AI-generated transcript of Community Development Board 09-16-20

[Andre Leroux]: Good evening, everyone. My name is Andre LaRue. I'm the chair of the Medford Community Development Board. Thanks for joining us tonight. I hope you are all well. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, General Law, Chapter 30A, Section 18, and the Governor's March 15, 2020 order, imposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place. This hearing of the Medford Community Development Board will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information and the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the city of Medford website at www.medfordma.org. With this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. 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 in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. Due to streaming conflicts with other city meetings tonight, this meeting will not be streaming live on a community access cable, but members of the public may access the proceedings in real time via Zoom, and a recording of the full meeting will be posted on the Medford Community Media website after the meeting. Just a reminder for everyone, to participate during the meeting, questions and comments may be emailed to OCD at Medford, MA.gov or at, excuse me, OCD at Medford-MA.gov or submitted via phone to 781-393-2480. All votes will be roll call votes and please introduce yourself before speaking. The first item on the agenda tonight is approval of the minutes of the meeting of August 20th. Those minutes were not finalized in time for tonight, so we will table those to our next meeting. Brings us to our continued public hearing for 278 Middlesex Ave, BJ's Gas. Let me just get that public hearing notice.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Pardon me, Andre, do you want to do roll call for the record?

[Andre Leroux]: For the minutes, it is not necessary.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Attendance.

[Andre Leroux]: Oh.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Meeting.

[Andre Leroux]: Sure. So in attendance, the board members And let me call on each of you, and you can just introduce yourselves quickly. Again, I'm Andre LaRue, the chair of the Community Development Board. Jackie, could you introduce yourself?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I'm Jackie Furtado, vice chair of the Community Development Board.

[Andre Leroux]: Katie?

[SPEAKER_02]: Katie McHugh, board member.

[Andre Leroux]: Deanna?

[SPEAKER_02]: Deanna Peabody, board member.

[David Blumberg]: David? David Blumberg, board member.

[Andre Leroux]: Cless?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Plus Andres, board member.

[Andre Leroux]: And Christy.

[Jenny Graham]: Christy Dowd, board member.

[Andre Leroux]: So I'm pretty sure everybody is here tonight in attendance.

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Andre, just before you read the announcement for BJ's, I just wanted to announce, just to remind the board and the public that I recused myself from review of this project last time due to a potential conflict of interest with Stantec, the firm that I work with providing environmental consulting and engineering for the project. So again, I will recuse myself from this item on the agenda tonight. And I will mute and stop my video for that portion of the agenda.

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, thank you. And Katie, you were not in attendance last time. So could you also just state for the record that you have watched and listened to the recording from August 20th?

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: Yes, I was not in attendance on August 20th, but I have watched and listened to and reviewed the recording from the August 20th meeting.

[Andre Leroux]: Great, thank you. You've also submitted written confirmation of such to the Office of Community Development. So this is a continuation of the hearing that opened on June 18, 2020 and was continued last month to tonight. The Medford Community Development Board shall conduct a public hearing on Thursday, June 18, 2020 at 6.45 PM via Zoom remote video conferencing relative to a special permit slash site plan review application submitted by BJ's Wholesale Club to construct a self-service fueling station within a portion of the existing parking area at 278 and 0 Middlesex Avenue and allowed use in an industrial zoning district. The site is currently occupied by an existing BJ's Wholesale Club with associated surface parking and site improvements. The proposed facility will be comprised of a more or less 200 square foot kiosk slash gasoline attendant facility with canopy more or less 4,525 square feet and a six dispenser service pump island. A copy of the application may be viewed in the office of community development room 308 from the city's website at www.medfordma.org slash departments slash community hyphen development by clicking on current CD board filings. At this time, I would like to ask the applicant represented by Mark Vaughan to present any revisions and updates to the plans.

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: Yes, good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. Pleasure to be before you again this evening in this virtual setting. I hope you're all doing well. So I do not have a lot to say this evening. I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that. I know that we've had, I think this is our fourth hearing with you and certainly appreciate all the input, time, and attention that the board has put on this. And I think it's resulted in a much better plan. What I thought might be helpful, just given that it's been a month since we appeared before you, and also with the board member who I know, board member McHugh, having listened to the tape, I thought it might be helpful if I just had Austin Turner, our engineer, engineering, and Sean Kelly very briefly just summarize again the modifications that have been made to the plan. that we're seeking approval of and have before you. I'm not gonna give a summary of what the project is. I think everyone on the board understands it at this point. The only thing I will add is just to remind the board, we did submit back in June how, in our opinion, the project does comply and satisfy the various site plan special permit standards that are set forth in your zoning bylaw. I think in as much as we felt that the project, as it was comprised then, met all the criteria, I think even more so now, just given the additional modifications, additional landscaping, traffic improvements and the like that we have made. So appreciate your time. And if the board is so willing, I'd like to turn it over to Austin to just briefly walk through and summarize the changes that we've made. and a couple of other tweaks to the plan since the last meeting in August, including the elimination of the dumpster, which we can explain, as well as some EV parking, car charging stations spaces, too. So thank you.

[Austin Turner]: Thank you, Mark, and good evening. Austin Turner with Bowler. And what I'll do is just as Mark mentioned, I'll give you just a quick recap. It's been a month and talk about how the project has evolved just quickly. And some of the recent updates that we had introduced subsequent to our prior discussion. And with that, I was gonna share my screen if somebody could authorize me to do such things that would be standing.

[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, Annie's the only one who has the ability to do that. And she seems to be having a network problem.

[SPEAKER_24]: It might have worked. It just popped up on my screen and said he was co-host, I think.

[Austin Turner]: It just worked. Yeah, it just came up. Thank you. OK, everybody see that all right? Yes. So you're probably familiar with this, this exhibit, we had used this to kind of summarize the global changes that have been made to the project, which I'll quickly summarize again, I'll go on kind of an encounter clockwise fashion. starting big picture, and Sean will summarize this again as well, through our conversations with the board and the feedback we've received, the product is agreeing to introduce the bike lanes and the re-striping on Middlesex Avenue that we had discussed. Obviously, we have to make sure that DOT is in agreement with that as well, but to the extent that they are, the applicant is agreeing to construct nearly 1300 feet of bike lane improvements and off-site improvements in Middlesex Avenue, which we thought was a fairly big benefit, both the community and a nice add that the project was willing to do. Related to that, as you kind of get more into the project frontage, we have been able to provide some reduction in width of the driveway out onto Middlesex Avenue. With that is going to come sidewalk improvements along the frontage of the project. The sidewalk that's located here will be reconstructed and brought into current accessibility compliance. Also, in the vein of pedestrian connectivity, we have incorporated into the site plans a pedestrian connection from the pedestrian sidewalk on Middlesex Avenue to the front door of the existing BJ's Club, which is going to be located along, I'm going to call it the top of the property, but as you can see my cursor tracing here, that sidewalk will be located on what is currently parking lot, but will be along that frontage and provides a direct connection from the sidewalk on Middlesex Avenue to the club. As we're continuing. to advance into the site plan. Some of the changes that we have introduced from the initial application was the inclusion of a very large landscape island immediately adjacent to the canopy and the fueling position. That was done as a direct result of some feedback by members of the board. We originally, if you recall, had a driveway in that location. And that driveway, there was some discussion about that driveway or the fear that that driveway may present some potential conflict for turning movements. In consideration of that, we just removed it and made it a large landscaped island. And similarly, we're adding a number of different landscape islands interior to the property, including some enhancement of the screening between the project and Woodruff Avenue. It looked like historically some of that vegetation hasn't survived, and it looks like it may have been compromised at some point in the past as a result of some utility work. With that in mind, this project is proposing to kind of reestablish reestablish the vegetative buffer along Woodruff Avenue. As Mark had mentioned, we're also proposing the inclusion of electrical vehicle charging spaces. And those spaces, as you can see, this is kind of the overall site plan view, but those spaces are going to be located in this general hatched area over here. So BJ's has been able to provide those. They've reached an agreement with a provider for that service. And that is part of this program that we're proposing. Last month, we had told you that we were pretty close to being able to commit to that. And as of this evening, we are able to fully commit to the installation of those. for EV charging stations. One other item too that was discussed at our last meeting was the removal and or relocation of the trash enclosure. And if you recall, originally the trash enclosure was generally located in this corner in proximate to Middlesex Avenue. We had worked with the BJ's operations team on this. And what we were originally considering was relocating it further interior to the property and into that large new landscaped island that we had added. And what we found actually is operationally and with the fact that this station is located within the parking lot of an existing club, we're actually eliminating it altogether. So what will happen is the existing enclosures and existing trash facilities associated with the club will be used to collect the trash for the receptacles that are out here and how that works essentially is the attendant will be responsible for maintaining those trash enclosures on a daily basis or is not as needed basis will remove that trash and then bring it to the facilities that are inside the club. So what that does is affords us the opportunity just to remove the enclosure altogether with it being proximate to Middlesex Avenue we understood that there was some concern about the aesthetic of that. And so with that in mind, we've just removed it altogether and operationally from BJ's perspective, that is fine and consistent with some of their other locations as well. So that's kind of the high altitude recap. I don't mean to run through the product in its entirety again, and Sean will touch on some of the traffic related components. Any questions before we transition over to Sean on some of the site related features that I just quickly summarized? Hearing none, should I flip it over to Mr. Kelly?

[Kelly]: Yes, please. OK. Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. Again, for the record, Sean Kelly with Van Asken Associates. On behalf of the team, thank you again for having us tonight. A lot of this might be duplicating Austin's presentation, but I think what I'd like to do is just walk through some of the improvements that we're proposing as they relate to traffic. We have had meetings with Tim McGivern and Todd Blake in the engineering department. And while this is an auto-oriented development given the gas station nature, the feedback we received from the city was that really the thrust of the improvements relative to traffic they were looking for was pedestrian and bicycle accommodations. Today the site, quite frankly, doesn't have a lot of ADA compliance, doesn't have direct pedestrian connections to the store. So we've made a number of commitments to upgrade the existing infrastructure that exists today. On the Fellsway side, that corridor was recently upgraded with new bicycle lanes, but our driveway doesn't meet ADA compliance. The wheelchair ramps don't meet current standards. The Delta Island doesn't provide the appropriate pedestrian path through, and we've committed to working with MDC to upgrade that to meet current design criteria. Similarly, on the Middlesex Avenue side, again, it's a wide driveway. We've looked at the geometry. We've looked at what we need to accommodate truck movements. And we've proposed to narrow that to the extent feasible to shorten that pedestrian crossing while still ensuring that truck movements can occur safely in and out of the site. In conjunction with that, similar to what we're proposing at Fellsway, we would put a painted crosswalk across the driveway, bring the ramps up to ADA compliance, reconstruct the sidewalk along our frontage, which, you know, will be in better shape post-development. And then really, I think, probably the most significant pedestrian improvement in terms of, you know, for Middlesex Avenue, as Austin noted on, is really providing a dedicated sidewalk that runs from the corridor directly to the store in the northern edge of the site. Today, pedestrians that want to walk the store, you know, walk down the driveway and they share that space with vehicles, which isn't ideal. This certainly represents an improvement in terms of pedestrian accessibility. With regard to bicycle accommodations, again, we did speak with Todd Blake, city traffic engineer. We understand that the desire to implement a complete streets design along Middlesex Avenue and the areas that are controlled in the vicinity of our site. This is mass DOT jurisdiction, so we will ultimately need to get them to sign off, but we have run this by them and they seem in agreement with it. As you can see in the plan that's up here now, the elements of the plan would be to have an actual dedicated bicycle lane that would run from the city line, which is up in the vicinity of Wendy's, runs south all the way down to First Street. And in that area, you again would have a bike lane that's dedicated with a buffered cross-hatched area to delineate the separation from vehicular and and bicycle flows. And then from 1st Street down to 5th, it would be a shared configuration with share roads installed along the corridor, as well as signage to share the road. So again, we've presented this to your engineering department for consideration. And if we agree to amass DOTs on board, we're committed to putting these measures in place. We feel these are what the city had indicated they were looking for. And while, again, while this is a project that will generate automobile traffic, we think these measures will certainly enhance the pedestrian and bicycle realm and will ultimately be an improvement to not only pedestrians and bicyclists destined to BJs, but also all users along the corridors. That's, I think, all I have for tonight. I'd be happy to, again, answer any questions that members of the boards might have. Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: Great. Thank you. Mr. Kelly, at this point, I'd like to ask the city's traffic engineer, Todd Blake, to give his comments about the proposal and whether there's any outstanding issues from his perspective.

[Todd Blake]: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think, as was mentioned, a lot of things have changed since the original proposal, and it's changed for the better. are for the following for additional consideration for the board. I don't really have any new written comments. I'm going back to my old written comments to see if point by point if they're addressed. It does appear like most of them have been, but there may be a couple of areas for your consideration. So circulation wise, they have improved things a lot. They have added the cross, the sidewalk from Middlesex Ave to the BJ's entrance. One thing I'll say about that, it is a very good feature to add. We appreciate it. I would just suggest adding some guide signage. For Medford residents coming from the south on Middlesex Ave, their tendency might be to hang a left in the main drive, thinking that the walkway is there to the center building. So they have to cross the drive, hit the corner probably and take a left to use that sidewalk. So it might be good to add a sign at the site drive and also where they make the turn onto the sidewalk, because it may not be as apparent that that sidewalk exists up there on the north side of the site, or on the Malden side. The bike lanes, we did ask for a bicycle infrastructure on the Middlesex Avenue corridor, and they did do that, and it looks great. I think in my comments, we had said to consider from 5th to 9th as well with Sheroes, so that's up to the board's discretion. Right now, the share is in that fifth, which would leave a gap between fifth and ninth that the state would have to kind of come back and do at some point. As far as pedestrian connections, it looks like looking at my original memo, we had talked about improving pedestrian access from the Fellsway side as well. And I'm not sure that piece was fully addressed necessarily. I think they're upgrading the ramps at the drive on the Fellsway West side, but I don't necessarily think they're adding a pedestrian connection from Fellsway to the front door. It's just something to consider when you deliberate. Just gonna check to see if there's a few more. I believe that's it. And obviously they have narrowed the, the drive at Middlesex Ave, but I didn't know if it met the needs fully of what was described several meetings back about potentially narrowing even more, so.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, thank you, Engineer Blake. I would let the proponent like to respond to those issues and whether they might be willing to consider them if they haven't already addressed them.

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: I can start. This is Mark Vaughn. I think with respect to the, I try to take some notes here, the signage for the pedestrian walkway. I think that we're certainly amenable to that and whatever signage the city thinks might be appropriate to help better guide pedestrians to where the sidewalk is. I think with respect to the other comment about the Shiros, I'll defer to, Either Sean, or we also have, that you have not heard from yet, but if you recall from prior meetings, Patrick Netriba, who's with BJ's, I know he's here tonight as well. But Sean, do you want to comment on?

[Kelly]: I mean, I think we could certainly look at the share rows from 5th to 9th. The comment letter did recommend considering it, but obviously 1st to 5th was the area where it was designated it was wanted. I think it's something we can take a look at. And then with respect to the pedestrian access from Fellsway, The backdoor of the from Felsbury is really the loading area, there isn't a very convenient way to bring pedestrian traffic into that area. drive aisle that runs between the building and Woodroof Avenue, but that, you know, accommodates two-way traffic flow today. You know, there's a number of stop signs along there and we did understand there's some concerns about vehicle speeds and what have you. I'm not sure it's technically feasible to get a pedestrian walkway in there in a safe manner that can also accommodate two-way traffic flow, you know, in both directions to the side of the store. So, you know, we haven't proposed a dedicated route there because I'm not sure we actually could fit it in a safe manner.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. Does Mr. Netriba want to say a few words at this time?

[Adam Hurtubise]: No, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. None other than to say thank you to the board and to you for your help in making this better. It's been a process, and we appreciate it. And we're a member of your community, and we want to continue to be so, and we want to be better every day. That's our goal. So thank you very much. That's all I have.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. I know we appreciate the willingness to listen to our feedback and to try to accommodate what's been suggested. I think that there's been a lot of improvements here to the project. So for the reopened public hearing, let me first take any questions from the board and then I'll reopen the floor for public comments. And then we will move on to, I'll close that and we'll move on to deliberation. So let me open to board members. Do you have any questions or comments at this time?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Andre, this is Jackie Patato. I have one quick question. It was iterated that there's a portion of the street that is owned by state and that the proponent would be coordinating with MassDOT. I'm just wondering, out of curiosity, because I have not looked further into this, if there will be any kind of access permit that is needed. The reason why I ask, I'm just wondering if that would change the design of what MassDOT is considering versus what the proponent is considering. That's my only question.

[Kelly]: but the project will require an access permit from MassDOT because of the, we're doing some geometric changes to the driveway to narrow it up, including the ramps and the crosswalks. So we will need a permit. I suspect as part of that permit filing, we'll probably try to get the bicycle accommodations done as well. And again, this is a conceptual plan. We're certainly gonna get feedback from DOT in terms of the engineering design. I expect there will be some changes, but I think the general thrust is that we will have that exclusive bicycle lane along our frontage, and again, leading up to the city line in Malden.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Thank you. I was just thinking holistically and as a whole, I know that we're interested in getting 5th to the 9th. I'm not speaking on behalf of the state, but I'm just wondering if this was kind of an area or an opportunity to have that full conversation. Thank you.

