AI-generated transcript of Community Development Board 05-17-23

[David Blumberg]: Welcome to tonight's meeting of the Medford Community Development Board. Call the meeting to order. And as always, begin with the obligatory procedural matters. This hearing of the Medford Community Development Board is being conducted via remote means. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings as provided for in Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023. A reminder that anyone who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by accessing the link that was included on the meeting agenda posted on the city of Medford website. If despite best efforts, we are not able to provide real time access, we'll post a recording of this meeting on the city's website as soon as possible. A reminder that given the remote nature of the meeting, tonight all votes from the board will be made by roll call. And a reminder to members of the public that project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed through the city's website Medford ma.org, go to boards and commissions, find us alphabetically click through to current CD board filings, and you'll find what you're looking for. A roll call attendance of the board members I'm Dave Bloomberg, welcome. Nice to see everyone. Vice Chair Jackie McPherson.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, here.

[David Blumberg]: Nice and Jason here. Christy down here. Peter call this.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah.

[David Blumberg]: And we're waiting, Ari Goffman, and Emily had a man will not be appearing tonight.

[Jenny Graham]: No, I am here. Hi.

[David Blumberg]: Oh, Ari, Ari. How are you already got my fishermen. Welcome.

[Jenny Graham]: Yep.

[David Blumberg]: Excellent. Okay, Amanda city staff on the, on the call tonight for members of the public to, to know.

[Amanda Centrella]: Sure. So, myself Amanda central planner with the Office of Planning Development and Sustainability director Alicia hunt of the PDS office is also present and senior planner Danielle Evans is here as well.

[David Blumberg]: Excellent couple matters on the agenda tonight from Boston have the first regards 640 Boston have. Here the applicant is applying for a special permit to allow for an eating place or a cafe at the building at 640 Boston Ave, which is located in an industrial district. The special permit granting authority is the city council, and per our zoning ordinance it has referred this matter to our board for our recommendation. The applicant can begin the presentation is attorney or cohort going to present tonight.

[Ian Urquhart]: Welcome. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Ian Hurtubise. I'm an attorney from the law firm of Nutter, McLennan & Fish in Boston, and I'm representing the property owner here who, as stated, is seeking to put a cafe use in the ground floor of the building. This is a 700 square foot space, and we're seeking a tenant that ideally has coffee, breakfast items, maybe sandwiches at lunch, that type of thing. If you don't mind, I can share my screen. I can show the boy the location and the building just to get a view.

[David Blumberg]: That'd be great. Thank you.

[Ian Urquhart]: Okay. Can everybody see this?

[David Blumberg]: Yes.

[Ian Urquhart]: Okay. So this is 640 Boston Ave here. It's the Sphere Apartments. It's a five story residential building with 42 units. It's located directly next to the Ball Square T Station. This is Tufts over here. This is Broadway in Somerville, just for orientation. This is what the building looks like. It's a slightly older picture, but this is the retail space here. 700 square feet. As I said, it had been a grocer prior to this, but, you know, property owner is really looking to have a more activated space here. Maybe, you know, some folks coming from the building or coming and going from the T station can grab a cup of coffee or a bite to eat. And I should also note that I've got Paul Spivak, who's the property manager of the sphere apartments on the call as well. So should you have any questions, technical questions about the building or the use that, you know, he can help there as well. Here's a, general floor plan of what this could look like, but you know, might be altered a bit for tenant specifications. I noted, you know, the type of tenant we like to have here. We've actually been in discussions with a local small business owner, you know, not a national engineer or anything, you know, just a more upstart business owner who'd like to ideally have this type of use here. So that's kind of where we are in the process, but we haven't finalized anything yet. please, if you have any questions.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, if that concludes your presentation, Amanda, are there any comments from city staff on this matter?

[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry, I lost my mute button. I don't know, Danielle or Alicia, was there anything that context-wise we wanted to provide

[Alicia Hunt]: I think that we did not, there's no written comments. It was more that this made complete sense to us. We actually, when the filing first came in said, wait, this wasn't approved, like in their original filing. And then we actually double checked and we're like, oh yeah, no, it was very specific that the language they used and they didn't speculate that it could be something more broad like this. Right. I wonder why they didn't but that predates all of us. So, yeah, it just it made sense to us.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, thank you. Let's open this up for public comment if we have any Amanda. Let me remind the members of the public if they wish to provide comments they can use the raise hand feature. They can get a message to Amanda in the comments there. They can also send an email to OCD at Medford-MA.gov. Are there any members of the public or hands raised at this point, Amanda? Do you see any folks out there?

[Amanda Centrella]: No comments in the chat, and I'm not seeing any hands raised. And if you'll give me a moment, I'll just check our office email.

[Unidentified]: Okay.

[Amanda Centrella]: Not seeing comment at this time.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, thank you. Well, let's close that portion of the meeting and turn things over to the board. Are there questions for the applicant here? Okay, I guess I had a couple of just general questions. This is for 700 and something square feet. There was reference to more first floor for other uses. Can you just sort of share the background on that or will we anticipate seeing you again, as you find potential prospective users for other first floor spaces in the building.

[Ian Urquhart]: Paul, can you can you jump in here?

[Paul Spivak]: Good evening, everybody. I'm a little confused as to other uses. I mean, you're saying if this tenant goes out of business, there's actually no other retail space available for use in that in that first floor area besides this other 700 square foot space that we're referring to.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, that's fine. I just thought I saw in the approvals, maybe I was going going back to the original approval that was a reference to a larger it might have even been a typo, but to, I think it was more like 7000 square feet on the first floor, that would be available so I just just wondered if there was more contemplated there but sounds like it's not.

[Unidentified]: This is the only one.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, very good. Any other. Any other questions.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'll just ask how I'm going to handle trash.

[Paul Spivak]: I'll go to Paul on that one as well. As with our previous tenant, we have trash pickup about two days a week. So they would just be part of that, that whole pickup system. So they would put their trash into our main trash room also on that same level. And it would just get picked up twice a week. know we have a guest control that comes in monthly to March or anything that that should arise but you know the building is a very proud of the way the buildings kept so it's it's in great, great condition and I'll make sure that this is headed here is by all our rules as well.

[Unidentified]: Excellent.

[David Blumberg]: Absent any more discussion, is there a motion to recommend approval of the special permit to the city council.

[Jenny Graham]: I just Christie, I make a motion to recommend approval to the city council.

[Ari Fishman]: Is there a second, second, I'm happy to second.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, Amanda I'll let you rewind the tape and see who gets the dibs on on the second there. Thank you both. Okay, let's go to our roll call vote vice chair, Jackie McPherson.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Listen, Jason. Hi. Chrissy down.

[Unidentified]: Hi.

[David Blumberg]: Peter call this. I already got some fishermen.

[Jenny Graham]: Hi.

[David Blumberg]: And I'm an eye as well. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Okay, next matter on the agenda is our continued discussion or meeting that had been continued from a public meeting on April 26 at 760 Fellsway with raising canes. And I understand that attorney Desmond and raising canes team is here with updated information to share with us.

[Kathleen Desmond]: That's correct. Good evening chairman Bloomberg and board members. As you recall, we were last before the board on April 26. And at that time we introduced the project and received comments from the board, most of which have been incorporated into the revised plans that have been provided in advance of tonight's meeting. At the time of the initial meeting we were still working with the traffic engineer and engineering to resolve some comments that had been received. We didn't have a subsequent meeting with the city traffic engineer and I understand that the engineering team has also had had conversations with the city engineer concerning the comments. We submitted comments to both engineering and traffic. I understand that the comments with respect to traffic have met with the satisfaction of Todd Blake. I did receive a message today that there were some residual conversations that needed to be had with the engineering team. with respect to the engineering comments. We're not quite certain as to what those comments are and where they arise specifically. Matt Ashley of the team had reached out to Owen when he contacted him and they essentially played telephone tag today. We thought that we were pretty well squared away at this point with engineering, but not exactly sure whether those concerns deal with the special permit for you so whether it's a construction permitting type issue that remains tonight. I don't have an answer for the board tonight with respect to that. In addition to that, we've also submitted a request for a special permit with respect to the extended hours. We talked about that in terms of the loading requirements and that loading would be off hours and we would need a special permit from the city council. The city clerk invited us to file that. Ordinarily, it had been done after the initial hearing, but he indicated that we could include that within our petition. I've provided that to the board as well. It dovetails with our request for a waiver on the loading requirements. Unclear as to whether this board has to weigh in specifically with regard to that extended hours permit. So I would ask the board, I suppose, at this point to weigh in so that there's no issue in that regard. And that's where we stand at this point.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Thank you. Do you want to, or have members of your team cover some of the details then?

[Kathleen Desmond]: Sure. Eric, do you want to take us through the changes that you made to the plans?

[SPEAKER_10]: Yes. Yep. I just need permission to share screen from the host.

[Amanda Centrella]: should be good.

