they're like, well, now these bigger buildings are going to push out closer and closer to my homes. So it might actually be the people the next block out who have more of a concern than the people in the block. So just to think of it that way. around the Hancock area, I think what's easy to think of as the inner block makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure that almost all of it is already owned by one party, and that would just kind of open up that development potential, whereas the outer one is where all the houses are, but it does, can one developer now come and build closer? I mean, the reality is we have a really good planning community development board, that will look at the site plans for something anybody that tried to build on 10,000 buildings 10,000 square feet or more has to go to site plan review, and they look at and spend a lot of time, how is this interfacing with the community, how is this impacting the immediate butters. So one thing that I would say is that we may want to hear from some of those neighbors. It makes sense perhaps to push it off. My instinct is to keep the inner block of the sorry that I don't see all the, I think it's Hancock Crescent, there are three different streets named with Hancock like right there. But I think it's clear if people are looking at the screen what we're talking about. And these maps are all up on the website and this PowerPoint will be up on the website within, I would say, a day or so.
[Bears]: Great. Yeah, and I think for Bonner and Alexander, my thought is you have basically what 10 to 15 year old new development that is the frontage on Mystic Ave. So if someone was to bundle those parcels, they're probably not knocking that thing down. So it's not even really on Mystic Ave if they bundled those and built those. So that is where I'm most inclined. And I tend to agree with you on that middle, the dotted lines around the Hancock Streets, Hancock Court, Hancock Ave, Hancock Street, I think. I mislabeled the Facebook event on the wrong one one time. go collect everybody. Um, yeah, so that's just my thought. I'll leave motions till the end of the discussion.
[Collins]: Thank you. I think I saw a hand from Councilor Leming.
[Leming]: Yeah. Um, so Right now, sorry, just to, Council President Bears, just to clarify, was your suggestion to replace the Southwest parcel there that differs between A and B with mixed-use one?
[Bears]: Just wanted to clarify if I, sorry. I meant the parcels here on Hicks Ave. Here. Yeah.
[Callahan]: Back, you mentioned that maybe keeping that not having incentive zoning and keeping that to.
[Bears]: Maybe, that was just an idea, yeah.
[Callahan]: I wasn't sure if he was asking about that, so.
[Bears]: It's really everything, I mean, if folks have been back there, you have whatever number rear Mystic Avenue, and then there's a private long road that's really like a parking lot, and that abuts the park and the school property, well, it abuts the park and then some industrial, basically anything that side of what is currently proposed as the commercial zone is what I'm thinking of.
[Leming]: Okay, yeah, for I mean, yeah, for the for the stuff that's like right next to the mistook I could definitely see the argument for making that into mixed use one but for yeah for the rest of that area like I run around that kind of spot of that parcel land all the time and it. It's very underutilized. There's like two banks there. So I think it absolutely makes sense to build higher properties there.
[Bears]: Like, it's basically what's abutting the school, the park and the public housing.
[Leming]: Yeah, yeah, no, no, that. Okay. Yeah, I thought I misheard. I thought you were suggesting to make that entire thing. No, excuse one. Okay. Um, General question about this, because I'm kind of thinking about what that would look like between mixed use, between option A and B. Which of the mixed use three versus mixed use four would developers normally be inclined to go for? Is there a situation where we decide on one and then developers are like, well, I don't think it's worth it to do that, but they wouldn't do that for the other? What I'm thinking of is like when we do pass one of these, would there be any difference in sort of estimated uptake of that?
[Hunt]: I think that it depends a lot on the developers and what their priorities are and what they're looking to do. One of the things that I have absolutely heard is that developers like to stay under a certain height. So they're not classified as high rises. And I think that that's 96 feet. I'm looking at our building commissioner. Maybe seven stories. Yeah, there's because if they go over certain height, they trigger all kinds of other things. So there's like some sweet spots to around how much parking versus apartments and stuff like that. So we often hear things like three over one and four over two being three floors of apartments over one floor of parking, or four floors of apartments over two floors of parking. And some of that has to do with their ratios of what is affordable and what they can finance. Some of it has to do like the maximum heights and stories of the building have to do with building code and like at what point do they trigger different things in the building code that suddenly make it more expensive to build a taller building. So once you hit a certain height, then you want to go really high because you've already triggering all those more expensive things. So now you want to maximize the amount of density on your property. So that's something that we've also been, I have been reaching out to developers and asking them to also take a look at a webpage, maybe watch the meetings if they wanna speak up or reach out to me directly when they see stuff like this. What was interesting was that the biggest comment, most, the strongest comment that I got had to do with the ratio of affordable housing and the depth of affordability and was not about setbacks and heights. So I just thought that was really interesting. But we're still trying to get some more input on this.
[Leming]: So just sorry, just just to summarize, like, so in theory, it sounded like that was kind of an implicit endorsement of option A, which is, you know, has more of the mixed use mixed use for which is sort of denser, but not quite as high. But what you were just saying now is that developers were, they didn't in In practice, they didn't really seem to care about the specific heights as much as the sort of depth of affordability when they were building housing. When they were building housing.