[Todd Blake]: Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yes, Mr. Blake. Just for the board members, background or point of information for the locus street project was completely separate project just as an example that had conditions that were subject to the state at the locus street and mystic Valley Parkway traffic signal. And the state did end up agreeing in that case, and there were some design changes back and forth but very minor and the intent was kept so if, if the applicant says they already reached out to master master to minimal. I would imagine it would be a similar case where that maybe some tweaks here and there, but as long as the intent is satisfied, hopefully they'll go along with it. I haven't had a conversation with MassDOT yet about it, but they do have state directives that indicate improving bicycle infrastructure, so I don't see why they wouldn't.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Thank you for mentioning that, for point of information. And again, full disclosure, I do work for the state, but I cannot speak on behalf of the state. And so that's where I was going when I was asking the proponent about that information. Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: And just for the record, Jackie works for a different agency, not for MassDOT.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Not for MassDOT.

[Andre Leroux]: So here we would do the same thing. I think we would include conditions that had the sharrows and obviously we'd have to be subject to approval by MassDOT. Other board members, comments or questions?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Gray, I have questions.

[Unidentified]: Yes, go ahead.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so I was thinking about the request by the engineering department to create some sort of pedestrian connections on the west side of the site. And, you know, it seems that the response from the proponent was very reasonable. I've driven through there, and I know that, you know, it's a very sort of working, loading type parking lot in the back. I got on Google Street View when I was looking at the area, and again, I think what he was saying made a lot of sense. I did make the unfortunate turn onto Woodruff Ave and have a look at the condition, assuming that the Google Street View is the current condition. And I was looking at the condition of the edge between the store and Woodruff Ave. And there's just two things that just jumped right out at me, and I think either two or three meetings ago, we heard from a number of people in the neighborhood, including one of the city councilors who lives in the neighborhood on this issue. And I can't really remember where things were left. But anyway, my comment is that when I look on Google Street View, I see this chain link fence with a pretty beat down series of green slats and what seems to me zero pedestrian connections between Woodruff Ave and the store. And what's interesting about that is that while I agree that connections to the Fellsway may not be feasible, it seems to me a good Um, a good sort of middle ground might be to sort of dress up the edge of Woodruff Ave, which we really haven't talked about too much and actually create some pedestrian connections there where people could get out, um, you know, through the adjacent streets. Um, this is again, just something that jumped into my head as, as I started looking around, um, on Google, but, um, cause I, cause I do think, you know, those pedestrian connections are important. And we've certainly heard from the neighborhood. And then just aesthetically, that edge is just a series of either dead or dying trees and old mulch and a really beat up fence. So I think they're, you know, the issue of connectivity through the site could be addressed along that edge rather than on the Fellsway edge.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Klaus. Attorney Vaughn, would you or one of your team members speak to that?

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, why don't I start? I think that I understand Klaus's point there with respect to the edge. And one thing I do want to mention that Austin touched upon in the presentation is that we did, although it's not really, I'm going to say, relevant or there's a nexus with the gasoline station itself, but because, you know, the gas station is up at that corner, you know, right along Middle 6 Ave, but you'll see on this rendering that we have provided for additional vegetation along the perimeter of our property along Woodruff Avenue to restore vegetation there and make for a a nicer buffer between our site and Woodruff Avenue and the residential neighborhood that's there. With respect to, if I understood the comment about providing a residential connection through there, I'm not sure we're against that or adverse to it. I don't know what the neighborhood feeling would be about it in terms of, you know, providing for additional folks walking back and forth into the neighborhood from there. But certainly something that we could look at in the future if that's something that folks felt made sense, but I don't know what the overall feeling with that would be from the neighborhood.

[Andre Leroux]: And Attorney Vaughn, is there any plans to, we've discussed the enhanced landscaping and vegetative screening for that piece between Woodruff and the front of the store. Is there any plans to just improve the condition of the chain link fence along that edge or to replace that screening which might be deteriorated?

[Austin Turner]: Mark, I can speak to that one if you don't mind.

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, please.

[Austin Turner]: Sure, certainly. So, um, we actually are going to be upgrading or replacing the slats in the fence, in particular, on both sides of the property. A similar fence does exist on the opposite side, but we are, as part of this project, replacing those slats and kind of bringing them into a state of repair, if you will, and putting new slats in. So that's been contemplated and is actually being currently orchestrated with the folks from the BJS operation team. So that fence is, you know, if there are slats that are broken or not serving their intended purpose, they're going to be replaced.

[Andre Leroux]: And Mr. Turner, was there ever any conversation with the neighborhood residents about the question of access from Woodruff Avenue, either pro or against?

[Austin Turner]: I haven't spoken to them directly. I don't recall there being much discussion as part of these proceedings, you know, from our initial discussion with the board to this evening. As Mr. Vaughn mentioned, if there was a desire from the folks who live on Woodruff Avenue or the streets surrounding there for some kind of connection, we could talk to Patrick and the folks over at BJ's about accommodating that. Like we said, we're not adverse to it. We don't want to do something somebody doesn't want, though. And if they do, we'll talk to them about what makes sense and how to accomplish that. Thank you.

[Todd Blake]: Chairman, if I may. Yes, Mr. Blake. Um, I did mention that the original engineering comment letter, we had a big asterisk next to it. So we said, increase pedestrian access from Millsex, Fellsway, and then the third was from the neighborhood, but only if the neighborhood wanted it. It's usually very neighborhood dependent, case by case. But the pedestrian access from Fellsway, yeah, I do get how it's currently more of a delivery entrance, but, If anyone that's a resident in Medford that lives in East Medford Glenwood area that might be using the second street or Myrtle Street crosswalks across the fells, that's the way they would come in, regardless of where the front door is. So, you know, that's why we had it in there. I didn't explore a lot of design options myself, but there is a one-way drive aisle on the north of the building, and there's a two-way on the south. There may, again, I didn't look into designing this, but there may be an opportunity have one way west on the north side as it is, and one way east on the south side, which would gain a lane for walkway and potentially more landscaping on the south side of the building?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I think I sort of see where you're going with that, Tim, and I sort of contemplated the same thing, but when I made my comment, it just seemed to me that the connection threw into a neighborhood might be a lot more viable and meaningful than just getting out to the Fellsway, which there's not a lot going on there. It's sort of a bridge. And I guess my only follow-up question to Austin would be, you said you're going to replace the slats. In my opinion, that's a system that doesn't present well after six months. I'm wondering if there's something that we can do. I appreciate that you're enhancing the landscaping, but you're really only doing it up against the parking lot. I mean, it's about 40% of the whole length of Woodruff Street, or less even, if you go past Bradbury. You're going to have this nice landscaping for the first however many, a couple hundred feet. And then the rest, it's going to be back to looking at a street and the side of a building, I suppose. I just sort of wonder why that landscaping just doesn't keep going. And I think I know the answer is that the street sort of comes up right up against the fence. I'm seeing a vegetated landscape between the fence and Woodruff Ave. Is that on your property, or is that city property? Because there seems to be plenty of room to landscape the whole length of Woodruff rather than just this one little piece.

[Austin Turner]: Through the chair, if you don't mind, is it OK if I answer directly? Yes, please. So to answer that question, that part of the site, if you will, as you've mentioned, it's very narrow there. We do have room. even if it's a little bit limited to do the landscaping where we're currently proposing to do it, that the ability to do that gets substantially reduced as you get further along the building side, just given the narrow limits of the driveway against Woodruff Avenue and how those things kind of are separated just by the fence. So there's limited opportunity, if any, to do some landscaping there. And I believe that landscaping bed is on the city's right-of-way, even if that fence splits it. I think the landscaping bed is actually on the city's right-of-way there. So I don't know that we can upgrade defense necessarily. If there are parts of defense that just clearly need to be upgraded because it hasn't done well over the years, we can entertain that with the folks at BJS. I don't know that we're going to be able to replace it in its entirety and especially given some of the commitments that we've made here to do those things. So I think there's limited opportunity to do some additional landscaping there. If we can accommodate it, we will, but I don't want to promise you that we can actually do that given the spatial limitations that we have. Right.

[Andre Leroux]: At this point, I would be inclined to leave it up to the city whether to convene a follow-up meeting with neighborhood residents in that area with BJs for any further possible improvements or issues that need to be addressed.

[Austin Turner]: Okay, and then I know that there was some brief discussion about the sidewalk connectivity. And I can understand on the surface, how it might look like, yeah, we have a lane to reduce, but really what that upper driveway, this upper driveway here, that's really intended to get delivery trucks out of the circulation patterns of the primary part of the site. And that that driveway is really utilitarian. It's not intended for customer vehicle traffic. One, because we don't want customer vehicle traffic interacting with kind of the nerve center of the property and the loading. Eliminating this and making it one-way drive means anybody who wants to go out to the Fells is going to go along and introduce there. So that's not something we want to introduce or consider at this point.

[Andre Leroux]: Other comments by board members or questions? Hearing none, I'd like to reopen the public comment portion of the meeting. And Annie and Alicia, if you could help me call on members of the public, that'd be great. I see Jessica Wall.

[SPEAKER_24]: Hi. Good evening, everybody. And good evening, members of the board. My name is Jessica Wall. I'm an attorney at Anderson and Krieger in Boston. I represent SF Medford Investments and also a group of Wellington residents opposed to the project. I want to thank you for the opportunity to comment this evening and for your continued consideration of our comments on the project. My clients continue to be concerned about some of the traffic issues posed or traffic numbers posed by BJs. As you know, there's been some back and forth. dialogue about that in previous hearings. We continue to have concerns about the data that BJ's is relying on. They've gone out to one particular site to collect some data, which we think is under-representative and not counting enough sites within professional traffic analysis standards. So if the board would be receptive, our traffic consultant, Stephen Elman from Benesch, would be happy to explain very briefly his concerns with those pieces of traffic information. So our request is that there be further study from BJ's about data from other locations about traffic impacts. But if Mr. Chair, if you would allow, Steven can offer further information.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. Happy to recognize Mr. Ullman. We just got to get you unmuted.

[SPEAKER_00]: There you go. There you go. Good evening. My name is Steve Allman. I'm a professional traffic engineer with Alfred Burnition Company. Our office is in Glastonbury, Connecticut and Boston, Connecticut, the two local offices. I'm also a registered professional engineer in Massachusetts. As Jessica noted that when they redid their analysis and adjusted their trip generation, they used a single site for their analysis. The ITE trip generation manual discusses what you should do if you do not match existing land use codes. Now, there is no land use code for a wholesale club with gas station, or a wholesale club gas station all by itself. The reason I have concerns with this is that BJ sells gasoline off market rate at discounted prices. On August 20th, the oil express gasoline publication noted that BJ's gasoline sales increased by 4% in the previous quarter, where most gasoline stations lost 10, 15, 20%. The average price for the week of August 17 for the Commonwealth was $2.13 a gallon. And it's my understanding someone went to the Norwood site on Saturday the 15th and saw that BJ's was selling approximately $0.30 cheaper. According to the ITE generation manual, if there is no good fit for land use, data should be collected at a minimum of three sites, preferably five. BJ's has collected data from one site, and we don't see any reason why they couldn't do at least two more sites count in the area, not four. Stoneham is not really the same context as the Medford BJ's. Stoneham site is located on an isolated roadway far from the main thoroughfare at the end of a dead-end street, while Medford site, as you know, has driveways to two arterial roadways. Um, if they didn't want to do counts at actual BJ's, I got to imagine that since BJ's is a member club and they sell their own gas, they should be able to provide the board with, um, sales data for, for several gas stations to get a good feel for the trip generation rates. Um, that's really my concern is that they only studied one site. It's not really representative. They said that it justified their data, but. I have a hard time with that. So just for the board's consideration, and that's all I have.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Mr. Ullman. Are there other members of the public who wish to speak? Seeing none, I will now close the public participation portion of the hearing, and we'll move to deliberation by the board. One question that I have for the proponent is, the comments from the members, the folks who just spoke reminded me, I don't believe that there's going to be signage on Middlesex Avenue that has the gasoline pricing, is that correct? I don't recall seeing that in, in the design. I know there's like a big BJ sign, but I don't think there's going to be like large gasoline pricing signs. Am I right about that or incorrect?

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: We actually haven't finalized a final sign package, Mr. Chairman, in terms of the signage. But my understanding is that whatever signage would be put on the pylon would be within the square footage of that pylon as it exists today. I think they may seek to incorporate a reference to the gas, but we're not quite there yet. And I understand that that's a separate permitting process that we would need to go through as part of, you know, any signage that would be out there.

[Andre Leroux]: Right. I think my My recommendation would be to not have the pricing signage out on the street. I know that looking at places like Stop and Shop that have an internal gas station, you don't see the pricing signage out on the street. So keeping it internal to the site I think makes sense, especially in terms of not having traffic folks going in who aren't members and then can't be serviced and then cycling back unnecessarily out into the street. into Middlesex Ave. Board members, what is your sense in terms of deliberation? Any further questions or comments you want to make?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I wanted to go back to the traffic, especially since this is one of the main concerns that I had originally about three months ago when we first started with the first hearing for BJ's gas station. And we all established that Middlesex is a very auto-centric area, correct? And that the gas station will most definitely increase and add to the existing conditions. I actually myself had concluded that there was going to be more impact than what had been presented or demonstrated to us. However, in talking through that, one of the things that I noticed at the second hearing, and I thought we were all in agreement with this, although I do not want to negate the public's concern in which Ms. Wall is representing, is that the proponent had done so well in in mitigating a lot of the nuances that um not that it would balance it out but I we didn't discuss the traffic a little bit more only because there were so many other nuances that were going to be mitigated so I I don't know how much we need to go back into traffic at this point and now I'm a little concerned only because of all the other work that has been done. But again, I do not want to negate the public's concern in this. But at the same time, if we did go back and use a further study, I'm not sure what the board at this point could do with that information, what recommendations could be made outside of, Andre, what you have already recommended. Don't put the signage out there to attract more. I'm thinking aloud right now, but at the same time, letting you know my thoughts.

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: If I could speak to that through the chair to board member Furtado. Yes, Attorney Vaughn. We did actually, I say we, Van Assen associate Sean Kelly did submit to the board back in August a follow-up memorandum. regarding the traffic and responded to comments that were brought up by the board as well as the folks at Benesh relative to council. We feel that everything that's been submitted has been done pursuant to industry requirements standards. We did go out and look at another site and it gave us comfort that our numbers were appropriate. And we feel very confident that the traffic has been evaluated and assessed appropriately as it relates to this. But I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood we did submit a follow-up memo that I know was circulated to Todd Blake as well, relative to the traffic analysis. Yes. Thank you.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: And Ajay, in speaking to that, I guess would this be the proper time to have Mr. Blake speak to that submission from August, in which perhaps Ms. Wall is not aware of?

[Andre Leroux]: Well, if you'd like Engineer Blake to comment on that, we can invite him to do that.

[Todd Blake]: Mr. Blake. Sure. Thank you, Chairman. When I look at these sort of things, I'm trying to You know, explain the situation to the residents and the board from my perspective. I think both sides of the conversation have good points, and particularly Mr. Ullman's comments about empirical data versus IT data. And if you do empirical, three sites recommend it. As a private consultant, I've done that in the past myself. That is the better way to do it. But I usually try to cut to the chase with this sort of thing. I truly don't believe that you would get both sides ever to agree on an exact number. So I try to take that into account. And there's varying degrees, obviously, for the community. If 100 cars are added versus 1,000, that's a difference, or 500. So ultimately, both sides present their best estimates of projections and their points of view. And we try to mitigate it. where I try to suggest a mitigation package that might mitigate some of those concerns. And then the board obviously makes the decision. So there's definitely some gray area. I just, in terms of ever getting an agreement of a particular number, I don't necessarily see that happening. So I'm trying to just give you guys my perspective. And I think by, so if someone came up with a higher number, what you would do is maybe add more mitigation to help address that higher number. So the approach that we took was recommending mitigation from complete street standpoint that hopefully balances out the mode split to address it that way. Another approach could be to add capacity to allow for those additional cars. So there's no exact science here and it's really up to the board knowing all that information, exactly how much, you think is reasonable in which approach you want to go. I mean, we're tasked with reviewing things from a complete streets perspective, but I also get the traditional way of adding capacity and improving levels of service and things like that. So if that helps.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, thank you, Mr. Blake. Personally, I feel comfortable with the mitigation that we've accomplished here. My priority has really been around safety, and I think the investments that we're seeing here will improve the safety of that intersection.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I just wanted to say that I echo that. I'm all for the complete streets elements that are being done as opposed to addressing safety, as opposed to adding capacity. Because as a planner myself, and this is nothing against all the information done by IT, as well as the great work of traffic engineers. But to me, you widen a street to accommodate more traffic, guess what happens? More cars come. really good with the mitigation that we have already done, or that has been expressed by the proponent.

[Andre Leroux]: I just want to review the the letters that have been submitted by the city's department heads. So we have a letter from Timothy McGivern, the city engineer, in an updated letter to the board that was dated August 18th, 2020. We have Mr. Blake's updated comments that he mentioned a few things which we may or may not want to take action on. The fire chief's June 16th letter, the Brian Cairns Commissioner of Public Works letter from June 16th, and Paul Moki, the building commissioner, his letter from March 6th. So I just want to ask the proponent whether the items that were in those letters from city departments, have they, in your opinion, all been addressed or are you able to address them in the course of the project as possible conditions for moving forward?

