[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Method Community Development Board. I'll call the meeting to order. Let's begin with some regulatory procedural matters. This hearing of the Method Community Development Board is being conducted via remote means. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings as provided for in Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023. A reminder that anyone who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by accessing the link that was included on the meeting agenda posted on the City of Medford's website. If despite our best efforts, we are not able to provide real-time access, we will post a recording of this meeting on the city's website as soon as possible. A reminder that given the remote nature of this meeting, tonight all votes from the board will be made by roll call. Please know that project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed on the city's website at muffetma.org and you can click on current CD board filings and you can also find a link in the chat. I am going to do a roll call attendance for the board. Vice Chair Emily Hederman. Present. Peter Cowles.
[Peter Calves]: Present.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Ari Fishman. Present. Adam Behrens.
[Janie Tallarita]: Present.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Annie String. Present. Ben Lavallee.
[Ben Lavallee]: Present.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. Danielle, can you introduce any staff on the call?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I'm Danielle Evans, Senior Planner. With us tonight is Alicia Hunt, the Director of Planning Development Sustainability. We also have Sal DiStefano, who is the Director of Economic Development. Jessica Martinez, who is our Economic Development Planner. And I think that is everyone from city staff tonight.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much. So the first item on our agenda this evening was to be 21 St. Clair Road, which is a site plan review for Dover amendment use. The applicant has provided a written request to continue the public hearing to 12-18-24. So I will need a motion to continue to 12-18-24 for 21 St. Clair Road.
[Emily Hedeman]: I'll make a motion to continue without prejudice. Second.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: I'll second that, um, continuance. We did get a second already. Um, so it was vice-chair Emily Hedeman first and then Ari. Ari. Okay, um, uh, vice-chair Emily Hedeman.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_25]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Peter Kauf.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_25]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Ari Fishman. Aye. Adam Behrens.
[Ben Lavallee]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Andy Strang. Aye. Ben Lavallee.
[Ben Lavallee]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. We have just voted for 21 St. Clair Road site plan review for Dover amendment use to be continued to a public hearing on 12-1824.
[Alicia Hunt]: Just to clarify for anybody who's here tonight for that item, there will be no presentation about the domestic violence shelter this evening, and there will not be any public testimony taken on it this evening. You're welcome to send comments to OCD at Medford-MA.gov, and you're welcome to be here on the 18th to speak about that matter, but we will not be discussing that matter at all this evening.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Director Hunt. The next item is for public hearing is Mystic Avenue Corridor District, which is the MACD zoning amendment. This is a continued public hearing regarding the proposed new Mystic Avenue Corridor District, which would involve the following changes. Amend section 94-2.1, division into districts to add the Mystic Avenue Corridor District. Amend section 94-3.2, table of use regulations by incorporating the Mystic Avenue Corridor District into the existing table and to designate the uses permitted therein. Amend Section 94-4.1, Table of Dimensional Requirements, which is Table B, by incorporating the Mystic Avenue Corridor District and to state the dimensional requirements therein. Amend Section 94-12, which are definitions, to amend and add various definitions. Amend Section 94-9.0 to insert a new subsection to create the Mystic Avenue Corridor District. and amending the zoning map to create a new Mystic Avenue corridor district and to change the zoning district designation of various properties along Mystic Avenue to place them within said district as shown on the map entitled Mystic Avenue Corridor Zoning Map dated October 9, 2024. Director Hunt or Danielle Evans, if you can please give introductory remarks before I turn it over to Ms. Emily Ennis from Innes Associates.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure, I think that Daniel's expecting me to say a few things on that. Emily is going to go through this in more detail, but I just want to make sure that the members of the public and the newer members of the board are familiar. The city did a comprehensive plan. comprehensive plan, recommended changes. We hired a zoning consultant to help us to figure out the details of those changes to make recommendations. Part of her team is actually a lawyer, Jonathan Silverstein as well, to make sure that everything we're doing complies with zoning law. So we've been working with city council members, a subcommittee of the city council has been meeting regularly on this. and city staff along with Innes Associates to prepare the zoning. The zoning officially went to city council for them to hear. It is then automatically, they must refer it to this board for this board's opinions. this board has the opportunity to then make recommendations on the zoning in front of them back to the city council. The city council then votes on the zoning and then the mayor has to sign it to make it law. So that's the process this evening. And this is the second meeting of the public hearing for this board to make recommendations. And I'll turn it over to Emily, who's gonna present all of this and even mentioned the comprehensive plan at all.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you, Director Hunt. Good evening, board members, members of the public. For the record, my name is Emily Ennis of Innes Associates. We do have some additional information that we can present, but we thought we'd start out by asking the members of the CD board if you have any questions or initial questions you'd like us to address. We gave you a lot of information at the last meeting. I know that you're all well prepared for the first part of it, but we did provide some recommendations from city staff. I think there was some perhaps some questions on that. So I thought I'd just start and open up and see if there's anything else I can address initially and then we can provide some additional information to supplement any questions that you've asked us.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Does the board have any other questions at this point? Hearing none, would you like to continue, Ms. Ennis?
[Emily Innes]: Yes, happy to. I'm going to share my screen. And the first thing I'm going to call up is one of the things that we had talked about afterwards that we thought would be helpful for board members, although many of you participated in the comprehensive planning process, but also for members of the public who maybe either hadn't participated or hadn't seen the information was just a little bit of background. of why we're looking at Mystic Avenue. So the comprehensive plan, which was finished a few years ago, really looked at the entire city and made zoning recommendations for changes to the city to bring in the community input that we heard during the comprehensive planning process, codify that as part of updates to the zoning ordinance. So the vision for changes to the built environment, which would include housing options, economic development options, resiliency, climate resiliency, open space, all of these things that can be controlled either in whole or in part by zoning would then get codified, updated in the ordinance so that future development could be able to address them. So you see these blobs on my screen on the right hand side, and this is the land use map, the future land use map that was prepared as part of the comprehensive planning process. You see a bunch of purple lines, some red blobs, some green areas. These are the types of zoning districts or areas of zoning change that were envisioned by the comprehensive plan. So the purple blobs, the purple here because they're overlaid on yellow, those are what we call corridors. Corridors are streets, long streets. that lead from one place to the other but have a very different feel to them depending on the existing purpose and the anticipated purpose of the area. So you get something like Mystic Avenue or something like Salem Street, which we'll talk about with you next month. which is a street that connects places but is within a neighborhood. And what we're looking to do in a place like that is enhance what's there but pretty much keep a lot of what's already happening. Mystic Avenue, I think we thought of the comprehensive plan and thought as we were developing the zoning, this is really a transformational area. What is there now is not consistent with what was envisioned in the comprehensive plan. So right now you have a lot of buildings that are kind of in the middle of lots, they're not relating to the street, they're not relating to the pedestrian environment. There are some uses that are maybe not the highest and best use for a corridor like Mystic Avenue, which really connects the downtown area to transit, to transportation in terms of the highway, is bordered by residential areas, but have large lots on one side that are suitable for a different type of development. and lots on the other side that really need to think about how to transition from that development down to the residential neighborhoods, that level of intensity. And so in thinking about what makes a walkable corridor a corridor that can address very different conditions along its length, that's where the zoning proposal that is in front of you, in front of the City Council comes from. So we wanted to give that a little bit of context to what's happening. And you can see here on this page, again, the right-hand side is the diagram that came out of the discussions of the Comprehensive Plan, and the left-hand side is the actions within the Comprehensive Plan. So you can see here implementing the Bicycle Infrastructure Master Plan here, thinking about the different uses that could happen here, implementing the complete streets. There's a lot of infrastructure proposals that were going in, that were being considered at the time. These are the zoning proposals that, by changing the zoning, allows, over time, new development that could be enhanced by the infrastructure that can enhance the experience of both people who live in the area and people who work in the area, but also the job opportunities, the housing opportunities that we'd like to see there. So as we look at the, here is the existing corridor and what it looks like, the existing conditions, you can see those sort of buildings that some of them are pushed back from the street. They're larger. There's a lot of parking going on here. There's a lot of not particularly well-defined pedestrian and vehicular conflicts going on. And you can see that the character kind of changes as we move down. So taking those existing conditions, looking at the existing uses where you can see this sort of mix. It's a real true mixed use district now, but not at its highest and best level. The individual uses are kind of So you've got these commercial uses, these industrial uses, these residential uses, but they're not really integrated together the way we'd like to see them. But you can already see that the variety of uses. And so as we think about the current dimensional standards here, this is an example of the C2 district, the uses that are allowed. It looks quite complex when you try and analyze the existing zoning because the dimensional standards depend on the type of use that's happening in this area. It depends on whether or not you have three floors or four floors and how does that work. And our goal is to really simplify a lot of what's going on. And so that's where you see with the new zoning map, these districts that we talked about last time, the mixed use, the mixed use two and three, the commercial down here, those transitions back and forth between allowing for a higher level of density along the 93, the infrastructure there, allowing the commercial where it's got access, And then allowing mix two as a transition to the residential, which is not being changed in this proposal. Allowing the transition with the mix one over to the downtown. And then seeing, okay, now we've got a much more simplified table of dimensional standards. It's not based on use, it's based on the district. It tries to create a more consistent way of building out each of the districts. And then you see here we've got the base heights and the solid color. The more transparent color for each of these types is to indicate that there is this incentive bonus for additional height, but they have to meet the additional requirements. to get that bonus. It is not automatic. And there's also the step backs at the upper level. So when you're on the street, a lot of people will worry about a canyon effect by having too many tall buildings right at the front of the street. We require the step back from the street so that widens out the view. You don't get the same impact as you would if these buildings were directly on the street. So this idea that we're simplifying the districts themselves, We're adding a wider mix of uses so that we can have that additional housing opportunity, the additional economic opportunity. We're making the standards more consistent and just easier to deal with. So I wanted to add that as additional information for the board to consider, for the public to understand what we're doing. I can also go through in more detail if it is of interest. The development standards take you sort of directly into the zoning to look at that if there have been questions on that. But I hope that initial stage was a help. Happy to answer questions on that first set of information.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much, Ms. Ennis. Does the board have any questions before I open it up to the public? Okay, I will now open up the public comment period. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Danielle in the chat if you're having technical difficulties. You can also send an email to OCD at medford-ma.gov. Before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. A reminder to all the participants to please refrain from using the chat function to provide substantive comments as it is not part of the public record. However, if a participant is having audio or other technical difficulties, this may be entered into the chat to alert myself and staff. Danielle, can you please manage the public comment queue?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Danielle Evans]: I do not see any raised hands, Madam Chair.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Oh, there's one. Mr. Kwasniewski.
[Laurel Ruma]: Hi there, thank you. My name is Laurel Ruma, I live at 149 Burgett Avenue. Could you define the canyoning effect a little bit more for us and what that means when you have that intentional gradiation of tall buildings that then go down to lower height buildings, especially in a neighborhood with houses across the street?
[Emily Innes]: With the permission of the chair, I'd be happy to. Okay. Okay, so in. So when we think of the canyoning effect or the canyoning effect that people have been concerned about, it tends to be when you have quite narrow streets and taller buildings right up to the lot line that can present a canyon effect. We are not doing that, right? We are allowing buildings up to a certain height and then you have to step the building back. This is actually a wider street. So that intentional step back of the taller buildings is meant to open that up. And then the idea of the other restrictions in terms of dimensional standards. We're having the taller buildings on the side of the street that backs up to 93 and the shorter buildings are the the ones that are on the residential side. And the intention is because you've got the taller buildings on this side, the shorter buildings on that side. I'm making sure my hands are within the window. And then you're stepping down to the residential so that there's a lesser impact on the adjacent residential because you're moving the taller buildings away from the adjacent residential.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Ms. Ennis. We have another hand.