[Hunt]: The thing is, if you're going to like life science and R&D and other types of things, then the heights and the requirements, but then they have different building code requirements. Because now if you're doing R&D in the building requirements, then if you're living, have people living in the building. So some of that and what do you design for that? I think that, in general, they'll say, give us more because then we have more options, right? If you say it's 12 stories is allowed, and they think it's more affordable, or let's just say it's a better return on their investment to build six stories, then maybe they'll only build the six stories, even though we allow more. I realize it feels very, very wishy-washy. But what I'm mostly saying is that these are all within the realm of much more desirable than the two-story industrial that we have. And so none of these are going to be prohibitive. I think four-story can get a little, you're going to get different things if you are allowing four-story than if you're allowing five, six.
[Leming]: more. So follow up to that. So what all of the different rules and incentives that are, um, that make developers make these decisions? Would those be baked into the zoning at the ordinance level? Or would those be baked into rules that are sort of decided to staff level as a result of studies?
[Hunt]: So with the staff level, we don't have regulations. I mean, I guess there's the stormwater regulations coming out of engineering. It's more what's in the ordinance. And some of what we haven't gotten to yet is this idea of incentive zoning, where we say, here's how much you're allowed to build, but if you do these things we like, you can go higher. And so I do think we want to look at that, because that may sort of get at some of what you're saying, because we've tried to take some of the things that we want, but have a lower return on investment for the developers. and try and say look, if you do these things we want, we'll increase your return on investment by allowing you to go higher and have more density.
[Leming]: kind of trying to avoid is that when, you know, all of this has passed, if we end up baking in some rules that end up being really difficult to change, it just end up not working, or that end up just discouraging development, and then would have to go back and sort of redo all this versus, you know, some of these incentive zoning programs that we're talking about that could potentially be changed, sort of more at the staff level after, you know, a consultant does a study on that.
[Hunt]: And that's actually, I think we should talk about, and I just wanna actually mention that we do have Jonathan Silverstein on the Zoom. So if we start to say, oh yeah, we can do that, and it turns out we're not allowed to do that, I'm sure he'll raise his hand and tell us that. But yeah, we should look at how the incentive zoning works and whether that's stuff that can be changed by staff rather than through coming back to city council. It's a very good question. Do you have more questions? I had a couple little comments that almost played on some of what you were asking about, but. Anything more from you, Councilwoman?
[Leming]: No, no, I'd like to hear more about this subject, but I don't have any more specific questions.
[Collins]: Great. Thank you. And I think we will be diving into incentive zoning more deeply at our next committee meeting as well. So go for it.
[Hunt]: So some of we were looking at some of this stuff. We really do like Councilor Callahan's suggestion of doing sort of a different zoning next to the public housing and the school and the playground. That makes a lot of sense to look at that. The other thing that when we dive into the use table, we want to think about which are the zones do we want to actually allow life science and more specifically R&D. R&D is a slightly more general term that like could be battery research or, you know, solar panel development, some of these other things. For example, there is battery development going on on Rear Mystic Ave. I got to go to the ribbon cutting for that company a couple years ago. So that's a more general term that I think is of interest to the community, that it's, yeah, part of it, it's not exactly commercial, it's not industrial, it's that sort of like, we're figuring this, we're doing research. And so there are companies that do that. The other thing with the life science piece, and I've also now been hearing that it is also true with some of the clean tech projects is that you allow a higher so if an apartment building has 10 feet before between stories. And that's so standard that you typically would zone like, oh, you're allowed eight stories and 80 feet, or maybe your bottom floor is a little taller. So 85 feet, so your bottom floor is taller. If you were gonna allow life science, you might say eight stories and 105 feet. And a residential developer would go, well, that's weird. But a life science developer would say, that allows me to do eight stories of life science. So, one of the things that I was thinking about that I hadn't done it with that I is that we may want to consider what are our maximum heights and make them not logical to the number of residential stories, but logical to the number of life science stories. that number out. We had a formula that we were using when we did the 02 zoning, because if you look at the 02 zone in Medford, that allows a certain number of stories and an oddly higher height, and that was to allow life science. So.
[Collins]: Thank you. I'll just a second. Councilor Hill. Thank you so much. Just to jump in there. I'm glad you just spoke to that. That was a question that I had on, um, the mixed use lens uses in particular is like where those would include life science or research specifically. So I think that would be a great thing to get more specific on for our next committee meeting, or even if we could kind of have an update on that in two weeks, just so we can kind of understand, you know, I think it's especially when I look at mixed use three in either option A or B, I could certainly see it kind of on that. more northern side of Mystic, and I'm curious to get a little more specific on where we could see that, where we could see developers opting into that. And I'll hold my further two cents for, I'll go to, Paula, do you have a quick response or, okay, then we'll go to Councilor Callaghan.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yes, so this life science use was intended to be more in mixed use four, so more the southern part in option A. So that part of the pinkish area that we see that is meant to be commercial and the type of commercial was more about life science, light industrial so to have a bit of production with retail and also residential. So what we can, what I'm very interested to hear about is if that what do you want is to have these mixed use three extended or if you would like to have that mix for with life science commercial in the southern part east of Mystic Avenue.