[SPEAKER_10]: Okay, great. So I'm just sharing the color rendering of the updated site plan. I think the last time we met, we talked about kind of a red line sketch of what optimizing this area on the eastern bank side of the site was. So we've fully designed that out of the landscaping to that area. We're showing proposed crosswalks to connect the two sites and as well as across the drive aisle. So all this area has been updated since we last met. There was some requests to continue the landscaping along the eastern bank frontage. So we were just having consistent design there. So we've continued that across the eastern bank area. We've added a couple of landscape planters on the patio at the request of the board from the last meeting. And those will be kind of at each side of the entrance to kind of end cap that entrance there. The EV charging station has been located on the site. It'll serve two parking spaces generally where my mouse is hovering. And then we added the geometry of the road changes, the active DCR roadway improvements that are actively happening onto the plan set, which is kind of where I'm highlighting here. And show generally what that sidewalk is going to do. My understanding is they're going to pave, actually all that the work is complete except for some loom and seating that needs to happen this imminently or could have happened in the past couple weeks since we've talked to them. So those are the main, I think, board comments. Otherwise, from all the response to comment letters, we generally just updated the plans per request of engineering relative to water lines and all the engineering type stuff. But yeah, Kathy, do you think that's a high enough level or do you want me to get some very specific details on?

[Kathleen Desmond]: The board whether they want to go into detail I mean we did provide the written comments, I don't know if they need that on the plan.

[David Blumberg]: Yeah, but my suggestion is maybe is to leave at least this portion of it at that, and the board members can ask questions if if they're more interested in some finer details but thanks for coming.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Pat, if you could address the traffic comments, I think that that was the other outstanding question that needed to be addressed at the meeting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, glad to. And good evening, everyone. I'm Pat Dunford, transportation engineer with VHB. I'll try to keep this high level as well, be a little bit briefer than the last time we had spoken. I'd also need this hosting or screen sharing. It's currently disabled. If someone could help me with that. Otherwise I'll have to be extremely descriptive.

[Ari Fishman]: Recording stopped.

[Amanda Centrella]: Oh, let me, I don't know what happened there, but Pat, you should be able to go and I just need to resume.

[Ari Fishman]: Recording in progress.

[SPEAKER_01]: And are we getting my screen just yet? Yes. Yeah, okay. So Eric had just covered most of this, so I won't dwell on this too long. This is obviously the prior site layout, which we don't need to belabor. And again, he had just walked through the changes on the left side of the Raising Cane's parcel with the new landscape amenities and improved traffic flow. I will note again, the drive-through layout is very unique and I'd say very efficient in that it has the double lane configuration. in which we can store up to 27 cars, which is more than we've seen at the multiple existing Raising Cane sites that we had looked at. So I talked about that prior meeting, but I think tonight we want to focus a little bit more on some of the off-site coordination we had following meetings with department staff and the mobility group as well. We're obviously familiar with the site overview. These are the areas we had considered in our review. And the following graphic, this obviously gets a little bit busy, but that's just a function of there's a lot happening nearby here, both recently and in the future, and as well as some additional work that we just found out about. And I guess we don't have to hit all of them in super detail, but first and foremost, in the upper right corner, the DCR work at the intersection, Eric had just shown that plan and how that ties into the corner of our site. And that work is ongoing. One thing we did talk with the mobility department about is we already were proposing that yellow kind of L shape that I have there. for the sidewalks going into the site. By the same token, we've since discovered that while they're doing, they being DCR frontage improvements along route 28, for whatever reason they were not planning and doing crosswalks across the site driveways. So we were going to ask as part of our work to pick that up. Not a heavy lift obviously but that would come with some pretty significant pedestrian benefits, which the mobility group had alerted us to and we certainly agree with that as well. Another one of those and I'll zoom into this one in a minute is the center driveway and route 28 where there's currently an enter only signal. They had pointed out as well that the crosswalks while being beneficial, there is a signal there which adds a certain degree of complexity to things. So we were also going to signalize the crossing of the driveway itself. And I'll zoom into that in a second and show kind of how that works and what the benefits would be. Obviously, with the drive through use and raising canes in general, It is more automobile oriented, but through some of the site features we had shown, particularly the new connection going out to the sidewalk and Riverside Avenue and some of the internal amenities, we wanted to make sure this worked for pedestrians as well, because there's a lot of foot traffic in the area. Likewise, with some of the bike traffic, I know there's a recent project within the plaza that done some bike lane striping out there that's kind of faded. So we were going to clean that up as part of our work. One other item wayfinding signage and this ties in directly to the Riverside Avenue driveway where I know historically, there's been a lot of concerns there. We've looked at that and through help of the city's mobility department. I think collectively we have a good solution there which I'll show you in a second. But we're also trying to take advantage of the fact that there's an existing connection going from right next to raising canes. You can continue to the left or west behind Ocean State job lot and come out at the commercial street signal, avoiding the need for the more difficult unsignalized left turn out of that driveway onto Riverside. Pretty simple, but also pretty effective. So we're trying to promote that route to the extent possible just to minimize the amount of activity that close to the signal on Route 28. We also were going to be relocating or actually eliminating an existing crosswalk that's at a very awkward and quite frankly unsafe location on Riverside Avenue. We had talked about shifting that to the left, which is still going to happen. But the interesting part and one of the ongoing bits of work out here, The city's already planning on doing a roadway resurfacing project with some other features along Riverside Avenue in this area. I think that's going out to bid shortly and possibly could start this year. So that would already be picked up as part of that work but Either way, with or without this project, that change is going to happen, which will be a much safer condition that's out there. To zoom in a little bit on some of these, step back a moment. This is heading northbound on route 28, and this is the center signalized.

[Alicia Hunt]: Do you think you're changing your slides?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, God, I hope so. I'm not.

[Alicia Hunt]: No, sorry. I realize maybe you didn't realize. Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hang on a second. We'll try this again. If not, I'll have to be extremely descriptive like I talked about.

[Alicia Hunt]: I apologize for interrupting so rudely.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm kind of glad you did. It would have made for a painful evening. Are we getting anything now with route 28?

[David Blumberg]: Yep. We see route 28. Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay. In all its glory. And again, sorry about that. So looking northbound on Route 28, this is the center signal to the property where you can turn left in only. And on the left side, you can see the sidewalk between the two signals where there is no crosswalk striping there. And with the signalized entrance, that can be a little bit confusing, potentially a little bit unsafe. This is a different angle of that. Are we now getting this view as well? Okay, I got my act together. Thank you all. So as you can see there's no crosswalk across the driveway which seems pretty simple but in the absence of it it potentially could be dangerous. So we were going to restripe that, but also put in standard walk don't walk signal heads at this location, pending DCR approval. It's a state roadway so they have the final say but I think it's a pretty clear and efficient pedestrian safety benefit that we were going to undertake. Not shown but in the background you can see there's a stop line as you enter the plaza. This is a one way enter driveway. And people being how people are sometimes it sometimes there's exiting traffic, which we don't want to see obviously so we're going to reinforce that with some do not enter striping some do not enter signs, just making it clear that this is an enter only location at that point, and you'll have a much better condition for both the cars and certainly the pedestrians crossing this driveway. The next one I don't think we need to get into this level of detail but At the city's request, we went out, took a look inside the signal controllers to make sure everything we're talking about is feasible, which it is. I'm on to Riverside Avenue now, and I'll ask one final time if I'm showing the right plan, Riverside Avenue. There we go. Okay, progress. So again, as I had mentioned, the city will be doing work out here, and as part of that, that crosswalk I had talked about was going to be relocated. The one kind of interesting thing is there's what's called do not block the box striping, diagonal striping on Riverside Avenue to make it clear if you're heading eastbound towards the signal not to stop and block the driveway. That's obviously uncomfortable if you ever accidentally do it. And we just wanted to reinforce that with that striping. What the city had pointed out was that clearly needed some sort of amplification. So what we're going to do And this is a ground level view of it where the striping is there, but it just needs to be reinforced a little, which it will be through the city project. But we're also going to be installing what's called cue detectors under the pavement. where when the traffic that backs up from the route 28 signal gets to probably around the area of the bank, that's going to trigger a sign that we're going to install on the other side of the intersection, an illuminated sign, essentially saying do not block the box or if the city wants it could be red signal ahead. But really something just to alert people more than a static, basic, boring sign. Once it illuminates, it really calls it out a lot more strongly. People are aware that something has changed and they need to react accordingly. That interactive signage could be very helpful here. It's something we're going to undertake and it's actually something that'll entirely be under city control because this segment of Riverside Avenue is strictly a city roadway. Um, so we had put together a memorandum, um, I think last week to go over to the traffic department, it spelled out the various details of this beyond kind of the high level stuff. I just walked through going through the exact type of signal, uh, equipment, the exact type of pavement and other treatments, just so we can show that it is something that can be built, uh, and is something that can be efficiently done, which it can be. So, we're going to continue to work with the city to make sure that gets in a timely fashion in conjunction with the project. And again, I will note that the route 28 work being under DC our jurisdiction is a little bit out of our control but I'm pretty optimistic that they'll see the benefits of that, and certainly allow that to go forward but we are going to be engaging them further along as we do that. So with that I think that kind of covers the new stuff since the prior meeting, but I'd be happy to attempt to show more slides and go back if you need more detail or more discussion. So, thank you for your time.