[Danielle Evans]: A. Birney. Is that the screen name?
[jJ8nibzobNI_SPEAKER_03]: I think you're calling me, Amy Birness. I'm at 138 Burgett. And thank you for the information. It's very helpful. I think that's a great area of our town to be developed. And the next topic, I am curious for where you say on the 93 side, what is the height level of the buildings that is permissible there versus on the residential side?
[Emily Innes]: just pulling it up. So on the 93 side, that is the MX3 or the mixed-use 3 district. The minimum height, the base height is 4 plus a tower of 6, which would be set back. So the base height would be 10 at that point. And then the maximum height would be 14, which is again that same 4, a step back to 10. The other side, the mixed use, is shorter. It's 4 stories as a base height, so you have that match of the base. before the tower on the taller side, and then it can go up only to six stories there. Remembering too that they have to have the parcel size to be able to get up to six stories as well, but that again is with the incentive bonus. They have to match the specifics of the incentive bonus to get either of the higher heights.
[jJ8nibzobNI_SPEAKER_03]: Great, thank you for that information. Appreciate it. I'm done. Okay, bye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, and thank you, Ms. Ennis. I believe that's all. Danielle, correct me if I'm mistaken. I don't see any other. I don't see any other hints. Okay, I'm going to close the public comment period for this portion of the meeting, and I'll bring it back to the board for further questions or deliberations.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, there was the portion, Emily hasn't presented the part where the changes that we're recommending from staff to what went in front of city council. You mean in addition from the changes from last meeting? No, those changes so that the board understands, because those would be recommendations from the board. Sorry, I'm going to have to close the door out, my door. Right. She presented those at the last meeting. That went so late that I wasn't even sure. And I wanted to make sure that we had them correct, because we had an early version from Emily. And I want to make sure that the... I was trying to find in my files, there was not a document that's in the board's files with the recommended changes. So I want to make sure we have them correct.
[Emily Innes]: I'm happy to put them up on screen if that's helpful.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Just let me know. Thank you so much.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah. Let me just put that up now. So there are three recommendations. I'm going to show them to you first, and then I'll come back to go through in detail. Two of them are recommendations to change the development incentives. And the third is a height waiver recommendation to allow the possibility of changing the height. I'm going to deal with that first and then we'll go back to the development incentives. So the height waiver is just we find that sometimes there are parcels or buildings or projects that just They're almost there, but not quite. And so allowing that minimum height, so allowing a waiver allows you to get the project to the right place. All of the districts have minimum heights, and it's because we want to encourage that highest and best use. But there may be a case in which you have an excellent project that's something that meets the goals of the comprehensive plan, many of which I already talked about, but it's under that minimum height. And so we wanted to give the board, in talking with staff, wanted to give the board flexibility to waive that minimum. And so we've set it up to waive it by a special permit. from the Community Development Board if they meet that consistency with the purpose of the district, which of course is laid out in the zoning, but also the goals of the Medford Comprehensive Plan. So that gives you criteria to use for the judgment. Two of the recommendations for the development of incentive bonus, we are deleting the certified as LEED Gold or equivalent standard. Right now it's set up so if you get LEED Gold, you get one story. If you get LEED Platinum or equivalent, you get two stories, so an additional story for a maximum of two. We're finding the lead gold or equivalent is kind of too easy to reach these days. So many are doing it. So we wanted to move it to lead platinum or equivalent to get to a single additional story. You want the incentives to be achievable, but not easy to achieve, right? Because we're looking for a public benefit from the incentives. The same thing, so these incentives were based on the Section 3A zoning from last year. And we had in that a provide active ground floor space at more than 75% of the ground floor. But in this case, in this particular district, that's actually a requirement for some of the districts. So it's not appropriate to have this as an incentive. So we're asking you to delete it.
[Alicia Hunt]: Before I go on, Emily, I realize that this doesn't have certifiable as opposed to certified. So it's both a technical thing and general that they can't actually get certified until a year after the building opens.
[Emily Innes]: Right. So it's certifiable, yes.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And in fact, it's less important to the city that they literally get that certificate, so much as that they show us that they've met all the requirements to be able to get the certificate.
[Emily Innes]: That's right. I think we've made that discussion after we created this. So yes, the board should know that this word should be certifiable as LEED, sorry, certifiable as LEED Platinum or equivalent standard. So, and we also did that because there are, it used to be that LEAD was the only standard. There are also many other standards that would meet city goals. So that's why we put the equivalent standard. And then the final change, and this is a little bit more complex, you will see if you look at the original zoning that we proposed that there's two possible incentives related to affordability. We felt in discussions collectively that the way that was worded was confusing. And so it looks more complex because it's a table, but in fact by giving the specific incentives, it allows you to actually see what's being required and it also makes it clear the difference between the project types. So, on the left-hand side, where we have the number of lots or units in the proposed projects, these divisions, 10 to 24, 25 to 49, 50 plus, are what exists in your current affordability requirements. and the minimum percentage of affordable units at 80% AMI, which is the second column from the left, is again, that's what's existing in your inclusionary zoning. So what we did was we broke it up for one additional floor in the first incentive bonus. We're asking for a deeper level of affordability. So you have a mix of 80% units at 80% of AMI and units at 65% of AMI, but they still add up to the total percentage that's required in your inclusionary zoning. And if you give a deeper level, the 65% AMI, you get two additional floors. The second incentive is about the number of affordable units. So you have your minimum percentage at 80% AMI. We're asking that you give additional units at 80% AMI. in order to get the one additional floor or the two additional floor. Again, this time it's a straight 3% or 5% of units. We did some calculations behind this to get to the numbers of percentage. You could, if you are the developer, say you want just one additional floor, you can choose whether you want to do deeper affordability or more units. If you want two additional floors, you could actually do this three different ways. You could either give extra deeper affordability, so you're going for more units that are more affordable. You could do the additional required units, so you could go greater than the number of required units, so that's option two. Or you could do one floor, deeper affordability, and one floor, more units. So, that gives them flexibility in looking at the financing of how they have to do the units, to choose which methods that they want to use to achieve the incentive.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much. Was this, were these changes part of 1120's meeting packet at least, even though they weren't for 12? I just want to make sure that the public has had a chance to view these changes as well.
[Emily Innes]: These 2 slides are, that's a great question. These 2 slides are what I presented at our last meeting, so they should have been in that packet.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: So they were 1120 and because we were continuing, the public had access to this information already, okay. And I just wanted to make sure because it sounds like this is familiar information. It's just that it took me a little bit of time and I'm sure the rest of the board, there's the whole reason for it to be continued was to digest it. And it seems like it's the information that we've already been given. Okay, I just wanted to make sure.
[Emily Innes]: My understanding is that this was publicly available and the only change we're making to these two slides is the one that Director Hunt mentioned earlier about changing certified to certified. Yes.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you for the clarification. And with that, does the board have any questions, comments, or further suggested changes?
[Adam Behrens]: I have one Jackie.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Yes, please.
[Adam Behrens]: Just to try to form the right mental model for the city's objective for the corridor, and for the incentive bonus. Is there just an overall target. that the city has, and apologies, I'm coming off a cold, so a little bit hard to speak, but is there an overall target that the city has for kind of the expansion of affordable housing or the availability of housing that it's trying to get to with the incentives, just at like a bigger picture level? for either the district itself, the Mystic Corridor District, or just more broadly for the city.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I think you might be getting at, we have a housing production plan that was done in 2021 that talks about affordability goals and ways of getting there. And some of that is allowing more larger buildings in more parts of the city. Some of it is increasing the amount of affordable units that are available in the city. all the buildings in the city. So I wouldn't say very specifically, oh, we want to see X number of units in on this corridor, so much as we've been thinking of this as a place where people can live and work and play and shop, like really like a more it's I would never say it would be like assembly row, but like conceptually, right, you might live upstairs, you might walk down the street and shop, there might be some commercial type buildings where you might work. That's sort of what we're going for on this street, more than a residential neighborhood. Got it. That makes sense. Yeah.
[Emily Innes]: And if I may, because it may not be clear to somebody tuning into this meeting for the first time, is that the three discussions of incentive bonuses I mentioned are not the only one. There's a full table. These are adjustments to the table, but there are a number of different public benefits that could be choosed. chosen, there goes my English for the night, chosen by a developer to get up to the level that they want to see there's this combination, but they all relate in some form to either affordability of housing, community amenities, most of which should be privately maintained, there's one for publicly maintained, or the idea of having an active, vibrant, walkable area. So, and then the final the final sort of grouping is those that would address some form of climate resiliency or environmental resiliency or improvements to that area. It is very heavily impervious at the moment. So, but that that combination addresses, I think, many of the goals of the comprehensive plan.
[Adam Behrens]: Yeah, thank you.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: I see raised hands, but we've already closed a public comment period, but I'm not sure if I should backtrack based on the new information that the public may think was provided.
[Emily Hedeman]: I think reopening it could be interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I'd support that, Jackie. Do we need to make a motion to reopen?
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: I'm not sure if it's at the discretion of the chair, but Danielle, can you please allow Ms. or Mr. Alex Hackman to speak? Sure.
[Danielle Evans]: All right, you should be able to unmute yourself, Mr. Hackman or Ms. Hackman.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_07]: Oh, right. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me okay?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_07]: Thanks so much. I'm sorry I missed my time earlier. I couldn't find the raise my hand button, but I have two comments. One's aspirational and one is mindful. The aspirational one is, I wonder if the board might dream about how really state-of-the-art public transportation could enhance this corridor. We have buses, which are great. You're going to have new bike lanes, which are great, but could you dream differently about something like a trolley that runs down the middle of this way over widened street, something that really encourages vibrancy of this new zone. So that's the aspirational. I just want to plant that seed. The mindful comes in response to the climate resilience comment from Emily. And by the way, I'm sorry, Alex Hackman, 71 Hume Avenue. The climate resiliency talk, Emily, great presentation. I'm very supportive of this density. I just want to point out that we're at elevation 9 or 8 along this stretch. There will be a time in the future when the ocean overtops the Amelia Earhart dams, whether it's storm events or sea level rise. And I think ahead to 100 years from now, when the city is going to be faced with removing these buildings, this is the former wetland of the Mystic River, the Mystic River, there will be a time when we are under water here. Would the city ever be very progressive and consider things like bonds for future building removals 100 years from now? Thank you for taking my comments.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much, Mr. Heckman. And we have one other which is Jamie Thompson, Thompson Realty.
[SPEAKER_31]: Good evening, evening everyone. Thank you for opening that up I did just want to ask for some clarification on the new information, just for the public if you could qualify the area median income at 80% and 65% based on that incentive slide. What those dollar values would be.
[Emily Innes]: I'm sorry, I do not have that information with me at the moment, but we could certainly get them to the board for distribution. For those of you who aren't aware, area median income is calculated at a regional level, so I'd have to jump into the details and pull it out. I don't have it at my fingertips tonight. I see Danielle's hand up. Danielle?
[Danielle Evans]: Danielle Evans, senior planner. Yeah, so these change every year when HUD releases the new immediate income. And it is the area of, yeah, it's the Quincy Boston That's what they call it, metropolitan area, I think is what they use. I would have to look it up. I used to have these memorized.