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: Yes, if I could, Mr. Chairman, Attorney Mark Vaughn. We are familiar with those comment letters. I know that Annie was kind enough to send them all. We got them all individually, of course, before, but we saw them today. And I think that we have either modify the plan to address them, or I know that Austin has responded to some of the more technical engineering comments and how the plan can address those. But Austin, please jump in if you feel like anything needs to be expanded upon as it relates to that, particularly DPW or engineering.

[Austin Turner]: No, I think as we've mentioned before, we're comfortable with the comments that the engineering department had provided with respect to some of the onsite improvements. We've addressed those comments. There are some that were construction related when the project transitions out of the entitlement phase into construction, and we're comfortable accommodating those requests as well. They're not unusual or different from most other projects, so we're quite comfortable there.

[Andre Leroux]: All right, thank you. So as we approach a vote, the conditions that would be... Um, part of the vote would be the what's included in the letters. I think there are a few loose ends. We as a board just need to, uh, finalize particularly the things that engineer Blake raised this evening. I think the pedestrian signage so that folks don't walk in the automobile entrance is, uh, it should be an easy one that we would want to include. Uh, I think we've heard that there's some, there may be some desire on the part of neighborhood residents to improve access from Woodruff Ave, but we are not sure. So I would say that we would leave that up to the city to pursue with the neighbors and BJs in the future and would not make that a condition. And I think we've also heard just the difficulty of creating a good pedestrian access from the rear of the loading area of the site, which I would also be willing to not include as a condition at this time. I don't wanna necessarily encourage people to use that entrance. Board members, what are your thoughts about those matters or others?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: The more I think about it, I would definitely ask that at minimum, the edge, I forgot the name of the street now.

[Austin Turner]: Woodruff?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Woodruff, yeah. Be addressed. I don't know exactly how to put that in the wording here, Andre, but You know, I think one of the big themes that we've seen that has sort of come forward in this review of this project is that I think everybody's asking for BJs to be a better neighbor. And, you know, it's hard for me to get behind this when there's something so glaring. I know we're dealing with real data and things on a lot of this, but the fact is we're adding a gas station, which is something that in a residential neighborhood could easily be seen as detrimental. And I think they need to do everything they can to counter that. And I think they have a great opportunity to do that in that woodruff edge, which I didn't realize was so degraded.

[Andre Leroux]: Well, I think there's a number of questions that have been raised around that discussion that we wouldn't be able to resolve tonight, or maybe not even in the near future. So plus, I would be more inclined to ask the city to follow up. And Engineer Blake, how would you feel about having a follow-up meeting with BJs and neighborhood residents

[Alicia Hunt]: I would also like to add that that's a suggestion that we've heard like from Chris and from Todd, but I don't feel like we've heard from residents that they want an additional connection at all. And I agree that there are both sides to that.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I'm neutral on the connection, but I'm more interested in the edge.

[Alicia Hunt]: The greening of the edge. And so I think that there could be some work for us to clarify with BJ's exactly where the property line is. And if we find that the property line is such that there is vegetated or could be vegetated area along there that is city owned. We can ask DPW to get some attention over there. And if the property, if that's actually all of that from the pavement towards BJ's is their property, then the city shouldn't be doing it. And we would have to ask BJ's to keep it.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I'm all for that. And then the last piece is the fence. And I'm going to repeat my comment that that fence plastic slats in a fence is ugly, and I think they could do better.

[Todd Blake]: Mr. Chairman, if I may?

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, Engineer Blake.

[Todd Blake]: Yeah, three points. So the fence looks like a no-brainer because it's likely the fence is constructed exactly on the property line because otherwise the fence would be further out. And if it was further into the area that's kind of in the street right-of-way, then there may be an opportunity to do the walkway that we spoke of. landscaping either or. So the other thing is I don't have the public private street list in front of me, but it's 39% private streets in Medford, so I wouldn't necessarily wanna completely solidify what the city can and can't do there if it's one of the private streets. In terms of connections, that's why I had a big asterisk in my recommendations because some communities don't wanna be connected, so I don't wanna speak for them. But I think in one of the previous meetings, there were folks that may have spoke against the connection when Councilor Marks attended. Yeah, when we talked about the break in the fence further down. And then one last point in terms of if the connection isn't desirable, and if there's not much you could do internally to the pedestrian connection from the Fellsway side, and these outstanding traffic issues are still in some people's mind, you could consider additional things that improve pedestrian safety or awareness on the Fellsway side. For instance, there's two unsignalized crosswalks crossing Fellsway West, second and Myrtle, that could use enhanced signage like flashing signs or pedestrian button, RFB style. So, but those would be subject to DCR, just something to consider.

[Andre Leroux]: So Engineer Blake, I didn't totally understand what you were saying about the fence. What was your position on that?

[Todd Blake]: The fence, it seems like a low hanging fruit because it's on their property and it does, as the other members pointed out, that particular stretch does have, it's lacking screening. So it doesn't necessarily seem like you're tied to a chain link fence with slats. I mean, you could do one of these really nice stained wooden fences that a lot of residential areas have if you can't fit landscaping. So I don't know, there's other options, I think.

[Austin Turner]: Mr. Chair, if you don't mind, just as something for further consideration of the board, I mean, perhaps a condition of a presumptive approval would be that the applicant continue to work with the team at the community development department, as well as the engineering staff to see if there are additional opportunities to further enhance the screening between the property and Woodroof Avenue. And to the extent that you empower the team at the community development and engineering departments, it would be amenable to working with them.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. That seems reasonable to me.

[Alicia Hunt]: I have actually one other thing that I feel like I should bring up, and that is the new sidewalk that you're adding. I believe that Mr. Turner and others may be aware that there's some drainage. So the portion that's not actually part of this plan that's connecting all the way to the club, that there is some additional drainage treatment that's going to need to occur down there, where the parking lot currently drains straight into the wetland. You'll have to address that with MassDEP because of the whole, it won't go back to the CONCOMM because of the appeal and the superseding order of conditions. But you'll need to make sure that that sidewalk change and all that DEP is comfortable with that. and how you treat the water. Right now, the water runs straight out of the parking lot into the wetland. If you put sidewalks straight across it, you know, with your regular curb, the water's gonna pool up in your parking lot. It's gonna be a problem operationally for the club. So you'll need to look at that. And I know we looked at it on site so that this is not like stunning, but just to acknowledge that something will have to be dealt with down there.

[Austin Turner]: That's that's a good point. We shouldn't. Thank you for bringing that back up. So we are working with PJ says that comes together. He would point that out and identified as an operational concern. So we're gonna We're like as part of the sidewalk improvements on how to make sure the drainage is water slowing downhill, so to speak, and isn't, um isn't causing any issues in that regard.

[Alicia Hunt]: And I don't think that the board needs to address this. I just sort of wanted to say in a public venue that that'll need to go to MassDEP because of the open, normally it would go back to what the Conservation Commission will look at, but because if there's a superseding order of conditions there or there is one coming, sorry that my brain has just stopped to where that stands. They'll be the ones that need to to approve that.

[Todd Blake]: Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yes, Engineer Blake. So for the sidewalk, I'm not familiar. Is the runoff from the landscaped area or from the parking lot?

[Alicia Hunt]: Because it- This isn't by Middlesex. This is really in their parking lot, very close to the building. So much, it's outside of the gas station area all the way down near the- Delivery driveway? Yeah, it's near that.

[Austin Turner]: It's an operational maintenance item related to the stormwater that we're going to be improving as part of the sidewalk construction.

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

[Todd Blake]: Yeah, that's that's what my point was going to be in the in the effort to reconstruct or add that sidewalk. There are opportunities with the type of curb chosen, whether it's Petunias Berm, Granite Curb, and also with catch basins and other drainage elements, you could improve that area, at least within the extent of where the sidewalks being at.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. I think we've heard there are conditions from the letters of the department heads that are amenable to the proponent. There is the pedestrian signage. There is the follow-up with the proponent and the Office of Community Development and the city engineer's office about the screening issue. And I think That is it in terms of outstanding conditions. If I'm missing anything, any.

[David Blumberg]: Andre, Dave. Hi, David. I'm not sure on your conditions what the final word was on closing the gap on the bicycle, the Sheros and so forth from 5th to 9th.

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, thank you for reminding me of that. Yeah, that's a good question. I think we've heard that they're open to exploring it, but I think we should include it in a list of conditions subject to the approval of the state on that. Attorney Vaughn, would you have any problem with that?

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: I don't, but I'm not the one writing the checks, I guess, for everything. So I'll speak, but if Patrick wants to jump in and correct me on it. But obviously, I think if you look at everything that we're doing mitigation-wise off-site, there's a significant number here in terms of trying to address the totality of the items that have been raised by board members. So I know that would be some additional funding, but Patrick or Sean, I don't know if you're comfortable with that, but please jump in.

[Austin Turner]: I think Patrick has to be unmuted, Annie, if you don't mind. Thank you.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you very much, Annie. I appreciate it. Mr. Chair, we're happy to commit to the sharrows from 5th to 9th. We will agree to that as a condition.

[Andre Leroux]: I think we were told it was the gap also from the 1st to 5th. Is that correct?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: 5th to 9th.

[Andre Leroux]: Oh, it's 5th to 9th as the gap. Sorry, I was confused on which was the gap there. Right.

[Todd Blake]: Yeah, there are bike lanes to 1st and then sharrows from 1st to 5th. So 5th to 9th was the gap.

[Andre Leroux]: Got it. OK. Thank you. Well, and thank you, Mr. Netriba, then. appreciate that. Great. Is there and then the other thing that I brought up was just in terms of conditions was not to not to have the the gas pricing numbers as part of the signage on Middlesex Avenue, but have it keep that interior to the site. Is that something that you'd be willing to consider?

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: I would respectfully ask if the board would consider not making that a condition. I think we heard your desire, but I don't think that we want to hamstring the operation. I just don't know enough as to what they would, you know, typically want to see or, you know, signs evolve over time to, you know, you may have signage there initially that, you know, they may want to change, but Patrick, I don't think that we're looking to increase the size of the signage. That pylon that's out there would be within the same square footage. But I guess that's what my preference would be, Mr. Chairman, if it would not be a condition. But obviously, we have to go through a separate approval process for any signage.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I echo what Mark said, Mr. Chair. We'd like to handle that outside of this, via the proper mechanisms that the city has set forth. But as an aside, we just seek parity in terms of our competition and the folks that we do business against. For example, our neighbor across the street has an LED sign. And for us not to have that as well, could you approve our application? Not to be presumptive, of course, sir. It would seem fair that we would have that ability to do so as well. And we have to advertise our pricing to the public. So that's a state law, and I couldn't quote you chapter and verse on that, but we certainly wanna preserve that ability in the future, sir. So I'll leave it at that.

[Andre Leroux]: Right, well, I'm just offering it as some feedback, understanding that that's a separate issue that's outside our scope is approval of the signage will be with the city council.

[Adam Hurtubise]: And we understand that.

[Andre Leroux]: All right. Is there a motion on the floor from the board? I can help you make the motion. It's got to come from the board members.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Can you reiterate the conditions and or the recommendations in which the board is deliberating on? Andre?

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, so the conditions, should you want to move to approve the project with conditions, the conditions would include all the items that are in the letters from the city department heads, and there's a whole kind of list of those letters, which the proponent has agreed to. And then there would be the pedestrian signage and the follow up with the office of community development about the, further improvements to screening and access along Woodruff Avenue. And the sharrows, of course, to fill in the gap with the bike lanes.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: So the proponent has agreed to the sharrows, but I was a little confused on the wayfinding. Are we making that a condition for approval? Is that the wayfinding should be?

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, I think we're just talking about a small signage that would tell people where the sidewalk is to access the site.

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: Andre, are you looking for a motion on the project with those conditions? Yes. I'll make a motion that we move ahead with the project with the conditions listed. The conditions being all the conditions from the department heads as listed in their letters, the pedestrian signage, and the follow-up with the Office of Community Development regarding Woodroof Avenue.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, and just let me get Annie and Alicia here to make sure I'm doing this correctly, since we are the Special Permit Granting Authority, as well as the Site Plan Review, maybe we have to take two separate votes, is that correct?

[Nicole Morell]: It's one vote Special Permit for Site Plan Review.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: If you can just add that to the motion, approve the Special Permit for Site Plan Review.

[afyYb4sUUnA_SPEAKER_13]: Mr. Chairman, just a point of information before you. So I just want to be on the off-site items that we're talking about on Middlesex Avenue. I think you had indicated this before, but obviously that would all be subject to final mass DOT approval. So I mean, we're comfortable constructing and paying for it, but it's subject to DOT approval for those items. Absolutely. Yes.

[Todd Blake]: So Mr. Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt. important note. So it's in regard it's in regard to saying conditions from the department has letters. So in the letter from engineering there's several civil engineering items as well as the traffic and in that traffic original letter it talks about the walkway from Middlesex to the building and also the Fellsway West to the building. So just to avoid some confusion in the confusion in the future about what the actual conditions are, because we've had issues with that in the past. It's actually, so in this case, it would be the letter, but excluding some of them because they did not necessarily add that walkway from Fells Way West. That's one example. So if you just include the letter as a whole, it will be contradictory to that.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. So let's try it.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right. We could say the department had letters and the engineering letter as discussed during this meeting. And Ali has been taking notes, and Ali and Annie can review the video and making sure that the ones that they verbally agreed to are the ones that are in it. It's also very easy for a project this complicated. I think we're happy to send, we always send the letter, the approval with the conditions to Andre for review. We could send them to the applicant as well and make sure that they heard the same thing we heard. And if there's any disagreement, we have a video so we can review the video.

[Todd Blake]: That would be very helpful, Lisa. Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. So the motion on the floor would be whether or not to approve the special permit with site plan review for the application for the gas station at the BJ site with conditions, including the letters from city department heads, and we will enumerate those with excluding the pedestrian access from the Fellsway West, and including additionally pedestrian signage to the site. The bike lanes from 5th to 9th and the, I feel like I'm missing one here, and the follow-up meeting with the Office of Community Development and the proponent and the city engineer regarding any further improvements along the Woodruff line. Does that sound like we've captured everything? Great. Thank you. Katie, would you like to so move?

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: Should I repeat that?

[Andre Leroux]: No. OK.

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: I so move.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. Is there a second?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I second.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Jackie. All right. We'll just go to a roll call vote. Katie McHugh.

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Deanna Peabody. David Lumberg. Aye. Klaas Andreassen. Abstain. I'm sorry, that was same? Abstain. Abstain. Christy Dowd. Oh, she's off, that's right. And Jackie Furtado.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: And I am an aye as well. So I believe that is one, two, three, four. Five in favor, one abstention, one recused. I believe the motion passes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Andre Leroux]: All right, thank you, Mr. Netriba and your team. Appreciate all of the discussion and work and mitigation that went into this.

[Unidentified]: Thank you all very much. Have a good evening. Thank you, you too.

[Andre Leroux]: The next item on the agenda is a public hearing for a brewery ordinance. The community development board will be making a recommendation to the city council. Let me read the public hearing notice. Public hearing notice amendment to chapter 94, zoning revised ordinances of the city of Medford, Massachusetts Community Development Board, September 16th, 2020. Medford Community Development Board shall conduct a public hearing on Wednesday, September 16th, 2020 after 6 p.m. via Zoom remote video conferencing relative to a petition referred by the Medford City Council in council paper 20-481. Chapter 94 zoning section 94-2 definitions is proposed to be amended to add definitions for quote brewery quote tasting room slash tap room quote barrel and quote brew pub. Section 94-148 table of use regulations is proposed to be amended by adding use 35b brewery, which would be allowable by right in C2, I, O, and MUZ districts. In the C1 district, breweries operating with seven barrels or under would be allowable by right, and breweries operating with more than seven barrels would be allowable by Special Permit Board of Appeals. The full text of the amendment may be viewed in the office of the city clerk City Hall room 103 or on the city's website at www.medfordma.org slash departments slash community hyphen development by clicking on current CD board filings.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Andre, it just came to my attention, I just wanted to make a full disclosure on something, just to make sure that it's not a problem later. My eldest daughter just mentioned, she says, hey mom, I hear that you're going to be listening to a case from my 11th grade teacher, Max Hennig, and he was her 11th grade teacher. Circa 2010, I have no special interest or financial gain in this project, but I did want to disclose that apparently this is a discussion that amongst their class right now. So, but I wanted to put that on record.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, thank you. Yes, go ahead Andre.

[David Blumberg]: I want you to finish with Jackie first. I'm sorry.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay. I don't believe that rises to the level of a conflict, so I think you're good. Go ahead, Mr. Bloomberg.

[David Blumberg]: So I wanted to share with the group that when I saw the materials on Friday and then reviewed them on Sunday, it came to my attention that this draft ordinance is somehow connected with a company in which my family has financial interest, although de minimis, and one that was obtained well in advance of my participation with the board. I feel like for that reason that I should recuse myself from the discussions tonight into liberation. So if that's acceptable to you, Andre and to the board, I'll go ahead and mute myself and drop off the screen for this item.

[Andre Leroux]: Great. Thank you, member Bloomberg. Appreciate that.

[David Blumberg]: Sorry about that.