[David Blumberg]: Thanks Mr. Dunford I just to clarify, and then I'll give the mic back to attorney Desmond but the things that you're summarizing and you covered with us with your slide presentation this evening. How does that compare to the memo the memo may 12, you have a couple of sets of bullet points of particular things that are going to be done. Is that what you've done to sort of that would lend itself to a set of conditions that this board should consider as the ones that you're prepared to implement, if you will.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's our expectation. And when we had talked with engineering and mobility. That I think was their expectation as well so our projects, more than happy to do these pending DCR approval and pending city staff approval, but, yes, that was our anticipation.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, just wanted to clarify that for everybody. Thank you. Attorney Desmond do you have more for us this evening in terms of presentation or I don't in terms of presentation.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Those are the outstanding issues at the time. And we submitted a written comments which would indicate that all the other department had comments are agreed to. So I think that that kind of closes out what was open at the last meeting.

[David Blumberg]: And just sort of for the benefit of the board members of the public. Could you or someone on the team just, just briefly because it's now I think a sort of a new item, compared to our last meeting, just touch on the on the hours, and that special so we can feel comfortable making a recommendation to the city council on that matter as well.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Certainly. So as I indicated, I believe at the last meeting, the procedure at city council had always been that you had to move first for the use of the special permit and the convictual license, and then come back at another time for the extended hours of operation. The normal hours in the city by ordinance are 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. And the applicant would be looking for an extension Sunday through Thursday of one hour till 12pm and as we had discussed at the last meeting deliveries will occur within that time period after the restaurants closed. So that portion the Sunday through Thursday was only related to our request for a waiver of the requirement of a specific loading space. Friday and Saturday, the extended hours petition. seeks to add another hour of operation time so from from 9 a.m to midnight with the midnight to 1 1 a.m being again for loading purposes so that the restaurant would close at midnight and then you would have that hour after that the fact to accept deliveries i think when we spoke at the last meeting adam indicated that you know it's it's it would be very unusual to have delivery seven days a week that is probably more two to three times per week but that would be an available time for them to obtain delivery service so that that's what the motion is and we were invited by the clerk to submit it with our petition and certainly it makes it more economical for the client to do so.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, thank you. All right, let's turn that over to city staff any comments from city staff before we open to the public. Okay. All right, well, let's move to members of the public then. Same as our last matter, if you wish to participate, you can provide comments, you can use the raise hand feature, message Amanda in the comments there. You can also send an email to ocd.medford-ma.gov. If you're here, want to raise your hand, we'd be happy to recognize you to speak.

[Amanda Centrella]: So I'm just giving people a moment. It doesn't look like we've received any emails.

[David Blumberg]: And nothing in advance of the meeting, Amanda?

[Amanda Centrella]: Nothing in advance of the meeting. And I'm not seeing any raised hands or comments in the chat.

[David Blumberg]: OK. All right, well we'll close that and we'll move to board deliberation any members of the board with questions, comments, things to share on the presentation tonight. How do we feel about the pedestrian measures traffic mitigation that sort of stuff.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Hey David. I'll just jump in and say that I think this team's done a really nice job addressing all our concerns from last time. It seems like everything was addressed and I'm excited to make that corner of Medford a little nicer. So thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Great. Thank you, Klaus.

[Peter Calves]: Jump in and just, yes, I'd like to, I'd like to say I appreciate working the around the state project and the city project in that corner and the improvements as someone who walks and bikes through there. I'm looking forward to having having that corner a little less chaotic. So I appreciate the work the team has put in on that front.

[David Blumberg]: Excellent. Thank you. I'll jump in.

[Ari Fishman]: I think this looks really nice. Thanks for taking everything into account. I'll just flag for kind of later when we get to site review that kind of still interested in more native and low water plants. So just so it's not a surprise, but this looks really great. Good work.

[David Blumberg]: A question with re raising that point is that is that something that is captured within any of the department comments or maybe that's something that we could have it would have to have as a condition of the board's approval.

[Ari Fishman]: Was that a question to me.

[David Blumberg]: Well, I guess I was asking Amanda to, or if attorney doesn't want to answer that that's fine too I just was looking for the plan to include items as to native plants that would be included in that.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Maybe Eric can point us to the exact page but I was pretty sure that we updated to that extent.

[SPEAKER_10]: I think we've just confirmed that the plants are native, so I don't think we made any revisions to that effect, but if there are any very specific comments about specific plant materials, I'm happy to work on that.

[Amanda Centrella]: I think we can easily capture this in a, in a condition, basically saying you know applicant to prioritize native plantings in the landscape plan, just to make it tidy.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. If you're suggesting though that it's already in the plan. I mean if you're already saying you have a landscape plan and all those are natives that we don't even have to worry about a condition I suppose but we can do a condition if we need to.

[Kathleen Desmond]: I thought there was a notation, but I might be mistaken. I defer to Eric on that.

[David Blumberg]: Well, maybe the easiest thing is to do the condition, and then that way you can take a look at it afterwards and figure it out.

[SPEAKER_10]: I think we're fine with that. The plantings are native. I don't know that we necessarily have that as a note on the plan itself, but I don't think it hurts to have that condition.

[David Blumberg]: OK, great. Thank you. Okay, other board members or we begin to consider what conditions might make sense here. We have a number of things that we have to vote on. I think we have a total of four. Maybe I can try to knock a couple of those out by suggesting that one that we can look at is first would be approval or a recommendation for approval of the special permit as to the extended hours. We could take that vote separately if the board is ready to move in that direction.

[Peter Calves]: I would mention that.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, do we have a second.

[Unidentified]: I'll second.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you class. Okay, so we'll go to a roll call vote and again this is the board recommending to city council to grant the special permit for the extended hours at the location.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'm sorry, before you do the roll call this is vice chair McPherson. Can I have a clarifying question in order to do that I thought that originally, Attorney Desmond had said that the project had to be complete first are we able to give that condition now.

[David Blumberg]: I think that was her explanation that that, and Attorney Desmond you give a thumbs up or thumbs down but I'm going to try to restate it make sure I understand it is that. going into this and what we talked about at the prior meeting was sort of a separation that the city council wanted to sort of see it as a two step process but you got the clearance from the city clerk that this could be combined into one. And so we can do more efficiently, sort of the way I'm proposing to do it today.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't adding extra layers for the proponent to go forward. Okay, I understand.

[David Blumberg]: Yep, absolutely. Turn Desmond Am I good. Are you comfortable with that. Okay, thanks. All right. So we'll start, then, on the roll call vote with Vice Chair Jackie McPherson.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Clyson dress. All right. Christy down. I hear call us. I already government fishermen. Okay, good. Okay, so that's, and I'm a yes as well. So that's one of our recommendations down. I think another one that we can look at that sort of stands on its own is to recommend approval of a waiver of the off street loading requirements. And that is, requirement is in 6.1 point seven of the ordinance, and the city council could waive that requirement or 6.1 point 10. So if the board is so inclined to vote in that direction. We could consider a motion. Is there a motion to recommend waiver of the off street loading requirements.

[Ari Fishman]: I so move.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you, Ari, and a second.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I'll second that.

[David Blumberg]: Thanks class. Okay, roll call vice chair jack for McPherson.

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Class Andreessen. Hi, Christy down. I hear Calvis. I already got my fishermen. I, and I'm and I as well. Okay, that's, that's two down. Now I think we have the recommendation to the city council to approve special permit, and also approve the site plan. And so I think this is where our conditions would would come in. And I think we have four conditions we have the traffic mitigation completion of the traffic mitigation measures that are summarized in Mr. Dunford's May 12th memo to Director Blake. We have a condition to use within the landscaping plan native plants. We have a condition that the applicant needs to secure approval of the plans from engineering prior to city councils to look deliberation on the matter. And we probably have a condition that the applicant will also satisfy the conditions of the other general memos fire department diversity inclusion board of health. I think I've covered them all because traffic is covered by the memo engineering has a bit of an asterisk next to it. Those are the conditions that I can think of board members or Amanda, am I overlooking something.

[Amanda Centrella]: I don't, I think those are the ones that we had noted. Yeah.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Attorney Desmond has her hand up.

[Kathleen Desmond]: With regard to the engineering comments just in terms of language, something that's mutual mutually satisfaction resolution of the outstanding engineering issues. Just so it's clear that we kind of need to come to some kind of resolution we're not even sure what it is it could be very simple.