[Peter Calves]: Is it the Boston and Cambridge Newton MSA?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so it's for the Middlesex County. So the median income at 80% for one person is $91,400. That's 80% of median income.
[Emily Innes]: I have the 80%. I'd have to calculate the 65, but I can give you, actually.
[Emily Hedeman]: Danielle, I just sent you a link to the MHP tables. Maybe you can get the same one.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, they don't have the 65%. We probably have to find a table, because these tables are associated with programs that use those so they're not going to show you the 65% if they don't have a program for that.
[Emily Innes]: So, just so people can see here's Medford under the Middlesex County one this is the mass housing partnership. Here's the 80% income by household size so as, as Danielle said 91,400 for a family or household rather of one, all the way up to a household of eight. I think much of the time we look at sort of a household of three or four when we're just doing a quick table, but that's the current 2024 information.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Is there no other hands i'm going to definitely signal that we are fully closing, uh the public hearing Or the public comment period at this point for this item And bringing it back to the board If there's any further questions Peter cals Uh, this is not so much a question as much as just doing my my job as a clerk to make sure we have a
[Peter Calves]: handle on the changes that we would be, I believe, if I'm following procedure correctly, recommending to the city council? Is that what we're?
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Yes, I believe. I think we have to spell them out, but we recommend an approval of the zoning amendment with any of the additional changes that were identified at the last meeting and any tonight, if there was any made by the board, which there has not been. So I believe we would have to read them out
[Peter Calves]: Yes, that's what I wanted to make sure that we are removing the lead gold standard from the development incentive bonus table, removing the active ground floor use from the development incentive table for this district, adding the height waiver as a special permit for this district, and add the modified table affordability requirements as presented.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And then the changing certified.
[Peter Calves]: And change certified to certifiable.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Yes.
[Emily Innes]: If it is helpful to the board, I did make the change on the slide. So I can, if you do need to read them out in full, I can put them back up at any point that you need them. So you have the correct text.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: That would be helpful for me when I do the actual motion. Thank you. Vice Chair Emily Hederman.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, just pick a quick point of clarification. It was remove the LEED Gold certifiability, but add in the LEED Platinum certifiability.
[Peter Calves]: I think I understood it as, I understood the language is remove the LEED Gold, but the LEED Platinum is already there.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay. The LEED Platinum is there for two stories. So the recommendation is to change LEED Platinum from two stories to one and make it certifiable instead of certified.
[Emily Hedeman]: Got it. Thank you. Appreciate the, uh, just want to make sure the language is correct.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Right. Seeing no other comments. If you can, please put up the changes and I will look. I will ask for a motion. So I would need a motion to change recommendations actually to recommend approval of the zoning amendments with the first change of at a table for the affordability requirements to the table of development incentive bonuses in section 94-9.x.4 development incentives. Second change. Delete from the table of development incentive bonuses in section 94-9.X.4 development incentives to certified as legal. or equivalent standard and modify certifiable as LEED Platinum or equivalent standard to one additional story. Number three, delete from the table of development incentive bonuses in section 94-9.x.4. Development incentives provide active ground floor space at more than 75% of the ground floor. And four, add to section 94-9.x.3, dimensional requirements, dimensional requirements and waivers. I, height waiver two, the minimum height requirement may be waived by a special permit from the Community Development Board for projects that are consistent with the purpose of the district and the goals of the Medford Comprehensive Plan.
[Peter Calves]: So moved.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And a second. I second. Total roll call, Vice Chair Emily Hederman?
[Emily Hedeman]: Aye. Peter Cowes? Aye. Oh, wait. I don't think I can vote, right? Because I wasn't here for the first part. I'll say aye, and then we'll figure it out later. Sorry.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Yeah, that's right. You weren't part of the, yes. Thank you. Peter Cowes? Aye. Ari Fishman? Aye. Annie String? Aye. Adam Behrens.
[Ben Lavallee]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Ben Lavallee.
[Ben Lavallee]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm an aye, and I believe we have quorum, even without Vice Chair Emily Hederman's vote. Thank you very much, Ms. Ennis. And have a great evening.
[Emily Innes]: You as well.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you for your patience with us. I want to repeat for the public that the St. Clair Road Domestic Violence Shelter has been continued to Wednesday, 12-18-24, and there will be no presentations or public comment taken on this matter tonight. So the next item on our agenda for this evening is 401 Boston Ave, site plan review for Dover amendment. This is continued public hearing where the applicant will present any new information. The public will have an opportunity to provide comments on the new information later in the public hearing. I'm going to ask the proponent. I don't see Rocco.
[Rocco DiRico]: I'm here, Matt.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Hi. Hello. How are you this evening?
[Rocco DiRico]: Good, Matt. Good. Jackie, how are you?
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Pretty good. Thank you so much. All right. I'm going to give you the floor. to present any new information.
[Rocco DiRico]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening, my name is Rocco DiRico, and I'm the Executive Director of Government and Community Relations at Tufts University. Tufts University is a mission-driven nonprofit organization that educates more than 6,000 students on our campus, and a key part of that mission is providing housing to our students. As we discussed at the previous meeting, this project meets a lot of the city's and the university's shared goals. on-campus housing, mixed-use development, transit-oriented design, an energy-efficient building, and it will meet the City's new Stretch Energy Code. I think also importantly, it will revitalize a key section of Boston Avenue, which currently serves as a gateway to Medford for people as they step off the Green Line. If I can ask the team from Elkis Manfredi to share the PowerPoint, and I can share with you the new information that we have for you tonight.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just changed their permissions. Okay. It's the conference room.
[Rocco DiRico]: Thank you, Director Hunt. If we can go to the next slide. So I am here with my colleagues from Tufts University, Capstone Development Partners, who is the developer for this project, Earl in Construction is the general contractor, Elcas Manfredi is the architect. We also have our landscape architect on the call, our transportation engineer, our civil engineer. If we can go to the next slide. So we have spent the last six months meeting with neighbors, elected officials, city department heads and other key stakeholders. We heard your feedback, acknowledge your concerns, and we've acted on your requests. We hear what you're saying, we value your input, and we are continuing to improve the project. We can go to the next slide. These are some of the comments that we heard over the course of those meetings, and we are here tonight to present new information and ways that we have factored those things into our project. If we can go to the next slide. So this project will provide much needed public realm improvements on Boston Avenue. As part of those things that we heard at the meetings on that last slide, we will be adding new sidewalks on both sides of Boston Ave, new crosswalks, new trees, a blue bike station, new retail options that we believe will make Boston Ave more sustainable, more walkable, and more accessible. Tonight, we're here to present new information that we're going to discuss. First, a traffic impact study and parking assessment. Second, civil stormwater management. And then finally, we'll discuss public realm improvements and community benefits. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff Bandini from Niche Engineering.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Rocco. Appreciate the introduction. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Again, Jeff Bandini, Senior Project Manager with Niche Engineering. So we were tasked with putting together the traffic impact study and parking assessment associated with the project. So as part of that, we put together first our traffic impact study and collected data at four locations within the study area, primarily along Boston Avenue so that we could best understand the impacts of the project. Second, we looked at the crash data. We understand that safety is important for this development and within the city. So we want to make sure that we're comparing existing crash data to understand if there would be any. mitigation that may be needed as part of this project associated with any sort of crash data information that we saw historically as part of our research. We looked at the Institute of Transportation Engineers trip generation for fill build out of a project of this size and scope. We understand that ITE trip generation in this project, as much as ITE is a good brings historical value to what this building means in terms of size and use. Its location on the Tufts University campus provides a little bit of a unique perspective from a traffic and parking study perspective, which I'll get into a little bit in the preceding slides. But basically, we applied the full ITE trip generation to this project to understand what the full build out of that would mean. And again, what associated impacts that would be as part of the project. We also, and since I mentioned ITE being a conservative estimate, and part of that is because we understand that the project is going to draw from the existing pedestrian bicycle and MBTA network, which, you know, this study area and the Tufts University campus provides tremendous accessibility from a multimodal approach and doesn't necessarily rely on vehicle trips. to bring students to campus, and that's part of what I'll get into again in a little bit. So I mentioned the ITE trip generation, so essentially what that would mean is a nominal increase in vehicle trips if you use the ITE conservative numbers, but again, suggesting that the project is anticipated to draw a lot of those trips from the multimodal realm. Next slide, please. So this is just a little bit on the parking assessments of part of the traffic impact study. The project site would incorporate part of the Hill Hall parking lot, which right now is 80 spaces during our traffic impact study. And during a Nelson Nygaard study that was conducted parking study that was conducted recently, the lot is fairly underutilized. So. you know, via its replacement as part of the project, the displacement of vehicles within the lot is fairly minimal compared to the amount of spaces within it. As part of our coordination with Tufts University and our research into the parking assessment, 11% of juniors and seniors have parking passes, so we use that number to assess what that would mean in terms of potential future capacity that's needed as part of the project. Right now, freshmen and sophomore students by policy are not permitted to park on campus. As part of the coordination with Tufts, we found that freshmen sophomores right now are parking on campus due to a loophole in being able to sign up for parking passes. which Tufts is committed to updating their system and compliance so that we can decrease the number of freshmen and sophomores parking on campus. And then that way, some of that displacement will lead into additional parking capacity that would be permitted for use by additional vehicles associated with the project. So as a result of the displacement of the vehicles on the existing Hill Hall lot, the utilization of existing juniors and seniors, the displacement of the freshmen and sophomore students, we anticipate sufficient capacity in the Dowling Hall garage to include the project-related vehicles associated with the project. Furthermore, I know it's an ongoing discussion with the university is certainly committed to monitoring parking demand in the future and is willing to adjust its existing policy as the current capacity and demand fluctuates as part of the project and other projects in the vicinity of the campus. Next slide, please. So here's a parking map that was put together as part of the Nelson Nygaard study, which I mentioned, and Nelson Nygaard conducted the study back in October. And this demonstrates just an understanding of where the project site is and where there are existing parking areas in the vicinity of the project site that do have additional capacity if needed to park additional vehicles. Either associated with the project or some level of displacement as vehicles park for the existing site and that's that's to suggest that there are areas within the project site that do have additional capacity. In addition to the darling hall garage, which I mentioned. as part of the assessment of the displacement and the lots and the modification of that, or I should say a little bit more of the, you know, getting the freshmen and sophomores to no longer park on campus. This is an understanding of the math of the existing parking that's available. Next slide, please. So, here's the conclusion of what we found during our traffic impact study and parking assessment the project. I mentioned the is the most conservative estimate I mentioned that residents of the building will walk and bike and use transit as a primary transportation mode and our. basically reliant or non-reliant on vehicles as part of this development. That being said, we understand the parking needs in and around the Tufts University campus and we understand how this is a housing project and there will be some parking associated with that. However, The goal of this project is to provide housing for students that currently live in Medford and the surrounding area and would anticipate that those residents would be the ones that are residing on the site and therefore will be less on campus or to and from campus vehicles along the transportation area. So basically the vehicles that travel to and from the study area will be vehicles that no longer have to do so because they'll be living on campus. The capacity in the Dowling Hall garage, which I mentioned, and other Tufts parking lots would be able to accommodate. The project-related traffic for those that do decide to drive and want to park on campus. But overall, as I mentioned, because of the displacement of the vehicles, the freshmen and sophomores no longer parking on campus. And the overall utilization, the project, we anticipate the project will have a minimal overall campus and study area impact on traffic and parking. Thank you. I'll turn it over to John Headland from the niche office. He's going to discuss the stormwater management associated with the project.