[Collins]: Thank you, Pella. And yeah, I think that is kind of one of our three critical decisions, or two or three critical decisions for tonight is, do we have mixed use four north of Mystic, or are we leaving that to mixed use three? And I do think part of my question on that, I like the ideas that have been posed so far. I certainly, I think that considering mixed use one for that area along Hicks, close to the park, the school, the housing, makes a lot of sense. kind of for the same motivations that we're putting Mixed Use 1 at the west end of Mystic. I think that putting Mixed Use 1 close to that, it's kind of a hub there. It's close to where a lot of streets join. We are starting to see some really nice ground floor commercial up at that joining. So I think that for a lot of reasons, changing that little elbow to Mixed Use 1 could improve either option. I'd personally like to know a little bit more about how life science and research could figure into mixed use three or the north side of Mystic. In either case, I'll go to Councilor Callahan and then President Bears.
[Callahan]: Mine was actually very similar. I'm just curious if it would be useful for us to have a definition of life sciences or R&D in the definitions, or if simply having a maximum height that allows for taller stories would be enough.
[Ramos-Martinez]: I think that we should add to the definitions anything that we will allow in this area because then it's easier to understand. If we want to have these type of buildings, which I hear yes, then we need to adjust the height levels because they are very different from residential as Alicia already explained.
[Collins]: And if I could just jump in here before I hand it over to President Bears. In my understanding, like the way that these options unamended are presented to us right now, we could still like mixed use four, whether it's on both sides of Mystic or just one, developers could opt in to put life science and research there. It's just a question of, are we creating that kind of like natural environment on just the South side or on the North side as well? If it's the case that mixed use three is not exactly telegraphing life science to developers.
[Bears]: Thank you. I just think we've already answered this question with the option B, which is defining maximum height by stories and not by amount of feet. And therefore, if someone wants to build 18 foot stories for life science, they can, or if they want to build 10 foot stories for residential, they can. And then we don't have to worry about having two different standards and trying to mix and match them. I just think that would be the way to go. I mean, mixed use three, you could end up I guess you could end up in a situation where a life science developer wants to build a tower. It seems unlikely to me that a life science developer wants to build a 14 story tower with 18 foot floors all the way up to 14 stories. Just seems like it's probably not going to happen. And if it was going to happen, or even if a developer proposed it, the discussion and site plan review would probably be, maybe don't do that. That's the only place where I think if we were to go with option B, there would be a conflict, because option B in the dimensional cinders doesn't have a maximum height by feet. It just has a maximum height by story. I don't know if that's intentional or unintentional, but if it was intentional, I really liked the idea.
[Ramos-Martinez]: I was waiting to hear if there was life science or not in order to calculate that maximum height.
[Bears]: OK.
[Ramos-Martinez]: That's fine.
[Bears]: Got it. I mean, I have some, the other reason I think perhaps just doing it without having two different height measurements, if you do this right now, if we were to put the height limits from, I guess, like the 12 story, right? Okay, maybe I'm misreading this. Would the maximum building height in mixed use three under option A be 54 plus 96? what would have to be to allow 12 stories if 11 of them were 10 feet tall and the other one was 18, right? So this is where I think we're gonna start having mathematical conflicts if we have two different measures of maximum height.
[Ramos-Martinez]: So yes, it should be podium maximum 54 feet and then the tower itself 96 feet.
[Bears]: And then so the total building height would be maximum 150 feet?
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yeah.
[Bears]: Okay, because that's the only way you can get it's 128 feet if you had 12 stories at the minimum floor height.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yes, so what we have done here is at least put from the maximum height is 12 feet per floor and then you have to sum the first floor as 18 feet. That's how we said that the minimum ground floor height should be. And so summing everything, that's what it turns out. But the maximum height by feet, I'm not so worried now. That's something that we can talk also internally. I also want to know from the city, what are their formulas? What I'm interested in now is more on the stories. And that is clear for everyone.
[Bears]: And I think my suggestion for that is have a minimum number of stories, a maximum number of stories, a minimum floor height per story, and a maximum floor height per story. And then I guess we could also have a maximum building height that is the number of stories times the maximum floor height, but then it's redundant. So that's just my thinking there to make sure that I understood this exactly right. But something like that. At that point, you're just multiplying two numbers that are already in there to get a third number. And I guess if people feel like that's helpful to have that third number, you can include that too. But I just wanted to make sure I was reading it right. Because I was like, if the tower can only be 96 feet, then it can't be 12 stories. So thanks.
[Collins]: Great. Thank you. So there's, I think, to add to the things on the table, there's a suggestion for this more streamlined way of defining maximum height to allow for that flexibility, especially in, which maybe would most come into play in mixed use four.
[Bears]: Yeah. Or, uh, yeah. Mixed use three and commercial. And I think that might be clear to the developer if they wanted to do life science too. Right. It's like, instead of having to go back and calculate, Oh, I can build 18 foot floors. It's like, Oh, the maximum height is what I need.