[David Blumberg]: Correct. And, you know, I think just really for members of the public to understand, I would seem unfair to hold the applicant up because we don't have the full and final feedback from the department. So, especially where there's another step in the process so if there is an issue that's identified it could be resolved, even discussed if need be at the city council deliberation. Okay, so with that amendment to the condition, so that the condition as to the Department of Engineering would be that the applicant and the Department of Engineering reach mutually satisfactory satisfactory resolutions on any issues identified by the Department of Engineering in advance of the deliberation with City Council. I think I don't, I don't know 100% what the right answer is here but I think it's probably in everybody's best interest that the site plan recommendation, and the special permit recommendation both have those conditions. I suppose you could try to draw a finer line but it's probably simpler to attach it to, to both we're recommending the approval of both. We're making the approval both with these conditions. Yes, director.

[Alicia Hunt]: I just want to make sort of a process suggestion. So I was talking with Amanda that. Because the Zoning Ordinance now requests that we send comments to City Council, but City Council's not used to that, that we include a cover letter that's in clear, simple language that any lay person could understand, and then maybe attach to that anything that's more technical and detailed to sort of keep it so that Any, any member of the city council could read the basic recommendation understand the basic recommendation, and then anybody who felt the need to be more to go more in depth in it could then choose to read the attachment to it. Does that, does that make sense.

[David Blumberg]: I'm sure I mean it seems like is as a matter of sort of internal municipal matter it would make sense for for teed up that way for the council to understand and, you know,

[Alicia Hunt]: Our experience is that when we use too many words, not everybody processes all of it. So we wanted to have something that's simple and clear. And so to that end, maybe they're putting that on top of the decision, or if the decision is simple, and then attach the conditions in an attachment so that they all have all of them for the record. I just try to make things simple because they're not used to seeing all these technical letters and all these technical legal things. Normally when they get recommendations from department heads on their special permits, their process had resulted in recommendations that were on the order of two to three handwritten sentences each. So that's what they're used to.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, I guess I just don't, I don't want to suggest that we need to have a board meeting to approve, you know, an internal transmittal that I think would come from your office and if you want me or other members of the board to weigh in on it kind of on the side that's fine. But I think it sounds like a good, a good practice and a helpful thing to do, no doubt but the decision of course would be what's attached to it. Right. And are we on the same page?

[Alicia Hunt]: Originally, I had been thinking that we try to make the decision as simple as possible with an attachment of conditions. But I realize that you might have concerns from the legal perspective. We can discuss it offline.

[Unidentified]: OK. All right.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Amanda, have you been scratching down the conditions? I'm sorry, but I've lost track of all of those. Maybe we could summarize those for everyone and then we'd be able to consider a board vote.

[Amanda Centrella]: Sure thing. Let me list them out. And we can adjust these, but applicant to complete the traffic mitigation efforts summarized in Pat Dunford's May 12 memo. Applicant to work with engineering division to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution for any outstanding issues identified by the engineering division ahead of city council public hearing. applicant to prioritize native plantings and planting plan and applicant to satisfy the conditions of the other memos, Board of Health, diversity, inclusion and fire. Thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Do we have, I guess let's do this in two I think technically there are two steps so we have this recommendation for site plan approval with conditions. Is there a motion on that to recommend make that motion. Okay, second. Is there a second.

[Peter Calves]: I'll second.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, excellent. Thank you. And we'll do a roll call on that this is the site plan with conditions vice chair Jackie McPherson. Clyson Jason. All right. Chrissy dad. Hi, Peter colors are a government fish. I, and I'm an eye as well. And then we would like to consider if someone would make a motion to recommend approval of the special permit with conditions, recommending to the city council for approval of the special permit with conditions or emotion for that.

[Jenny Graham]: This is Christie I'll make a motion for what you said.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you. And there's a second. Okay, excellent. And roll call vote. Vice Chair Jackie McPherson.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Nice and Jason. Hi, Christina. Hi, your colors. I already got my fishman. I, and I'm an eye as well. Okay, Attorney Desmond. How do we do.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Thanks very much, appreciate it.

[David Blumberg]: Excellent, thank you to you and to your team and thank you for being so responsive in the presentation tonight.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Thank you, have a good night folks.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you. Okay, returning now to Boston Ave. Let me read the notice on this matter. This is relative to an application for site plan review and special permits submitted by Simmons properties LLC to construct a 40,000 square foot addition over an existing parking structure at 200 Boston half. The applicant has applied for a special permit, seeking relief for the following. project does not comply with dimensional requirements for rear setback, which is required in office to zoning districts, and as to landscape, open space, as proposed, is evidently is deficient, less than the lot area required. So that's what's before us the Community Development Board is acting as site plan review authority, and also the special permit granting authority for dimensional relief which is a new wrinkle in the ordinance that we have not seen before but we now have the ability to issue a special permit for certain dimensional deficiencies, if you will. So I, as you know, used to work at Cummings, and although I have not in quite some time, I did recuse myself from the first round on this project. And as the project is essentially coming back in much the same form here tonight, I'm going to recuse myself from this one. I'm going to turn the baton over to our vice chair. who is ready to run this discussion, and I will return afterwards. So with no further ado, Vice Chair McPherson.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, David.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Hi, everyone. This is Jackie Patato, Vice Chair. And at this point, since David has already prepared us for what to be going before us, I will ask the proponent, Mr. Mavini, if you can, if you wanted to take over and Amanda, if you can please give him the control so that he can share his screen with us and he can do his presentation.