[SPEAKER_13]: Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, I'm John Hedlund with Niche Engineering. I'm a project civil engineer. So I'm here tonight to talk about the stormwater management, and I'll try to keep it at a higher level. I am an engineer, so sometimes I get deep into the weeds on technical stuff, but I'll keep it at a higher level tonight. So a little information on the existing stormwater system for the parking lot. So this was constructed prior to 2008 mass stormwater standards, and this means it provides minimal stormwater peak flow attenuation, water quality treatment, and groundwater recharge. The project itself is proposing a comprehensive stormwater management system, and this is shown in blue along Boston Ave, and this consists of stormwater chambers. It provides approximately 39,000 gallons of infiltration capacity. So that means it can infiltrate 39,500 gallons of water into the groundwater. So this is increasing groundwater infiltration. It also provides treatment using deep hooded catch basins, water quality structures, stormwater chambers with isolator rows, and stormwater infiltration. So during the 100-year storm event, it will actually reduce flow to the city system by 88,000 gallons of stormwater. So this is a roughly equal for perspective about a 25 by 45 by a five foot depth pool. Two of those pools not entering into the municipal system. It also reduces the peak flow rates into the system as well. And I just wanna note to the board that we have met with the city DPW numerous times and they've taken no objection to the stormwater approach. So with that, I'll hand it off to David.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_52]: Madam Chair, members of the board, good evening, everybody. I'm David Manfredi from Elkis Manfredi Architects. I'm going to be very brief this evening. You've heard me several times. You all know the site. It exists approximately halfway between College Ave and Winthrop Street, a long linear site on the south side of Boston Ave that is today occupied by two surface parking lots just west of Dowling Hall. and sits at the bottom of the hill, the hill that goes up to the green into residential quadrangle at the center of campus. We want to talk tonight about improvements to public realm especially, and you've seen this image before. We are looking to make significant improvements on both sides of Boston Avenue that will provide benefits not just to the the users of the street, but hopefully significant benefits for the neighborhood as well. And that includes setting the buildings back, creating wide sidewalks. And most importantly, we are looking to relocate the power lines, the above ground power lines that are currently on the south side of Boston Ave to the north side of Boston Ave. That will allow us first to remove what is not a particularly attractive utility, but secondly, to plant real street trees to create what we call a complete street, meaning with a landscape zone, mature street trees, wide sidewalks, approximately 22 feet from curb to face the building for that entire stretch on the south side of the street from Dowling Hall to University Ave. We're also proposing to the MBTA to plant smaller trees, lower trees on the north side. And so it would be a double row of trees, one row of trees on the south side of the street, another row of trees on the north side of the street between these two buildings and the neighborhood. The reason that the trees on the north side would be smaller in stature is because they would live underneath the relocated power lines and provide that second buffer to the neighborhood, that green buffer to the neighborhood, without any issues about limbs dropping onto the MBTA tracks. Now that is That all requires approval by the MBTA and by the utility to relocate the power lines. I want to show you a section through here to make this a little clearer of what these improvements will provide. At the top, you see the plan. That's basically the plan you saw in the former slide. Just reduced it now in scale all the way. If you see my arrow. I can see it. There it is. That's Dowling Hall. That's our east building. The stairs between the two buildings are West Building and University Ave. And we're cutting a section right through the earth and through the buildings right here. So that's the section as it exists today. You can see a surface parking lot well above the street and that slope that you're all aware of. And then the existing public realm, which is a 5'4 inch sidewalk, parallel parking, bike lane, two lanes of traffic, and again, the 4'6 bike lane and parallel parking, 6'10 sidewalk. These cars are approximately, it varies, of course, but as much as 15 feet above the street, obviously, I had lights shining to the north. The proposed section below, you can see that same dash line is the existing grade. Our building would sit at the elevation of the existing sidewalk. The sidewalk would be approximately 22 feet, 22 foot six from face of building to curb. It would include a five foot six landscape zone for these new street trees, nine foot sidewalk, fully accessible, and then an eight foot, what we're calling an outdoor seating space, if there is a restaurant on the ground floor, or if there's retail, but in good weather, would spill out onto that sidewalk, but all of that becoming part of the public realm. You can see again the parallel parking on both sides, the bike lane on both sides, and then the wider sidewalk on the north side, on the neighborhood side, and the new street trees adjacent to the curb on that wider sidewalk. And this is the sidewalk on the campus side. You can see that wide sidewalk that from curb to face of building is the 22 foot 6 inches. You can see where There is this kind of seating zone for a restaurant that would spill out. If it were retail that spilled out, the handrails go away and in the good weather, you're activating and energizing the industry. I'm not gonna repeat all 14 public realm improvements that you heard us list just a couple of weeks ago. I'm only gonna point out number one, because it is the most important of this list, And that is that these two buildings will provide on-campus housing for approximately 677 juniors and seniors at Tufts. These juniors and seniors would, in all likelihood, be living in off-campus apartments in and around the campus. And there's every reason to believe that taking those students out of the neighborhood will reduce rent pressure in the neighborhood, will reduce traffic, because they'll already be on campus rather than driving and parking on campus, as well as significant other benefits that always accrue when more students are living on urban campuses or semi-urban campuses around the country. And with that, I'll turn it back for one final important conclusion from Rockwell.
[Rocco DiRico]: Thank you, David. So as David mentioned, in addition to those commitments that we made on the previous slide, that were the results of our months of meeting with with neighbors, elected officials and department heads. We have also pledged to the city that we are committed to a one time contribution of $500,000 to address the concerns of the neighbors that are impacted downhill from this project. And we look forward to working with the city on finding the best way to utilize those funds to benefit the neighborhood that surrounds our campus. With that, I just want to thank the board for giving us the time to come back here and speak again tonight. And we'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you so much for going to all of your team members this evening for presenting. Before I open it up to the board, I do believe that Peter Cowles has words that he wanted to say.
[Peter Calves]: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Chair McPherson. As I said last time, I work for NIFT Engineering. And so as a company policy, whenever something comes before a board, I will, the initiatives worked on, I will have to recuse myself. So thank you, Chairman Phearson, and thank you everyone. And that will be my only comment on this matter. Bye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Peter. Before I open it up to the board, I wanted to bring it back to the city and just ask if the department head for transportation, transportation engineer is on this evening, just to give us a little bit more insight of the city's stance on the parking waiver. Or if Danielle or Director Hunt wanted to give any information or any insight there.
[Danielle Evans]: I don't think that Director Blake was able to join us tonight. I have not gotten any written formal comments, but I was in a meeting where he attended yesterday with some of the Tufts project team. So I don't want to speak on his behalf until I see those comments.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Okay, I just, only because I know that tonight is heavily based on a transportation presentation and questions that's going to surround it. We've seen that, you know, I've seen actually evidence in my opinion that it's not going to, it's going to have a nominal increase in trips, even using a conservative manual, but I am not an expert in transportation, so I can't satisfy the public's questions on that. And saying that, I will open up to the board if there's any other questions. At this point, before I open it up to the public. Ari Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the applicants for the presentation. I am curious if you can speak more about the concerns that the public brought at the last meeting about the significant shadowing that your own study found would affect quite a large number of streets. I was hoping from the introductory slide that you would speak more about that, but it wasn't addressed. I kind of have heard significant concerns and I'm imagining how I would feel if I suddenly started being in the dark at 2pm during the winter instead of at 4pm, and that seems like something that we should continue talking about. So I'd love to hear some more from the applicants about any options to decrease the impact on the neighborhood. Thank you.
[Rocco DiRico]: Thank you, Ari. You know, a lot of the trees that we have added and the other features that we have added are meant to mitigate some of the additional shadows caused by the building. And also, that is why we came up with this community fund to best determine how to support those neighbors that are impacted by the shadows. I will say we looked at reducing the height of the building. And what we determined is that eliminating a floor or two off the building did not have a significant impact on the shadows. But for every floor we took off, that's 60 more students that are, you know, living in the neighborhoods. So we, you know, we wanted to make sure we got that point across. The other thing I would emphasize is that we all, the allowable zoning in the area which the city has set forth is 12 stories. And so we intentionally shaved off, you know, two stories before even proposing the building. So we're doing our best to Satisfy two things, which is maximizing the amount of students that are living on campus and bring together a project that's good. If there's any other members of the team that want to speak to this, please just raise your hand.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: If I can add to that, Madam Chair. Yes. Patrick Gallagher with Goulston and Storrs on behalf of the applicant. And Ari, thank you for bringing up the fact that we did not raise shadows and I understand how that might seem conspicuous on our part. And I think the reason for not spending time on that today is we're trying to work and obviously on a compressed timeframe with the holiday last week. But we're trying to work toward getting more information that we can specifically share with the neighbors who are affected and with the board. We're hoping to have more conversations on this between today and our next hearing on December 18. We felt like we just wouldn't have been in a position tonight to present new information. But I want to assure the board that this is something where spending a lot of time internally looking at and trying to figure out how do we address these concerns, which we understand are very real concerns of the neighbors.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you. Adam Behrens.
[Adam Behrens]: Apologies if you covered this in the last meeting. I don't fully remember, but I think there was an astute comment from one of the members of the public. Just more broadly, the Tufts campus is a large campus, and there's additional sites to try to spread out construction or housing where it wouldn't necessarily need to be concentrated in a 10-story tall building. Um, but my question was just a little bit more to kind of wrap my head around, um, like how much of the kind of student housing shortage does this particular building solve? Um, and so, you know, just in terms of the students that don't have housing, um, you know, uh, is that like a thousand students or 2000 students? And so you're kind of biting off the 670 of them and then I'm not. Too familiar with some of the master planning around Tufts, but is there then additional dorms and housing that Tufts will need other sites for? over the next five years or 10 years in order to meet that shortfall? Or do you think about this project really as, hey, this is going to substantially bite off that shortage and really address the immediate or midterm needs?
[Rocco DiRico]: Adam, that's that's an excellent question. And to answer the specifics that you mentioned, we have approximately 2000 students that live off campus. So this project will house 677 of them on campus. So that addresses about a third of the students living on campus. But to your larger question we're not done there. We are renovating Blakely Hall, which is also on the Medford side of the campus that will be an additional 120 beds for undergraduate students. We also have a project. in Medford called COHO, which stands for community housing. And we're adding buildings to that. Those are kind of smaller scale dorms, but together they help us add up to a dorm. And there are other sites on the Somerville side of the campus, for example, that we are currently looking at and evaluating for additional housing. So, while this is a very big chunk of those students, I do want to assure you and the board and the members of the public that we're looking at all options that we can to add more housing on campus.
[Unidentified]: Thanks.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And to go along with that, Rocco, if you can just reiterate that you're not, this is not in a response to increase in enrollment that Tufts may have in the future. You're actually trying to bring more students off campus back to campus. I mean, that are living off campus, because I remember attending Tufts, you only had housing for freshmen, correct? And since then you've increasingly have created housing. So I just want to make, I wanted to be clear to the public that you're not responding to an increase in enrollment.
