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[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Danielle. You can begin recording. I'm going to begin. Good evening and welcome to today's recording in progress. Of the Medford Community Development Board, we apologize for the delays. We had to get some housekeeping issues in order and establish quorum. I'll call the meeting to order. Let's first begin with some obligatory procedural matters. This hearing of the Medford Community Development Board is being conducted via remote means. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately the proceedings as provided for in chapter two 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 in the meeting agenda posted to 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 also know that the project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed on the city's website, which is medford.ma. You would click on current city board filings and Danielle will provide a link in the chat. I'm going to do roll call attendance. Ari Fishman. Present. Sally Akiki. Present. Peter Kautz.
[Peter Calves]: Present.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. Danielle, can you introduce any staff on the call?
[Danielle Evans]: You're on mute, Danielle. I think I remember to do that. I think it's just me tonight. I'm Danielle Evans, senior planner from the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. Awesome.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Daniel, before I continue, do you want to make any introductory comments about this? The first item, which is 1 Cabot Road, the first and only proposal we have before us this evening is 1 Cabot Road is for a special permit and a site plan review.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, so, um, tonight, the Community Development Board is the referral board City Council is the special permit granting authority and the site plan review authority for a medical office use in the office zoning district. So it needs a special permit, and it's subject to site plan review because it qualifies as a major project, because it's a change in use over 10,000 square feet. So it's kind of a technicality. It's not constructing a new building, but the size of the re-tenanting and fit-out triggers that review. So that's what is before you tonight.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Okay, so I'm just going to go right in and have the applicant please introduce yourselves and you can go right into presenting the proposal from there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Danielle. Will I have magical sharing powers through Zoom?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, I can make you a co-host.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, thank you.
[Danielle Evans]: Promise to behave.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. I'm Andrew Fuqua. I'm the general counsel of Cambridge Health Alliance. And joining me from Cambridge Health Alliance tonight is our Alison Brisson, our Vice President of Facilities and Support Services, David Farmer, our Senior Director of Facilities Design and Construction, Tom Leslie, our Director of Real Estate, and our outside counsel, Paul Feldman of Davis Mom. In addition, also attending are Jason Badricchi of the Davis Companies, the property owner for the proposed development project, and Chris Anglici of E4H Architecture. I'm now going to attempt to present the screen. And I'm going to go here and share. And am I successfully sharing? Yes. Oh, thank you. Oh, there we go. This is the introductory slide. So I'd like to start with just a brief introduction and explanation of Cambridge Health Alliance for those of you who may not be familiar with CHA. Cambridge Health Alliance is a public health care system that was created by special act of the Massachusetts legislature in 1996. It was formed from the spinoff of the then Cambridge City Hospital and merging into or with Somerville Hospital and it later acquired Witten Hospital at the request of the state in 2001. The mission of CHA as a safety net organization is to improve the health of our communities. And our primary service area are the communities of Medford, Malden, Chelsea, Revere, Somerville, and Cambridge. And we specialize in and our focus is in the care of underserved populations. We operate two, as I mentioned, two inpatient acute care hospital campuses, one in Cambridge and one in Everett. Our Somerville campus now is an inpatient psychiatry facility for youth, children and adolescents. In addition, and the real core of CHA's business, is that we operate 15 ambulatory clinics throughout our service area, including four school-based health centers. And these are throughout Revere, Everett, Malden, Somerville, and Cambridge, and hopefully Medford. And we provide a varying mix of services in each of these sites, from primary care to behavioral health to medical specialty services. Our primary care panel is approximately 128,000 patients. So we provide a services to a large segment of the population, but as far as hospitals in the state go, we are relatively small. What brings us before the board this evening? We currently operate, or CJA currently operates a care center in Assembly Square, more or less across the parking lot from the Home Depot, for those of you who are familiar with the Home Depot. It's about a 26,000 square foot site, but we're being, required to, even though the site has worked wonderfully in an office building, we're being required to vacate that space because the building is going to be torn down and replaced with lab space. So we will need to vacate by September, end of September in 2025. So as we were looking for replacement space for the Assembly Square Care Center, the Davis companies reached out to us and we found that OneCabit presented just a fantastic relocation opportunity for the services that CHA is going to be providing to the patients we serve. Among other things, it's a great location, very accessible, and it was very important for us also to You know, to be in Medford, it's one thing to say that one serves the Medford community. It's another to actually be within a community that one serves. So we have signed up a 15-year lease with the Davis companies for about 56,000 rentable square feet on the second floor of the building at 1 Cabot Road. As I noted is a very accessible location and it's actually we find that it's closer to public transportation than the assembly square site and it's also closer to many of the patients that we serve. It's easy to reach and it has. plenty of parking. In fact, that was really one of the key factors in considering the location. And under the lease, we have 3.25 spaces per 1,000 square feet under the lease, which is much greater than the zoning requirement of less than one. The timetable for the project is that we would open up the clinic in late summer of 2025. Just as a reminder, um, or a refresher on the building, because, um, I'm not sure. You know, how long all the members of the board have been on the board. Um, 1 cab at road is located within a. the office zoning district, all of its existing property improvements fully complied with all zoning dimensional requirements. The building itself is approximately 300,000 square feet, and the building coverage is less than 