[Hunt]: The other reason to throw the definition of life science in there as a use category and have it in there is it signals to developers, look, it's in our use table. We thought about it. It's actively included, as opposed to saying, could you fit it in under R&D, which is honestly what we've been doing the last couple of years. We've actually gone through the permitting process for some life science buildings that in the end didn't get built because of the timing and the crash. Um, but we've just been fitting it in under R and D. I definitely want to that death.
[Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. This may not be something you guys can answer. But, um, in terms of like commercial buildings, uh, I know that ever since Covid, there's a lot less need for commercial buildings. Do we still think that there is enough need that if we zone something that is purely commercial that, um people going to be developing that.
[Hunt]: I mean it's a great question and it's sort of. what they're looking for. We're getting more and more clean tech inquiries coming. The difficulty is sort of fitting this, what I've seen are startup companies that are looking for spaces, not looking to build buildings. So is there somebody who wants to come and build the building for them to then come and move into is sort of where we're going. We've recently permitted one on Commercial Street that was originally gonna be a life science building. And when they, they came in front of us and we said, Oh, we, we thought there was a problem with like science they said oh actually we are, we're pivoting to clean tech, and that Florida floor the 14 feet and I will say we just did the math on the O2 is 14 feet, and I'm sure that's why is. this would work for clean tech and we want to do this for a clean tech building here. So I think we are still seeing some of that. It's not hot the way it was. We're hoping that with some of the things that have been changing, honestly, for the interest rates to drop and to settle how our country is going to move forward after November, I think will frankly affect the development, whether people are going to risk or not and what they're risking and who's risking.
[Callahan]: And just as a follow-up question to that, given the, I guess, ongoing crash in commercial real estate, do we think, in terms of this option A or B, I just wanna get a sense for like, If we exclude commercial, do we think that we'll be missing out on folks who want to develop here? If we include commercial, will we be risking having a whole zone that does not have a lot of demand? Just obviously, you can't fully answer this question, but do you have a sense between those two?
[Bears]: Yes, I think we have an oversimplified understanding of the commercial real estate market in the conversation. Downtown office buildings where foot traffic is significantly reduced are seeing significant reductions in valuation. I was talking to Ted. We're not seeing that reduction in valuation in our commercial properties. Most of them are seeing use. Some of the office buildings by Wellington are having some occupancy questions. But I think what we're talking about is a little bit different than like the downtown Boston valuations. And I don't think Cambridge, like Boston's desperately asking for a property tax class shift because their office buildings are, there's a, there's a ton of new class A offices that were built. And a lot of the valuation drops are in like a little bit older or significantly older class B office buildings where Companies don't need as much space. There's not as much foot traffic. I think we're not, we don't really have that exposure here. And I think we're not trying to build office buildings mostly. So I think we're in a better spot on that front. You know, Alicia can certainly speak better to and Sal to what's coming into the city, the clean tech. that kind of thing. But I think that would be more the direction. I'd be surprised if someone said, I want to plop an eight foot office bill, you know, a century bank like or Herb Chambers, whatever it is now, like, which is now becoming, leave that for another day. A building like that, right, where it's just an office tower. And he's even, Herb Chambers' proposal is to change that because that's not a good use for, even though he likes the property, it's not what he wants it to be or whatever. So that's where I think we'd probably be okay. Who knows, who knows what will happen, right? As Alicia noted, some of this requires having the rule of law, but yeah.
[Hunt]: Sal just raised his hand, our economic development director.
[Bears]: Sal is a better answer than me, but I just think we're not nearly as exposed on the commercial front as like a Boston with the office issue.
[Di Stefano]: If I could do with the chair. Go ahead. Thank you. I want to echo the councilor's comments. So I guess it's, we have to be careful about generalizing commercial real estate demand and looking at the headlines that we see coming out of Boston. What we're seeing in our department is a lot of activity, a lot of questions from developers and real estate brokers on what they can do with certain properties on Mystic Ave. And I think that's a combination of different things. The opening of Great American Beer Hall has definitely sparked interest from developers looking to do kind of ground floor commercial with residential above. I attended a ribbon cutting with the mayor and Steve and for a biotech company called Unravel. And I spoke to, they're in the Tufts Cummings property in 196 Boston Ave. And I spoke to the CEO and I was asking him point blank, what made you choose this location? from Boston, and he said one of the things is location. It's easier for his North Shore employees to get to Medford than it is into the heart of Boston. Parking availability, which is a lot easier in Medford than it is in Boston. And he thinks that he's interested in their next kind of expansion. And I also connected with MassBio to talk about the Anheuser-Busch property as something that will be coming on the market soon, which is 20 acres in the middle of the city to do something interesting. There when it comes on the market, so I would say that. Demand is very good, but the 1 thing we need to be careful of and it's why we're doing this zoning. Is we don't want we don't want to get the uses as Alicia mentioned the 1 or 2 story. industrial, you know, trucking or automotive service uses. We have plenty of those already. We don't want leftovers and scraps from other communities where they're getting priced out and they look at Medford as a last resort. We want this to align with the vision set out in a comprehensive plan. So thank you for allowing me to speak. I'll stop here.