[Rocco DiRico]: That's correct, Madam Chair, and you're right. When I first got to Tufts, the requirement is for all freshmen and sophomores to live on campus, which we currently provide. So now what we're doing with these new housing projects is really trying to bring juniors and seniors back on campus. So that Coho development that I talked about, that's junior and senior housing. This entire development will be junior and senior housing. So you are 100% right that the objective of this project is to bring juniors and seniors who are currently living off campus and bring them onto campus.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: And Madam Chair, if I may, I would also just emphasize to a point that Raka was making. This project, I think Tufts Views is really a generational opportunity. to bring a large number of students back to campus under the umbrella of a single project. And whereas to hit that number of 670 students in smaller projects, you'd be talking about a larger number of projects, potentially, you know, extending and impacting far more areas than this single project site. So understanding and not to minimize any concerns around the size of this project. But I think the size is also an opportunity that Tufts would not have from doing smaller discrete projects to bring a significant number of juniors and seniors back to campus.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much. And if there are no other comments from the board, I'm going to open it up to direct on.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, I sort of wanted to put this in that interim between public comments and the board comments. So I did want to acknowledge that Mayor Brianna met with residents. She sent a letter to the President of Tufts. She met with Tufts as well, sent a letter to the President of Tufts. And they did respond to this evening with a letter, along with sort of listing out what they feel are the benefits to the community, including mentioning this $500,000 community fund. which is the first that she or the staff had heard this idea. And I let her know very briefly that the letter is there, but we had city events all evening and she hasn't had a chance to actually review the letter or any of that yet to provide sort of her response to it. But I did want people to know that those are out there. There were some ideas that we had had about How to respond to some of the resident concerns. We, I have reservations about a fund just to be clear that the city cannot receive money and distribute it back or directly like we couldn't do work on somebody's house or private property. or give money to a resident if the city received it, that would literally be illegal. So we could only like do sidewalks and traffic calming with money. So I just wanted to sort of put that sort of framing, if there was a fund that Tufts administered or some other third party, there would be significantly more flexibility with money like that. And I just want everybody to be clear on how that, what's allowed and not allowed. And there was one idea that I actually discussed with her yesterday that she wanted me to raise, and that's the idea of community solar. And this is the idea where an organization has solar, and then other people other than the entity that owns the solar benefit from the renewable energy, the electricity, that they buy the electricity off of it. Often we've been hearing from residents who are very much in favor of helping low-income people that they'd like to see as community solar project where low-income people could then buy the solar, the electricity at a discount so they'd get discounted electricity and benefit particularly people who couldn't afford to have solar on their own homes. And so an idea of having a community solar project through Tufts where the residents whose homes by a solar expert could tell you whether or not you could have solar on your home based on the amount of shading at your location. if they were found that they couldn't because of this project, that they could benefit from a solar project at Tufts. And so I just wanted to put that forward because that would be a direct response to a direct impact. That would be possible. It wouldn't help with any shading, but would help with higher energy bills because of more shading, for example. So I just wanted to put that out there as an idea. I don't see any way that anybody could respond on the ability to do that upon hearing it at first. They'd have to look into it. So I just wanted to put that out there. And then I can manage the public comment queue for you. And if you'd like me to speak about the written letters.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, yes, I'm just gonna do the public announcement and just set a little bit of housekeeping rules for the public commenting period. I'll open it first. I'll open the public comment period. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Danielle in the chat. If you are having technical difficulties, you can also send an email to OCD at method-ma.gov. Before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. A reminder to all participants to please refrain from using the chat function to message any comments to city staff or board members as it is not part of the public record. However, if a participant is having audio or other technical difficulties, you may message staff for assistance. Each participant will have 2 minutes to speak. 1 of the things I wanted to just set straight is that. Tonight's comments will only be about new information and not comments that we've already rehashed in the past. And we can only take into consideration things that are part of the site plan review that the CDB board can control, like height, bulk, parking, setbacks, design, but we cannot do labor agreements. We have no control over labor agreements, and I wanted to make that clear to the public before opening. And with that, Director Hunt, can you please manage the public comment queue? I know that you're not able to read all emails and letters, but if you can please just give us some common issues or themes that you have read.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I did share with the board an email this afternoon, late afternoon, so I can't imagine that anybody's had a chance to see it. that a couple of the letters had some illustrative photos in them. And so I called their attention to the names of those letters in our public comments section if they wanted to see them. And sorry, I had it in front of me. I just wanted to give a very brief summary In general, there were some concerns about whether Dover applied here. And I will tell you that we got a very clear statement from our lawyer that if Tufts owns the property or leases the property and the building houses Tufts students, that in their opinion, it is very clearly a Dover project and there is no question about that. And sorry, I had a, A quick summary up in front of me. I wanted to just sort of give you the numbers. Actually, I can tell you there were, since the last meeting, we've received 12 letters from residents that have concerns, issues. They're opposed to it. They feel the project is rushed. They are concerned about the shadowing. They're concerned about living right next to a 10-story building. And they're concerned about construction noise and construction impacts on them. Then we received eight letters from residents who said they would really like to see more housing on the Tufts campus, that they like that it's near the T stop, and they'd like to see more housing built and built soon. So that's the very brief summary of that. And all of those letters are available in full in the public comments folder.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Director Hunt. And do we have any members of the public that wish to speak this evening?
[Danielle Evans]: Madam Chair, I had a participant message me that they are unable to raise their hand. So I'd like to take this person first. It's a birdie. It's the screen name. I will
[jJ8nibzobNI_SPEAKER_03]: unmute this individual. Oh hi yes it's Amy again for summary. I'm on my phone so it's really hard to get to the features and I didn't see that option listed. I spoke earlier tonight. This is Amy Burness. I'm at 138 Burgett Avenue. I was on the call two weeks ago so thank you for the new information tonight. Interesting piece. I didn't realize we were in a zone that allows 12 stories on top of a hill, on top of a community with one-story buildings. Contrasting that over by 93, you're putting the bigger buildings, the zone over there for Mystic or the earlier topic tonight. Yet in a residential area, clearly residential, we're allowed to have buildings that are 12-story. I think that zoning should have been looked at a long time ago and fixed. The parking, I assume that we're in a parking permit zone now on our street, so hopefully that excludes anyone on Tufts campus so that our street doesn't become an easy parking for the building. It'll be like one street over. And I guess my third comment is around The fund, so I don't know. None of us like 10 stories towering over us. It doesn't seem like any of that was addressed. I don't know at what point the shadow would make sense or why a building couldn't be somewhere else. 500,000 for who? I guess I would like to just put on record then those of us who are living in direct impact of this should have a very good say about it, whether it should be solar or I don't know. I don't know what the perfect use should be, There should be discussion if that fund is available, particularly for those of us on these streets where we're going to be living in the shadows of a large building. So thank you for my time.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you so much. And just to reiterate, the city will have to have continued conversations with Tufts University regarding that fund. So it's not written in stone, as Director Hunt has already said this evening, the city cannot accept that fund. So they're going to continue to have conversations with Tufts University going forward regarding parking and the shadow studies, just to give you an idea, Ms. Burney. Next.
[Danielle Evans]: Next.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_07]: Okay, there we go. Hi, everybody. Alex Hackman 71 human Avenue. Thank you for the presentation site and the information. This is super real for my household. We're going to look right out of this. My kitchen window here and right out of my diner window and boom, it's going to be right there. So. That said, we, in our household, are very supportive of higher density, of bringing kids back to campus, what it means for the units that will become available for other people in the community. So kudos and appreciate all the information. I want to raise two concerns, though. The first is about not the parking issue. It's not about the parking by the residents. It's about the parking, the temporary parking that is going to occur from deliveries. We walk around Tufts campus every other day, we bike down the street regularly, and we know that delivery drivers park in the bike lanes, interrupt traffic. And we see this in the new Cummings building, which is right over here too, despite claims that this wouldn't happen. People are picking up their cup of coffee, blocking bike traffic there. I really want us to avoid making a pinch point here, where this whole stretch is going to be redeveloped. And I think if we mess this up, if we don't consider those kind of temporary drop-offs right, we could regret it. So I just hope we can really think about Not the residential parking, but the intense drop-offs. We know younger kids order a lot of stuff, including single cups of coffee early in the morning. That's what I see get dropped off. So I'd like that to be thought through. I know, seriously, Pat, I do see that. The other thing I'd like to say is we are going to fall into the shadow space here. We just invested tens of thousands of dollars to solar, and we're fortunate to do that. We also bought heat pumps. We're really concerned about sustainability. And in the wintertime, Um, you know, losing those precious couple hours. The afternoon is a big deal. Um, the trees are going to help. Um, but Mr. you mentioned that you had looked at. The alternative impacts from the 8 or 9 story buildings, I'd like to ask if that could be put in the public space. I think that was the question that my household's interested. It's just a relative to what. question. We like density. 10 stories is high, right? Density is great. But how much less shading are we going to see for 8 or 9 stories? So I really encourage that to be put in the public space so residents who are in this shadow zone can really think about that. With that, I'll wrap up my comments. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the information.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Mr. Hackman. We're going to take all public comments before asking Tufts to respond to the questions they feel are necessary.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll call on the next one. Madam Chair, I want to ask Tufts if they could plan to, when they're responding, zoom in on that drop-off area. Under most site plan reviews, we would look much more closely at the drop-off area to see how long it is, how many vehicles, how that's going to work. And I think the board should take a look. The next member of the public is Lori Krieger.
[Laurie Krieger]: Hi, everyone. Thank you. And Madam Chair, I apologize for speaking too long last time. I had three minutes written, but I couldn't edit in real time. So my biggest concern is all of it. I think you saw the photos that I did. I hope you did. Please take the time to do that. The thing that I really want to hear is like one of the developers tonight said that they put the building at the bottom of the hill. No, they put that the building at the middle of the hill. And the side view, the elevation ends abruptly at the end of the train tracks. And then there's the rest of us, the other half of the hill. And so I think it's an extreme placement by virtue that's in the middle of the hill. And we want to see what that looks like. Right now the building's on the left of the picture. Center it or put it right so we can see the whole story. And I'm really concerned that in most of these renderings that we get, we're not getting the whole story. Similarly, all of the photos around the project itself, where it's placed in space, is at a very, very wide angle view, which we know makes objects further away smaller and those closest to us bigger. It's kind of like our peripheral vision, but a 50 millimeter lens is what we see in terms of how things are squared up size and scale. So show us that building again, but in a real situation, not this skewed one. Make it look like it would look to a human being. So 50mm lens, we want to see what it really is going to look and feel like. And I've also mentioned every floor of my house on the south side, I get to look in a dorm room. I don't want to see 20 year old junk. I just don't want to. And I think it's really important that you cannot replace the sun. You just cannot replace the sun. If it has to be five stories, six stories, or seven stories so we can live our lives, our lives have already been upended for the good, for the train, for the T, for the Cummings Center. We support development for sure, but there are a whole lot of parking lots on Tufts. There's a whole lot of place to do things. And please, Don't steal our son. Thank you.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Ms. Crager.
[Alicia Hunt]: The next resident is Judith Weinstock. Hi.
[Judith Weinstock]: I think we spent a long time and a reasonable amount of time and even more time should be dedicated to the whole shadow effect of the building because it will be substantial for the group that is affected by it, some of them previously affected by the Cummins Center as well. What I've not heard tonight at all are the effects of the light emissions from the 10-story building, which will have as dramatic an effect on the neighborhood as shadow, except that the light effect won't occur until the sun has set. And then in the community below, it will feel like daytime at night, even more than it already does and substantially more. And it has not been addressed. It certainly hasn't been addressed in a way that mitigates the problem. Planting trees is a lovely idea, but they're never going to grow high enough because they both can't and won't to mitigate the light emissions from that building. So I really do think that the board needs to be looking very carefully, not just at what happens with shade and noise, but what happens with light emissions at 3.30 in the afternoon, all winter long, when all the lights in the building over there will turn on and students will not turn them off at night because they're up at night. They're studying at night. So I would really impress on the board that more really needs to be heard from the developer about how they're going to manage those light emissions. And curtains inside the student rooms aren't going to cut it. The students will not close their blinds. And so Lori's concern about having to look into 300 dorm rooms and see most of what's going on is probably not at all unfounded. So I would like to hear a lot more about that as well as the board continues their due diligence looking at the project. Thank you.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Ms. Weinstein. I'm assuming, Mr. Gallagher, when you spoke earlier about not being prepared to speak further on a response to the public for the solar, are you also preparing to speak further to the public on the light emissions?