[Michael Levaney]: Thank you. Thank you to the Community Development Board and any members of the public who might be here this evening. My name is Michael Albany. I'm an architect with Cummings Properties. We are representing Simmons Properties LLC on behalf of Cummings Foundation. As the chair said, we are here this evening seeking a special permit and site plan review for our proposed expansion at 200 Boston Ave. I'm pretty excited that we get to be the first test case here for, for this group for that tweak in the office to zoning. zoning bylaw that allows us zoning ordinance that allows the board to address dimensional deficiencies. Very exciting. I want to give a brief history of the project. As some of you may recall, this project was before the board in 2021. At the time, the Zoning Board of Appeals was the special permit granting authority for those two deficiencies that we'll get into a little further. At that time, the Community Development Board provided to the ZBA a site plan review recommendation letter recommending the approval of the project. And I think that letter was dated September 30th, 2021. Shortly thereafter, we went to the Zoning Board of Appeals and they denied the application for the special permit. At that point in time, we put the project on the back burner and Here we are now, we'd like to kind of rekindle this fire if we can. One of the things that made us want to come back here was after the ZBA denied the special permit application, the city has gone through a zoning recodification that allowed this board to look at those two aspects of the two deficiencies, the provision in section 4.2.8.5 allows the Community Development Board to be the special permit granting authority in this case. In July of 2022, the Community Development Board voted to recommend to the City Council We came, we came to the Community Development Board so that we can move this property from the industrial district to the zoning district and this board provided a recommendation as such, we went to the city council and they moved it to the zoning district. So then hey, we're back here with the project right. So the challenges that this project faces the two dimensional issues of the rear yard setback, the rear yard setback is required to be 15 feet. We currently have 0.3 feet, and this building was built in the 1920s as a factory building and there was a railroad spur in the back and there was a railroad side and the train would come right up to the back of the building and open up the sides and everything would be brought in. So setback is what the setback is, I guess. And then the landscaped open space requirement is 15%. We are proposing 7%. We are adding landscaping to this property as proposed. The current condition is 6.8%. Interestingly enough, the industrial zoning district that we opted out of had zero. The property was developed that way. We were lucky to have some there. So we're going to make that a little better. Obviously, the site has historically been paved, but for the small amount of open space that's there. So with that, I would like to share my screen if that's okay. Awesome. All right, share. Can everybody see what I get going on here. Excellent and you can see my cursor as well, as I move stuff around. I talk with my hands a lot and here I'm going to talk with my cursor even more I think so. Here we go. So the project before the board this evening is a redevelopment of an existing civil single level parking structure into. multi story approximately 41,000 gross square foot mixed use research and testing space. We're going to add roughly 40 structured parking spaces to the property. This includes up to about 2000 square feet on the ground level that is intended to be kind of a amenity space neighborhood amenity space. similar to the project we saw two ago in front of the board over at the Ball Square area. I think before I go too far, I do want to say this project has not changed one iota since 2021. This presentation you're going to see is the same. The plans are the same. The submission was the same. We were then and we are now. very comfortable with all the conditions that the municipal departments made on this approval back in 2021 and are more than happy to accept those. I think we provided documentation to that as well. I think most of the comments that came in were also almost exactly the same or very similar. So if that's helpful, everybody knows that this is very similar to what we talked about in the past. So the slide you're looking at is kind of our vision of the property looking south down Boston Ave. Like I said, the two stories of leaseable space in the foreground, there's a level of parking here, and then there's the ground level of parking that's going to remain. So the ground level remains, the parking deck remains, and there are two levels that are going to be built above it. Let's go to the next one. This is an illustration of our vision of the property looking north up Boston Ave. What you're seeing in the foreground is the parking structure that we're going to expand. Basically, the parking deck you drive in here now and you drive around and you come up to about this point right here that you can see here. I'm hoping everybody can see my cursor. We're going to extend that and just put another level on the piece that's in front to account for some extra covered parking spaces. This is a vision of our building again the north elevation inside the site. The, the, the building will be connected to the existing building there a two story elevated pedestrian walkway. Of course our goal is to make that an accessible connection. Um, we we had in the past worked with the fire department on the clearances here and we were pretty good. I think, um, nothing's changed since then. So hopefully we'll, uh, also be, um, in good, good condition with the fire department and their access. Um, so this has kind of different, um, different views of the site. This is how the site looks now, if you're looking south down 200 Boston Ave. This is, if you were standing in the middle of Boston Ave, it's kind of looking east. That's what you see right now. The parking deck is in here. These are precast concrete panels and there's a steel frame parking deck there. This view right here, view C, I guess, is looking north. You drive into the site and here's the, you kind of drive up the ramp and then the ramp goes all the way to here. We're going to again from this point here extend the ramp up, add a deck up there. Let me see if I can zoom in a little more just to make this I don't know I'm having a tough time seeing it. I don't know what you folks are seeing so bear with me. This is an overhead view of kind of a locus plan, Boston Ave, Mystic Valley Parkway, the river. This is where the addition will be the building will be built. Similarly, a little more site context, the existing parking structures here, the footprint of the provostry developments in red, the existing buildings here, the bridge will be, elevated pedestrian walkway will be right here. To locate everybody, U-Haul's here, 196 Boston Ave, the Elizabeth Grady property is right here. This is kind of an overhead view. I actually like this view a lot. kind of an overhead view to see what's going on there now. And again, if anybody has any questions as I go along, please feel free to interrupt me. I could talk all day. So what I'm going to share with you now is the package that was submitted for the building permit application into the Community Development Board for this particular meeting. Again, this just introduces the project team. Myself as the architect Simmons properties, our civil engineer Max Lager our traffic engineer tie and bond. Again, existing conditions of the property now, nothing to nothing too crazy commercial building. Let me just hold on I'm not quite sure you can see the whole thing, land use table, the existing commercial building the existing parking garage. Um, this is the kind of in the green. What you'll see here is kind of the footprint of what the new building is going to be. It's and we're not expanding the footprint at all. It'll all sit inside that same footprint. Um, I've highlighted here the, the, the two, um, deficiencies on the side, if you will, uh, and yellow highlighted is the rear set very odd set back. And it's just, just one little corner right here. Um, that is the challenge. It gets wider as it goes out. We do have some parking back here. We've had an access agreement in the past with the MBTA to use the area back there, and it also allows the fire department to get the circulation. Additionally, the landscaped open space, as you can see here, we have I'm not giving anybody any vertical or anything but we're required to be 15% of the lot we are now 6.8% or adding a few hundred square feet. And I'll show you where that is as we go forward. It was part of one of the conditions that we talked about actually it's here we're going to add some space here one of the comments and some of the comment letters in the past for that. We wanted to get the parking a little further back from the street, so we'll add landscaping there to make up, serves two purposes, gives us a little more landscaping and also opens up the safety here for pedestrians and traffic. And just another interesting slide. We'll have 1, 2, 3, 4 electrical vehicle charging stations. If they're not there now, they will potentially be there by the end of the month. We have been installing them throughout our portfolio, so there will be some electric charging stations there. If in time they get used and there's a demand for it, we're very much amenable to adding more, but we're going to start with that for now. There's also a significant amount of bicycle racks throughout the, there's a good amount of bicycle racks in here. There's one, two. So there's one, two locations that are outside right now. Actually, this is under the existing building. So we have two covered locations currently. We will continue to have two current locations. We will dedicate space in the parking garage for bicycle parking. And there is one open rack here at the 196 building. just catch up to my notes. Did I miss one? Excuse me a second. No, I did not. Okay. This is some of the utilities. Again, none of this has changed. We have anticipated utility consumption, water and sewer. One of the comments that was made, and it was a fair comment, I think by the DPW that we This, the building sewer will not tie into the water stand separator I'm going to bring it back out to this manhole. That was a mistake on my part in the past and we'll certainly address that and all the other comments but it's a fair one but that's probably the only thing that's different. meet with the water department and on site back in 2001. And so this eight inch waterline serves this adjacent building to 222 Boston Ave. And So the water shoot it serves as the fire water but the domestic water comes off of North North Street or North album not sure which one it's actually called, but we decided that that was in that was there. We don't have permission to loop that obviously because it's another property. But when talking with the water department. There was a. I thought that if when this property got redeveloped as they may very well get redeveloped, that was the time that we could potentially loop all that and that could be part of the program. Again, nothing super exciting. Let me go back sometimes a little quick here. here. We get just electric. We're going to get all the utilities will come from on site. Um we have worked with we had started some communication with the electric company and have subsequently stopped it. But we will get back on that as soon as we have the opportunity. Um um, to do so if this project goes forward to pick up all the electric from from on site, so in general, we don't expect that we're gonna have to go into the street for any of these utilities, and that's a. That's going to be super, super helpful here to us anyway. This plan is the grading and drainage plan. So many years ago when we built, there was an addition here, this building kind of stopped here, there was a single story addition in 2011, we knocked it down, and we constructed a four story addition to this building. At that time we looked to see if there was an opportunity to do some recharging, there wasn't. We had dug a big test pit here. There were some challenges. The water table is a little higher than we would have liked it to have been. And it just wouldn't have had the system, wouldn't have had the coverage or the opportunity to recharge. So the position that we took and since then, and when we're in 2001, 21, two years ago, and we talked about this as it's a redevelopment project, we're going to increase the uh, pervious area. So it becomes a redevelopment project for the mass T. P. One of the benefits here is when we put a roof on this, um, on this structure, um, at least the water, it won't right now that the parking garage goes to the old water sand separator. The water will be theoretically a little, um, I can't call it clean water, but it's definitely cleaner because it doesn't have the sand and the oils in it. So there is some environmental benefits to that as well. Landscape plan. Sorry, let me go back here and landscape plan. Not again not much has changed on this, we will. We added some more green space over here. We typically do stuff off of our. a typical planting list. We'd be happy to consider native plants and low water plants as we redevelop the landscape plant. We're gonna try to save as much of it, but it's a very tight site. So we're probably gonna be looking at thinking about how we replant some of the things there. Again, I only included this slide again because it was part of the submission package. A couple other things I wanted to highlight. So here's the, it was kind of the grade level plan. I just wanted to highlight in green. These are all the accessible parking spaces. There are, bear with me. Let me just find that. I believe there are more spaces than required there. I think there was supposed to be nine, one, two, three, four, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I think based on the number of spaces, it was supposed to be nine. I think there's 13 here. I know there's 13 here. So one of the comments was that is make as many as possible in the places that were accessible. Again, there's an accessible ramp entrance here. There's an accessible ramp entrance here. And the covered spaces are all in the core. So there's an elevator core here that allows us to have these spaces are as close to this core as possible. Again, typical upper level plan here, the parking garage, again, as it exists now, will come around to this tan part is what's going to be added between here and here, and then it'll come up to this upper level. Another accessible space here. There is opportunities to add another accessible space here if the need becomes as such, we will be happy to do that. We designed that accordingly. Roof plan. actually, we'll go back down here. This is the upper level. The garage doesn't go that high, so elevated core here, stairs. This will also share the stairs with these set of stairs here, these egress stairs. There will be solar panels on here. We will do our best to, or better, to comply with the Medford solar ordinance. Right now, the intent of this building is for it to be a research and testing facility. As such, we need to, we can certainly, the roof will be prepared and the roof will be able to, it will be solar ready. We do anticipate some roof equipment here based on the use. So we kind of looked at the solar on the garage part more and more focused at their 160 panels. It's about annually, it's about 74,000 kilowatt hours annually saved. Comes out to about 59 tons per year of CO2 that this saves in electricity. Again, some building sections, I don't know, I don't want to kind of bore you with that, but basically, you know, the existing levels here and then in green and blue are the new levels. And this is kind of a longitudinal section and some shorter sections. Elevations again very similar to what you saw last time. I think one of the comments the board made last time was that there were two comments that will remain. We are going to continue to create some streetscape entrance from Boston Ave so that you know where to enter the building here and we will install some kind of screening on the garage so it doesn't look like as much of a parking garage. It will be, whether it's a fabric screening or a metal screening, the goal would be to be able to retain the open parking structure designation. So those are the two things that we talked about a couple of years ago that were a focus of this board and they still remain. Again, a kind of a three-dimensional view of what we're looking at in the site. Again, these were just included in the plan. Again, that elevation. Looking south, looking north. Some of the shadow studies, if anybody has any questions on that, it looks like they're going to be more intrusive into the back of the site than on the houses across the street. And I'm happy to answer any questions, if anybody has any take a break.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you so much, Mr. I appreciate you going over those very extensively with the full details. At this point, what I'll stop in and I'll open it up to the city staff to provide any kind of input that they may have at this at this time.