[Collins]: Thank you, so I really appreciate that and I think that was I think that was really well said and echoes you know kind of a lot of our goals with how to make sure that we are enticing the development that we really want and need to be seeing. here specifically. I think that general point of discussion is a really important one. For me, it further endears me to option B because I think it's extremely worth considering how much kind of zoned for commercial, telegraphing commercial is enough or too much. And this is already kind of further cordoning off that commercial specific to just the south side of Mystic. I wouldn't be a proponent necessarily of having no commercial zoning necessarily. I don't think that we need to go that far, but I feel comfortable, especially if we're, you know, amending this proposal such that it's kind of more clear where life science fits in and making it more flexible to include life science and research, putting that commercial zone how it currently is in option B, but with the carve out for perhaps mixed-use one along the park school housing area along Hicks Avenue. In terms of what we have, just to quickly gloss over, not comprehensively, what we've spoken about so far and some of the ideas that have been put on the table. Councilors. We know that we want to see this amended to include a definition of life sciences in the use table. I think we want to see that alternate way of defining maximum height for mixed-use 3 and commercial to allow that flexibility. It sounds like there's a lot of interest in seeing that carve out for mixed-use 1 along HCSAV and commercial like we were just talking about. And then I think we're going to come back to President Bears' suggestion about potentially, for the purposes of this proposal, just moving forward the highlighted parcels within the potential parcels for inclusion around Harvard, Alexander, and Bonner. Just to, yeah, great. Great. So just to, I just want to recenter us on kind of the questions that we need to make sure we answer tonight to move this forward. It sounds like we're approaching consensus on what we want to motion out as next steps for our zoning consultant in terms of land uses and proposed added parcels that we haven't taken motions on any of that yet. We haven't spoken as much about, we've touched on the setbacks issue. We haven't spoken as much about that. So I want to make sure if there's a discussion to be had about how we handle that issue, I want to make sure we spend some time on that. Go for it.
[Hunt]: So one thing that I just wanted to be clear about is, and I feel like I get confused myself when we refer to it as option A and option B too much, whether we are, there's a consensus on whether there should be a portion of this that does not allow residential in it, or residential is allowed everywhere. And if there are portions that allow auto uses, and there's a part of me that thinks we might want to allow gas stations as a by special permit, just so that there can be some amount of, you know, distribution around the city, and whether we're allowing. R&D, life science, light industrial in summer, all of this, and how much of that is actually lining up the use tables and doing checkboxes versus us looking at it in this map format and saying that. Because I'm not sure that I know the answer of the wills of the, what the preferences of the council. I can kind of go a different way. I can hear arguments on all the sides for all of those. So thank you for that.
[Leming]: Uh, Councilor, let me, sorry, just a real, um, personal idiot check question on my part here. So, I mean, with option with option, be like, we would need incentive zoning, correct, to implement the other programs that we're talking about as part of our, as part of the zoning overhaul. So, like, would, like, we would need this in, we would need kind of those incentives to build higher for, like, for implementing, like, a TDM program, for instance, or some kind of, some kind of green incentives. Is that, And so if we go with option A, that's just all out. Is that no?
[Ramos-Martinez]: No. So the incentive zoning, because it's very difficult, I don't want to have the option A or B and then you vote on that. But I needed to put more variables on it. And so incentive zoning is just one extra variable that can be applied to A or B. So it's not only dependent on the option, it can be applied to any option that we want. And that will be another voting that we will do just next from the land use. would be the, do we want incentive zoning or not? So it's not related to the options.
[Leming]: Well, on the next slide that we were just looking at.
[Ramos-Martinez]: This is just, it says incentive zoning option A or B. And so it's A, no incentive zoning, B, with incentive zoning.
[Bears]: within sentence, all right, yeah.
[Hunt]: Oh, A and B are confusing there. We should have used one or two.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yeah, I just didn't want it to, there are a lot of variables and yeah, maybe that's, I should have taken out all the colors.
[Leming]: Listen, I'm a very simple person, you gotta.
[Bears]: Yeah, I like it, I like it when things are. I like it when the code puts the correct answer. I was just going to say that my motion will be to adopt the option B, which is the mixed use three along the entire highway side and the commercial on the non-highway side with the incentive zoning. That's my suggestion.
[Ramos-Martinez]: And life science is also in mixed use three?
[Bears]: Yes.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Not in mixed use two or one?
[Bears]: Well, that's, I was just going to say, add it to the use table. Is it right now? Is it in two or one?
[Ramos-Martinez]: What I have thought is more of this larger scale would be going to mix three and mix four. So for me, life science was more on those areas.
[Bears]: And the mix use one and two is more like neighborhood kind of like... Yeah, what does the R&D use line say right now in the proposed use table?
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't see the proposed use table. You didn't send it to us. Yeah. The only thing I saw was the cover sheet.
[Bears]: Oh, if you click it, it opens it up.
[Collins]: Would it be possible for you to screen share that, Paola, the table of uses?
[Bears]: Oh, it's not letting me open it either. I wasn't able to open it.
[Ramos-Martinez]: So I took the existing table of uses. I'm not sure if it's there or not. I was hoping to get to that at the end, but we can... I think it's useful now.
[Bears]: The setbacks question will probably iron itself out relatively quickly, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the September 18th email. Is that one?