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you, Madam Chair. I think we're happy to address the questions as best we can, and it'll be a conversation that probably continues beyond tonight, but we can provide some responses.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much.
[Alicia Hunt]: The next resident is Laura Jasinski.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_26]: Hi, everybody. My name is Laura Jasinski. I live at 65 Burgett Ave and appreciate the additional information today. And I think maybe echoing certainly what some of my neighbors have said, appreciate that we're making some progress in terms of mitigation. just as a voice saying I would still not trade the sunlight for the additional funds, but I think we're getting closer to having conversations, but just would be another voice in saying that that sunlight is invaluable. We're really trying to look at massing of the building, the different shadow studies. Are there other ways to help reduce or mitigate some of the loss of sunlight? I do also want to say I like hearing things like looking at community solar. Things that are directly addressing the concerns that we're sharing and so I guess my, my questions or would ask the board to continue to ask these questions are twofold one would be, what is the process going to be to continue this conversation so that there's accountability in terms of how we. either allocate those funds or continue to talk about mitigation after this process is over. So I would appeal to the board members to ask that and would ask that to Tufts directly. And then the second is what are the policy changes that Tufts can make that are not going to be, you know, a wholesale solution, but are you going to require juniors to live on campus? Are you going to require seniors to live on campus? Because I think the intentions of providing more housing in the neighborhood and affordable housing are great, but there has to be more than put a building up and they will come, I think. And so I'm curious if Tufts can also speak to how they're going to make policy changes, how you can make policy changes about some of the lighting issues that have come up as well. It's not going to solve every problem all the time, because we are talking about individuals and 20 something year olds. But I think that that can also be a part of the solution and would like to continue to hear more about that from from Tufts as well. Thank you.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Ms. Jasinski, and I just wanted to just reiterate to the public that as far as the board, within our powers, actually, we have to do reasonable regulations that can actually mitigate what's reasonable to mitigate adverse impacts of waiving the requirements that the actual proponent's looking for. So we'll continue to have those conversations, but we're very limited in what we can ask the proponent to do. Again, We're happy that the proponent is having these conversations with the continued conversations with the public, but and hopefully we will get to a point where the public will be a lot more happier with the end result, but there's only so much the board can do.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam chair, the next speaker is says Mike Krasinski, but it's Laurel Ruma.
[Laurel Ruma]: Thanks, Alicia. So, the traffic state to me really felt like a parking study. We all know how traffic moves around here and Alex's point about how dangerous as well as disruptive the traffic is in front of the Cummings building is is really true with a quick. serve coffee shop with ride shares picking up and dropping off, food deliveries 24-7, the uptick as well as deliveries to the building itself, the uptick of traffic in the area that requires careful maneuvering not just for cars but pedestrians and cyclists as well is really significant. So the fact that there is no kind of traffic drop-off pickup in front of these two large buildings, which you know I have to say I had no idea how much food people ordered to just have delivered until I saw the Cummings building, you know, all day and all night. It's not insignificant and I feel like any real traffic study in 2024-25 would have to really visit that kind of disruption as well as know what we're not talking about which is 700 kids moving in and out of a building twice a year what does that look like how does that disrupt boston avenue i mean thoroughfare for the city but also emergency for thoroughfare um you know that is the kind of traffic study i expected you know i expect these kind of answers to be ready for the public if you're seeking approval for the building to be built, which kind of leads me into my next point, which is this entire process seems very rushed. We were talking about the need to do everything all at once without the proper studies, without the agreement. We don't know if the $500,000 is actually real. We don't know how it will be executed. We know this building won't have solar panels, so where is the solar farm going? I mean, a property around here is incredibly valuable. There is no way that Tufts is going to then just put solar panels in the middle of a parking lot when they could put up a building. So we need to be extraordinarily realistic about two things that don't exist now. And we have no through fare to actually ensure they do exist. And one is the trees on the north side of the property. That's actually the city's and the MBTA's property. And the second thing is this $500,000 fund. You know, these are things that the neighbors will, you know. keep on keeping on about, but for example, when the power, when Tufts is building the co-generation plant, the power plant that's also in Boston Avenue, if you don't know, this is the view. It's a co-generation plant, it's a massive co-generation plant, so a massive power plant, a massive parking garage, and now it'll be two massive dorm buildings. So basically from the middle of the hill, as Lori says, you're looking at an entire wall of utilities and functional buildings for Tufts. When that was being built, we asked.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Four minutes left. I just wanted to let you know. Four seconds.
[Laurel Ruma]: Yeah. But the point is, let's be realistic about what Tufts actually wants to do with this money.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Understood. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: The next speaker is JFD8. Please provide your name for the record.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_23]: Hi, sure. My name is John Dillon. I live at 11 Oldwood Road. And I did also want to chime in on this feels like a small version of Apple presentation with Steve Jobs, you know, announcing something at the last minute. But I'm here to talk about the shadows, because yesterday I was in Stearns Field, and it was a very clear day. I have sent photos to this. I took a photo of the sun as it was getting ready to go down just over Hillside House. of the dorms where this building would be in front of. And at 3.13, most of the field was still very much in sunlight, bathed in it. At 20 minutes later, the sun disappeared already. It was 3.43 PM, a half an hour before sunset. uh, which was four 13, it's going to be four 15 by the time of the, uh, winter solstice. So we're talking about a two minute difference by that time, almost the entire field was in shade, uh, with no, it's not, it wasn't clouds. It's just that the sun just, you know, took a little dip over the house. Uh, and, uh, That was at 3.43 p.m. I know it's two weeks before the solstice, roughly. But when I look at the map of what Tufts had posted, Let's just say it took a much sunnier view of the available sunlight around there, because it has only a tiny sliver of the field that is in shadow, and that's at 4.15 p.m. on the solstice. Can you explain the discrepancy? And can I, does it call into question that shadow say, how accurate is it? Thank you.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, the next speaker is Stephen Lucez.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, hi, Steve. Huh?
[Alicia Hunt]: Try that again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Stephen Lewis and I live at 44 Woodbine Road. Thanks for your time tonight. I have just five items, some concerns and some statements. First, concern traffic. Like Laurel mentioned, the traffic impact study, just based at similar to what she said, just based on the Cummings building traffic, the ride share, pick up and drop off, as well as food delivery. And I mean, the ride share, they just stop in the middle of the road, drop people off, because the building is there and there's not a crosswalk. I know there will be crosswalks at this, but students just cross where the um, you know where the entrance and exits the building comes out i've seen uh, you know pedestrian to vehicle accidents there so that I just Like laurel mentioned I just have uh Big concerns on the traffic impact study, which is food delivery and rideshare pickup. I mean you may have a rideshare lane There's they're not going to be I don't know how tufts is going to enforce them to not just stop on Boston Ave and pick up students right outside. I just don't know how that is going to be managed. It's not managed at the Cummings building currently. It's just a free-for-all over there. In addition, there'll be a restaurant, at least proposed. I've yet to see a good restaurant that doesn't generate some vehicular traffic, even if it's just for food pickup to external customers. Never mind, again, that ride share dropping off. And then, you know, kind of another statement on traffic you know Tufts mentioned this being this project being a corridor to Boston Ave, and that just sound whether it's people traffic crossing the street quite a bit or again more vehicular traffic I just further concerns there on on that intersection being busier. The canyon effect was mentioned on the Mystic Ave project, and again, like Laurel mentioned, you've got the power station, you've got the large parking garage, and now you're going to have this massive building. It just seems like that canyon effect is going to be something real, and it's just going to extend further down. Fourth item. So the basis for this project is a shortfall of on-campus housing for students. And to me, this isn't an accident. I mean, Tufts over the past two decades has just continued to increase enrollment. So there's been some intention there. So I don't know what, maybe I've missed it. I haven't heard guidance from Tufts on like what future enrollment is going to look like. In 10 years, if they just continue to increase enrollment, we're going to be in the same boat here and not really solved the problem. uh fifth and last point uh the moving of the power lines being contingent upon the approval of the mbta and then being able to put up more trees sounds like a lot of red tape i'm just wondering how that impacts this project timeline will it move forward regardless if that doesn't get approved what happens will there just be more trees are we going to wait for mbta approval for this project to culminate to finalize plans And then actually, I said lastly, I have one more thing was a comment made at the end of the presentation by Pat Gallagher about looking to address the on-campus housing in one big project. This timeline is so rushed, that's an interesting question, but I don't think we'll know that. I think it's an interesting question if other small projects sprinkled throughout campus would be more beneficial. I don't know that, it's interesting. the alternative to a 10 story building seems to be, that seems to be pretty attractive to have much smaller units sprinkled throughout campus than this one big thing shoved in a residential area. Thank you for your time. That's all I have.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. The next speaker is Scott Saitake.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hello, I'm Scott Saitake, 131. Yeah, I'll be in the shadow in the afternoons in the wintertime. So it would be wonderful if it could be shorter, or put somewhere else. The other thing I would mention, if we do have to have it, you talked about community solar. Another thing to consider would be community geo, where we wouldn't need to find solar space, but we could put geothermal under streets and share it with the houses around. There's been a few pilot projects in the area, and Tufts seems like it'd be a good partner for doing that. It's kind of a researchy thing, so it could involve the university in that way as well. That's it for me. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. Speaker is Jeremy Martin.
[Jeremy Martin]: Good evening, everyone. Jeremy Martin, 65 Burgett Avenue. I just want to ask a question about the issues with MBTA and the power lines. Has the team considered burying the power lines along this stretch as a way of getting more significant canopy trees on both sides of the street and avoiding that that limitation. Another question to Tufts and its team. What is your solution? What is your offering if you are denied those trees or the ability to plant those trees? What are you providing to the community to help mitigate that building? And then lastly, I'll reiterate the comment that we've seen a lot of great things in the presentations or improvements. We've heard a lot about how the team is working to address our comments. We have yet to see that in a formal plan, a formal site plan. And until that is submitted to this board, those statements are just presentation and the project should not be approved based on a presentation. It should be approved based on an actual submittal. So please do not vote to approve this until you get the real information in front of you. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: The next speaker is Lisa DiMatteo.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_25]: Good evening, everyone. Lisa DiMatteo, 138 Brookings Street. Lots of really good comments have been made this evening. I'll make just a few points. I want to highlight the rushed nature of this. Somewhere earlier in the presentation, someone from the Tufts group mentioned this has been six months of conversations. And I could have been under a rock for part of this, but I only remember the first public presentation happening at the end of September. And that was way less than six months ago. I will underline what's been said about approving a plan based on a real plan versus the lots of ideas that are out there, but no real assurances. And I guess I'll share a little annoyance about Tufts presentation of kind of like this one-sided story. I get that this is good for Tufts and good for Tufts students, and I'm not against this project at all, but I feel like we're overlooked, literally overlooked. And I don't know what you do with 500K, because I don't know that you can put a price on the cost of somebody's mental health with decreased sunlight and increased evening light. That's all. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. The next speaker is Janie Tallarita.