[Unidentified]: You're on mute.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Sorry. Director, thank you very much. Director Hunt or Amanda, if you have anything that you want to add to this before we open it up to our board and to the public.

[Alicia Hunt]: I guess I will just add it kind of a high level so the our office reviewed this extensively when it came in originally we thought it was a good project. We were happy with the changes that the planning board brought to it at that time, which, to my memory are still incorporated here. It was very frustrating when our ZBA decided that it took issue with the zoning decisions of the building commissioner. We think this would be excellent for economic development in the area. Cummings is a great organization to have in the city and to be working with us and for them to have more space that they are filling with their mission. I think is good for the city. So that's just very kind of high level I feel like we really did go through a lot of stuff. I'm back then and I'm hopeful that all of those things are still an account here. They, I mean to my memory they appear to be I didn't I personally did not go back and cross reference them to the filing two years ago so Amanda's telling me in the background they are that she did that work.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Yes. And thank you, Amanda. And thank you, Director Hunt. I appreciate it. And as I was, I've actually, I quickly cross-referenced myself as Mr. Vinnie was going through everything. And it seems we do have obviously a couple of new comments that came in from the city, but it seems as though the city staff, the department heads don't have much more to add either, but we'll get to that part after I open it up to the rest of the board to see if they have any questions. Does any board members want to speak or provide input.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I just have a question quickly. We had talked about retail. We previously reviewed this, this project. What's the status of that.

[Michael Levaney]: I'm happy to talk. That's still the amenity space right here still remains about 2000 square feet. And I will tell you, I didn't update these plans I submitted the same package from two years ago so this is really the same package. Obviously we haven't marketed this yet, because we don't have any. You know, we're not at the approval, we don't have an approval yet. So we're committed to it, though. It's there, it's gonna be part of the approved package, hopefully, and we're gonna move forward with it.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Again, this is just me trying to mine my thoughts from the last time we looked at this, but I feel like there was a request that you looked at, and again, we could have moved away from this, but it's just something that I'm seeing this image and I'm thinking of. Um, it seems odd to me that the entrance to a public space wouldn't be on that corner. Um, versus where it is, uh, sort of around the corner. Um, and I think we had also talked about, like, potential for outdoor areas, I guess, with those umbrellas or sort of what you're suggesting there. Um, I don't know. It just seems odd to me that you wouldn't try to activate that that pretty civic gesture that you have with either an entry to the building or an entry to the amenity retail space.

[Michael Levaney]: So it's a good point. We did talk about that extensively. So the challenge we have is that there's definitely a grade difference here that we're gonna have to deal with. It is possible that we could, and there's some utilities here that we'd have to consider. I think there's some, go back here a little bit. if you don't mind, I think, if I had a safe plan, I know for a fact. There is some, in this area here, there is some telephone equipment and some electrical stuff. We could, at one point in time, we had considered kind of digging this out and put a retaining wall. It would be, I don't know, You know, we could probably get half of that landscape back and kind of cut that in here if we had to if that made more sense. We just felt like this was going to be the kind of the main access a little bit off the street, there could certainly still be signage here. It's something to consider.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think, I think if you were clever about it, and I think that dashed line is suggesting the limits of the retail space. Um, if you really sort of activated that window and then I had the entry in a, in a sort of clever way, sort of in here where you want it. No, I was suggesting leaving it the way you have it, but like the way, the way it's reading right now is that you have this big window that doesn't really, doesn't seem accessible. And then the door sort of down the alley a little bit, but if there was a way to sort of visually connect them or. sort of create a transparency or something in that element that's sort of really read as retail and that maybe the entrance became not as important. There's that bottom brow, which seems to like sort of disconnect the glass corner from access, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

[Michael Levaney]: Yeah, I get it. Yeah, we could also kind of yeah, we could bring it up. We can move it up to and kind of revisit that.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: That's fair. I think it'd be worth studying for sure.

[Michael Levaney]: Yep, I agree.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Do we have any other questions or comments from board before we open it up for the public? All right, hearing none, I am actually going to go ahead and open up to the public. And so those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Amanda in the comments. You can also send an email to OCD at Medford-MA.gov. Before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. Remind all meeting participants to refrain from using the chat function. to provide comments as it is not part of the public record. If a participant is having audio or other technical difficulties, this may be entered into the chat. So I'd like to share and all the staff. Amanda, I can't see the entire screen.

[Amanda Centrella]: I'm not sure if you can help me see if there's... Yeah, and actually, Mike, would you mind stopping the share screen for a moment? Great. And so I just checked our email, and I'm not seeing any new comments come in, and we did not receive any ahead of the meeting. And I'm taking a look here at the participants list, and I don't see any raised hands or comments in the chat at this time.

[Unidentified]: Okay.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: At this time, Amanda, I'm gonna, so I will close the public comments since you don't have, since we don't have any that are coming in right now. And one of the things I wanted to just make sure is that before I proceed to the board to get us to deliberate, I want to make sure that we are in compliance with making sure that we're considering the special permit as the grant and authority. We've already looked at if there's a special, if you can guide me on if there's a special consideration besides what the department has already entered into, or have already provided to the proponent to be considered, whether it's for traffic or anything like that. Other than that, then the board would deliberate without, the board would deliberate outside of whatever you suggest.

[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, so if I may, Jackie. Yes. Maybe what I'll do is I'll post in the chat just for board members to refer to. There is special permit criteria that I think might be important for board members to touch on as everyone deliberates. So let me paste that in the chat, and folks, let me know if you can't see it. So everyone, let's put it right here. So basically, the Special Permit Granting Authority, which in this case is the board, must provide kind of a determination on whether there are adverse effects that this project has, or rather that they will not outweigh its beneficial impacts to the city. And the criteria are the ones, the six ones listed in the chat there.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And for public purposes, do you want me to read those out? Sure. Yeah, actually, it could be good just to... Okay. As per 94-11.62 for a special permit criteria, what we are now determining is the consideration of the following. One, that social, economic, or community needs which are served by the proposal. Two, traffic flow and safety, including parking and loading. Three, adequacy of utilities and other public services. Four, compatibility with the size, scale, and design of other structures in the neighborhood. Five, impacts on the natural environment. And six, the proposal's compatibility with the purposes of the city's comprehensive plan, which we have heard from the city's director, Hunt, that it goes well with the community's needs there. Based on an update from the traffic information from Todd Blake, his overall sentiment in regards to traffic, there's this one tiny mitigation that the proponent can consider and that's just additional blue bikes. But I want to bring attention to the fact that two of our conditions previously from the previous board ruling, number one and two may be outdated. So that's something to look at going forward. And overall, his assessment of the project hasn't changed, then his recommendations have not changed. That's in regards to traffic.

[Michael Levaney]: Can I make one comment on the traffic?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, of course.

[Michael Levaney]: Some of the traffic mitigation, the traffic mitigation that was proposed, we actually already did. We worked with the DCR to change some of the signal timing at the intersection of Boston Avenue, Mystic Valley Parkway. And I was able to confirm that with Mark Parente of the DCR as recently as February, that that work had been done. So we provided our traffic engineer and they worked with the DCR to make some signal timing changes. And regarding the blue bikes, I think, the city traffic engineer suggested that that could be an alternative to the physical modifications that were proposed to happen in Boston Ave and we'll continue to look at that. I actually reached out to Blue Bikes and haven't heard back from them. It's a pretty interesting little process, but we'd be We will certainly consider that, but we're very comfortable with the mitigation measures that were proposed the first time. The physical improvements, the bike showers and the bike lane, and some of the signage, I think they could be very beneficial.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And then in addition, one of the newest is from the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that was not included previously. Have you looked at those requirements, those recommendations for ADA compliance?

[Michael Levaney]: Yep, so the building will be accessible and that's where I think they had asked for a few extra or the opportunity to have some extra accessibility spaces if they were necessary. Yep, totally fine with that as well. Again, you can't, You can't build the building otherwise, really, so I think we're very amenable to that.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Without my influence, I want to say that based on what I've seen and what has been prepared here in the length of our conditions previously, if we looked at our conditions, I think it pretty much covers one through six, but I would need, I don't stand alone, and I would need the board to pretty much weigh in on what you think. This is our first one, so.

[Michael Levaney]: I'm glad I could be here for it.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And I guess before we actually vote on it, Amanda, are we, the onus is on us to make sure that we have all these conditions again, because we can't just rely on the previous conditions because a couple of them are outdated, right? So would we need to relist those 16 conditions? I believe it was 16 conditions.

[Amanda Centrella]: I think maybe an easier way could be If the board was happy with the majority of the conditions, we could refer to compliance with the recommendations from XYZ date, omitting whichever ones may feel outdated. So whether it be condition number one or something like that. And then a subsequent condition, if there were other things that you all discussed that you're interested in seeing, then we can add that as well.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And I guess this is more of a two-part kind of thing, because we're also doing site plan review. So should we do that separately, or should we review the actual standards for approval for that going forward?