[Bears]: When I try to do that, it says can't access the file. Either way, I think I still have the floor. My point was generally being that I agree with including life science as a separate definition. I just think we need to make sure that it's allowed in the same places that R&D is allowed. And if we think that MX3 and commercial makes the most sense for that, that makes sense to me. Oh, yeah, this was in the document that was attached to the agenda. I was like, where is it? And that's the page I have open.
[Collins]: Thank you, Paola. Sorry, those of us behind the rail, myself included, struggled to find that. So I think I just want to get, with this, I just want to get clarity on if we should be taking care in the finalized proposal to be seeing life science included in the table of definitions and also added as allowed uses to mixed use three and four, or if it's already... Right now, manufacturing and research and testing are no, no, no, yes, or special permit.
[Bears]: So I think we just want to make sure we align those. Would Alicia, sorry, would Green Tech fall, like let's say they want to build Green Tech, is that manufacturing?
[Hunt]: Are you talking about a particular company or in theory Green Tech?
[Bears]: If some Green Tech company wanted to
[Hunt]: So it's this idea, if they want to make the product, it's manufacturing.
[Bears]: Okay.
[Hunt]: And that's why we might talk about light manufacturing versus manufacturing. And we may need some definitions of manufacturing. Like if they're making the product, there is an in between place that we have called R&D. We have like the actually the former building commissioner classified it as R&D. When the proposal was life sciences like to do iterations and so they'll produce a small batch of something, and then they'll work with it some more or maybe use that for testing right you know you put your. doing, you need enough to do a test group, right, while you're in R&D, clinical tests, sorry, thank you. When you're in clinical trials, you need to produce enough, but not a lot. And so we actually classified that under R&D, research and testing. But we may want to go ahead and get a bunch of definitions that are a little bit more clear. that that sort of small-scale manufacturing, we've permitted two of those. That's that new life, the new building I just talked about that is gonna go clean tech. They also do prototyping like that. Is that on Commercial Street? It's the one on Commercial Street. And then the one straight back from there, I wanna call it Sydney Street, but I think- Sycamore. Sycamore. That one was for specifically biotech. to do like small scale manufacture, do some more testing and then iterate.
[Bears]: Great. I think I got it down.
[Collins]: Great. Thank you all. Um, it sounds like we're getting close to being able to make some motions. I think the setbacks issue can we can we skim over that? It sounds like that's pretty close to dispensed with. Are there questions from Councilors on how to Or Pella, is there a similar kind of like options that you're presenting to us when it comes to the treatment of setbacks in the various land uses along Mystic or?
[Ramos-Martinez]: So the idea of the uses was to have as the smaller type of scale to be for mixed use one and two and then the bigger type of scale. So if there is like hotel small can be mixed one and two but larger can be more in mixed three. or for or commercial. For example, for life science at the moment, we had it in mix for and commercial. Oh, sorry, I was talking.
[Collins]: Sorry, I might have misphrased my question. I was talking about setbacks specifically.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Oh, sorry. The Yes. One second. So the setbacks, what I need is to talk first about the sections of the street that we have, because we have some issues. The street has two different ownerships. And so there are some complications over there. So I wanted to, I need to go through the presentation first before explaining the setbacks. So do we go to that part?
[Collins]: Yeah, I think we can do that really quickly. Can we skim through the issue of the presentation on the setbacks?
[Bears]: It sounded like there was kind of a... Yeah, if we could just get to the nugget of what the difference like, what do we, what's the difference between doing the street setback and the other? I'm still not sure. I don't phrase it.
[Collins]: Yeah, I think, I think, since the presentation was circulated ahead of time, if it's possible, Paola, to just kind of give us the comparison on what's, what's the difference between the two options for property owners, what's the difference in streetscape, and what is your recommendation?
[Bears]: Yeah, pros and cons.