[Janie Tallarita]: Hi there, Janie Tallarita at 68 Charnwood Road. And I guess just a couple of quick things. I agree with pretty much everything everyone has said so far. Also curious, there was a comment that that reduced number of stories was looked at and it was determined that wouldn't make much of a difference in terms of shade and I feel like we should, there should be actual studies and we should have the chance to see them. We being the community. There was a comment made that having one big development in one area and two massive buildings was better than spreading out housing because spreading it out would impact a whole bunch more neighborhoods and let's just keep it all in one place where it only impacts one neighborhood. But that impact on our neighborhood is as massive as those buildings are. So I think that spreading it out would be less impactful. on a wider range of neighborhoods. And just, you know, it's not insignificant also the acknowledgement that Boston Ave from college almost all the way to Winthrop Street will just be one big, gigantic, massive wall of building overshadowing us. And just to confirm Lori's statement that the bottom of the hill is where the Mystic River is, not where Boston Ave is. That is the middle of the hill. So I think that's it. Thank you.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_23]: The next speaker is Kelly and Claire Rhodes. Thank you so much. My name is Kelly Rhodes. I'm representing myself and my wife Claire Rhodes at 83 Charnwood Road, corner of Charnwood and Brookings. One of the most affected abutters to this situation and project. Um, I firstly just want to say thank you to our mayor for hearing our concerns, listening to our neighbors, and then taking action to communicate to us to be able to advocate on our behalf. I think that was huge advocacy on her part, and we really appreciate that. I also want to thank Ari for speaking up on behalf of the neighbors that were saying they were having major issues with the shadows and addressing that as a board member. And Alicia for also representing us as neighbors and being very clear with what was being communicated from Tufts to the neighbors at large. With that said, I want to reiterate what my neighbors have said in terms of This is going to be devastating to us as homeowners close to this situation, especially the abutters who are going to be directly affected, not only mental health, but with all of the other concerns that they have raised that we have raised in letters, etc. I also wanted to say that I believe Rocco talked about that trees were going to help mitigate the shade somehow. I was confused how that worked, so I'd love to hear that as well. And I also wanted to know the environmental impact of what they're proposing with the trees to try to mitigate some of the light emissions, etc. what environmental impact that will have with our neighborhood. And as many people have said, this is seemingly rushed, especially because we're not getting any of the data or reporting that Tufts is identifying. And the neighborhood would like to see all documents and full transparency. Thank you so much. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, I don't, oh, sorry, Elizabeth Bale is the last speaker.
[Elizabeth Bayle]: I would just, I just cannot pass up any opportunity to voice my strong objections to this project. And I've submitted written comments that lay out a bunch of my concerns, but this just massive, completely out of scale set of buildings is going to be a permanent negative change to the hillside area for everyone. I should say I live at 34 Emery Street, which is a few blocks away but it's this is our neighborhood and I really feel for the people who are direct abutters but it's still going to affect a lot more people and those more people did not get any notice to participate in this full discussion. I only found out about it at the end of October. I missed the September meeting somehow but Still, the communication somehow has to be improved so that something of this scale in a neighborhood like Medford Hillside, which has a definite character, can be so that people can know about it and have a chance to have an effect. Um, I, I really cannot believe the zoning being maximum 12 feet in this area that really should have been changed. I hope if anybody's listening in this meeting who can affect zoning, um, that's crazy. Um, in that particular location, I want to call attention for the board to the. The long eloquent letter that Lori creeper sent. a couple of days ago, and that John Elliott amplified in writing today, pointing out the issue of the photographs taken with a wide angle. And he made a mock-up of what this will actually potentially look like at nine stories. He didn't even do the 10. And it's just, I would like to know where around here is a 10-story building? You know, how can that possibly be even contemplated around here? I just don't understand. I was here for the whole meeting, so I've heard all the discussion about the Mystic Avenue corridor. And I thought there was a lot more sensitivity there, which is a more industrial commercial area, about the canyon effect and stepping back buildings and stuff like that. I don't hear any of that here. I don't know why. And I guess that's all I have to say. I would scream, but I don't want to hurt your ears. So that's it.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. Oh, it seems that actually this is a new speaker. This is Mike Krasinski.
[4FsPfOqpqG0_SPEAKER_00]: So I guess my comment is more for the board here. I guess I kind of get the feeling that the board doesn't feel like they have a lot of power in this, right? But you do have the ability to regulate size and bulk. And I know it's going to seem hard against Dover and against a big developer, a big real estate developer like Tufts and Capstone. But the opportunity is going to come soon to do the right thing. And I think the things to remember is Tufts really hasn't addressed the issues that the neighbors raised, the issues that the city has raised tonight in this meeting. Nothing has really changed from the last meeting until tonight. The $500,000 fund really doesn't matter. The trees which aren't approved don't matter until they're approved. This is all a lot of smoke and mirrors. If you look back at the JCC and you can read the DBA decision there, it says that Tufts, essentially in that case, In the dissenting opinion, it says that the Tufts tried to do a bait and switch. And I think what they're doing here isn't much better, right? They're telling you they're making changes, but they're not really changing much. And I know it's going to seem hard to make the right decision, but because you feel like maybe Maybe Tufts will challenge and appeal if you try to impose the conditions. But you do have the power for bulk and height to impose those conditions. I think it is at the border of a zone between an apartment two and a general residence in a single family zone. I think there is opportunity there to regulate this building. I know it's going to seem hard to do, and it's going to seem like a difficult decision to make, but I hope the board does the right thing. And really, that's my only comment.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, and I just wanted to reiterate that yes, the board does have control over regulating the bulk and the height. However, I want to reiterate that any restrictions imposed must be considered reasonable and not excessively burdensome. So there's a balance that the board must consider when it comes to the proponent's proposal. Are there any other public comments? Warren Krieger.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, Lori Krieger has raised her hand again.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Since there are no other... Yes, please allow Ms. Krieger to speak. Okay.
[Laurie Krieger]: Thank you so much. I just wanted to wonder, an excessive burden to whom? Right, that's what I mean for Tufts. I know you mean for Tufts, but the burden for us is beyond excessive.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And I definitely understand, and I do empathize with that. But I meant for the 40A, for the Dover Amendment Regulation, 40A statute is what I meant. The proponent cannot be severely burdened in what that regulation is.
[Laurie Krieger]: Whatever you can do.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: I understand, Ms. Krieger. Seeing no other comments, I'm going to close the public comment period. I am just making sure that there's no other public comments. And I will open it up to the board to ask any additional questions or provide requests for more information that may be necessary for us to deliberate. or for us to better understand, to help out the public and their understanding. But I also want to make sure that we understand that there's only two questions before the board that we can handle, and that's, does this use qualify as a protected educational use under the Dover Amendment? And we have already been given legal counsel that, yes, it does. Two, what are reasonable regulations that should apply to this project? Should the requested relief from parking requirements and relevant dimensional standards be granted? And also, what are the conditions of approval that are needed to mitigate any adverse impacts of waiver requirements? It is of my opinion that we don't have enough information. Uh, although this will, uh, we don't have that information from the parking, uh, engineer. And neither do we have the information that Mr. Gallagher has, um, expressed. So with that being said, before I go ahead to make a motion to continue to a date certain, again, I want to bring it back to the board, but also I was negligent in not allowing Tufts to answer questions that have arisen this evening. So I want to, before the board makes any other comments, Mr. DeRico, if you want to provide a summary to any of the questions that you have heard this evening or concerns.
[jJ8nibzobNI_SPEAKER_03]: No, he doesn't.
[Rocco DiRico]: Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak again. I just want to emphasize that we do hear the concerns of the neighbors, and they are very important to us. And we have made significant changes to the project to try to make it a better project for everyone involved. This is truly a generational opportunity for us to provide more on-campus housing. But we want to do it in a responsible way and we will and we've tried to add all the features that folks have mentioned that community meetings department head meetings community development board meetings into the project and those are some of the slides. we showed you today. We are happy to provide you with additional information. We'll continue to do that. There is a drop-off pickup zone that we showed in our plans. So we are cognizant of that issue, and we did include that in our plans. I wanted to be clear about that. I know there are other areas of the city that lack it, and that's why we included it in our project. And we are going to have another community meeting. It's going to be before the next board meeting on December 18th. So we will do everything we can to get the word out about that as quickly as possible, but also with the understanding that we need to put the meeting together quickly. And we'll be happy to share additional information at that meeting and everything that we've talked about we've submitted to this board. And if there's anything additional that's asked of us tonight we'll submit more of it so it's we're being as clear and open and transparent as we can. And I want to give Pat Gallagher, the opportunity to talk as well in case I missed anything.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: And Madam Chair, if I may, you had asked a specific question, whether we could talk about or respond to a concern about light and light spillage. There were also several questions on the drop-off pickup. I think the Elkis-Manfredi team can probably address all of those questions, and so we'll actually Turn to them and then I think after afterwards, we can also quickly respond. To a couple of the questions that were more traffic. Um, specific and so maybe after the team, if I could ask Jeff to respond and I don't want there to be. a misperception about the traffic study that we had provided. We didn't present on the entire study tonight, just in the interest of time, but the entire study has been submitted and is available to the board. And we did discuss that with Director Blake and happy to take the board's questions. But I think If we could start with the team on the design pieces that I mentioned, and then Jeff Bandini on the traffic concerns.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And as you're responding for the traffic, the concern more so is the drop off and pick up. And I know I understand that you said it was on. the submissions. However, if you can sort of explain to the public what even if you want to put it on the screen again and just like just explain it for the public and what your visions are for that.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_52]: Oops, sorry. You can see on this plan, I should have pointed it out when we were on this plan, there are two dedicated parking spaces here between the two buildings that are dedicated for pickup and drop off.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, did you say two spaces?
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_52]: I did.
[Alicia Hunt]: Personally, as a city planner, as we've been reviewing other apartment buildings, I would recommend more than that.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_52]: We'll certainly look at that.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: David, are we able to speak to, I think there have been some questions around how the light is going to be kind of viewed through the windows and what the light fixtures are going to be like. I know that was something that we spoke about a bit at the last meeting, but are you able just to quickly give an overview of that? I think especially compared with some of the existing buildings that are going to be, have been up on the Hill for much longer and just talking about the quality of the windows and the types of lighting in the new buildings as compared with what's there today.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_52]: Yeah, actually, I was going to say exactly what you just said, Patrick. I think the best thing is to look at existing residential buildings that face the neighborhood today. They're a little farther back, but maybe they're 100 feet further away. And the light spill that's coming out of those residential buildings, and factor in the to your point, the improvement in light fixtures, the quality of light, and then I know a number of people have discounted the value of blinds and shades, but look at that with and without blinds and shades. And also look at it relative to, you all know this is designed to be a passive house building. Passive house requirements, very strict control over the ratio of opaque to solid, meaning window to brick in this case, the amount of window in that facade or any facade of the building as measured today, as the building is drawn as you've seen in our renderings, is about 30%. So we can compare it to existing buildings that you're looking at every day or every evening, what those percentages are. I'll add one more thing since nobody jumped in there. I think it was mentioned that we have done studies on shadows, the difference in shadow impact between a 10-story building and an eight-story building, and we can be prepared at this next meeting to show you what that delta is.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: And I'll just add to that that I think Rocco had mentioned just a moment ago. Our goal is to have a follow-up meeting between this and the next hearing to share some more detail and just have an ability to talk in more depth and show the shadow studies in a way that this setting is not necessarily the easiest venue to do all of that in. And that's not to say that we're not going to show those same studies and provide them to the board. But the goal, I think, is to be able to show our analysis on why are we saying that we think the impact of going down in height is going to be maybe less than you might think otherwise. And so that's part of the goal of this meeting, that we're going to be organizing you know, the next week or so.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you. And the only other question I have, and I'm not sure if you want the city to speak to this, is about the burying of the lines. And then additionally, what is the alternative if you can't get the permission from the MBTA?