[Andre Leroux]: It's okay. And I appreciate everybody's have good habits on this. And let me just finish on the public hearing notice that folks who want to participate can, let me just say this one more time. So to participate during the hearing, questions and comments may be emailed to OCD at Medford-MA.gov or submitted via phone to 781-393-2480. That's 781-393-2480. All votes will be roll call votes. And please, if you speak, please introduce yourself. And members of the public will need your name and address for the record.

[Alicia Hunt]: Andre, I feel like we should just also mention, it makes it sound like if people are connected to this, that they have to send an email or call a phone number. If you are in the Zoom call, you may use the raise hand function in the members list, and we can call on you during the public hearing portion of the meeting. You don't have to call the phone number if you're on the Zoom call.

[Andre Leroux]: Right. Thank you. Very good clarification, Alicia. All right, so let me invite Paul Moki, the city of Medford's building commissioner, to speak to the draft ordinance. Is that, or do we have, Annie, is that who we should have go first, or is there a proponent that should go before that? All right, Paul, thank you, Mr. Moki.

[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Okay, good evening, everybody, thank you. So on this, looking at this proposed draft, I noticed in the, would you like me to just comment on it, Andre, or do you want to go over some of the- Well, if you don't mind explaining it so that members of the public who might not be familiar with it can understand what it is exactly, what it does. Okay, so right now, in the zoning ordinance, there's no specific definition that allows any type of brewery use. What we did when we, going back to last year, and we started drafting this proposed ordinance, we looked at what some of the other cities and towns were doing and how they were classifying them. And it seemed to be one of three things. One, either they had a line item in the zoning table that did allow a specific brewery use, or they listed it as light manufacturing use. We don't have any. light manufacturing use defined in our zoning ordinance. We do have general manufacturing, but that's really what you consider as, you know, factory, typical factory use. There's nothing that would allow brewery. And the other thing that they were doing was they, some cities and towns were classifying as a restaurant. And of course, it needs the state license, local pouring license and things like that, no matter what classification is going on. So we tried to, you know, combine what we thought kind of like the best of both worlds for breweries. So right now the definition is defined in the proposal. Brewery is defined as an establishment primarily engaged in production and distribution of beer, ale, or other malt beverages, which may include accessory uses such as tours of the brewery, retail sales, and on-site consumption of the products. For example, a tap room or a tasting room. And as we just mentioned, the facilities should hold the appropriate Commonwealth of Massachusetts brewery license, as well as any required pouring license approved by a local licensing authority. And also, this facility may host marketing events, special events, and brewery tours. And the facility may only sell beverages produced by and commercial goods branded by the brewery. So on this proposed ordinance, In the table of use regulations, there are several districts which would allow this. So the first district that's classified as a commercial one, and it's abbreviated in our zoning as a C1 designation. And the proposal would be yes to allow breweries operating with seven barrels or under. And in the C1 district, it would be SPA, which is a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. for breweries operating with more than seven barrels. And for purposes of this ordinance, a barrel is defined as a container, which is usually cylindrical in nature, used for the storage of a malt beverage with a capacity of not more than 31 gallons. And there's several other districts, four other districts that would be allowed by right, commercial two district, industrial district, an office district, and a mixed-use zoning district. All four of those districts, the brewery would be allowed by right. So the only one that would require any type of special permit is a commercial wine district. And that would only be for if they were operating with more than seven barrels. Also, on this paper, which I think we may need to kick this around a little bit tonight, whatever point you I'd like to address this, Mr. Chairman. There's a proposal by Councilor Morell to amend this. And the amendment she proposed would be to add a definition of a brewpub. And a brewpub would be an establishment that provides full on-site meal services and is also licensed to brew beer on the premises. In addition to that, a brewpub shall sell 25% or more of its beer on site. A brew pub shall be categorized as a restaurant and not a brewery for the purposes of zoning. Just checking the last page here, see if there's anything that's applicable for what we're gonna discuss tonight. And that's really the context of the proposed amendment that's before the board tonight.

[Andre Leroux]: All right, thank you, Mr. Moki. Let's open it up to members of the public. I'd like to open the public portion of the hearing. We did receive some written comments, a letter which I'll read right now from John Costas from the Metro Chamber of Commerce. dated September 15, 2020 to Andre Leroux, Chairman and the members of the Medford Community Development Board from Medford Chamber of Commerce. Regarding item four on the CDB's September 16, 2020 meeting agenda entitled Public Hearing Proposed Amendment to Chapter 94 Zoning to add definitions and use regulations relative to breweries. The Medford Chamber of Commerce fully supports the City Council's proposed Ordinance Amendment of Article 1, Chapter 94 of the Revised Ordinances of the City of Medford as voted and passed by the City Council on July 28, 2020. It is the consensus of the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors that allowing breweries slash taprooms in C1 and C2 districts will encourage economic development and revitalization and that the proposed requirement that a special permit be required for breweries with greater than seven barrel production will also protect the neighborhoods from close proximity to large scale brewing operations. It is also the consensus of the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors that the council's proposed classification of brew pubs as restaurants will also encourage economic development and revitalization without negative impact on residential districts. Therefore, the Medford Chamber of Commerce encourages the Community Development Board to approve the proposed ordinance amendment as voted by the Medford City Council. Please note that the Chamber of Commerce would not be in support of excluding C-1 districts or requiring more restrictive special permit requirements. Sincerely, Medford Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. At this time,

[Alicia Hunt]: And can I just make a technical clarification that this board is making a recommendation to the city council. It is not approving or denying anything, right? There's no authority. It's just a recommendation.

[Andre Leroux]: That's correct. When we receive papers from the city council like this, it is always for us to hold a public hearing and or make a recommendation back to them, which they may or may not follow. Thank you. I see some members of the public with their hands raised. Annie, can you help me out? We have Nick Bolitho and John Costas.

[Alicia Hunt]: We unmuted Nick. Nick, you can go ahead.

[Nick Bolitho]: Hello. My apologies for how I should address everyone. assuming you can hear me, although luckily if you don't seem to be able to see me either, my video button won't work. Yeah, so Medford Bronco, we've been obviously trying to push basically the world of the brewing for quite a few years now. We're very enticed, very into the community. The overall plan for us to build our own brewing establishment, which has grown, we have a huge amount of following in the local community. And as was mentioned, as David even mentioned how and others have in the past, where there are connections, very local connections, who've invested within this company as well. I'm hoping it's because we are all local people, really trying to make things happen overall. And, you know, it's something great for the community that is very popular at this stage. But Medford Brewing aside, and ignoring my slight bias because I'm Max Heinig and I own the company, What we're really positioning and proposing is to say that Even if we do or we do not open a brew pub, the reality is it's the same floor space as a restaurant would have been. This is not really a case of, as people mentioned, building gigantic sort of systems where sort of like the Harpoon Brewery or a Sam Adams Brewery. This is much more small, local, community, boutique style, very much like a bakery. where a Goldilocks bakery or any of the other bakeries in Medford where we basically, you take a small amount of ingredients, you mix them up and they make bagels somewhere or bread. We do a similar fermentation type of process and we make a liquid called beer. And as I said, the reality is Medford Brewing probably won't be opening a, brewpub restaurant situation, but we do strongly believe that for the city of Medford and the growth of Medford and for what's really happening out there, it really makes no sense for it to be vetoed for somewhere that is providing food and beer created on site. If you go to many restaurants now, things like Limoncello. Well, guess what? That is very similar in many ways. You actually look down on the science of what's actually happening and restaurants are doing that now. You look at other things where people are blending existing ingredients and doing other things to then create a secondary product. That's basically what we are doing, what happens with breweries. So said, please, all we're looking for is to say, look, this is something that a lot of people want. It's great for the development of Medford. It's great for the diversity of what we're doing as a city. I've been here for 15 years. My business partner has been a teacher in Medford, I think for 20 years or so. We're very, very connected. in many ways and really want to work with the city and make things happen. And we just see this as less of an entry restriction for something that will cause absolutely no difference in disruption that a restaurant would have caused. In fact, less, because a restaurant will be ordering beer to be delivered by these gigantic trucks. I know from my distribution side of things in my business that these are big old trucks who will block a street when any restaurants get their beer delivered. All of a sudden, the street's blocked off because of this gigantic truck. We won't be using these trucks or these things for the seven barrel system that we discussed. We won't be using them because the volume of product that is made is nowhere near that volume. So please, again, all we're asking is for you to sort of take a look and take a think of the reality of what we're trying to push. And as Sue said, we probably won't be able to do the restaurant group of ourselves, but I think it's gonna really benefit the city without disruption that is already created from, as I said, either bakeries, which are fully allowed, from any other stores, even a supermarket that gets deliveries. So it would be absolutely no change whatsoever to that.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Mr. Bolithico. Can you just state again your name and address for the record? I may have missed it at the beginning.

[Nick Bolitho]: No, yes. And it is Bolithico. I'm sorry. That's a pet peeve. To have a weird name. I've always got to correct it. I'm foreign. I'm sorry. So Nick Bolithico of 20 Dutton Circle in Medford. Thank you. Thank you for listening.

[Andre Leroux]: Annie, can you unmute John Costas? And John, sorry, I read your letter before I saw that you were on, so.

[John Costas]: Hi. Hi, well, thank you for reading the letter. That was fine. You read it better than I would have read it. Essential, I'm saying, is that we understand that it was a proposed from the council, and then what your commission does is recommend it back to the city council. There's not much more I can say that the letter hasn't said. So thank you for considering and reading the letter into the minutes. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Costas.

[Andre Leroux]: Other members of the public would like to speak? All right, seeing none, I will close the public comment portion of the hearing and open it to deliberation among the board members. Are there any board members who would like to comment on this?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Can you remind the board why it was recommended back to us? I just feel like we've been going back and forth with recommending it back to city council.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, this is actually a new paper from the city council. So Annie, maybe you could clarify the history of this with this board.

[Nicole Morell]: Sure. Yes, this was before the board last year. The Chapter 40A identifies timeframes that the council has to act on a proposed amendment after it's submitted to them. And so the board acted, and then there were, I think, some Committee of the Whole meetings. The statutory timeframes weren't met. So this is starting anew with a a new proposal that changed slightly from the last one and is back before the board because it's a new proposed amendment.

[Andre Leroux]: Right. This has the BRUPA definition, I believe, is new, was amended.

[Nicole Morell]: The BRUPA definition was a proposed amendment from the council in the meeting where they referred it to you. The changes before that were a distinction in the C1 district about the number of barrels over seven barrels requiring a special permit, but under seven barrels being allowed. In the version you reviewed last year, it was all special permit CBA in the C1 district. And then also barrel definition was added as an associated matter with that.

[Andre Leroux]: Right. And the one thing that we did add when we discussed this last year and made a recommendation to the Council on was that we, I think, wanted to make it easier for breweries to serve food if they wanted to of some kind. So we had some language there. And I don't know, Andy, if you want to read that language. Do you have that, Andy?

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: Sure. I'll pull that up. Andre, can I ask a clarifying question while Annie's looking for that? Yes. When was this originally discussed by the board? You said last year.

[Nicole Morell]: Yes. It was the end of, I think it was July 31, 2019. OK.

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: And so for those of us who were not members of the board then, can you just also clarify, Annie, what the official recommendation of the board was then?

[Nicole Morell]: Yes. So I can read that letter. So this is to John Falco from Chairman John DePriest, August 7th, 2019. Council paper 19-481 proposed amendment to chapter 94 zoning to add two new definitions and an additional line brewery to the principal uses set forth in the table of use regulations. Following a public hearing conducted on July 31st, 2019, the Community Development Board voted to recommend that the Medford City Council adopt the proposed amendment with the following change. Add the following after the last line in the definition for brewery. Quote, the facility may also provide food that is produced on site, produced off site, or produced with food trucks that are located on site. Thank you for consideration of this recommendation. John DePriest.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: And what would be different? What is a different recommendation? I was there, and I'm still with the same recommendation, but I want to make sure that I have the changes clear. You said there was a slight change, and I'm not sure that I'm

[Andre Leroux]: So the difference is that that first, sort of last year's didn't distinguish between, it basically said special permit or brewery in any of the zones. What this new one says is that- In the C1 zone, just to clarify. And was it just the C1 zone? Yeah, just C1. Well, I know that's for this one, but the last one was as well?

[Nicole Morell]: So yes, the last one, it was special permit for all proposed breweries in the C1. Now it's distinguished by size.

[Andre Leroux]: By the seven barrels, right. So if it's smaller than seven barrels, it's as of right. And the council added this brew pub definition that would basically allow a restaurant that brews their beer on site to kind of have their own definition and be explicitly approved.

[Alicia Hunt]: And to be clear, that's not a definition made up. It's a legal statute that for some reason had never been discussed in Medford prior to this past winter. But it's not a definition made up by our city council or legal council, but rather it's a state definition. that they have an option whether or not to include it.

[Andre Leroux]: Board members, your thoughts supportive of allowing breweries and brew pubs with these definitions? And would you like to, and if so, would you, what do you think about including the, allowing them to offer food produced on the site? If you visited the places in Everett, for example, you'll notice that they, I don't believe they're allowed to do it on site. So they have food trucks like offsite. We just thought it might make it easier to have more flexibility for any establishments here in the city.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: If I'm not mistaken, one of the things that arose previously was that food trucks in Medford are a whole other problem. So I'm just, I want to make sure that, For one, I want to recommend this project just as I have before, but I want it to be in an easiest way so that the city council can pretty much rule on their end and make it as easy as possible for them to adopt our recommendations or not and move on. But I just want to make sure that I understand all the language here and how it can definitely be a hindrance to the proponent. Sorry, I'm thinking aloud again.

[Alicia Hunt]: Perhaps it would be helpful if the one business that has been here to speak in favor of it, are they in favor of this language as it stands, or are they interested in seeing changes that this board should consider? That be fair? And I see Nick raising his hand again.

[Nick Bolitho]: I don't, yeah, I'm sorry, I always raise my hand for one of those people. So yeah, so the proposition as it's laid out right now, we believe, as I said, well, again, the bottom line is a straightforward brewery should realistically just focus on brewing beer. So take a harpoon brewery, a big old brewery in the seaport. Their main focus, obviously, is that. What we're talking about is, obviously, yes, allowing a brewery to make food, which is great, to have that option for them. But the main amendment to what was put through was actually the recognition of a brew pub. And with the brew pub, unless I'm missing something, with the brew pub, it's basically to say that they serve food It's a restaurant that also creates basically that makes food that is sold on site as well. And so that's kind of where perhaps the alteration in what was put forward from the last time you received things. As we know, the city of Medford is against food trucks, unless it's in their city parking lot, then it's okay, but nowhere else. But again, I mean, the reality is Having all these options open at this stage is a much better place to be, I think, quite honestly, because food trucks should be a part of Medford. Medford is growing like there's no tomorrow, and having these restrictions that are sort of set forth for small businesses, I think, It's detrimental to our city. I mean, we're growing as a city, we've got X number of food trucks, people are based in Medford, and they can't operate in their own city. But that's me going off on yet another tangent. So, we are very, very keen, basically, as it was put forward, we are more than happy with the new proposal was put forward through the city council that has been passed over to you.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Mr. Bollight, though. So it's pretty straightforward. Where does the board stand on this?

[Jenny Graham]: Hi, this is Christy. I don't see really any issues with it. I mean, if it's similar to a restaurant, I don't really see any problems with it. I think it's an attractive option to have in these districts. If someone says that there's some other different environmental impacts that require specific regulations around them, I haven't heard that. I don't know if they really differ that much from restaurants. So I would assume that similar regulations will apply under the zoning code. But I don't know. I'm in support.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. Deanna Peabody?

[Deanna Peabody]: Yes, I'm also in support. I think we should go with our last recommendation.

[Andre Leroux]: And you'd like to include that language as well with it. Again, it's just a recommendation. The city council can take it or leave it.

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: Exactly, yes.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, and Katie McHugh, I see you on mute as well.

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: Same, exactly, same.

[Andre Leroux]: Thanks. Class Andreessen. I'm very much in support of this. Thank you. Is there a motion on the floor?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Andre, we're not suggesting any conditions.

[Andre Leroux]: The only one that's been mentioned has been to pass along the language that we sent them the city council last time, which would allow the breweries to offer some food as well on site.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I can make that recommendation.

[Andre Leroux]: Would you like to include it in a motion?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I make a motion.

[Andre Leroux]: to- I guess we'd be recommending to the city council.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Recommend to the city council that they approve this and add the recommendations from our last approval.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. So there's a motion on the floor to recommend approval of the proposed ordinance from the city council with the suggested language that we had given them last time about offering food. Is there a second?

[Nicole Morell]: And just to clarify quickly, Andre, is this, this is the amendment as The proposed amendment as amended by the city council to include that.

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, the full paper, which includes the definition. Thank you.

[Deanna Peabody]: Second. This is Deanna.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Deanna. Move to a roll call vote. Katie McHugh.

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Deanna Peabody.

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Klaas Andresen. Christy Dowd.

[Jenny Graham]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Jackie Furtado.

[Jenny Graham]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: and I'm an aye as well. So one, two, three, four, five, six in favor, one recused. We recommend favorably this, that motion to the city council. All right, thank you everybody. And good luck, like to see a brewery here in Medford.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Yeah, so I can stop going all the way to Cambridge.