24% of the lot. It has 941 parking spaces available. Jumping back to what CHA will be doing within the space, all services that we'll be providing will be outpatient services. There will be no inpatient services. These will be primary care services, will be the major service that we're offering there. We'll also provide orthopedics and rehab services there. There will be limited on-site outpatient laboratory services so that patients don't need to travel for various draws that may be required. some procedure suites for non-surgical ambulatory procedures that can be done in a doctor's office, a pharmacy for our patients so that they can pick up drug, their medications while on site. And then we also will house our occupational employee and employee health services in this location. Here is a rendering of the overall plan for the clinic. This has got a lot of small, small, indecipherable colors and words on it. So here's a breakdown. Going back, we're starting here near the entrance. We'll enter in the elevator lobby here. Up near the top of the screen where the cursor is, is our main lobby and central registration area. To the left is where the procedure suite will be built. To the right is the outpatient lab and x-ray for patients. Down at the bottom is the pharmacy and where our occupational health services will be provided. The meat of the clinic is on the next slide. And this here, we will have primary care exam rooms and services at the top. And then we'll have our orthopedics, podiatry and physiatry services offered in these exam rooms in the middle where I'm circling the cursor. And the way that these exam rooms are designed is there will be some ability to flex back and forth between services to meet patient need and demand. Finally, down at the bottom is where we will have our physical therapy and rehab area, which then brings us back out to the main entrance. That concludes the presentation portion. And I think, Madam Chair, we are willing to entertain any questions that the board may have.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you very much. Attorney Fuqua?
[SPEAKER_04]: Fuqua or Fuqua, either way.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. We appreciate it. At this time, I'm going to, before I open it up to the board, I want to know if, Danielle, do you have any questions? Or did you have anything you wanted to point out? I do have a few clarifying questions myself and I will open it up to the board, but I didn't know if you had any on behalf of the city.
[Danielle Evans]: I just wanted to ask if the team had reviewed the comments from our director of traffic and transportation on any of the. recommendations, particularly around additional EV parking, additional bike parking, bike racks outside, and the recommendation for restriping a bicycle lane. There are, you know, as there is, you know, substantial parking in the lot, but, and the use will generate quite a few more trips than the existing use, so we're trying to, you know, shift more of those vehicle trips to bike and pedestrian trips if possible. And those would help in that regard. And just wondering if there were any objections to those recommendations, if we were, if the board was to add them as recommended conditions tonight.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, if I can, Andy, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Paul Feldman. I'm an attorney at Davis Bomb. I represent CHA. I do a lot of entitlement work, a lot of zoning work in the various cities and towns in the Commonwealth. I probably have appeared before a hundred different cities and towns, but I don't have a recollection of when the last time I was in Medford. It was some time ago. So I'm glad I'm glad to be back. So I could walk through what Danielle was just asking about. First of all, with regard to parking, One of the important things that CHA looks at when it's doing its due diligence regarding the appropriateness of a site is adequacy of parking. And one of the things it negotiates into its lease is knowing that it'll have parking available to meet its needs. In this particular case, There are 182 spaces that are potentially available to CHA. And there is actually, in the lease, and maybe we can bring it up in handy, I would ask you if you could share your screen again. We took the Ulta plan and we marked it up a little bit. There is going to be a dedicated patient parking area of 75 cars. that will be dedicated to the CHA patients. And when we look at the operation of the facility in, when it's at full capacity, we expect 75 cars to be about, have a 15% excess capacity of what we expect our need to be. And CHA has tremendous amount of statistics as it pays attention to its operations at all its facilities. So the parking area that's designated in the lease in the upper right-hand corner says patient parking 75 spaces. There are 74 spaces that are designated in the garage on lot 7. That is predominantly going to be used for employee parking. doctors and nurses. Again CHA has a program where its employees that are using their car participate in parking permit programming within the hospital system and they know from their other facilities that again 74 spaces were more than a accommodate that demand. And then there's an additional 33 spaces that's in the office garage itself and a couple of entrances are designated. So, to answer the question, you know, will there be, you know, dedicated parking area for patients so that repeat patients will know where they should go and park? The answer is yes. And this is laid out in our lease and it's presented on this exhibit plan. Um, you know, there are, uh, existing, uh, 30 interior bike racks. There's 5 exterior bike racks. Davis company advises us that. There's an enormous amount of capacity in their interior bike rack room when we. two or three or four bikes are regularly using that room so there's plenty of capacity for additional users. Neither the property owner and upon our investigation feel a need to increase Bike racks, we appreciated the comment by the transportation director because it actually had us look into it for preparation for tonight to make sure that there's adequate room for biking needs. The director of traffic made a comment about adding some EV spaces. We looked into that with the property owner. There are four spaces right now on site that have charging capability. You wouldn't find them on ChargePoint, even though if somebody is a member of ChargePoint, that's how they use the The spaces, you don't find them on charge point because they're for the tenants of the building. It's not intended to create public charging. Again, to try to figure out that there was adequate capacity, we talked to the property owner. I could turn it over to the property owner, but the bottom line is they have statistics that they get from ChargePoint about how much those spaces are used on an hourly basis in a year. It turns out that not even two spaces out of the four are being fully utilized. I could turn it over to Jason from the Davis companies, but he advises that the Davis company is very proactive in meeting tenant need and in tenant demand. And if it. If the demand increases over time, they voluntarily installed the four spaces that are at the property now. At the time this building was constructed and was originally