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: So Madam Chair, on the first question, I'll take a quick stab, but I'll look at Jonathan to correct me. But in the meeting earlier this morning with Director Wartella, I think we all expressed that we would love to be able to bury the lines, but that National Grid is not amenable to that. And so I think that's why we're looking at our next best option of moving those lines across to the north side of Boston Avenue. And as to the other question on how do we move forward if the MBTA does not give us permission to do that, I think I would first note that we've had a lot of positive conversations with the MBTA, with their consultant, Graystone, with National Grid, and with the city. And I think, you know, with Director Hunt and her staff, with Director Blake, I think there is A universal desire to improve the streetscape and we appreciate that the city has made it really clear that whatever the city can do to assist with that, including working with the MBTA. So, I think we're encouraged by the progress that we've made with them. That being said, we are. And we'll have updated plans to submit to the board in advance of the next meeting that we would consider to be treated as the control plans that we would ask the board to vote on. And those plans will show alternatives if, for example, the MBTA says you can't put polls right here. But again, it is our hope and goal to be able to do that. we're encouraged by the conversations that we've had. And I think it's a priority of the development team for many reasons, including the improvement that it'll affect on Boston Avenue.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much, Mr. Gallagher. So I will bring it back to the board to see if there's any additional questions or requests. I know that earlier I stopped atom bearings.
[Adam Behrens]: I had just a specific question just to try to understand the height of the 10 stories. I think in the last week's presentation, there was, I think it's slide 14, a comparison of the, you know, it's 107 feet, and the buildings drawn were like Hallowell Hall, I think, and North Hill Road. But just so that I can also just better understand looking at the dormitory right now behind it, that's a six-story dorm. It would just be helpful to understand the height relative to the immediate building behind it. Um, sort of from that baseline of the street. Um, just to know, because I think the way that you presented it was. You know, 10 stories really isn't 10 stories. The 1st floor is kind of dug into the hill. Um. I don't know, you know, it's hard to do the math on the exact building heights, but I just wanted to. to look at the concrete number of the height of the building behind the proposed building and then the proposed building height.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_52]: We can certainly provide a section, let's see, running north-south from Boston Ave through the proposed buildings, through the hill, and through the existing buildings. And you can see them relative to each other.
[Janie Tallarita]: OK. Yeah, thanks.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Ben Lavallee.
[Ben Lavallee]: Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the comments on the power lines and the options there and the discussion with the MBTA. I think there's been a number of questions about the topic of power infrastructure. And while it may not be something that we can require, I think the public would benefit from some documentation, some comprehensive documentation on the electrical power needs of these buildings, how those will be supplied? Does the grid infrastructure in the neighborhood support it? Is there additional, I just think some general artifacts related to the power requirements of these large structures that will be fully electric, if I remember correctly. I think that would be useful information.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much. And Ari Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you, and thank you to the applicants for your answers. I wanted to kind of share my thinking after those presentations and share some concrete questions that I would love to hear answers to, probably not today, but at our next meeting. We'll be certainly voting to continue to further discussion. First, I look forward to hearing the mayor's response to your response and urge you to continue working closely with City Hall and taking very seriously the strong advocacy of the community. Also, I'm interested in this half a million dollar proposal. It sounds like that is brand new to the city. I would like to see a lot more detail, and I'd also like to note as those discussions progress that I think if there is going to be a very concrete negative harm to neighbors in terms of losing sunlight, I like this idea about reduced solar costs and did hear that it was specifically only people who were eligible for solar, I think it would be worth considering everyone who's shadowed by the project. I think it shouldn't just be that opportunity cost, and I think it could also be worth talking about subsidizing other utilities that are impacted by the loss of sunlight, like heating. I am interested as a community member said in seeing the data and estimates of the alternative impact of an 8 to 9 floor building. If you could please share that and. Also curious about this drop-off area. I agree with Alicia that two spots is not enough given the size of the development and the prodigious interests of undergraduates in takeout and delivery. And I also am curious if Tufts can commit to strict enforcement of parking violations for example, with TUPD, if they can somehow cooperate with parking enforcement. I don't know if that's possible, but seems worth discussing. And I did kind of my final thing is that I would love to hear a a continued significant discussion of the nighttime light emissions. I know we've kind of talked a lot about the daytime and evening shadow. I feel like there should be a technical solution in terms of external window coverings that would block sunlight going out but would allow it to come in. That seems like a thing that exists. I'm not an expert in that field, but I want to love this project. I'm a huge proponent of density. I think it's near transit. I think students should live on campus. There's a lot about this that I really want to support. And what I'd love to see more from the applicant is working with the community to make this a win-win and to kind of take very seriously these concrete harms to immediate neighbors. And I look forward to finding a mutually agreeable solution.
[ZQDZZh_VfdI_SPEAKER_08]: Madam Chair, would it make sense for me to respond to a couple of those or would you prefer. No, please. Thank you. So I thank you very much for your comments we really appreciate them. And just want to quickly say because I know we're losing hours in the day on the proposals that we've heard talked about tonight both between the $500,000 fund that Tufts is committing to, as well as the discussion over community solar. I think I just want to recognize that a lot of this is, we're having these conversations in real time. As soon as we can provide more information on our thought process, we're going to share that with the neighbors. We hear the concerns that that's not a fund that the city could administer. But I certainly think that we can get to a point where everyone in the neighborhood will be comfortable that that is a real commitment. And we are standing here in a public setting telling you that we are firmly committed to that. I think on the question of community solar, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up that it's something we need to look at. And I think it is a very intriguing idea. with a lot of complexities. And so I just want to put that in the category of things that we will absolutely look at and take back to our team and talk through if that's something that would be feasible. So I just wanted to respond to those couple of items, but thank you for your comments and we'll certainly take all of them back and follow up with the board and the community on them.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you very much. Vice Chair Emily Hedeman.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Chair McPherson. First, just want to say I echo the comments of Council Member Fishman. It was outstanding, and I think they did a really good job of kind of summarizing the community feedback and sticking within the bounds of what we can do as a community development board. So huge thanks, and I saw some applause from other attendees, so just want to pass that to This might be a silly request, but in future iterations of the shadow study, would it be possible to use colors that are not so close to each other for the net new shadow and the existing shadow? Right now it's like a periwinkle and a gray. And I, you know, don't have the youngest eyes, but I'd like to think that, you know, there could be a better way to kind of show that difference, since shadow does seem to be such a challenging topic for this building. And I think it would do a lot in terms of communication transparency to differentiate between those two colors. And, you know, I know that a lot of those colors are industry standards, but just make it really clear, like, hey, what's there already? What's new? Just to help improve communication there. And that's all I have. Thank you, Cher.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you so much. Adam Behrens, did you have another comment?
[Adam Behrens]: Yeah, I had another comment. One thing that would be helpful for me, and I think maybe for transparency with the community and the process, Is there a way for us to get a deeper dive from our legal counsel for the city on the Dover amendment, the type of restrictions that can be placed on something like height? It seems like the biggest concern is around height. The second biggest concern is around traffic. Not necessarily parking, and it would just be helpful to understand. uh ways in which the medford in the past has applied restrictions to to dover projects and what the justification requirements are for that you know and so the biggest justification requirement it feels like in this case is you know the impact to the surrounding houses and community with with regard to shadow and light And I just don't know, from a precedent perspective, the extent to which we as a committee really have the flexibility to kind of put those restrictions with that justification. And so I don't want to mis-assume that our hands are tied or mis-assume that we kind of have to go down a specific path without getting a little bit of that work done from our side. And I think it would benefit the community to sort of be able to see that and just understand a little bit better just the purview that we have with the Dover project.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you, Adam. And actually that sums up my actual comments because it was asked earlier exactly who would the burden be on. And one of the things I wanted to make sure that we understood with the city before we did anything, before we made any decisions, even after continuing is exactly what conditions can we, are we allowed to do and what is considered reasonable regulations to mitigate these very real concerns that we're hearing from the public. at the same time or reaching sort of a win-win for both across the board, for the actual proponent, the community, as well as just everyone involved. So what does that mean? What does it look like? What are our legal parameters for enforcing this mitigation? What does that mitigation look like? How much does TUF have to do and how much are we allowed to enforce them? So that's where I leave my comments for this evening. I really don't have any other questions until I pretty much, the city is able to answer that question for us and help us fill that gap. Because I don't want to be unreasonable to Tufts University, but at the same time, we don't want to be unreasonable in our responsibility to the public either. So with that, if there's no other questions or if there's no other requests, and if we can leave on that and just ask for a motion to a date certain, which would be 12-18.
[Emily Hedeman]: I'll make the motion to continue without prejudice to, we said 1218. To 1218, we would be continuing the public hearing for 401 Boston Avenue to 1218.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: 2430 PM. I'll second that motion. Continue till December 18th.
[Alicia Hunt]: yes and at 6 30 p.m.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: you need it at 6 30 p.m. it's a date certain time starting 6 30 p.m. vice-chair if we had him in I Peter cows oh he's not on this one re fishermen I any strength I Adam Barron's I Ben Lavallee.
[Ben Lavallee]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm an aye. Thank you so much, Mr. Guadalupe Rico, as well as Mr. Gallagher and the entire team for being here this evening. We will see you on 1218.
[Rocco DiRico]: Thank you, Madam Chair.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you.
[Rocco DiRico]: And thank you very much for your time.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you so much. Our next item, it's 914. Let's see. So at this point, I'm not sure if the city has a zoning update for the next amendment coming up. And if it's something that is brief, or if it should be put off to the next meeting. I will let Danielle and Director Hunt make that decision.
[Danielle Evans]: I think we should go to the minutes, probably.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just wanted to, the city council has referred the green zone, the green score to you. We haven't actually scheduled it, so it won't be the December 18th meeting. We thought that was too full, so it'll be the first meeting in January. And there's a big public meeting, well, there's the next city council meeting on Salem Street is next. Wait, I wanted to say, Oh, I have the wrong calendar up there. It's next Wednesday night, whatever that date is. Is that the 11th? And so I just wanted you to know that we're out there advertising that to the public to encourage people to come look, come hear about and talk about the Salem Street zoning on the 11th at the city council subcommittee meeting, in case anybody's interested.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thank you. So a motion to accept or approve the meetings from 10-30-2024. I so move. I'll second. Vice Chair Emily Hederman? Aye. Is Peter back? He is not back. Ari Fishman? Aye. Any strength. Sammy.
[Adam Behrens]: You know, she might have dropped because of the.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Thinking that the meeting ended, I think we may need to reach out to board members and let them know that to follow the agenda, because I think this is the 2nd week that we've lost her. Adam bearings.
[Ben Lavallee]: I have.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And myself, Jackie McPherson, I'm an aye. And now a roll call vote to adjourn. We need to make a motion or we just go right into it.
[Emily Hedeman]: A motion.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Sorry. I, yes, I, I need a motion first before I can do the roll call vote. Sorry. I jumped ahead. I'll make a motion to adjourn.
[Unidentified]: I'll second.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Vice Chair Emily Hederman? Aye. Ari Fishman. Aye. Adam Behrens.
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: Ben Lavalle.
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[fZTCR91cjd8_SPEAKER_43]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm an aye. Thank you all so much. See you on the 18th.