[Ramos-Martinez]: So the thing is that Mystic Avenue in this sense is quite complex. And we are still talking to the DPO, sorry, the public work department. the engineers from the city because it's not very easy to solve. And so we have proposals, but we still need to see that these are possible. So what I wanted to explain very quickly is that Mystic Avenue is divided from this point, that is Hancock Street, we have towards the south, towards Somerville, is MassDOT ownership, and the northern part until Main Street, that's Medford. There is some kind of. from MassDOT, so the part that belongs to MassDOT is quite wide regarding to the sidewalks, while the Medford part, it's really not enough. And so we need to think in some strategies on how that can help us to build a proper sidewalk so that it will become an active, vibrant, interesting for pedestrians type of a street. And so this is the situation that we have now. And this is the area that we have. And this is from 5.5 feet to usually around 8. Some places are 10 feet wide. It's not very wide because they also have all the kind of infrastructure, street furniture, signs, poles in this area. So there is no space available. This is the other side. So this is the mass DOT area. And at least the property lines are quite offset from the curb line. From the curb towards the property line, the mass DOT, we have at least 15 feet offset that we do not have in the first part. So that's where it becomes a bit complex. What we need, and at least from NACTO and that is the national, sorry I have it somewhere, The National Association of City Transportation official, and this is one, but there is this type of dimensions comes from many, many studies, is at least to have a curb zone where it's a street furniture green zone that is more dynamic. That goes from five, six foot minimum. Then to have exclusive pedestrian zone, and that is from eight foot to 12. And then there is the area where the building and the private property relates with the street and that's what they call frontage. Um, what we have now is that the situation on and this is only for Medford portion of mystic. We have mainly, uh, towards where you see the property line. And so we have very, very little area to really, uh, ensure and have a good, um, corridor and sidewalk. So what we are thinking, and we hope that is possible, and this is something that we want Jonathan also to help us, how to do this, that it's not taking advantage of anyone and that everyone is happy with this situation. We try to do some kind of a street setback. And this is taken from the curb line. And that's what we see here. That is the area that connects the external part of the sidewalk with the road, with the road lane. Having a setback of at least 15, that will be the minimum. And that will go over the property line. So that you see this bluish hatch. that should be used, that we want to use for the public, even though it's part of the property lot. And then from there we have the front setback, that it can be quite minimum, it can be around three. What do you see on the left is what we have right now. So we have a curb line, then we have a sidewalk of at least eight in the better cases. We have a property line. And then what they demand at this moment is this 15 feet setback. So we are not taking a lot of the space for building that will be even less what we require. So in that sense for where they can build, we are not messing with that, at least with referring to the current that they have. So we need to stipulate how can we work, if it's by easement, if it's by building setback. We don't know still how to build this, but to be able to at least have a minimum of eight foot setback. So what we had here, it was proposing option A, 15 foot of a street setback, and then the building setback. And that means that we would go on the image that we see below this option A, you see a smaller orange line, which is we take less from the property line towards the public. Meanwhile, we can also say, well, let's do as much as we can as a street setback. And we don't require building setbacks. And so at the end, for the building purpose is the same. It doesn't change. It's just how we do it. technically. So for us, the best way to do it, because of what we are seeing that is happening in MassDOT portion of the Mystic Avenue, we think the best is to go with option A. So that will be my recommendation, to try to have a street setback of at least 15 feet, and then a building setback of three feet. It's complex, so sorry if I cannot, but let's hope that you understood me.
[Bears]: Go ahead. This is just for the Medford section.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yes.
[Bears]: We don't need to do this in the MassDOT section, we're pretty sure, because the setbacks are basically already wide.
[Ramos-Martinez]: The property line is already quite offset, and we have a space for sidewalk.
[Bears]: Okay, and that's more like we're going to have to negotiate with MassDOT to have it be something more active than bushes and grass, but that's a MassDOT question, not a property owner question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Bears]: Okay. And are the difference between these two options that one may be more legal than the other to ask of the property owners?
[Ramos-Martinez]: Once we ask the street setback, I think it doesn't matter how much we do in legal terms. We need to figure it out. But once we figure it out, if we can do this, it doesn't matter which option. The thing is, do we have to do this with only building setbacks or so we require a longer building setback and we say that it has to be Also used by public, I don't know if that is possible so that is a Jonathan question that I would like to explore with him. I also want to talk again with the engineers to see what they think is possible and not. And I think that the best that we can do is to have the first one also because it gives us the continuity with the other portion, because then we also have these, let's say that this 15 feet is continuous all over, because that's also what they have in the MassDOT portion. And then we control the relation between the building and the street with this minimum setback of three feet. So that's why I also think that the first one can give us more continuity and a bit more flexibility with the two portions of Mystic Avenue.
[Collins]: Okay. Can I jump in here? Yeah. I think I keep missing the second half of each of these options that we're setting up. With option A, is it the case that we have this 15 feet of curb and then we also get Do we have 15 feet of sidewalk in any case under this proposal, and then we maybe get three feet more depending on the negotiation with the property owner? I'm confused about what the difference is between these two. Could you make it even simpler than you're already doing?
[Ramos-Martinez]: No, it's really not a lot of difference because the amount of space that I'm requiring is exactly the same for both. It's just about how we do it. So if we give a bit more flexibility, having a building setback plus a street setback, or if we only ask for a street setback.
[Collins]: Is the difference in what we are asking of the property owners and how that setback curb zone is designated, like this is your building setback versus this is your property but you're designating it as an active pedestrian zone and just like how we're referring to it.
[Ramos-Martinez]: So the building setback is mainly that it's still on their jurisdiction and they can do whatever they want with it with certain development standards, but mainly it's still, it's not, they don't have to do any easement or they don't have to give it back to in some way have give permission to the city to use it. The building setback, it's something different. So that's why in the option A, I divided. So that is not so abrupt for the owners.
[Collins]: I see. I mean, if option A is more, it sounds like you think it'd be more streamlined, which I'm always persuaded by.
[Ramos-Martinez]: And this is still something that we are still doing some research and we need to see how this can be really done.