approved, electric cars were type dream for all of us. They voluntarily installed the systems to respond to tenant interest and As the need grows, they're prepared to address that. Again, we thank the parking director for having us look into it, but we completely satisfied ourselves that there's excess capacity at the moment for charging of electric vehicles at the site. There's questions about encouraging use of alternative means of transportation and that's something that PHA is prepared to do. As our traffic assessment indicates, you know, we'll provide a welcome packet to new employees and we provide a transit subsidy, TPAS subsidy to our employees. If you look at the traffic assessment report that was submitted by Van Ness at the end of the report, There are a series of recommendations that are made by the traffic consultant for purposes of trying to mitigate car demand and reduce vehicle traffic trips and if the planning if the community development board wanted to recommend that the project be conditioned to comply with those recommendations of our traffic consultant that is absolutely acceptable uh to to the applicant to to cha um the other comment is regarding uh um striping of public ways that that's really beyond the capability of the applicant it's cha has never been asked to To do that, um, we would we would hope that, um, because the board has the access card on this property that with the substantial. Tax revenue that's generated by this property owner that. Hopefully would be DPW would have the resources to. necessary in this city. That's not something that CHA feels comfortable that it can take on or would want to take on, particularly on public rights of way. I think that hits all of the items, Danielle, that Todd Blake set forth in his comment letter. But if there's any follow-up, we're happy to respond further.
[Danielle Evans]: Madam Chair, may I respond? Yes. I'm very, I'm very, I guess, dismayed about the the existing tenants and their EV charging use. I think in the planning department alone, there's four of us that own EVs, and we only have two charging stations at City Hall, and we're always battling it out for those spaces. And the provision of the EV chargers at our workplace was actually a large reason why it was a decision that we even bought them because you can charge at work. And also when I choose to patronize different businesses, the availability of EV charging is a consideration for me as well. And if I was a patient coming to CHA and you're there for a good, usually like an hour, two hours, that's the perfect time to kind of like top off your car in the patient area. Where the EV chargers are now are on the complete opposite side of the building, and so are not a convenient space for patients or visitors to use, though they would be a great spot for, you know, employees and staff who would know that they're there or in the garage. So, I mean, I would recommend that CHA consider adding at least one charging station in the patient parking area, as well as exterior bike racks near the entrance so that folks can actually bike there and secure their bicycle and then go into the building. So there's two user groups. There's staff and employees that are there all day. And then there's the folks that are coming to the medical office, which is the, I would defer to your traffic engineer or to our board member Peter Calvis, which is driving the increased vehicle trips, and we want to convert as many of those to non-vehicle trips if possible.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fair enough. So let me respond by saying this. We're certainly open to talking with the landlord about adding a another post with two charges, so to activate another two spots. I think it's going to be challenging, and I wouldn't want to overcommit CHA to locate that in the patient parking area because, again, I don't know where the electrical supply is coming from. That could be an extraordinarily expensive retrofit in this situation that would not be a good resource, a use of resources for CHA, you know, as a public hospital. It really does, and its resources are not nearly as much as its need. So it's very conscientious about its budget. But having said that, we could talk to the landlord and work to the landlord about adding or being able to activate 2 additional spaces. I would suspect it would be in the proximity of where the current EV is just because of electric use, but I don't know that for sure. If the building owner says, no, we could tie into an electric conduit that's proximate and do it at a reasonable cost, we're not ready to that location. The only reason why I'm commenting it and not wanting to create an expectation about the parking patient area is it's a little bit away from the front of the building. You got to walk over to it. I don't want to resist that that's what it's going to take adding a couple of EV spots. I just wanted to respond that way. Again, if there's another set of bike racks that the board thinks is appropriate that should be added, if the property owner is going to give us a spot to be able to do that, and I assume the property owner will help us find something, we'll get another set of bike racks out there as well. The final comment I'll make is that Jeff Durk, when he wrote the traffic assessment report, was careful to say that all the numbers he presented to the board here does not include any reduction. because of public transportation use or other alternative means of transportation other than vehicle trips. And he did that purposely because he wanted to analyze whether or not the traffic situation could handle the complete worst case. And it does, and he indicated that it does. But the practical reality is CHA knows that from its patient population that many, many of its users, most of its users use public transportation and the proximity of the Wellington stop is really makes this particular facility accessible. And many of the staff of CHA use carpooling and other means. So while Jeff Turk was careful to say, look, I'm not reducing these traffic numbers. The practical reality is that they overstate the demand. And he was just trying to give the community board a sense of how many additional vehicle trips we might expect. from a medical office use instead of a generic office use. And even under those circumstances, the adjacent road network is adequate to accommodate additional traffic without creating any unnecessary or additional queuing delays or other traffic delays.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Attorney Feldman. We appreciate your responses. And one of the things, the onus now is on the board to pretty much weigh what's reasonable and what we can recommend to the city council at this point. And with it being a site plan, as Daniel has already laid out, it's not really triggering all the comments from the city department as outside of transportation. And with it being a special use, a special permit with the change of use, And, um, our due diligence is making sure that, um, we are trying to, um, abide by the reform standards and zoning ordinances as set forth. Um, and so in saying that I'm going to, I believe that you have, uh, successfully answered my responses, but I'm going to open it up to the rest of the board to see if there's anything that they want to, um, add.