[Andre Leroux]: The next item on the agenda is the site plan review recommendation to the Board of Appeals for 30 to 36 Salem Street. This is a project we heard presented for the first time last month, and we gave the proponents some feedback. They have come back with some revised materials. It's not a public hearing. But we, it is a site, our site plan review recommendation that would go to the ZBA. Let me invite Kathleen Desmond, who is the attorney for the project, to, representing the applicant, to review the new revised material for us.

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm on the board now. Lost my Wi-Fi.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay. I think everybody else is good though, right?

[Nicole Morell]: I believe what she was going to say is that the city engineer has indicated that he can log back into the meeting if needed, if we have questions.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay. I do not know whether we do need him at this time.

[Alicia Hunt]: Just letting you know, if the board decides that he is needed, sorry, my Wi-Fi started to flake. I can text him and he'll jump back on.

[Unidentified]: Okay. Thank you, Alicia.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Good evening, Chairman LaRue, board members, Kathleen Desmond of Conway Law. I'm here tonight with the petitioner, Paul Connolly, the manager of 34 Salem Street LLC, the design team architect, Eric Zachrisson of Context in Boston, and the project engineers, Anthony Esposito of Carver, Richard Mead of Medford Engineering, and traffic engineer, Jeffrey Dirk of Van Ness & Associates. Briefly, by way of background, and I know we were here last month, the project site 3036 Salem Street is located within Medford Square in a C1 zoning district. The existing structure that will be the subject of the renovation sits on a 13,910 square foot parcel. The building itself was built in approximately 1915 and originally housed a theater as well as a meeting and commercial space. As indicated at the last meeting, the Connelly family purchased the building in 1986, and they have been members of the community for well over 30 years. When the building was originally acquired, it was their intent to revive the theater and eventually have live entertainment. Unfortunately, a portion of the rear of the building where the existing parking lot now sits was in substantial disrepair and had to be removed. So over the years, the building has been somewhat underutilized. The first and second floors have housed commercial and retail tenants. The third floor has not been utilized due to demand for third floor space and also the improvements that would be necessary to make that attractive to a third floor tenant. Connelly's proposal is to renovate the building in a modest scope in keeping with the character of the square. It provides for a one-story addition, converting the property from a three-story commercial building to a four-story mixed building to include one floor of commercial space and three floors of residential space. The footprint of the building is also being marginally extended to provide primarily for a trash room, bicycle area, and residential lobby. The structure, as proposed, preserves many of the historical features of the building and will recreate the signage that was originally on the, marquee signage that was originally on the 1950 building. In addition to providing greater detail as to the building, we've also attempted to incorporate those items the city engineer had requested as part of his comments on site plan review. And with that, I will turn it over to Eric Zachrisson of Context to run through the plans for you, the revised plans.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Attorney Desmond.

[SPEAKER_09]: Unmute me?

[Andre Leroux]: Yes. Now you're unmuted.

[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you very much. Can I share my screen?

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, please.

[SPEAKER_09]: Excellent. Everybody can see this? Yes. There we go. Thank you, everybody, for your time this evening. We wanted to walk you through the project, introduce you to kind of what we plan to do with this, formerly known as the Medford Theater or the Dyer Building, built in 1915. We'll come back to this in a second, but I want to kind of walk you through from a broad planning level what we intend to do with the project. Across the top of the sheet here, the screen here, you would see Salem Street. The building is the five-sided light gray shape here. You can see my mouse all right? Yes, we can. Okay. There is an existing driveway, which narrows down to about nine feet right here, and through that driveway, There are an existing approximately 22 spaces back here, although they vary in width and they've kind of meshed together in the current condition. But the parking is entered through the side. The building is entered currently through three retail entrances directly off of Salem Street as it stands today. The proposal for the project would be to consolidate the retail entrances to the center here and to add a portion approximately 20 feet deep at the rear of the property where we would add a residential lobby and we would add a few of the storage and bikes parking areas and a little bit of mechanical space that would be desirable to have on the first floor and more accessible. So a resident or guest would drive down this narrowish driveway on the right side of the building and park in what will now be 18 parking spaces, one of which will be ADA accessible, and the other 17 will be at city standard dimensions. There's also a pedestrian walk, which would come along the other side of the building. This is property that is owned currently, and it is currently a sidewalk, but we would spruce it up to make it more of a patio feel, try and make it welcoming to bring people along this side of the property and into the back of the building where the residential lobby would have its entrance. There is a portion of the property here that we want to open up as kind of a little bit of a plaza space, a little bit of greenery and a hardscape. There are a handful of life safety and safety issues that kind of I think are have been critically discussed and I want to kind of point out. For example, there is an existing eight foot 10 inch high retaining wall in the rear here. We intend to keep that as it is. We intend to use some of these green spaces here for kind of snow storage and melting during the regular processes. We're proposing a fire hydrant back here, which has been a request that would help in safety of the upgraded building. There was a lot of concern about pedestrians coming across here, and we completely appreciate that. would hope that both switching this to a residential building would reduce the kind of inflow and outflow of vehicles, but also we'd look to add signage which would help people recognize when cars are coming down the driveway and help them to not be kind of surprised by it because this is about nine feet wide. There, on the left here, we broke down the C1 zoning requirements, what the existing building is and what is proposed to be changed to. You see that there, the parking, the lot depth, the max and minimum coverage, Most of these, they're being shifted by this addition here. We also broke down the commercial spaces, and we can get into those in depth, but the commercial spaces on the first floor are going to remain largely the same, and we'll see that in the next slide. This is kind of stepping back to note that this section of Salem Street is largely retail and office space, but there are some other residential buildings, and our building is here in the center. These are to highlight the existing condition. As you can see, the building still retains much of its original detail. The marquee has been removed. Some of these storefronts have been infilled a little bit, And then there was an addition here at the third level, which enclosed an area that is kind of an outdoor space that originally was kind of parapet space, but has been enclosed by this black wood frame construction that we would be removing as part of our kind of revitalization of the project. Going back to the site plan for just a moment, We want to talk about kind of our opportunity to introduce some green space back here. A lot of our neighbors have a little bit of green space on the sides, and we want to respect that. And for our residents, try and dress up this rear parking area as much as possible. So we're showing trees and landscaping that is fairly indigenous, very typical for the area. and would be more resilient and leaving some green space. Here it would again be double as a space for snow to be kept and melted during the winter when that's necessary. One of the critical issues is definitely going to be how do we light this space to make it feel safe and how do we keep it both from interrupting the neighbors and making it inviting. So down this pedestrian path, we're envisioning a strategy where we would use some lighting off of the building to make it feel warm and welcoming, and to some degree warm and welcoming on the driveway side, but there also, you know, safety becomes a little bit of a different issue. We don't want to cast too much light on our neighbors, but we do want to kind of make sure that we make both of these sides feel very warm and inviting. And if we use the proper amount of downlighting, we feel like we can really minimize what gets thrown onto the neighboring properties, as you can see here. Looking at the ground floor plan. So this is, again, Salem Street is at the top of the page, and there are currently three entrances different retail spaces. We would look to consolidate them into a single commercial lobby as more of a secure point, and then to have entrances coming to the right and to the left. Ideally, the Elizabeth Grady Spa that is here will remain. The H&R Block office space, which is here, will remain. The currently empty retail space in the center will be revitalized. So we would still have three separate retail spaces. What's different is that this yellow box here is the extent of the addition. There would be, again, you would come down the side here as a pedestrian or come and park as a driver, and there would be a residential lobby here with a new elevator to bring you up to the different levels. There would be a common trash room, a bike storage room, mechanical sprinkler room, and there might be a little bit of additional storage space for H&R Block or, you know, tenant number one, as they are on the left here. And this breaks down the different, the areas of the different, three different spaces and the lobby itself. Up above, the units are fairly, pretty repetitive. There is a three-bedroom and a two-bedroom and a one-bedroom on each floor. On level two, Here you see this yellow box is again the addition. You would come up the elevator or the front common stair and into a common corridor. The unit on the left here is a two bedroom family sized unit facing out onto Salem Street. And the unit on the right here is a three bedroom, again, living and dining facing out onto Salem Street. This particular floor, which I believe was called the Lodge Room, is quite tall. And so we wanted to preserve that, which we think is a real amenity, but it has very tall windows. So we're going to keep this floor the height that it has always been. And in that space, we're going to see if we can introduce a little bit of an office loft. up above the kitchen and the third bedroom here, but above the kitchen and the bathroom over here. So that is an aspiration that we're still working out with the overall floor-to-floor heights. We have to make sure that we can provide code-required minimum clearances. In the back here, we will have a one-bedroom unit, which would also, if everything works out ideally, would also have a small loft area above the kitchen. But we're going to treat this as a one bedroom with one and a half bathrooms, living and dining, kind of the one unit that would face primarily towards the parking lot. And then as we move up to the building, we're gonna see the similar layouts. On the third floor, you would again have a two bedroom on the left and the three-bedroom on the right. These two units on the third floor would share or would have deck space that would be directly off of the living and dining room and will be behind the parapet. The existing brick parapet, which we want to kind of preserve and not change, is going to end up being quite tall. Now, as we go into the demolition and removal of this, We believe that there is additional structure that we can bring down. But it will be raised up a few steps from what is going on inside of the unit. So as we go through this, we're going to reconfirm that it's about 16 inches above the finished floor inside of here. But this parapet will still be well over four feet high and possibly as much as possibly as much as 56 inches above the decking. It'll be rather tall compared to a conventional roof area. In the back here, we have, again, one bedroom unit, which would be very similar to the layout on the second floor without having a loft space in any of these three units. And then the fourth floor, It's going to be similar to the unit below, except each of these units now has a staircase, which leads us up to a roof deck. So again, we've got a two bedroom on the left and a three bedroom on the right with a one bedroom facing towards the parking lot. All three of these lead to have their own individual staircases leading up to head houses, which would lead us to, what I like to term like private size decks. They are in the, you know, under 300 square feet, the size of a living room, not necessarily the size of a kind of party or assembly space. And the intention would be that this is for private residents to enjoy, but not for them to necessarily be able to have a large party or gathering. We broke down all of the unit sizes as well as the commercial unit on this sheet, just so people can understand roughly what they are. You see the three bed units come in at over 1,800 square feet and over 1,400 square feet, over 1,200 square, or over 1,400 square feet again. quite sizable, even the one bedrooms come in at this first one at 1217, this one at 909 and 930. So they're good size one bed, one and a half bath units that we will be bringing to the market. And then the overall gross area of the building, as you can see, was 11,500 and will be brought up to close to 20,000 square feet. So stepping back to look at the exterior of the building, we've been working or having some conversations with the Historical Association, but we've also, based on the comments that we heard in our last meeting here, spent some time going back and refining the design so that we can get closer to kind of what the end product will be. But we're looking forward to kind of working through that as we go, as we talk to the community. But in general, the existing building, brick and highly detailed as it will be, we'll try to restore as much as possible. And there's a good chance that We believe we have a lot of the tin work for these storefronts that we can reintroduce. We want to bring back a marquee similar to the 1915 version of the marquee, and we want to kind of restore the detailing, some of which has aged well and some has struggled more. We will look to do something on the front of the facade that is not as complimentary, but definitely a backdrop to the more detailed and smaller scale of the brick and coping details that we're gonna see up here. So we had talked about using like a high-end Nichiha or seamless cement fiber panel potentially in a vertical orientation that gives us a very minimal number of seams. And we're kind of revisiting that and talking about whether it might be more appropriate for it to be something that is metal or something that is another material. But we tend to shy away from it being something that would be glossy or reflective, feeling like it It doesn't want to whatever what we do up here does not want to call a ton of attention to itself. And so we're, we're looking forward to working through that with again with the historical committee and comments caveats that we receive from you here. So stepping over to this image. This is largely so that we can identify that there is this deep-ish well where the third floor units would walk out to. A couple of these three foot wide windows would actually be doors. We would, and we would try to kind of develop a consistency across this and whether or not these two units, these two levels become very similar or they have some, you know, variation as as is shown on the first and second floor, is one of the questions we're kind of working through at this point. At the back of the building here, you see we would probably, we will intend to kind of to take this light colored building down all the way to the back and bring it all the way around and all the way around to the other side so that the addition does not try to did not try to mimic the existing building, but does not try and does not try to take a lot of attention away from the existing building, but instead really serves as a clean backdrop, a technology, you know, using somewhat more common, more contemporary technologies in order to address the enclosure in an energy efficient and economically efficient way. So there's a possibility that this would be the same material as what's going on up here or that we would kind of wrap the more durable material to a point either here or here in order to accentuate the front of the building and separate it from the back of the building. We were requested to, it was requested that we provide some shadow studies. So, and we did quite a few of them. Basically, this right here is looking at 9 a.m. on, and I won't go into too much depth, but we have them all as part of the presentation, say March 21st. The existing building is right here. The proposed building, which has a 20-foot addition and is one story larger, you see its shadow gets a little bit longer. You definitely see it at noon about here and over here. It's a little longer and a little deeper into the parking lot. We could go to June 21st and you're going to see it doesn't really hit our parking lot and hits the side of the Baptist Church a little bit. Again, similarly, in the in the height of the day, it's not really, there isn't really much of a shadow from either the proposed or from the existing building. We could do it in December. We still see the extent of the proposed building kind of barely touching the neighbor here and the existing building, it kind of doesn't even quite hit the retaining wall at the back of the property. But as I said, we have all of these in depth in the later portion, in the appendices if we want to get into them. That is the bulk of our presentation. I didn't want to spend too much time talking and would prefer to spend the rest of our time answering any questions that you have.

[Andre Leroux]: Great. Thank you. And thank you very much for for providing a set of materials that's much easier to read and comment on. You're welcome. I would, although this isn't a public hearing, I would open it up to members of the public before the board starts deliberating if anybody wants to make a comment. So let's do that. Is there anybody that would like to say something? just you can raise your hand if you're on the Zoom call. Okay, I see John Costas.

[John Costas]: Hi, John Costas, 56 Haines Street, Haines, yeah, 56 Haines Street, Medford. I'm a neighbor of Paul's across the street, the electronic shop, and Paul and his family has been great neighbors. I've never had any issues for them, and I would, you know, 100% support. whatever he wants to do with the change he wants to make. Thank you. Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Mr. Costas. Any other comments? OK, seeing none, let me open it up for board member discussion. Hi. Mr. Andreasen.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Ah, thank you. And I want to thank the proponent for redoing their presentation, echoing what Andre said. Much clearer to see and understand what you're proposing, and I thank you for that.

[Unidentified]: You're welcome.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I have a couple comments, and I think that Eric could probably knock them off one by one after I finish, instead of going one by one and answering each. You showed a little bit about the exterior patio. I think you may have included as a supplement a drawing which shows some more detail of that. But I think it'd be worth understanding exactly what you're proposing as far as outdoor amenity. for that little patio space and how that's going to feel. This is maybe more of a general comment for Andrea or Alicia, but it's pretty clear that they're not meeting their open space requirements. What does that mean for the project going forward? It's just basically for my edification. You mentioned that you were in discussions with the historic board. Are there plans for them to issue any other sort of follow-up letter based on the conversations you've had with them? You show in your drawings Some specifications for electric vehicle charging. Is that intended, or is that you didn't mention it in talking through the parking area? The one item that I think I probably take the biggest issue with is access and location of the trash room. It seems very odd to me that residents are gonna have to walk or go down the elevator with their bag of trash and then walk outside in the middle of winter at 11 p.m. when the trash fills up and go into a trash room. So I'm wondering if you could, it's also right at the front of the building, right where really the sort of exterior residential node lies. Follow-up question, you're mentioning fiber cement, which I think you answered my preliminary question was whether it was going to be high density or like a hardy material. It sounds like high density is on your list or some sort of metal panel, which I think would be a great way to do this. I might recommend that you do a slightly darker color to sort of tie into more of the metal elements, perhaps the new canopy that you're going to build. to recreate the old one. The white seems a little, like it might be a little harsh, but that's just my own style question. But my bigger question is you mentioned that the whole back including the addition starting at the ground going up would be white as well, but you didn't mention whether that would be the fiber cement or like perhaps a tertiary material like stucco or something else. I was just wondering about that. And if it is fiber cement, just a final caution that you're showing it going right to the ground, which is probably not the best use of that material and you should probably put some masonry at the ground on the back. I'm assuming you're still working out the windows on the third and fourth floor. I noticed your plan still had the big windows, so are you doing the big ones or the small ones, or is it still being explored? And that's it.

[Unidentified]: Great.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Hey, Mr. Zacherson, you got all that?

[SPEAKER_09]: As they know, but let me know if I am going to try and go on this in the same order. But let me know if I'm if as I miss anything in the rear patio area. The, the current intention is to do probably a gray paver Some potted plants that particular area with or without the the additions, we're doing tends to be rather dark and so It's going to be a little bit of a game to try and make sure that some things can survive well in there. So we're not planning to do an intense amount of planting there. It'll probably be more of a hardscape with some potted plants and maybe a table and chairs that kind of invites people to wait outside or to congregate outside a little bit. but not like an intense seeding zone and not necessarily, you know, and not an intense planting zone. But we haven't engaged a landscape architect and really put that down as a design element. We do not, I believe it's my last calculation, we do not meet the open space requirement and we would, Currently, we would be looking to get some relief on that as we go forward, or talk about increasing the size of the roof decks to meet that, but that didn't necessarily feel like the right approach.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Since you're talking about it, are you going to hire a landscape architect?