[Amanda Centrella]: Danielle, do you have an opinion on whether discussion should be explicitly talking about the special permit, vote on that, and then explicitly talking about site plan review, vote on that? Or if it makes sense to deliberate on both first?

[Danielle Evans]: I mean, some of them go hand in hand, but I mean, it should be two separate votes. Yeah. Yeah, the same same decision. I do think that you need to. I mean, this is a new filing. So you have to make sure you can't necessarily rely on the old approval that didn't go anywhere. But yeah, you should just you should go through the the different criteria. in order and then make a vote. But a lot of them well there's some overlap so you could, you know, reference like, you know, as we discussed for, you know, Criterion two of site plan, or have special permit, you know, we make the same findings for, you know, x criterion in site plan review or something like that, just

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I mean, determining that we're hitting on every, um, one of the, uh, the listed points.

[Danielle Evans]: I mean, you need to, you do mean you make all the findings.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So basically what I'm asking the board is, do we find that one social economic community needs, which are served by the proposal and the Two, do we find that the traffic flow and safety include in parking and loading? Three, do we find adequacy of utilities and other public services? Four, compatibility with the size, scale and design of other structures in the neighborhood? Five, do we find impacts on the natural environment? And six, do we find the proposal's compatibility with the purposes of the city's comprehensive plan before we make recommendations? Is what I am asking the board.

[Peter Calves]: I'm not quite sure from a process perspective, obviously being fairly new at this, but I think, I mean, in my view, these are definitely hit, especially in my opinion, in comparison to the previous uses of it as just a parking garage.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I think we've got it. Thank you, Peter. To me, the social economic community needs definitely served, obviously, because as Peter has pointed out, before it was just the parking garage that was serving cars. Now it's going to be serving people, communities, economic benefit for the community. But again, I cannot stand alone on that. Two, traffic flow and safety, including parking and loading, has been determined by Todd Blake. And so I'm going on the expert of the department head. Three, adequacy of utilities and public utilities. I am going by, again, the determination of the department heads. As far as the compatibility with the size, scale, and design of other structures in the neighborhood. As far as scale, that's something that we can further discuss if we We had board member Clay's agency has already Asked a few questions. I didn't have any myself. I didn't know if any of the other board members wanted to do a great on that particular point As far as impacts on a natural environment Direct director hunt. I don't know if you have a specific thing for climate or resiliency there for us to do a rate on that point. I

[Alicia Hunt]: And I don't really have anything particular to add. There's not a lot of green space. There's not a lot of space to put green space. They do do their best to incorporate native plantings and trees into this. I think we'd be hard, particularly given that this is an existing footprint, we're particularly hard pressed to find any additional way to add additional things here. So. It certainly is not worse on the environment than the existing. And these don't actually say the renewable energy, we appreciate the real effort to get the solar panels on there.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So if we can probably clean up the conditions. So, um, how does the board feel about the existing conditions with eliminate and one and two, um, as being obsolete, um, as per Todd Blake. And then if we wanted to add any Peter, um, I know I'm, I'm.

[Peter Calves]: I'm good at that. I don't know if you're asking for a motion or just the general sense of the board, but I think that makes sense.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: General sense before we do a motion. I just want to get the conditions under control. Um, so that's Amanda. Thank you. Um, so Amanda, that would be striking one and two from the, uh, previous conditions. Sounds good. And then adding, um, How do we feel about adding the blue bike reference from public? And the one thing is in number 15, I guess we would just update. to perform a compliance with recommendations and we would update all of the letters at this point because there are up to include updated letters as well as the brand new office of diversity. That was originally included. So based on those conditions, if we can have a motion to grants a special permit to, uh, for the approval. What conditions as do we have, would we have to state them again, Amanda?

[Amanda Centrella]: No, I don't think so. But I did have a question. Yes. Les had brought up this idea of kind of exploring sort of activation of that glass corner for the retail space. And so maybe, would the board be interested in, you know, a potential condition to that the applicant revisit? Yeah, like ways to activate that corner. with specifically with regard to how the wind I guess the windows, the glasses used and the entrance to the amenity. Yes.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I apologize I mentioned that and we would do the list but neglected to add it as a condition. All good. So with that, we'll be updated. Seeing no other conditions from the board or no other input, do we have a motion to grant a special permit to 200 Boston Ave for approval with conditions as stated?

[Peter Calves]: So moved.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: This is Christy, I second. OK, I'm going to do a roll call. I'll start with Claes.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Aye.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Christy? Aye. And I apologize. I'm not saying the names. Clay's agency. Um, and Christie Dowd, Peter cows, Ari Gold, Goldman Fishman. You're on. I saw you say, I saw you mouthing it. Sorry.

[Ari Fishman]: Yes.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I, and myself, I am a yes as well. Okay, Amanda, I don't know if you want to put the SPR standards for approval. I can read them out for the public purpose and the board can go through them. So for one, the provisions of vehicular loading and unloading, what we are looking at now for the actual site plan review, as we all know, we're looking at the provisions for vehicular loading and unloading and parking and for vehicular and pedestrian circulation on the site and into adjacent public streets and ways. It will not create hazards to safety or impose a significant burden upon public facilities. Two, the bulk location or height of proposed buildings and structures and paved areas and the proposed uses thereof will not be detrimental to other private development in the neighborhood and will not impose undue burdens on the sewers, sanitary and storm drains, water distribution system or similar public facilities. And I'm going to pause for really quickly. Amanda, we've done site plan review and I think we all know this. I'm just rereading this because of our previous activity. Do I continue to read this or since the board is well aware of this process?

[Amanda Centrella]: I think that, yeah, and some of these are so lengthy. I feel like it's hard to absorb them when they're read out anyway. You all are fairly so familiar with site plan review, and we have it in the chat, the actual language from the ordinance. And if anyone wants, I'm happy to put it on the screen as we're talking through if people find that helpful, or if you'd rather see each other's faces, that's fine too.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. The one difference that I see with this is a question I was in, I'm not sure if it was covered earlier and how you were going to handle the trash removal. And that's to Mr. Avini.

[Michael Levaney]: Yeah, so we will have provisions, there are provisions on site now for trash removal there as dumpsters and compactors, and there will be another one added on the first floor. of in the garage or right outside the garage, probably in the garage. We're gonna have to figure out a way to get it out, but that will happen within the building as well. Screened from everybody else, no one will see any of it.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. And we discussed exterior lighting earlier with one of the provisions that Police Anderson has already laid out. Does any board members have anything else that they want to add as far as the site plan overall. It's almost like a repeat of everything that we've already gone over, and especially with all of the conditions that we've already had before. So I'm going to ask for a motion to recommend the site plan for approval for 200 Boston now.

[Ari Fishman]: All right, so move.

[Peter Calves]: Second.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'll do a roll call.

[Peter Calves]: Aye.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

[Peter Calves]: Aye.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Aye. Aye.

[Michael Levaney]: Thank you. Thank you so much to everybody. Can I ask one more question that I didn't want to be presumptuous and bring up before but I'd like to discuss it a little bit now. Mass General Law chapter 48 section nine is about regard special permits, and it allows the special permits to be valid for three years. And it leaves it to the cities and towns to make those determinations. I only asked this because I don't know how long, some, some of them are two years every every everybody kind of looks at it a little differently. This isn't a this year project for us. We're really looking at thinking about this next year at this point in time. We would like to be able to have this permit be for three years, if that's something that this board is amenable to. Again, it's chapter 40A, section nine is a very specific section about it. And it puts the power in the city's and town's hands. So two years might be tight, three years we should be good.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Amanda, Director Hunt, do you have any input on, is there something in the ordinance that says how long a special permit is valid for?

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm taking a quick look at the, honestly, it's the first time I've been asked this one, to see whether this is something we have to adopt. Am I wrong in remembering this really someone having come like an applicant having come back to the board for an extension of a bad that's actually I thought are the site plan reviews were good for one year and then they had to come back and get it renewed and that was because that what comes to mind is the BJ's case. And they basically said, we went to litigation, we need an extra year. And so we actually extended it for one year from the point that the litigation ended. I will tell you, I'm sorry, this is like three pages long. I don't think I can digest this on the fly. I was hoping it was one of those two paragraph ones. Um, I don't know if Danielle has experience from her other communities on this.

[Danielle Evans]: Is this a new provision to grant a special permit for three years. It's been over a year since I sat on a landing.

[Alicia Hunt]: There are several notations in this MGL that says fourth paragraph effective until July 2021 and this one is amended in 2021 and so it sounds like this is one of the things that there was actually a lot of things played with during the pandemic.