[Danielle Evans]: I see that Peter has his hand raised.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Peter, go ahead.
[Peter Calves]: Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. So my question was regarding the, let me look at it, it's in Director Blake's comments, regarding the, reallocation of current employee parking for visitor parking. And this is, I'm not really sure who this is a question for, whether this is a question for the applicant or the landlord or maybe attorney Foucault, if you can help me understand this. It looks to me from the parking layout that you submitted that there will be some reallocation of that parking. And I think that kind of addresses that concern somewhat because obviously you don't have as much employee parking when it's not solely an office. So I think some of Director Blake's concern with regards to parking is going to be addressed for the patient parking.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Peter, not to cut you off and not to speak for the applicant, but I believe that's when they presented 182 spaces available to CHA and 75 will be for patients. Am I correct in saying that?
[Peter Calves]: I think that addresses... Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.
[Peter Calves]: Okay. That's fine. I was looking at a lot of numbers and I just wanted to get some clarification on that. And then also, uh, uh, The other thing, one of the recommendations that I wanted to speak in favor of is wayfinding, because I do believe that, I do agree with Tony Feldman that a lot of the users of this facility will be accessing it from the Wellington stop, and as someone who lives near the Wellington stop, I certainly know that area and that routing, and I would encourage My thought would be to encourage between the property owner and CHA to have some kind of wayfinding to direct people who are coming from Wellington to the CHA facility, especially because it will be a new facility. So you will have people who presumably are coming to the area who haven't been around that area before and to make sure they know how to get there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, good point. Jason, who you see on the screen is a from the Davis companies. When we saw that, I mean, I forgot to mention this from from Todd Blake, we followed up with him and he pointed out that a couple of years ago, and Jason, maybe you could speak to this signage and a lot of improvements were made to direct people correctly to one cabinet. But Jason, you You know those details better than I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the, the improvements to the pedestrian walkway under route 16 were done when that when the bridge was redone. But, you know, the actual actual way finding getting to our building. I mean, when you get off the T, you can see, you can see the sign that we have on the building at the top that says 1 cabin road. I don't know if I would be able to put any signage on the MBTA's land, but I can certainly, you know, at the corner of our lot where our sidewalk begins, you know, look at adding a sign there to get them onto our sidewalk and, you know, to our entrance.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, that would, I think, be good because I know I'm not always sure where the entrance is for one cabin. I mean, I walked past it to get home from work early today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's two of them. So there is a rear entrance, which is where you would end up going if you came from the T. You'd end up coming in the back. And then so another thing to note is we do also run a shuttle during rush hour from our front entrance to Wellington. It's only a couple hundred yards away, but for people who can't get around, we run that three hours in the morning and three hours at night. And we're all just like EV charging and just like bike racks, we're monitoring usage. And if there was demand, we'd look at altering it. Thank you.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you both. And I just echo to what Peter said that I think that was my only additional question. And that was pretty much wayfinding. And that was how do you get people to navigate between those multimodal options that we've been discussing? And how do you get them from driving, biking, walking, transit, so forth within the property itself? So thank you, Peter, for bringing that up. Any other questions from the board? Okay, so this is a public hearing. So hearing none, I am actually going to open it up for public hearing. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Danielle in the comments. You can also send an email to OCD at medford-ma.gov. Before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. A reminder to all meeting participants to please refrain from using the chat function to provide 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 for myself and staff. Danielle, can you manage the public comment queue and read any previously sent emails or letters about this item?