[SPEAKER_09]: I think, yes, we will. I don't know enough about plants and I don't think Paul does either for us to really make sure that we get the right kind of life in the background. So yes. As far as the historic board, yes, we sent over renderings pretty similar to what we are showing you today here. And we received some comments from them, I believe on Friday afternoon or so, definitely they appreciated many of the things we've done and asked, in fact, asked some of the same questions that you had asked. We're definitely going with the three, the smaller scale windows that we're showing here in elevation, not the ones that are shown in plan. I didn't even didn't even realize till you said it that we hadn't updated the plan, but the intention is to do with the smaller scale. They actually also asked about the white color versus a lighter gray or something darker. Personally, I think we'll end up with something lighter gray since that seems to be coming from kind of everybody except me, and that's okay. We will do something like that. I had personally been trying to avoid getting something that was too close to the off-white of the existing building, but there are lots of other directions that we can go. So I think that the majority is definitely pushing us in that direction. So we will look at that way. They also had some comments about the detailing of the windows and can we incorporate some of the fourth floor detailing on the third floor? So we will be looking at that with them. They also had comments about whether the front of the building should be higher should be metal panel or well actually they listed a handful of metal panels that could be painted as opposed to the high-density cement fiberboard and I wanted to revisit with them the idea that this would be a higher-end cement fiberboard that we were intending to use. I personally, and we haven't talked about the back of the building, the back of the building be a similar cement fiberboard, you're right, it shouldn't come to the base. That's just an unresolved detail at this point, but we will definitely take into effect. So we have a kind of question about the front part of the building and about the back. There's a possibility that there'll be the same material with a different jointing pattern or that if the front is metal, then the back wouldn't be metal. I don't think that would be appropriate for such a big scale. It would feel too industrial, I think. So we would kind of figure out the two of them hand in hand as we go through this. Yeah, as I was going through this, I noted that there's supposed to be a door. Um, uh, that these two rooms are probably, uh, what, uh, should be switched so that the, um, residents can use a door to drop things in the trash. And then there, it can come out and we would move the mechanical and the sprinkler over to this, this corner. And, um, the intention is as we kind of engineer this, we can eat into this, uh, storage space on the H and R block area as we need to. Um, the, Yeah, the EV charging station, I'll have to defer to Paul Connolly. I don't, off the top of my head, I'm not exactly sure where that sits right now. So I think if you could let Paul, he can probably speak to that.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, he had his hand raised. So I don't know if Alicia, you can unmute Mr. Connolly.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I'm supposed to have all the answers, but some of them the owner has to speak to.

[SPEAKER_05]: Hey, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Can everyone hear me okay?

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, sir.

[SPEAKER_05]: Great. Yeah, I originally raised my hand, Eric actually hit to the point where there would be a rotation on the trash in the mechanical room. Which is a great point. We absolutely had addressed that, talking about it just didn't make its way on to this particular plan. But I believe the, you know, having the trash accessible from the inside for the residents, as well as keeping it on an exterior wall where we'll be doing a private pickup, you know, made the most sense. So I, to your point, yeah, that is definitely our intention. And just be a, you know, as easy as switching around the wording in those three rooms there. And as to the, based on some prior conversations that we had regarding the, you know, the electric car space, it would be our intention. We're definitely open to it. There seemed to be some desire for one, you know, and with nine residential units in the way the world is, chances are there could be somebody coming into the building with the use for it. So it's definitely something that we're open to discussion on and open to having back there if the city felt it was a benefit.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. I do a question about the parking. Is there going to be designated retail parking spaces back there?

[SPEAKER_05]: The idea as proposed was to have 15 of the 18 spaces we're left with go to the residential, as Eric spoke to, to try and eliminate the amount of trips in and out of that driveway during the day when that sidewalk is most heavily trafficked. And then we would have three spaces back there for the commercial that would most likely go to employee parking, not necessarily clientele. So it would be similar fashion to the residential, where it would be one trip in, one trip out, and not multiple in and out throughout the day, if that makes sense.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, great. I will throw my own comments out there right now. So I definitely agree with what class Andreas and said about the front facade. I think the metal cladding that you're talking about kind of wrapping around the historic part of the building makes a lot of sense. I think the darker color would look good. The back I'm not as concerned about. I think having a, you know, a lighter color back there and the, you know, cement fiber is fine, but I was wondering whether it might be possible to to add usable balconies on the back for those three units that are back there that don't have much other space, and also whether around the doors, the three doors that are in the rear, whether there could be some patio paver treatment around them to set them off that pedestrian area, because I don't necessarily see that indicated either.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, to that point, I think the paver idea for the back by those doors to designate them as pedestrian friendly is a great idea and would probably tie in nicely with the walkway and patio. And I like the idea of more deck space off the back if, you know, if it didn't create any further issue for us as far as, which I don't think there's any, I think we have plenty of space off the back there, so there'd be no encroachment. if I'm correct on that. And, you know, as those have those kind of Juliet balconies there, if we were to be able to put full, you know, not to the degree of the third floor balcony or the roof, but to some sort of real deck where you can maybe get a, you know, a sitting chair and take in the view of the new landscape. Yeah, definitely open to that as well.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, that'd be great. I mean, we've just seen how people being at home so much really need to have that access to open space and air.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, into some of the buildings we've done, um, you know, the company I work with has done in designed and built in Boston, um, have done very similar to what you're saying, like not large by any means, but enough where, you know, a definite benefit and seem to be appreciated by the people moving in.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. Great. That would be, that would be great. And then a final question that I had was the square in the back parking area that's now for snow. What is that going to look like when there's not snow stored there?

[SPEAKER_05]: Sure. The idea is to keep it as green space. And to whatever tool, whatever capability, and this may be when we bring in the landscape architect to help us design the ideas to make that as pretty as possible in the non-snow season, which depending on the New England winter can be hopefully nine months. But also the idea was to keep it as flat as possible to allow the snow storage there, but still having this green space.

[Andre Leroux]: Well, one possibility that I think we saw in another project was to make it like a little doggy pad area. So if people have pets, they have a place to go with them.

[SPEAKER_05]: That's actually a great idea. And as the owner of a inpatient lab, I think they would appreciate that. And it's obviously a, You know, it takes away from them potentially doing it on the more common, you know, patio space and stuff where it would look a little nicer. It draws it away, which I think is a great idea.

[Andre Leroux]: All right, and is that, Klaas, I think that was you that was gonna speak.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I just had a couple follow-up things. I think all the answers have been great. I echo what Andre says about the dog area. I think that'd be a great way to sort of do two things in one space. I feel like you should do a little more study of the bike area. It seems really small. We don't have to go into detail about that. It's just, you know, these days, the requirements for bike storage are getting more and more. We don't quite have them in place here in Medford yet, I'm certain it would be more than that for the amount of units you have. And I guess my last comment, if Eric, you can go to the last page. So I think, you know, the original, and I understand that you're going to, this is probably still evolving. you're gonna be moving the doors to a common center vestibule, which I think is fine. But I really love the look and feel of the entries to the stores on each side of the building here. And even the glass transom up above. And I would encourage you, because I think I saw a rendering, it was either on the first page or something, where it looks like you're keeping the existing signage the way it is. And I would really encourage you to take a second look at that and see if there's a way that you can really bring in this sort of the scale and proportion of these old storefronts and try to integrate the signage into that rather than putting them right below the windows where they are in the rendering you had on the first page. Whether it's taking that glass transom panel and turning that into your signage band or somehow integrating it into the sort subcornice there above them. I feel like you're doing a lot of really nice work to the front of this building, so to leave the signage the way it is would be kind of a shame.

[SPEAKER_05]: Definitely open to that. I'm actually partial to the paneling, the square paneling and detail work of the original building myself. I would like to see that come back to life. And like you said, if we were, I think from practicality to use that one common entrance to have everyone come in, but to maybe have the appearance to as much as possible to the original facade, the mimic the doorways that are there. to a degree I think would be great. And yeah, I think we just put the signage up there to see everyone get an idea of what it looks like today. But I agree with you there as well. The idea is to restore the Dyer building to its former glory and open to a discussion on what the best use of being able to let the businesses that are there advertise and let people know what's in there. you know, in a way that really reflects the character of the facade.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. Yeah. And class, I'm really glad you went back to that. Cause that was my final comment that I forgot to make is looking at this was, I do love that, you know, the glass transoms as well. And just the, and on the bottom along the sidewalk, those dark rectangular panels, I feel that that could really, you know, echo the kind of a darker metal treatment on the facade that's being built above. I really like how that could, you know, incorporating those details as possible.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm very, you know, this is very exciting and it's interesting, you know, I think your idea is to replicate the canopy as it once was. I think, you know, at the end of the day where that ends up, we'll see. But I think my point is I would put the similar amount of passion into the whole street frontage at that first floor and how that works.

[SPEAKER_05]: I agree with you there, and I can tell you passion is the right word for that, because that's what this project is for me. I've been, literally my entire life, I've spent in that building, in and around it, and when I was old enough to walk, I was apparently old enough to be put to work there. So I would, you know, I really do want to come to get to a point where it's not just a building that gets approved. It's something that everyone's excited about. And I know I am. I'm excited to be a part of it and to really spearhead this. And I'm hoping that we get to a point where everyone else is equally as excited to see the finished product.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: That's great. It's an exciting project. Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: Yes, go ahead. Please just say who you are because I can't actually, I don't have everybody on the screen right now.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: This is Jackie Furtado, board member, vice chair. One of the things that I wanted to go back and say was I wanted to reiterate what Clay said, and thank you for actually providing us a visual. I pretty much, at our last meeting, was getting excited with the information that was given. But one of the problems that I was having was more information needed to be articulated to make sure that we captured the essence of what your project would be. And I started to go there, but I have to tell you where it got me is that in my line of work, going around 351 cities and towns in the state of Massachusetts, I review a lot of projects, development projects, and it was just really hard for me to zoom in. do the work that we needed your visuals to do. So I wanted to let you know that this is a huge improvement and I extremely thank you. And I am just as, if not more excited about this mixed use development, especially the fact that it's being redeveloped on a redeveloped site prior to state's community development principles. So I have nothing further to say, but to express my appreciation for that.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. Thank you. Other board members want to weigh in?

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, this is Chrissy Dowd, I'd just like to say that I echo all the comments, I really appreciate the great comments that Clace and Andrea provided, and I was thinking about a similar line of questioning in terms of the scope of the historic restoration and the entrances, and I'm glad to hear about you know, the commitment to sort of bring some of that original design back. And I'm just very excited that this building is going to be redeveloped and really, you know, focusing on restoring this building and creating a mixed use. Cause I think it's very important to the city of Medford in this area. So thank you very much for a great presentation. And I have, a much better understanding of the project.

[SPEAKER_05]: Welcome, thank you.

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: Andrea, I don't have anything different. I'll just say ditto. I've always loved this building. It's one of my favorites in the square. And I've often sort of just wondered as a resident right like what what could be more in this particular space. So it's really exciting to see. I particularly love this picture of the building, you know, over 100 years ago, and I think whatever can be done to preserve and resurrect some of that historical nature of the building would just be really cool. So this was a great presentation. Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. Wonderful. Any other board members have comments at the time?

[David Blumberg]: Sure, Andre, I'll take a shot. It's David.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, David.

[David Blumberg]: I won't try to retread some of the great comments that we've already had and the feedback you've received tonight. Just to reiterate my enthusiasm for that storefront, to see that that is sort of brought back to its former grandeur as much as possible. I think we're all enthused about this as the kind of project we'd like to see more and more of in Medford Square, both on the residential side, but also on the storefront. We're sort of hoping that this will be the kickoff to better things ahead for many of the other buildings in your neighborhood. My one specific question, I guess, is on the patio, which to my eye looks pretty nice. Could it be, instead of these solid pavers, could it be something more permeable, or would you keep that in mind as you design that?

[SPEAKER_05]: I'm open to a conversation as to something that would, one of the, as that's all concrete walkway back there right now and concrete under in the back, we were, the idea of the paver was to add a more permeable surface, but if there's a system that could be put in place that still, like you said, keeps the integrity of the patio, but is more permeable, open to that conversation as well.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, it seems like that would be nice. I think Klaas had mentioned the open space, and I think that would be a benefit to the property to find a way to do that. Those are my only comments. It looks real good.

[Alicia Hunt]: If I might just sort of add that information on there, there are pavers and there are permeable pavers. And so as you're going forward with that, if you get a landscape designer, just keep that in mind that just because it's a paver doesn't mean that it's permeable.

[SPEAKER_09]: Right, and we talked a little bit about it just, I think it was this morning, I don't know. It feels like a long time ago, but we need to make sure we maintain ADA access. So it might be a combination of some permeable pavers and some non or like what goes on in the substrate, but definitely a desire to drain what we can using permeable pavers where we can. And we may extend that out to the, I really like the idea of extending that out to the other three doors or to the doors and kind of using that to tie everything together.

[Andre Leroux]: A question, Alicia, for you, is there, does this project, does it fall under the city's solar ordinance at all?

[Alicia Hunt]: We believe that it does, that it requires 50% of the roof to have solar panels. I'd have to review the details of that. But basically, the first requirement is that it has a solar assessment. that is then submitted to the Director of Energy and Environment, which happens to be myself, and that solar assessment would inform us whether or not solar panels are practical as designed. Building code requires that the the roof be solar ready so that the structure be strong enough to support solar panels. The question about whether or not the shading is appropriate, the location is appropriate would come through with an assessment and any solar company, I believe, would do a solar assessment for free in the hopes that you would then hire them to put the solar panels on.

[Andre Leroux]: Have you guys looked at that at all, or is this sort of a new issue?

[Alicia Hunt]: We actually have not had a building permitted since we passed that. It was actually only passed last Halloween. And so we haven't actually had, or it was signed last Halloween. a building go fully through the permitting process since then, from start to finish. Usually a building that's large enough to fall under that ordinance takes a long time to be permitted. So actually we haven't had one come through yet. Is that what you were asking?

[Andre Leroux]: I guess I was actually asking the proponent whether they had considered solar at all and whether they were aware of this.

[SPEAKER_09]: We were, I believe. speak with you, Alicia, about this at the beginning of it, like... Yeah, in January. Pre-COVID, way back in the normal days.

[Alicia Hunt]: Pre-COVID we discussed.

[SPEAKER_09]: In the normal days, yeah. We did talk about it a little bit and are looking forward to working through that with you. Okay, so, yeah, great.

[Deanna Peabody]: I had one question about the signs coming in and out of the driveway. How big are they and how do they work? Do you know? or like how well they're placed?

[SPEAKER_09]: I am learning how they work and what they're assigned, what the kind of, what is considered safe sizes are. I believe, if I can, maybe I can zoom in on these to get the dimensions. These are, we are discovering what is considered safe. It looks like these are being drawn right now at 18 inches by 14 inches. So kind of a pedestrian scale, but not a very large. Now, we don't know if that's the completely appropriate, but that's what we've been looking at with our civil engineers. That's what seems like the appropriate kind of common size. And we can work with whatever recommendations to identify what is really appropriate for this particular space.

[Andre Leroux]: And those signs would be motion activated? Yeah.

[Kathleen Desmond]: If I could, Jeff Dirk is on the call, our traffic engineer. He may be able to provide a little more information in that regard, if you still have questions concerning that. how they operate.

[Jeffrey Dirk]: I could offer, they will be sensor operated. So yeah, motion or sensor, but they're going to pick up whether a vehicle is entering. So there'll be just like your garage door has those light beams. It's pretty much operates on the same principle or there could be... Or anything in the pavement. Or in the pavement, exactly. The variations that we've shown here are basically you see the LED signs that are there, which are less obtrusive, I would say. The lower sign is a version where it's a backlit sign. So it basically blanks out under either situation, but in the lower version, You know, the signs there, when it detects a vehicle, light bulbs are behind the sign that turn on to illuminate the sign itself. So it's just a variation on the types of signs that could be used, but they all operate the same way.

[SPEAKER_02]: And would they be maintained by the homeowner's association or something like that, I would assume?

[Kathleen Desmond]: Yes, that would be part of the association requirement that they maintain those.

[Andre Leroux]: All right, thank you. There is a representative from the Historical Commission, so I just want to give them the chance to speak briefly if they feel they have something to add to the conversation. Peter Miller, I believe, is here. I just want to give him the chance to speak as is Doug Carr. You're still muted, Peter. Alicia, can you, or Annie, can you unmute Peter?

[Alicia Hunt]: I just clicked on him, so now he can unmute.

[SPEAKER_08]: There you go. OK, now can you hear me? Yes, we can now. OK. Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate some of the other comments. Great step forward. We have a few more comments about the facade, maybe the durability of the fiber cement. We weren't saying we had to have metal, but we like the direction that the facade's going with the kind of three groups of three windows. And just some questions about the articulation on the third floor should probably reflect what's going on on the fourth floor, so that detail carries down. And... So similar concerns about the storefront, the drawings are a little bit vague, so we just kind of wanted to have a little more specificity on, you know, what the materials are, how they actually fit together, you know, where the real, what the control joints really are, some issues like that, but we thought it was a great step forward from the previous iteration. I don't know, Doug, you have anything more to add on that?

[Andre Leroux]: Mr. Miller, just a question about your process. So are you still, it sounds like you're still in dialogue with the proponent?