[Michael Levaney]: I can read it to you if you want. It's, you know, it's pretty close to the end it's probably. I'll read, I'll read you where I got this anyway. Yeah, any ordinance or bylaws shall be provided that such a special permit granted under the section shall lapse within a specified period of time not more than two years, which will not include such time required to pursue or await the determination of an appeal referred to in section 17 from the grant thereof. If a substantial use thereof has not sooner commenced except for good cause, or in the case of a permit for construction, the construction has not begun by such a date except for good cause. Now, I actually asked this I started asking this question to the building commissioner, the current building commissioner. Commissioner Forte, and he wasn't quite sure either. It's silent in your zoning ordinance, what this is, what the timeframe is. And that's why I wanted to ask. And again, I'm happy to go along with however long it's supposed to last for, but I know this isn't a this year project for me, so we're a year from starting it anyway, just to save the aggravation of coming back here if it was, Not that that's a problem for me. I just don't want to put it on you folks to have to do. I liked it, but I'm not, I just want some clarification, I guess that's all. And not to put anybody in the hot seat if it's something that wants to be thought about at some other time, or, you know, I could come back in some other time or we could just, you could write it however you want to write it. But I just wanted to kind of talk about it.

[Danielle Evans]: So that's not a decision we could make. This this board can't make that decision that that's it has to be codified zoning ordinance so that would be. a zoning amendment if our ordinance doesn't say last for three years.

[Alicia Hunt]: So there's actually in section 94 11.6 point eight is the title lapse under special permits, and that in our says special permits shall lapse if the substantial use thereof or construction there under has not begun except for good cause within 24 months following the filing of the special permit. So it is, this does, our ordinance does say 24 months. And I guess what I would tell you is that, that if you felt that you could come back and justify it with good cause, you know, we could, we could,

[Michael Levaney]: Yeah, that's fair. So does that the site planner, did they go hand in hand with the site plan review as well then so this is talking about specifically about special permit is a site plan review kind of attached to that as well.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, in our experience so it's it's unusual because of the way, so we actually have a section in special insight plan review for laps as well, which is the same 24 months. So, I was actually going to say without even finding that that the usually the special permit, the site plan review is in findings are incorporated by the special permit granting authority. It just happens that this is the same board this time. But actually that is also there's a statement, so that's a 11 714 11 714 Okay, the other one was 9468. Hold on. I had it up. 94-1168. Okay. All right.

[Michael Levaney]: I appreciate it. I won't take anybody's more time. 24 months works for me if I have to come back and have another conversation. Fantastic. It's been 24 months anyway. We did this 24 months ago. I don't want to come back again.

[Alicia Hunt]: We would love it if you were under construction in 24 months. I would love to see this.

[Michael Levaney]: I think that's a fair timeframe. It just definitely is not this year. I don't have the architecture staff to even get this going right now so we're, we're starting fresh here so we're gonna, we'll make it happen. I appreciate everybody's time. Thank you so much to the board. Thank you, and to the community development, the planning staff we appreciate everybody's help through our impatience and understanding throughout this process and thank you so much. Have a great night.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: You too. Thank you.

[Michael Levaney]: Thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, excellent. Well, thank you to our able vice chair, filling in there and getting us through that matter. Appreciate that.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, I just but I feel that saying places last name, and properly, I'm sorry. Mr. Andreessen Andreessen I know how to say your last name.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: That's what I have a long blooper real myself so you're not the first, and you won't be the last. My whole life.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, next item on the agenda, I think really is to, to just hear a motion and vote on to not consider the April 26 meeting minutes as they're not yet prepared so we have a motion we can move that whole item along.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'll give a motion to move it along. I second.

[David Blumberg]: Excellent, thank you. Okay, so that's to, to move that item to our next meeting agenda and roll call vote starting with Vice Chair Jackie McPherson.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, it's okay.

[David Blumberg]: Jackie your vote.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, I'm sorry.

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Yes.

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Yes.

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: And I'm yes as well on the minutes. Amanda, do we have some miscellaneous updates that's where we are on the agenda.

[Amanda Centrella]: Yes. As some of you may know, there are a couple of members that have their terms coming up. It's not that we're kicking them out. We, you know, you all have been wonderful, but there are, you know, as part of the regulations and the ordinance, there are limits. So I think we'll be seeing, saying goodbye to Christy, David and Kless at the end of June. And so we're reaching out now to some candidates to potentially fill those spots, as well as we have two open associate member positions. And I just sort of wanted to plant the seed that with the shifting of folks onto different things and taking in some new members, and David will be part of the group that's leaving, we'll need to consider having someone step into the chair role Um, and so I just, I wanted people to start thinking about that. Um, and you know, if anyone has questions for myself or other staff on, you know, what chair sort of entails and I'm sure don't want to offer up David's time, but I feel likely to answer questions on that as well. And what that experience is like, um, we're happy to discuss. So just wanted to put that out there and kind of in a related vein, um, there. So it is required that the Community Preservation Committee have a CD board representative as part of its membership. And Christy has been serving that role for us. Thank you so much, Christy. And Ari has offered to step in kind of on an interim basis. I think we want to re-approach it once we have new members come in at the end of June, early July. Kind of bring that back to everybody to kind of think about. So just planting that here again. And I think that's all I have, unless Alicia and Danielle have other items.

[Alicia Hunt]: I just wanna clarify that we have every intention of getting new members appointed in that timeframe so that by the end of June, for the beginning of July, there'd be new people. In the event that we're not able to fill all the positions right away, we've had to verify this for other boards in the past. There's what you call holdover status that you remain in your appointment until we appoint somebody else to take your place. So just because there is a term limit, if we're actively working to fill it, we're hopeful that people won't just say, see ya, if we're having trouble filling them. I don't think we're anticipating that. I just wanted people to be aware that that can happen. I see Christy. Christy's like, I'm out.

[Jenny Graham]: Not that I want to. I could probably stay on for like another month, but I won't be able to go past July because I have another commitment on another board that I'm going to have to shift to. Okay.

[Alicia Hunt]: And it's very helpful to understand because we are trying to fill them. Historically, we've had a lot of trouble getting the positions filled in a timely manner, but that's just had a lot to do with capacity and the time to get this all figured out and then get the mayor's attention on it. I'm sure that she understands that it's a priority and that the getting the appointment letters out are a priority for her staff. Because I think there's not always an understanding that like their terms and and we need to move this this this through because they don't attend these meetings regularly. So yeah. And we do have a list of people that we're looking through. Amanda's been working on this, reaching out to some people. If there's anybody that you feel would be a really good fit for this, especially if you think they haven't applied, please push, tell them too, because we do really want, it's wonderful to get people who are enthusiastic. It's also super helpful to have architects and lawyers and people who work for development companies It's to have these landscape architects, to have these experiences on the board is super important for us. If we had a board that was just interested residents without some of these expertises, you know, this would just not be as functional a board as it is. So please think about your colleagues who live in Medford and Bush. Thank you. And we'll push to if you don't want to do it, you can drop me a dime and just say, Alicia, here's who you should reach out to and talk to them. And I don't have to tell them that you told me.

[Amanda Centrella]: And on a different note, I just thought I would flag for folks in our upcoming June meeting. We are expecting to see some new PDD applications. It might be the first or second meeting of June that we see those. So yeah, get excited, I guess is my advice.

[David Blumberg]: And Amanda we're still tracking I assume.

[Amanda Centrella]: So we've been doing it the June, I think it's the seventh and the 21st would be the correct the seventh and the 21st and I can confirm for you guys that there will be meetings those dates so if I haven't already I'll send out calendar invites that get that around.

[Alicia Hunt]: And one of the things I don't know Amanda if you figured out the dates yet, but there is a zoning change request coming into going to be on the city council agenda on Tuesday so they will be referring it to you. It's over by the Wellington T stop a request to extend the muz area. So that is particularly for a, there's a parcel there that would like to be housing. So that'll be coming to you all soon. And we are looking at... how strong our recommendation is that the zone should be contiguous and we should include the MBTA parcel in that as well, because the MBTA themselves are not held to local zoning. So it actually doesn't impact their rights in any way, but it would make a nicer zone if it was contiguous. So we were just contemplating that in the office and whether we should ask to submit that on behalf of the mayor. I'm not sure if we can actually get that on the council agenda for Tuesday. So, but anyhow, I'm also happy to hear opinions offline if people want to think about that because that's not actually on the agenda I'm just giving you a preview of something that's coming.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, well, thank you, and I'm definitely open, Jackie, Peter, Ari, if any of you wanna talk more about the possibility of the chair or what it entails or have any other questions, that doesn't bother me, you wanna send me an email, give me a call, I'll meet you someplace in Medford or I'll have you over at the house, beverages included. Not a problem at all, happy to do it, okay. Without any other miscellaneous items I think we're ready to entertain a motion for adjournment.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I sort of question but let's do it after adjournment after adjournment.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, that sounds good. That's okay. All right, motion for adjournment out there. Oh, I'll do that. Okay. In a second.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'll second.

[David Blumberg]: There's a second. Okay, roll call. Vice Chair, Jackie McPherson.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: I Christina. Yes.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.

[David Blumberg]: Yes.

Paulette Van der Kloot total time: 14.44 minutes total words: 1074	Jenny Graham total time: 0.43 minutes total words: 52