[Danielle Evans]: So I do not see any participants with raised hands looking to speak, and I have not received any written comment or emails about this project.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Awesome. then I will close the public comment period until this meeting and we'll reopen if there are additional materials to consider going forward. So bring it back to the board. I want to take this time to read. I want to evaluate whether to bring a special permit that we must consider whether all the criteria under 9411.62 of the zoning ordinance and then the performance standards, which is section 6.4. I may have that backwards, I apologize. Daniel, can you please put them both up on the screen? That's what happens when you try to move the lines, yeah. Can folks see my screen? Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So 11.7.10 of the zoning ordinance and the 94-11.62 special permit criteria.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so when considering whether to grant a special permit, the board needs to consider the those six criteria and whether any adverse effects of the proposed use will outweigh its beneficial impacts. And if you don't find that any of those are met or would need conditions in order to be met, that's when you would do that. So like traffic flow and safety, including parking and loading, If you want to add any of the traffic conditions in order for number two to be met, it would satisfy that criteria.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So at this point for the traffic, I believe that the applicant has fully satisfied the questions. As far as adding additional EV, we wanna make sure that we are doing it reasonably as well as economically without providing undue economic hardship onto the proponent. And in saying that, I think I'll get a temperature feel from the rest of the board about the stipulation for adding the EV charging stations. additional EV charging stations, if you wanted to make that as a recommendation. And then also, based on the feedback that Attorney Feldman has given regarding restriping cabin road on public land, I'm not exactly sure that we're within jurisdiction to recommend that. Danielle, did you want to say anything about that?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, one thing that we do as planners when, let me see, wait a minute, I just, here we go, is weigh the pros and cons. And different departments will want to see different things. And then it's our job to find the right balance. I agree that I don't think that we should require any striping of the public way. That is something that we do require for new builds for mostly private developers and sometimes just residential uses. So it's not out of the realm of normalcy to require off-site mitigation. and traffic calming methods. But I think for this re-tenanting and fit out that maybe the nexus isn't there to require that, I still think that they should consider adding the EV spaces. But we could soften that language to should consider if feasible, which isn't a requirement, but a strong suggestion that they do that. We are a community that adopted the stretch energy code and the specialized stretch energy code, which requires 10% of all parking spaces be EV ready. So I'm not sure if the building permit would trigger that anyways. You'll find out once you apply for a building permit. That's kind of outside of my realm of expertise, but there could be things triggered just by virtue of us having adopted the stretch energy code. And most of our neighbors have too, including Somerville where you're leaving. The bicycle parking, exterior bicycle parking that's convenient to visitors, I would really strongly encourage keeping that as a condition that feels like a really low, low hanging fruit, real, you know, short money kind of ticket item to add that would, I think, go a long way. Because I didn't see any near the entrance, but maybe I, didn't spot them. Can the applicant confirm that there's no exterior bicycle parking near the entrance where patients and visitors would enter?
[SPEAKER_03]: Jason, can you speak to that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there currently is not. They're around the side and covered, under cover. But yeah, we can certainly look at locating some in the front.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Any other clarifying questions or input from board members?
[Evangelista]: I would like to ask Daniel if you know, do you know when it comes to EV stations, what percentage of parking spots should have EV or are required to have EV in new construction?
[Danielle Evans]: 10% are supposed to be EV ready.
[Evangelista]: I second basically Danielle when it comes to EV stations and strongly suggest that the CHA looks into it and its feasibility. At least one station in the patient's area would be great. Or if this is not feasible, then maybe add signage to direct patients to the current existing EV stations.
[Danielle Evans]: That's a great suggestion, Sally, because they wouldn't know that it's there at all, because it doesn't show up on the apps. Rightfully so, it's directed for tenants of the building.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, the easy solution, though.
[Danielle Evans]: I think Ari's hand is raised, Madam Chair.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari?
[Ari Fishman]: I didn't mean to interrupt the current back and forth. Feel free to finish it, and then I have a separate comment.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No, you're on.
[Ari Fishman]: I agree with the suggestion to strongly recommend, but do require at a minimum signage. On a similar note with, I think that applies to the bike parking too, especially visitors who are only there occasionally should have very visible, easy bike racks at both entrances if possible, the back and the front. There are people who bring bikes on the T or might be coming from that direction. So I'd love to see that if possible.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, and I was just actually echoing earlier with what Sally was saying about the signage for the EV. And I'm not sure I know, Danielle, you said you've seen it, but when we pulled it up on GIS, it was not clear that the EV stations were for tenants or whether they were for the tenants or the visitors or the patients. So the wayfinding of that, even when you find it, can we make that a little bit more clear that it is for their use? the patient use?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, through the chair, because I know when I drove around and was kind of, you know, poking around and I went up to the, you know, to the charge point, you know, whatever you call them. kiosk thingamajig, and I couldn't tell if it was something that would be open to a visitor to use or if I'd get towed. So, it would be helpful, you know, signage will go a long way. You don't have to, you know, submit it to ChargePoint or PlugShare and have it visible, but, you know, to the general public, but it should be folks visiting the building or even working in the building should know that they're there. And, um, you know, maybe it's available for tenants and. Visitors or something for, like, visitors and users of the building or something so that there's. It's understood that it's not public charging if you're not coming to do any kind of business at OneCabit, but it's if you're there visiting OneCabit that it's available for use and it doesn't have to be free. It can continue to be paid for it.
[Evangelista]: Peter.
[Peter Calves]: Okay, I've just been trying to keep track of the back and forth and wanted to make sure that we have a handle on what conditions we're proposing. And so far, it seems that we're recommending to the city council for approval with the conditions that the applicant considers the installation of additional EV spaces if feasible with the addition of signage clarifying the use of the EV spaces or just signage mark directing to the EV spaces?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, and then bicycle wrap both.
[Evangelista]: Oh, you want to answer Peter's question? I guess so. Yes. Okay.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Sorry. Yes, that's a more appropriate answer. I just said yes, but both.
[Peter Calves]: Okay. And then the second condition would be that the applicant work with the property owner to install bicycle racks at the entrances of the to the proposed facility?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.
[Peter Calves]: Okay. And that's all I have as of now.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And those are all the conditions that I would myself would be looking for a motion for and recommending to a special permit to the city council since they are the special permit granting authority. And Danielle, are they also in the site plan or are we recommending the site plan here?