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, when they sent us the renderings, which are pretty much what you saw tonight, we did Uh, kind of throw those around amongst the commissioners, the architects on our commission. And, um, we came up with some comments, so we sent another round of comments to, um, to the architect. Um, and so the, the current drawings don't really reflect that yet, but it's in process. Yeah. So I guess you could say it's an ongoing dialogue, which we're happy to keep going if people want us to. So, yeah.

[Kathleen Desmond]: I believe that the applicant is certainly open to that moving forward.

[SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely, yeah.

[Doug Carr]: If I could add, I think this is great progress. I think both Eric and the owner there have been, and Paul, have done a great job to work with us. I think what's really needed is to take all these comments from ourselves and also the board and do a summary kind of final elevation final model to show that gray, to show some of the details we talked about, to show that the gray is going to return a certain distance on the sides and then become a different material. And obviously the details at the storefront and the retail. I think we're all on the same page. We're all on a path of success here. It just needs to be tightened up a little bit.

[Unidentified]: Yeah. Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: Right, so I guess my question is, and maybe, Annie, you can unmute and respond to this a little bit. Should we put all this together? What's the timeline with the ZBA?

[Kathleen Desmond]: Presently, we have a date next week for the ZBA. Their September meeting is is next week. And we'd like to hit that date only because of the time to get the decision, and then construction is only a certain amount of time before we hit the dead of winter that's going to kind of stop things in its tracks.

[Andre Leroux]: I'm just wondering how the design issues are going to be nailed down before you go into the ZBA.

[Kathleen Desmond]: I mean, we're willing to continue to work with the staff and the board on those issues, but we still have a long way to go in terms of approval. In addition to the special permit, there are variances that we need to obtain in this regard to move the project forward. And then there's a decision that has to be written, which generally takes 30 to 60 days. So what we'd like to come out of here with a recommendation we have made strides in terms of design, no one's trying to move the board out of that process, and we're more than willing to work that way. It's just that to keep going through these iterations without knowing at the end of the day when we're gonna get the variances, or if we will, creates some issues for the applicant.

[Alicia Hunt]: This is one of the difficulties with how our process currently works, is that they need to get a number of zoning variances. The zoning board will say, did this board approve it or not? They're not gonna look at the design in detail, like the colors and the facade and all. I did hear from our city engineer that he is comfortable with this moving forward to the zoning board. He's not on the call, but we texted to make sure we had that from him, because we don't have an updated letter.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, well, I think it's up to the board whether we want to try to put together a motion here to vote on. Sounds like if we were to do that, we would have a series of conditions. We'd be making a recommendation of approval to the Zoning Board of Appeals for special permit site plan review with conditions. Conditions, I know that Annie put some together based on our comments from last time, and let me read those right now. One, snow shall be removed from the parking area and drive once accumulation negatively affects use of parking area. Two, preparation and approval by the Medford Police Department and Traffic Commission of a construction traffic management plan. Plan should include delivery of construction materials during off-peak hours. Three, provide for safe pedestrian access along Salem Street on the north side throughout the construction period. Four, consider use of the parking area for longer term parking to reduce the number of potential pedestrian conflicts from the enter and exit drive. I think that has been addressed. Five, comply with recommendations from the following department heads and letters addressed to Chairman Scott Carman. That's Fire Chief Giliberti, City Engineer McGivern, And I think the public health director, Marianne O'Connor. And I haven't heard any issues from the proponent with complying with those department head letters. So I'm assuming we're good there.

[Kathleen Desmond]: That's correct. And we have incorporated most of them into the plan at this point.

[Andre Leroux]: And then I would add a few conditions that we discussed tonight, including the extension of the permeable paver area to the rear doorways, internal access to the trash room. And I would like to, well, would the proponent be okay then with also adding the rear balconies?

[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, absolutely on the rear balconies. I think that's a great asset.

[Kathleen Desmond]: The only thing I would say in that regard to the extent that there's any issue with setbacks, because the multifamily units on floors two through four create a whole other set of dimensional requirements that we're going to need relief from. So as long as we can work within the context of what we have now in terms of the request for relief that we're looking for, and I don't anticipate any issues, But without seeing what the design is, it's kind of hard to say whether they create any further zoning issues for the project.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I can put together a spec pretty quickly so we can review that ahead of any decision that would need to be made. But to the degree, to the scale of what they would actually be, I don't think it would create a problem.

[Andre Leroux]: But you have one.

[SPEAKER_05]: I just want to make sure.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. Okay, maybe we can just say to the extent feasible, keep it simple. And then I would like to put some language in there to make sure that the design piece continues moving forward. And rather than us try to micromanage that, I would maybe like to refer to, I guess, I don't know if it's approval by the Historic Commission or if it's adopting the recommendations of the Historic Commission.

[Alicia Hunt]: Could we say that they continue to work with the Historic Commission on the historic aspects of the building? I don't know how to enforce it if they next week say, no, we're not doing that anymore. But if the historic board came back and said they are refusing to talk to us anymore, it would be as if they had gone against any other one of the conditions that the board puts on a project.

[Andre Leroux]: Well, does the historic commission There's no real. Is there any further process that you guys need to take as a commission?

[Doug Carr]: No, I think it's I think it's just seeing a final design that reflects all the comments we've heard tonight. That's really all we need.

[Unidentified]: Okay, but maybe we could.

[SPEAKER_05]: If you guys, if you don't, if I'm able to speak to, if you guys want to put some language in there that, you know, adds a comfort level, you know, when your guys end, I completely understand that too. And I just would like to speak to the fact that I would operate in good faith. And I really do think we're all on track to the same end result, something that we all really, really do think would be a great, great fit for the square. seem to be close and happy to continue the conversation and get to a, get to a place where, you know, in the time that we have going forward, get to a place that we're all very happy with the end result.

[Andre Leroux]: Right. Well, Annie, is there a way of doing this where we basically, I know that, you know, we can work on the language and maybe try to tweak that, you know, this week where we can incorporate with more detail like what we've heard from the board members as well as the historic commission?

[Nicole Morell]: Yes, we will need to turn this around fairly quickly if the ZBA meeting is next week, but we could turn that around tomorrow and Friday.

[Andre Leroux]: Right. So maybe saying something along the lines of adopting the design recommendations as discussed at the September 16th community development board meeting to the resolve to the satisfaction of the board and the historic commission. Would that be acceptable?

[Nicole Morell]: That's acceptable to me, yes.

[Andre Leroux]: All right, and my board members, am I missing anything that we discussed? Oh, there is also the, I think the dog pad we talked about.

[Unidentified]: Oh, yep, it was that.

[Andre Leroux]: That wasn't to me, right? In the rear, in the parking area.

[Kathleen Desmond]: That's acceptable.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay. Oh, you know, the final thing that I hadn't mentioned that I was, I was curious about is it looks like the internal hallway doesn't have any windows. Am I reading that correctly? Because I, if not, it seems like there should be a window in that hallway.

[SPEAKER_09]: I did notice that. It currently does not have a window. because it ends in stairs at either side and has units on both ends of it. We've tried to minimize its overall size. Currently, it does not have a window. I mean, we can punch them into the stairs on either side, which we have not done. But the core itself is separated from the stairs by fire-rated doors. That's not any kind of requirement. We could we can incorporate we could incorporate one if that was a requirement Very close.

[Andre Leroux]: I think did you just say it's not any client kind of requirement, right? I wouldn't say it's typical. No, okay I wasn't sure it looked like on one end. It was not the stairway was not exactly at the terminus so it seemed like there was an opportunity to put at the end of the hallway a window, but I

[SPEAKER_09]: No, you're right. On the second and third floor, we could if that was a requirement.

[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, I think- Why don't you just look at it and see if it makes sense?

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. I think we could just put some, craft some language along the lines of incorporate natural light into the hallway where feasible.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Great.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, I think that, I think that covers everything. Am I missing anything, anybody? So is there a motion on the floor to recommend special permit site plan review approval to the ZBA with the conditions that we just articulated? And I don't think we have to repeat them all.

[8oEn2KkMIiU_SPEAKER_07]: I'll make that motion, Andre.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you, Katie. Is there a second? Thanks, Klaus. Roll call vote. Katie McHugh?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Deanna Peabody?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: David Blumberg? Aye. Klaus Andresen? Aye. Christy Dowd?

[Jenny Graham]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Jackie Furtado?

[Jenny Graham]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: And I'm an aye as well. So unanimous decision. in favor, recommending to the ZBA site plan review approval.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Terrific. Thank you very much.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you for all the work that you did. Really appreciate it.

[Kathleen Desmond]: Have a good night, folks.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. You too. Take care. All right, the last item on our agenda tonight is the local historic district recommendation to the city council for 16 Foster Court. And just to be clear, this is not a public hearing, nor is there any kind of a permit that we're simply making a recommendation to the city council. There is a language in the local ordinances stating that any historic districts should come before the CD board, but it doesn't say that we have to do anything or say anything about it. So really it's at our discretion whether or not we make a recommendation to the city council and what that recommendation is. So at this point, I would like to invite Ryan Hayward to present the proposal so that we can all kind of hear the rationale behind it and decide whether we'll make a recommendation or not.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Sure. I have some slides to share just with some history if you guys want to see them. I can do it verbally, but if you want just some fun history, I'm happy to share that. Yes, my other account. which I will see if I can share my screen. Nope.

[Andre Leroux]: I think that slides would be great, but if we could keep the presentation to a minimum, I know it's already getting late, that would be excellent.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Yeah, I could do that. So just in short, we have two historic boards on the city. There's a historic district commission and historic commission. The 16 Foster Court building could comes under the demo delay. We review buildings that are up for demolition and we have 18, you know, we have a two-step process that we review them and then we have 18 months to have the owners work with us on on coming up with a way to mitigate the loss of the building, possibly perhaps meaning to alter their plans for renovation to include some new designs. The owner was unwilling to do that, so the Historical Commission approached the Historic District Commission about establishing a new local historic district in the city. We're allowed to do that under Mass General Law 40C. We have to submit the report to Mass Historical and the Planning Board, and you guys are acting planning board and you know we got good feedback from mass historical and you know we had a public hearing on it a lot of people support the district we had a committee of the whole meeting tonight about with the owner and the city council and it seems like city council is leaning towards supporting it but we need to have a site visit but we're Still moving forward with it. The building in summary, just five quick points. Medford at one point had one quarter of all of the Commonwealth shipbuilders. This building has ties to several shipyard owners. It has ties to the ship carpenters. It has associations with J.T. Foster, who Foster Corp is named after. It is rare in the sense that it is 18 Built between 1804 and 1814, it's one of three federal era Cape Cod buildings remaining in the city. That alone puts it in a really elite group of buildings. buildings and it just maintains good integrity over its long course of its life. So, you know, using the history as leverage, you know, we tried to work with the owner to at least preserve a portion of the building, but he was unwilling to even entertain any options. He presented a ton of stuff tonight, so at least the dialogue is moving forward still. but what we're looking to do is to have you guys hopefully support us in this district, in other districts that are coming up and we promise that we'll give you guys more time to digest information. I mean I know it's quick to be able to digest a hundred page report one night so and of course with larger districts the report will be bigger so we want you guys to play a bigger and better role. We just We just want to make sure that we include this one, which is under the deadline now at this point.

[Andre Leroux]: Mr. Hayward, you, I think, have permission to show your slides now. I think you're a co-host.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Let's see. It may take a minute.

[Andre Leroux]: Yep, it's come up now.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Okay, good. So yeah, I just, you know, why the Haskell Cutter House, just to show you guys what the building looks like. It's a small Cape Cod that has undergone a series of changes, but its original form is evident. It's a single story building with rooms underneath the eaves. It's got its center chimney, and it's got this little nice Italian bracket that was added in the 1850s. A proposed district mimics the historic lot. The lot hasn't changed since 1804. So it's rare that that happens. But this building, the historic district would preserve both the house and the lot together. And we're not trying to dissuade development here. Historic district is really to encourage development that's compatible with the existing buildings. And, you know, Foster Corp being a witness to history, they would... Thatcher Magoon is our first shipbuilder in Medford. We have Isaac Sprague and Galen James who are his apprentice. They live in this neighborhood and then J.T. Foster buys out the entire thing. This is a picture just showing you guys the last ship built in Medford the Pilgrim in 1873. So, you know, this building which is located just below the tree line here right on the right hand side, you know, was witness to both the comings and the goings of the shipyard era. Of course, Foster Court is a part of the larger shipbuilding landscape. There's something like 900 pre-1900 buildings in East Medford where this building is located. Of them, maybe 500 of them are shipbuilding buildings. And then this one is of the elite elite, just because there's probably less than 10 that are in that window that the building was built. You can just see the 1855 map of Medford. You can just see the density and where 16 Foster Court was. It's kind of an outlier, but it's got all this great history behind it. And we did look at the neighborhood, but the neighborhood has some integrity issues. One of the buildings is gone. The Isaac's break house was cut into four pieces and moved to Dedham, Massachusetts. The Joshua Foster house was demolished. There's a few houses that remain duplexes that house the shipbuilding workers, but this really is the most historic building of all of them. And just Patrick McLuhan's yard, you can see the foster court is up here featuring prominently and basically everything surrounded the shipyards. And just that point where I made virtually all traces of the industry have disappeared for having one quarter of all of the Commonwealth shipbuilders at one time and having built 568 ships. There's only a handful of buildings. I count three. This one with its association with the shipyard owners, another house on Court Street, and then there's a little tiny counting house on Riverside Ave. So we're doing our best to preserve the buildings. basically save them from demolition, to continue to partner with various city boards, with the public, with private entities, and just try to make preservation a bigger part of Medford's open dialogue. with those who are coming here and working with us. And of course, I saw the Salem Street project tonight. I think that's one of the good projects. And I think 16 Foster Court, if we're allowed time to have a dialogue with that owner, will develop into something good. But in the meantime, at this point, the only way to preserve the building is to put it in a historic district, to continue that dialogue and to hope that the building is safe for future generations. you know, hopefully we, you know, continue to work on this and establish other districts and do good things in the city. So that's it. That's all I got. I'm happy to take questions. I'm happy to continue dialogue as you need me.

[Andre Leroux]: Great, thank you, Mr. Hayward. Just because it's getting late, I won't beat around the bush here, and I'll just throw some concerns out there. I live literally two blocks away from this property, and I loved, I read all of the material that was, the packet of materials, like 100 pages or so. Loved all the old maps, the history, really enjoy, you know, learning more about this. I want Medford to be able to preserve and promote its history better. But I have to say that this particular house is not very kind of You wouldn't even notice that aesthetically that it's a historic house if you didn't have all of that information. And so that's one concern that I have is what is the value, the long-term value of this vis-a-vis other development that might be moving forward on the site to create housing. And just in terms of fair play, creating a historic district as a property owner, you know, is starting to move forward with something. I am a little concerned about kind of that as a process issue in terms of fair play for a property owner. I would really like to see these historic districts happen, but in a more proactive way as part of a set of priorities that, you know, parcels are identified or properties identified, and then we're taking action before there's development that's on route to being proposed. And the district itself, as you alluded to, has really changed a lot, right? We've lost, I would say, the most significant historic properties in the neighborhood The boatyards, the shipyards itself are totally built over. The kind of the shipbuilders homes are largely gone. So I guess, you know, I wanna be supportive and at the same time, I'm just a little concerned about this. So I don't know if you could respond to any of those points.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Yeah, I mean, I can respond to a few of them. First, howdy neighbor, because I am not too far from here as well. So I mean, I walked by the building a lot. I, you know, as both commissions have said multiple times at multiple meetings, we do want to encourage development in the city so long as it's not at the expense of history, you know, so we you know we approached this project as an open dialogue to first at least analyze looking at reusing the building and the homeowner wasn't even willing to do that so we were kind of at an impasse because you know we're being told by city council that we're not a design review board and we're you know so we can't look at the proposed building that's there, you know, unless of course it comes through you guys for site plan review or some sort of other community review where we get a comment period. But also, you know, we have to look at first mitigating the demo and seeing if there's a way to integrate new design into it and the owner wouldn't even do that. So we were kind of stuck where we were not getting any sort of data out of them. But we do want to encourage people to have a dialogue with us and to be able to come to us and explore different options first, you know, and not just tell us, you know, it can't be done. You know, we definitely, you know, there's three architects on the board, there's, you know, a real estate agent, and, you know, there's a bunch of different people that definitely want to use their professional expertise to help guide the, you know, guide the process here. And Um, you know, we, we definitely want to, uh, you know, try to preserve our history and in a way that, that is not at the expense of, you know, stopping the city from moving forward at all.

[Andre Leroux]: Hey, I see, uh, Cles Andreson, uh, will speak and then I'll open it to, I think, Christy Dowd as well.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Go ahead, Cles. So Ryan, thank you for your presentation. Um, can you talk a little bit about, The fact that this house is for sale for a dollar. And with the caveat that it gets moved to a suitable site and restored properly.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Yeah, I'm not clear why the owner decided to list the building for sale at such a late point in the game. Perhaps it's to demonstrate that he's making some sort of effort to find somebody to rehabilitate the property, but I have not. We were aware that the building went on MLS because we were notified, but Um, not by the homeowner. And, you know, we had changed and that listening. We're not at our request. What we asked them to do was to, you know, over 16 months ago was to at least start by looking at the design. And only tonight were we able to get information out of them. Um, you know, at a city council meeting in front of all the city councilors and not before our board to be able to digest and talk about and have any sort of dialogue. So I'm not sure why the owner decided to list that something that way.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: So do you have a position on that potential outcome?