[Collins]: Are there further questions or comments from councillors on these kind of, it strikes me that the The resident experience for people walking down the sidewalk will not be much changed from option A versus option B. As one Councilor, I'd be comfortable with moving forward with trying to see if we can make option A happen pending Paula's future research. And then we can, you know, over the next, I guess that'd be two or three weeks, and then see what's possible for the final package on the 23rd. Are there additional questions or comments on this from Councilors? Or do we feel comfortable with putting that pin in it, seeing some thumbs up. Great, thank you for that explanation. So we have some resolution on the question of setbacks. I know President Bairds is working on a motion on land use, and then it sounded like there wasn't a lot of quarrel with the idea of for the proposal coming to us in a month, including just the highlighted parcels. inside those proposed additional parcels being added to the Mystic Ave corridor area, which satisfies my list of three questions that we absolutely had to speak to tonight. Paola, go ahead.
[Ramos-Martinez]: Yes, I also had these ideas for the frontage, and this is what I told Councilor Bears, that what we want is to really achieve very, very active frontages, so front yards, and so the elements that we will to have on the front yard are going to be mainly if they create active use, if they are helping towards stormwater and active mobility, like bike parking, for example. So this is what we want in case they want to have a bigger front setback. These are the elements that they need to include. Otherwise, their setback has to be the minimum of whatever we require zero or three, depending on this on this later conversation.
[Collins]: Great. Thank you so much for that. Great, thank you for that substantive overview of a lot of what's before us for in the Stick Up corridor. This is really exciting. I know there were some motions in the works. I can't make motions from the chair. Any further questions, comments from councilors? I'm also happy to go to public participation while folks are thinking. Could you do that? And then I'll do the motions. Great. I'll open it up for public participation on this topic. If you're in person, you may approach the podium. I will recognize you if you're on Zoom, please click the raise hand button and I will recognize and unmute you. For public participation, everyone who wishes to speak has three minutes to speak their mind on this topic. Not seeing any hands raised, I'll give it a second for folks to find the button if they're looking. While I'm vamping, I'll just note that As Paola mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, our planned agenda for our next committee meeting, which is October 8th. So Innis Associates will be working on finalizing what comes out of this meeting into a final proposal for us to review on Mystic App Corridor. So at our next meeting on October 9th, I think our plan is again to revisit the topic of green score. which we touched on, I think it was two meetings ago now, or maybe just one, as well as our housing definitions. And I will make sure that all the documents that this committee received or looked at in committee around those two topics are recirculated to Councilors ahead of time so that we can come in ready to make some decisions and ask some really good questions around green score and housing and get those Moving along as well, so that green score, the housing definitions, and the Mystic Avenue zoning proposal can all be reported out as a package on October 23rd, if we should move that way. I misspoke, it's just October 9th.
[Bears]: Sorry, what's October 9th is?
[Collins]: Green score and- And housing definitions.
[Bears]: Great.
[Collins]: And we are hoping to have a finalized proposal. We are planning to have a finalized green score proposal to potentially report out on October 23 at the same time as Mystic Avenue zoning. Great.
[Bears]: All right. I have the motion. Great. It's six bullet points. I'll just send it now. guys. Um I'll read it. It is. Promotion to move forward with drafting based on land East option be with incentive zoning. Um adjust the discussed parcels on the southwest end of Hicks Motion to add life science to use table and align slash update definitions of research and testing laboratory manufacturing and the scientific research accessory use and allow them either by right or special permit and the proposed mixed use three and commercial districts. I do not add the parcels to these zones that do not have Mystic Ave frontage between Bonner Ave, Alexander Ave, and Crescent Street, Malvern Terrace, Hancock Court. So that would be like that inner portion, the kind of L-shaped one, as well as the stuff right behind the Harrow's Chicken Pie and the Dunkin' Donuts. And finally move ahead with assessing the viability of street setback option A, the 15 feet plus three foot building setback and incorporating that into the final language.
[Collins]: Thank you. I see a second from Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: incentive zoning not being in that one section, but I assume that everything else would have incentive zoning.
[Bears]: Yes. Yeah. Just the no incentive zoning at the, just that little HICSAB mixed use one kind of, I don't know if we want to call it that.
[Callahan]: And also behind, like, yeah, the HICSAB one, right?
[Bears]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just that, that's, exactly.
[Collins]: Yeah.
[Callahan]: Great. Thank you. It does have.
[Collins]: Yes. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for the clarification. All right. So that's a second from Councilor Callahan on President Burris' motion. We're not hybrid tonight, so unless anyone requests a roll call vote, all those in favor?
[SPEAKER_08]: Aye.
[Collins]: All opposed? Motion passes. Great. Well, I'm really excited to leave this meeting with a clear set of next steps on zoning for the Mystic Ave corridor. Really excited to review that final proposal ahead of our committee meeting on the 23rd. Really excited to move forward a more specific plan for green score as well as shoring up our housing definitions on October 9th. Like I said, I'll make sure that all of our documents around green score and housing definitions are forwarded to Councilors ahead of time so we can review and come prepared. I just want to thank Paola and Jimmy from Innis Associates so much for your hard work in helping us get to this point. This is the culmination of not just nine months of work on zoning in this committee, but also incorporating many, many years of community outreach and planning as a community-wide process. Thank you for going through that with us, and thank you, of course, Director Hunt and Planner Evans for shepherding us through this work. Any final comments from councilors? Do I have a motion? Motion to adjourn, seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor? All opposed? Meeting is adjourned.
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