[Danielle Evans]: We're also recommending the site.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, just a point of clarification. Excuse the fact that I'm going to get hung up on the words, but when you say, if it's feasible. you know, bottom line is almost anything is feasible with enough dollars if you throw enough dollars at it. So it would help if you in that condition says we examine the appropriateness and feasibility of adding a additional EV charging space, one charging station with that accesses two spots, you know, it's a dual head charging station, at least that way, it's not vague about you know, the order of magnitude of EVC stations you're talking about us evaluate for feasibility. And then we'll look at whether or not they could be located in the patient parking. And as I understand it, if they can't be located at patient parking, we provide some kind of signage to direct someone if they were looking for an EV spot where they could find it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I appreciate that language, Attorney Feldman. You made it a lot easier to move forward. And if the proponent's comfortable with that, I think that's what the city would appreciate in capturing. Peter, did you get that language?
[SPEAKER_03]: I could always work with Danielle tomorrow on the actual, you know, drafting of the recommendation to the city council. I'm happy to help Danielle, um, very common for me to prepare draft decisions uh for boards um but in this case i know it's a recommendation letter and i know daniel does that routinely but i'm happy to help daniel in any way i can thank you and i know that the city clerk's office um as the staff to city council would definitely welcome any help in drafting that condition and it will expedite you getting one
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So for the motion this evening, Daniel, I would have to word it and say in conditions as set forth by the city. As I set forth by the community development board drafted by the city.
[Danielle Evans]: You would say, I mean, we could just kind of. You would recommend approval of the special permit and the site plan review with the additional conditions. It would be, I guess, three conditions. The first one would be the applicant shall add or the applicant shall work with the property owner to add bicycle racks for visitors near the entrance to one cabinet or to the main entrance to one cabinet. Does that capture the consensus? And then The other one would be.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. I'm going to pause you there and I'm going to go back and I'm going to ask for a motion to recommend one cabinet road for, uh, for special permit and site plan review to the city council based on the conditions that Danielle was going to list. You can list those.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. So yeah.
[Ari Fishman]: Seconded with the comment that I'd love to see bike racks at both visitor entrances, not just the front one.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Oh, no, I was just going to have Danielle restate them.
[Danielle Evans]: Sorry. Yeah, the applicant shall work with the property owner to add bicycle racks for visitors near the entrances. I wasn't sure that there's two. Patients will use both of them. I wasn't sure that there was a main one or there was a secondary one. I'll just put near the entrances, let's keep it open like that. Then the applicant shall work with the property owner to add an additional EV charging station in the vicinity of the visitor parking area, you know, to the greatest extent feasible. And we can wordsmith this so that it's in the correct legalese. And also, or if, or and, or provide signage to direct visitors to the existing EV chargers and make clear that they are available for patient use or visitor use. And then we had a third condition regarding wayfinding signage. So provide wayfinding signage to direct pedestrians to the entrance to the building from Wellington Station. To the extent feasible?
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, to the extent feasible within the property.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can only put a sign on my property.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll put it on the corner. I'll put it on the corner of my property, you know, closest to the underpass.
[Evangelista]: Jack, chair, you're muted.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Peter, you capture that as to the extent feasible for him. OK, awesome. And is there a motion? I second the motion. OK.
[Peter Calves]: I second.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: OK, I'm going to do a roll call. Ari Goffman? Ari Fishman?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes, with enthusiasm as a patient of CHA.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Sally Akiki? Yes. Peter Kautz?
[Peter Calves]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm a yes. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Attorney Fuqua. Thank you, Attorney Kovner. Thank you, everyone else.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, members of the board. Yes, thank you, members of the board.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Have a great evening.
[Evangelista]: Good night.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Your screen says R-E-G.
[Ari Fishman]: Oh, it should say R-E-G Fishman. Okay. Yeah, Goffman is my middle name now.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, okay. And I saw the G and I couldn't see the first one, and so I apologize. Okay, the next item for tonight would be approval of minutes. I'm not sure that we had minutes. I did, yes. There were minutes from last week.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, the February 7th meeting minutes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, a motion to approve the meeting minutes from February 7th.
[Ari Fishman]: I so move.
[Evangelista]: A second. I second. I, Sally, second.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Roll call. Ari Fishman? Yep. Sally Akiki? Yes, Peter cow.
[Peter Calves]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. Yes. And the next will be miscellaneous or other updates that the city have any updates.
[Danielle Evans]: I see that Alicia has joined us fresh from the permitting subcommittee meeting. were you with city council tonight Felicia?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes if you don't mind actually it would be great to just mention this to you all we've talked about this that we're doing a zoning overhaul the one of the motions that councilor bears president bears made tonight was to request to reach out to the CD board chair, the zoning board chair and the building commissioner and request thoughts, ideas, things they'd like to see changed in our zoning. So he worded it in a way that it doesn't have to go to the whole board and be a discussion topic at a meeting. They would like stuff sooner rather than later so that we can start really actually digging into making changes. I apologize, I didn't write down the date by which they said, because it's not my job to tell you this, it's the city clerk's job, but they are requesting changes. And within the next few days, we are gonna push out basically a little form to the public with two questions. What would you like to see changed in Medford zoning? What do you not want us to touch in Medford zoning? And the idea is that we've done a lot of outreach. We've done the comprehensive plan. We've done all of that. But I could imagine people might have a pet peeve, you know? I think setbacks should be six feet instead of 15. I don't know. Let us build three-story houses. I don't know what people are going to say. But I feel like it's time. If people have their pet peeves, they want to send in.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No more housing. We can't fit any more housing in Mefrin.