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: I mean, I would be okay with the building moving to a new site. I actually, you know, tossed out the idea of possibly using the open lots across the street for that or maybe a land swap or something that encourages perhaps a different location for this building or a different location for the proponents project. But, you know, I haven't explored that deeply because, you know, the onus is on the builder to present options and for us to give feedback, and we've had none. And even with this, he didn't approach us, he just listed the building. We're definitely not against working with him, we just are trying to... you know, follow through with one of the proposals, you know, and we prioritize this building over the three others that are currently under demo delay. There's other buildings, but they're simply not to, you know, they're important to the city, and they certainly rose to the occasion of the demo delay, but out of all of them, we prioritize this particular building. I mean, if we had to had multiple buildings under demo delay, I think the board would have prioritized this building out of all of them, simply for the age alone, but then with the history associated with it, I think they definitely would have prioritized this building.

[Andre Leroux]: I'm sorry, go ahead.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: No, I mean, I was just going to say, like for me, I really appreciate what you've said, Andre. The best possible outcome would be for me would be to move the building to a more appropriate site. Like it's kind of lost there now. I mean, I'm imagining some wonderful situation where it gets moved to a prominent site somewhere near the square, maybe somewhere near the river. I mean, that would be wonderful. Even as a, you know, as a historic relic, you know, that just is just maintained. I mean, I know that's all, pie in the sky thinking, but I just wonder about a recommendation for us based on considering that, because actually for me, knowing that neighborhood, that seems like a better outcome than leaving it where it is and preserving it. Because frankly, even if it's preserved in place, I think what's going to happen is it's going to end up getting like, you know, just anecdotally, let's say it's 800 square feet. It's going to end up getting another 2000 square feet tacked onto the back of it. And it's going to look like garbage. So anyway, that's what makes sense.

[Andre Leroux]: Christie, I know you had unmuted before.

[Jenny Graham]: I may have more questions than I have. suggestions. But my first question to Ryan was how do you know how much of the original house is intact? You did mention that there had been maybe some renovations to it over the years, but I'm just wondering if you know how much of the original remains.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Yeah, so I don't want to put a percentage to it, but we did a walkthrough during the demo delay hearings. And based on what I could see, so the original, maybe 1810, 184, 1810 structure with its original center hearth. and the staircase alignments and, you know, framing are intact. Then there's a second rear L from, you know, that's very early. It's probably 1820s that went on after that building. Most of those finishes in both the front and the rear were probably replaced at some point in the 1860s, 1870s with lath and plaster, but that's all under you know, that's all under later, I would say, paneling from like the 1960s or 70s. It's been painted. I mean, the building was occupied up until two years ago. And, you know, there's examples of other buildings that we've found, you know, several layers of history on. I wouldn't say that the buildings probably, you know, of original You know, it's probably 50% there. The framing makes up 50% of the building and then the later finishes that are important in their own right probably make up maybe another 25%. It's lost its windows and doors. There are some original features like that in the house. But it's been, you know, it's been modernized over time. But the key thing here that we're really stressing, and we've always stressed in the beginning, you know, we're hoping to preserve, you know, the building in the context of a redevelopment, but that wasn't even explored for the homeowner. So, you know, we understand that it needs to change, you know, we saw that tonight a little bit, you know, but there's enough there to warrant integrity and to warrant the demo delay.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I was just curious if you were to put a priority on, I mean, is it more about the architectural features of the home or the history that it represents. And I don't know, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but, you know, so just thinking like in that area, it seems to me a little odd just to, I understand, you know, what you're getting at and what your objectives are, but it seems a little odd to me to just create that as, a historic district, that single lot where I think we have to look at where we are in present day and balance the tension between historic preservation or educating our residents about our history and allowing important housing and redevelopment to move forward that is appropriate. I guess I don't really have any answers. I'm just sort of thinking out loud, because it is a challenging issue. But I sort of like where Clace was going about, is there an option to relocate it to a more appropriate location? Or is there mitigation somehow that can be negotiated with the homeowner to incorporate some historic elements, maybe not the entire house, but information or a plaque or history or photographic evidence of the home are something in writing about the history. I don't really have much else to say, but I don't know if I can personally support just blanketly recommending that that lot be its own historic district, considering other factors around housing development.

[Andre Leroux]: Jackie Portato?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I'm trying to figure out, at one point when this house was for sale, it says it was just a building for sale, not the land. And the option that was mentioned previously by Andre and Clace is for the seller, the new owner, had to have a lot in which it could could be moved to properly, but the previous owner would pay for that, pay for the installation of this house to move. So at what point did we change from that? Because it was actually listed as such. I don't know if it was 2018, 2019. I don't know if it's the current owner. But at some point, this was a listing for this development. How did we move away from that?

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: It was put on after we moved this process forward and in the last, what, 30 days? I'm not sure, but it's definitely, it's just an offer and he's never presented to us. And it's been listed twice. When we gave him the original list of options, we asked him to first pursue reuse of the existing building to demonstrate to us that it was technically infeasible. But instead, he just listed the building for sale available for $1 to see if anybody would want it. I think it was on there for a handful of days. I he never provided any documentation that he received offers or received inquiries You know, there's you know, there's a ton of miscommunications and no communications here that you know That again, we our hands are tied. We can't generate that information We can't help him move forward with the demo delay if none of that information is being provided to us you know, so we we and again communications broke down where he, the homeowner, sorry, the homeowner just stopped communicating. He said that he's not going to entertain any idea, any reuse of the existing building or any analysis thereof. And now here, 16 months later at city council meeting, he provided that information to us. Whereas he could have done that 16 months ago and we wouldn't even be here, but you know, we're using the only tool available to us to move the dialogue forward. That's all.

[Jenny Graham]: So the- Can I ask another question? Like one of our first, well, one of the first board meetings that I attended, didn't we have a proposal before us about building, you know, two houses on one lot? I mean, has that, and one of them was to allow a second home on a lot where it preserves a historic home. I mean, is that something that was discussed with this

[Andre Leroux]: Well, it depends on the zoning. The zoning laws for this area is different. It's just a different district. So there's more dense apartment development allowed in this zone.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Gotcha. Yeah, we were definitely open to building another single family residence. I mean, it's apartment to zoning, so he can build several units by right. He says, or his attorney says, we're not opposed to that by any means. We definitely are, if he can do it by right and he can provide housing to the city, we definitely want that to happen. He, you know, he, he, he continuously says he can't do one thing and has no evidence to back it up. So we, we can't make a decision to help him or, you know, to help move the process forward. So we just, we have to look at reusing the existing building at that point. Um, and, you know, and stick with that. I mean, you know, two of the architects that are on the board said that it can be done. I mean, we know that it requires renovation and repair and, you know, we talked a lot, you know, earlier tonight about, you know, possibly reusing a portion of the building, maybe the oldest portion, but, um, you know, none of those options have been explored and the owner was unwilling, you know, in a flat out letter, he just said, we're not entertaining any options to reuse this building period. So our hands were tied at that point. So, like I said, this is the only option available to us to move the discussion forward. Again, we're not trying to. heard the development here, we're trying to encourage design that's compatible with the neighborhood, that helps the city, that gets tax rolls, that he makes money on, you know, there's definitely a balance here that's trying to take place, you know, and I can definitely understand everyone's concerns. And, you know, I enjoy hearing everyone's point of view, because I think it's important that we take it all in and then just try to come to a consensus that works for everybody.

[Jacqueline McPherson]: As has been said earlier, I'm not sure that I can even recommend or even provide anything on this situation outside of having it transferred. And it sounds like that's not an option with the owner anymore, although it was at one point. I wouldn't know how to move forward with this, to be absolutely honest, outside of transferring.

[Andre Leroux]: So just a couple of questions, Ryan. The demolition delay is going to end at the end of October. Is that correct?

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: October 8th.

[Andre Leroux]: OK. And just so everybody on the board understands, the city council actually had a committee of the whole hearing tonight at the same time we were meeting. And they had this on their agenda. We don't know what they discussed and talked about, except Ryan, I don't know if you could go into any more detail about if there was anything productive from that conversation.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: You know, we heard both sides of the story. I gave the presentation on the history of the building and historic districts. Ari and the owner and you know his team gave the gave some drawings and some information to City Council. There was some public input and then at the end of the meeting they elected to do two things. They're going to have a site visit. on Monday just to review the building, and on Tuesday voted to move the paper out of committee to be on the agenda next Tuesday for a vote of approval.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay. And did the property owner give any different indication tonight about being willing to explore creative options?

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: No, his position, you know, I know I'm coming from the position to try to defend the city, so I'll try to relate it as best as I can. His position is that it's technically unfeasible to renovate this building, and, you know, he provided structural information and drawings and photos, and we have always understood that, but we, you know, the we were asking him to be a little bit more creative and come up with some information that would allow us to at least pursue other paths that involve the new building, but he wasn't willing to do that. But he did that tonight, not for us, but for city council at the presentations. And it was very schematic, but his position has not changed that, obviously his plan is to either get rid of the building or demolish the building. rather than try to make any attempt to preserve it. I don't think the listing of the building is an act of good faith. I think it's just an act to demonstrate that he's doing something to move this process along, perhaps in his favor. But I just, you know, I think the, you know, some of the Councilors obviously relayed that, you know, we didn't have the time to review any of that information and that he didn't respond to any of our requests. know, for that information in the beginning. So, you know, it's just his position hasn't really changed.

[Andre Leroux]: And then the final thing I would say, just brainstorming here, this is, the property is adjacent to LaPreeze Village, the the affordable housing project that I believe is owned by the city. And has there been any conversation about possibly the city purchasing the property and using some CPA funds for affordable housing and historic preservation to basically do the development itself?

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: No, that's a good idea, though. I did broach the idea of perhaps doing a land swap with the housing authority owning the property across the street that it would give the developer the opportunity to build on the same square footage and the same lot size. They're both 13,000 square feet in exchange that the housing authority could team up with the historical commission and yes, get the renovation of the building and perhaps the housing authority authority could use the land at the rear either for public housing or, you know, they wanted to build a community center. I don't know where that stood for that village, but that was another option. You know, I, and the big question is, would Ari even sell or, you know, knowing that the delay is looming, you know, or could the city afford to purchase that property from him? Um, to prevent the demolition. I think those are all good ideas. I don't, you know, I, I broached the idea and, you know, it seemed, you know, I was told to ask the question, so it's working through, but, you know, those are complicated matters. I mean, that would, that would definitely take some time, but, you know, I, I think if the city could acquire that land, I think they definitely could and should do something with it. Um, even adding it to the lacrosse village, I think that's, you know. That might be nifty. Plus it's near the schools. I mean, it has, you know, we could use the building for something, you know, maybe it's used for the village sometimes, and maybe it's used for students for teaching about the history, you know. But, you know, right now I'm just focused on even getting the building standing to hopefully be able to continue that dialogue at this point.

[Andre Leroux]: So, you know, it's really, it's a tough call, I think, for us coming in last minute to weigh in on something like this, which is, it's a challenge, I think. So, I guess I'll throw it back to all of you board members. Do you have strong feelings one way or the other? We are not required to make a recommendation, so we could do, what I'll call the class solution of making no recommendation is also a possibility. What is the will of the board?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I'm hugely conflicted. Preservation of any property is always a great thing, but it can have negative consequences later. Taking something out of stock for the use of all, I'm just not in a position where I feel as though myself as a board member should even rule on this as put forth. Again, I'm all for preservation, but at the same time, taking something offline and hindering use from others, I have a huge problem with that too.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: So Andre, just to be clear, are we able to say that we don't have a recommendation?

[Andre Leroux]: Yes. That's my understanding. And Annie or Alicia, you can feel free to weigh in on that.

[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, you guys can make a recommendation.

[Andre Leroux]: Can I make a motion? You can make a motion.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I make a motion that we do not make a recommendation on this, but encourage the rethinking of this project in different ways and in an active dialogue with the owner. Does that work?

[Andre Leroux]: Let me see if we can. So I think there's a motion to make no recommendation on the historic district, which is the specific piece in front of us, but to encourage

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: the preservation of this building, either on this site or a different site.

[Andre Leroux]: So it's to encourage the parties involved to pursue preservation of the historic structure on this site or another site.

[David Blumberg]: Andre, this is Dave. I'll second that.

[Andre Leroux]: Okay, we have a motion, we have a second. Any comments before we move to a roll call? All right, then we move to a roll call. Clyce Andresen? David Blumberg? Aye. Deanna Pubety?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Katie McHugh?

[Jenny Graham]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Christy Dowd?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Jackie Furtado?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: and I'm an I as well. So thank you. And I realized that you guys have done a ton of work on this and good luck fighting the fight. If there's any creative brainstorming ideas we can help out with informally, I think their members would be happy to do that. We'll see, I think the city council will probably make a decision regardless of what our recommendation is.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Yeah, we definitely want you guys to play a bigger role. Some things came up and we're just working through the channels here, but there are other districts in the works. There's one for the full length of forestry. that we definitely want you guys to review and have time to give us feedback so that we can, you know, work with the homeowners and the owners there and, you know, have something that perhaps is a little bit less contentious on both sides. You know, we have the support of owners and renters and neighbors there, so that would be a little bit better. You know, you guys definitely play an important role in our city, so we want you guys to have your feedback and the more minds that, the more minds, the merrier.

[Andre Leroux]: Right. Thank you. And we're, you know, I think we're trying to move in a direction where we can function more as a proactive planning board. So I think we'll be doing more of that over the next few months and would love to work with both of the commissions, the historic district commission, as well as the historic commission on trying to identify our priority historic assets in the city and how we can incorporate that into the preservation plan while we grow.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Yeah, one of the things that the Councilor Marks offered for BPAPR tonight was to analyze the funding for a community-wide preservation plan. So I think that that would definitely help. And if we did, we can use the survey work that we do to at least analyze the properties and use all the good data that we've gotten over the last decade to help you guys plan and give you all this good information that's out there too.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, and I think there are maybe other ways to, you know, regardless of the outcome on this particular property, I think the shipyard history is very important and interesting. And I think there could be some, you know, we've lost a lot of stuff, unfortunately, but there could be some interesting ways of celebrating that history so that more people in the city will know it.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Great, sounds good.

[Andre Leroux]: Well, best of luck. Good luck.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Thank you. Thank you all. I'm sure we'll be in touch again.

[Andre Leroux]: Thank you very much, everyone.

[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_31]: Thank you.

[Andre Leroux]: So board members, we've come to the end of our agenda. We just need to set dates for our next meeting. And what I'd like to do is see if we could, I think Deanna said that she had a preference for September 30th between September 30th and October 1st. So if that, Does anybody know that they can't make September 30th? Okay, great. So we'll go ahead and set September 30th as the next date. And then after that, let's try to look ahead a little bit. And I think Annie and I were talking about just two weeks, every two weeks after that for the next few weeks. So October 14th and October 28th. So those will both be Wednesdays at 6 p.m. any conflicts that you guys know about right now on those dates?

[Nicole Morell]: And we may not need all of those. And we can be in touch about canceling them if there aren't enough agenda items. But we wanted to give you guys an opportunity to do some items that were not as statutorily required and as some of the development review we've been doing. Ideas are welcome. Right.

[Alicia Hunt]: Comprehensive plan is going to get advertised next Wednesday and therefore released. And then I think we're setting October 23rd as the date that RFPs are due back. And as I had mentioned in email, that we could look at doing design review settings. Sorry. I said it correctly in the email.

[Andre Leroux]: Design guidelines. Thank you. Design guidelines.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.

[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, I think that would be a good discussion point. Even if it's not to the level of design guidelines, I think we had talked in the past about there are certain comments that we time and again talk to developers about. So I think articulating what we expect from developers in terms of presentation materials would be one thing. And then also, what's our checklist in terms of things that we continue to go down, right? you know, trash removal, bike parking, blah, blah, blah, all those things.

[Alicia Hunt]: In preparation for a meeting like that, we have a checklist that goes out to people when they want to submit to us, like, here's the requirements, and we'll send that out to you, you know, the blank one, and people can start to look at it, and we can look at what's codified, what's in our regulations versus ordinances, things that are in our regulations, this board can review. Another thing I'd like to put on the table is that in the ordinance, it says that we would review linkage fees every three years. And we are still operating with the original linkage fees set in 1991, I believe, even though it's said, and I don't think they've ever been reviewed. So those are some examples of things that have, that we'd like to discuss need to be in a public open meeting?

[Andre Leroux]: So good news is the pipeline going forward looks a lot less. And we can be proactive and talk about some things that might be a little bit more interesting for us to deal with. I'll talk to Annie and Alicia about what some of those items might be. If you have thoughts about things that you would like to talk about as a board, please send those to me or the CD staff. And our goal going forward is to really try to limit these meetings to two hours if we can. Great, well, is there a motion to adjourn?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I'll make a motion.

[Andre Leroux]: Thanks, Jackie. Second?

[Jacqueline McPherson]: I'll second.

[Andre Leroux]: Thanks, class. Roll call vote. Class Andreessen? David Blumberg? Aye. Deanna Peabody?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Katie McHugh?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Christy Dowd?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: Jackie Purtado?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye.

[Andre Leroux]: And I'm an aye as well. So thank you. We are adjourned. And see you in two weeks.

Jenny Graham total time: 5.08 minutes total words: 518	Nicole Morell total time: 3.0 minutes total words: 283