[Alicia Hunt]: No more housing. You're joking.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No, no, no, no. I am. I saw him joking. Yes. That's the first thing that came to mind when you said public.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I will say that what in our minds, what we're sort of thinking of a process is like, if you have a list, you want to send me or any member, send me a list, right? If individuals want to make like a couple, like a comment or two, or just an idea, we want to funnel those through this web form. So they'll all show up in one document. So they'll be collected because if we told the public to email me, I would be losing them, right? That would become a management nightmare. And we don't want to set up a special email address or anything. So we're just going to put up a form to channel comments into. But I am actually… If you feel like you're going to write treaties on this, then just send an email to me and I'll pass it along to the team. So…
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I would love to see the site plan review process change, but I'm just one person.
[Alicia Hunt]: You know, I think what we really want to hear from you and is how do you want to have it changed? And it and it could be like, so there are a couple of ways also to approach it. If you guys if we had a meeting that was going to be short, and we wanted to put an agenda item on for us to talk it through. I could even invite Emily, the consultant to come and to hear hear it or one of her staff, she now has a staff. Like a staff she's eight staff to come and like capture these thoughts and ideas right. If, however, that is not going to fit in our meeting schedule, especially because we're really trying to get moving on this quickly. then if you wanted like one person from the board to sit with me or Danielle or Emily directly and talk it through, that could be arranged too. We just can't have a quorum meeting about it offline about business of the board. So I'm putting it out there and especially whatever it is about site plan review that you don't like, It is actually in zoning and certain things are required by 40 a but certain things certain some stuff is just made up either by Medford or by the person who wrote our last round of zoning shall remain nameless, you know, like.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: It it just needs some major in my opinion. It needs to be overhauled It needs some major revisions and i'm not even sure that I have that kind of time this week to even send To you what I would like to see but I can definitely touch upon it That's right Absolutely And it's only 7 45 and it's yes Although it was not an agenda.
[Alicia Hunt]: This is more of an administrative update and not a
[Danielle Evans]: We have a meeting next week.
[Alicia Hunt]: I don't know how long it'll be, but you can... If you have some... If you wanted us to, actually, we could put zoning updates and zoning changes as an agenda item, and then If we say the update is we're meeting regularly with the consultant there, we gave you an update, or if the update is that we want to actually have a discussion about something in the zoning. You know.
[Danielle Evans]: Then everything will come through you all anyways for you to make recommendations, changes to So you will see everything eventually. And if you want to have your ideas front loaded, so that's.
[Alicia Hunt]: Honestly, I would rather have, if there are thoughts and ideas of the planning board, give them to us. Let's put them in with the consultant. Let's churn it out at the right time in the right section. as part of the public process um so that it's because we're you know we're going to do short-term changes we're going to do edits and we're going to do bigger changes that might take longer um right now the city council is planning to meet approximately every two weeks about this zoning or is it once a month it's two weeks so the next one is um april 11th and then april 24th hold on i just double check that they were in my calendar. So the planning and zoning committee of the city council is planning to meet every two weeks on opposite weeks from this committee from this board. So they were just talking about The 10th of April is a city council planning and zoning subcommittee. And then April 24th are the next two meetings. I am mildly confused about what happened to the 27th, unless they have some other thing, but I have to be at a Broadway court or a charrette. Let me actually just fill you in. You know that we're doing a zoning, study with Somerville about Broadway Corridor. And there is going to be a public charrette. Somerville likes to do these big, long things. They originally wanted it to be for three days. At this time, hold on, I have what's in my calendar, but I also have the email that I received today with the updated schedule. Yes. So there's going to be on March 25th, a community meeting from 6 to 8. On Tuesday, the 26th, open public drop-in hours from 3 to 5. And then on the 27th, a work-in-progress presentation from 7 to 9.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: We have a meeting on the 27th. No? Oh, no. Ours is next week. That's right.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, ours is next week.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: OK.
[Alicia Hunt]: And let's not talk about the nine to three on the Tuesday with different staff and elected officials and stuff that I'm probably gonna have to be at the whole thing. So that, it's a little insight into how Somerville does it when they have tons and tons of staff. We gave them permission to flyer in Medford because they have staff with the time to go door to door putting out flyers and telling people about it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I have three projects in Somerville, there's a different planner and a different engineer for each one. So are you proposing zoning updates and changes for our next meeting in March? Because at this point, I want to keep it to the short meeting because we just put this on just to make sure that we got it to happen.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. If next week you guys wanted to do a little brainstorming kind of thing, like they didn't have to be fleshed out ideas. Because one of the things that we have on our list that we've just given Emily is like, here are problems that we see. Right? Like, some are real simple, like, technical. In our use tables are parking and loading codes, which reference numbers in another table. Why don't we just have the parking and loading requirements right there in the table? Why are they codes referencing another table? It's super confusing. Right? That's like, just, that's almost clerical. Then we have things like there are uses that are not defined in our zoning that probably should be like our use table. And the example I used tonight at city council was that the only restaurant food establishment stuff we have is food establishment, food establishments and food establishments with drive-through. So if somebody wants to say have a coffee shop, They need to get a use and it's not allowed in that zone. They need to use variants for food establishment. Now, what if the zoning board or whoever is saying, well, actually, a coffee shop would be great there, but a full blown restaurant would be too much at that location? There is no way. Yeah, because it runs with the land. Right. There's no way to say that in our zoning. So an example would be we should have a use type of coffee shops and a separate use type of restaurants. And maybe we want to have a use type of fast food restaurants. Maybe.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Isn't that what the held up with the bear garden was, going back and forth with the bear garden? Because we couldn't define, I mean, bear.
[Alicia Hunt]: How is it defined? Right. It's not a brewery. It's not really a restaurant. But right. But the only thing we have is food establishment. So that's some of the examples, right? Is that there are uses that we should have. And I'd love to hear like, people want to look at the use table and tell me uses they think we should have so that we could zone differently, that would be great. And I, you know, there's some paranormal uses in here that were like, why? In what NIMBY world are these called out as separate uses?
[Danielle Evans]: And also think about, you know, when we, even like tonight an example is, you know, things that you would want to require that maybe we don't have the teeth to require. And I, you know, such as like the EV parking and stuff. And maybe this is a question for Alicia, for you and Brenda of, you know, what exactly, like, so like a tenant fit out, like what are, you know, what does that trigger under the specialized energy code?
[Alicia Hunt]: So Brenda just sent me a list of climate zoning brainstorms that I'm going to send to the, I'm calling it the zoning team, Danielle and the consultants, pardon me, Kit and Zach. that talks about particular density bonuses, floor area ratio exclusions, expedited site plan review, perhaps if it's a net zero design or passive house. Like these are just sort of like things we should be considering. By right, allowances for EV charging. We actually allow solar arrays by right. Things like that, small scale green infrastructure, like permeable paving, our zoning had said around parking that parking has to be paved. And what it kind of went on to say is that it has to be not dusty. And there are other ways to treat that now. Because in the 1950s and 60s when they wrote this, there was a lot of concern about dirt driveways and the dirt and how that would be bad for the people around it. But there wasn't really any thought about like, oh, there are pavers, there are grass pavers that could be used for driveways.
[Danielle Evans]: So anyhow, I thought was was the best and you wanted it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, so Yeah, that would that would be an interesting question because I was a little with the ev and that's not having our own attorney was just a little bit difficult, especially with them stay in the case And it's not they're not doing much on the exterior and it's just like tenants but out and they're uh retaining pretty much How do we? enforce it now with the stretch code coming later. And I definitely understand where, Daniel, you were coming from in the city's stance, but it's kind of hard, right? But how do we go forward?
[Danielle Evans]: I don't know. These are things to consider. So for projects that are subject to site plan review, what should they be doing? What should be a requirement? And perhaps it's a requirement and things could could be waived if requested, but the default should be you're doing this, you know, unless you request some kind of a waiver, maybe that's the solution, instead of trying to, like, you know, force someone to do something like have them make the argument that it's, you know, a hardship or not feasible. But also, yeah, I do want to respect your time since this was kind of an emergency special meeting.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: One question. What are we looking at? I see Harvard Street. I sort of poke around and I see like a glass kind of, what is it, auto glass thing?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So that's just one thing for next week?
[Danielle Evans]: Um, yeah, because 290 sound street is requesting a continuance. So, I believe it's just the auto glass. I'll have to think might that could potentially be an and are we always there's things that could come up in the interim. But yet that's a result of the most recent zoning change for any kind of auto repair facility now requires a special permit. It used to be by right in the zone and now it's a special permit. So it'll be going to you all and you are the special permit granting authority. And fun fact, so I got in a minor little fender bender last week. And so I got a list of auto repair facilities from my insurance agency and I was just, I knew we had a lot in Medford, but I was really shocked by the list of auto repair facilities in Medford, because it was all Middlesex County. And then I was like, wow, Medford has a lot. We have a lot. I mean, this is just, this is technically an auto repair, but it's just glass repair. But yeah, you have to make the decision whether they satisfy the criteria for a special permit? What's the use? Does it outweigh the negatives of it? OK.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: All right, well, thank you. If there's nothing else I'm going to ask for. So, yes, I guess I'm guessing the board will have like a brainstorming session next meeting.
[Alicia Hunt]: Do you guys want to just put it on the agenda to discuss potential zoning changes?
[Danielle Evans]: And we can maybe narrow it or frame it to kind of direct. Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: Whatever you guys want. I just want to get ideas from you now and not in six months, please.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Well, I'm for it. I don't know if we have to vote on it, but I'm for it. I'm not for it tonight, but I would entertain it for next week, especially since it's a smaller agenda next week.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great. I'll put it on the agenda next week. How's that?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Now I will entertain a motion to adjourn.
[Evangelista]: I so move. Seconded.
[Peter Calves]: Somebody has moved and somebody has seconded.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes. Ari Fishman. Yes. Sally Akiki? Yes. Peter Cowles?
[Peter Calves]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm a yes. Thank you, everyone. See you next week. Thank you.
[Peter Calves]: Good night.
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