AI-generated transcript of Community Development Board 02-21-24

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Welcome to tonight's meeting of the Metro Community Development Board. I'll call the meeting to order. Let's 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 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 the 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 the meeting, tonight all votes from the board will be made by roll call. Please also know that project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed on the city's website, and that's visiting medfordma.org, and you can click on current city board filings. Alicia will provide a link in the chat. I'm going to do roll call attendance for the board. Vice Chair Emily Hederman. Present. Peter Cowles. It's muted. Just put a thumb up, Peter. And Ari Fishman. Present. Pam Arianski. Present. and I believe the only other is myself, Jackie McPherson. Alicia or another city staff member, can you please introduce any staff on the call?

[Alicia Hunt]: Certainly, Madam Chairperson. I'm Alicia Hunt. I'm the director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. Tonight, we have with us Aditi Mogur. Aditi, you want to introduce yourself? Sorry, I butcher your name again.

[Adithi Moogoor]: No worries. Thanks, Alicia. Hi, I'm Aditi Mogur. I'm the housing planner with the city of Medford.

[Alicia Hunt]: And Clem, do you want to introduce yourself?

[Ruseau]: Sure. I'm Clem Doucette, a graduate student intern at the city.

[Alicia Hunt]: That's it for the staff this evening. Although actually, Amanda, I don't know that Amanda is staying. One of our staff planners is, Danielle is on vacation this week. So Amanda has been helping us with some of the technical. Many of you will remember Amanda from the past.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, so the first item on the board, for the board to review tonight is 96-100 Winchester Street. It's a PDD, which is planned, PDD special permit site plan and special permit. So the CDB, the advisory to the city council will only be voting on a recommendation tonight. And I'm going to summarize the public hearing and the public meet and legal ad. The Medford Community Development Board shall conduct a public meeting on February 21st, 2024 after 6.30 p.m. via Zoom to make a recommendation to City Council relative to an application by 96-102 Winchester Street, LLC for a planned development district special permit. and site plan review to permit the construction of a four-story, 65-unit residential building and a 4,000-square-foot commercial structure at the site known as 100 Winchester Street, comprised of properties located at 96 to 100 Winchester Street, Myford Bluffs, 02155. A public hearing will also be later held by the Medford City Council on March 12, 2024 at 7 p.m. in the Medford City Council Chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall at 85 George P. Hassett Drive. The Zoom link to the public hearing will be posted no later than 48 hours prior to that meeting. Does the staff have any opening comments for this project?

[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to confirm that everybody is, you just summarized the process, but this has been a long process with many meetings, and I just wanted to make sure everybody knew where we were, that this is in fact the site plan review for this project tonight, and this meeting tonight is advisory to the city council who will be actually voting on it. But if there's any questions about the process, we're happy to field those.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So the new PDD1 overlay sets. new dimensional regulations that align with the approved preliminary plan. In order to build the proposed development, they must now receive a plan development district special permit and site plan review approval from city council. And that's where we're at now. So I am going to invite the applicant to introduce themselves and to please present your proposal.

[Alicia Hunt]: Are you, Alicia? Sorry, I clicked the bottom. Let me try that again. Sometimes if we can. All right. There we go.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: There we go. Sorry about that. All right, thank you very much. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Adam Barnosky, with an address of 255 State Street in Boston. I'm an attorney for the applicants on this proposal. With me are the developers, Steve and Gerald Nardone, project architects, Peter Quinn and Milton Yu, and the landscape architect, Katia Patadialo, and the engineer and traffic consultant, David Giangrande. So as mentioned by the chair and by Ms. Hunt, this project was before the board as you'll recall last year as part of the plan development district for the site pursuant to section 9.2 of the zoning ordinance. After a review of the submitted materials and deliberation by the board, it was unanimously voted to recommend that the city council adopt the proposed BDD. The PDD was then subsequently approved by the City Council and codified as Section 94-9.2A of the Zoning Ordinance. That ordinance is now known as the Winchester Street Planned Development District. So the project as it will be presented to you this evening is a by right project in terms of use and dimensional requirements under the zoning ordinance. However, all PDD projects require this PDD special permit by the city council as the special permit granting authority. So, as was mentioned before, at the hearing tonight, the board will be acting as a referral board of the city council. So with that said, we're very excited to, again, be before you on this. I know we touched upon many aspects of this proposal when we were first before you last year. We're excited about the project. It has been a long time in development. I just want to reiterate again and thank the planning staff, leadership, legal counsel, and the planning department for their efforts throughout this process. We know it's a new one for the city and appreciate the undertaking by all the parties to date. So I'll provide the board as a refresher with an overview of the property, the project, and then turn it over to the design team to walk through the renderings, landscaping, and engineering. So first about the property, the proposed site is located on the southern portion of Winchester Street, due east from the Ball Square T-stop. The site consists of three lots comprised of five tax parcels measuring just under 50,000 square feet. The two lots located at 96-102 Winchester are contiguous through lots with frontage on Winchester and Alfred Street. They've been used for many years as a commercial space for offices, garaging, and outdoor vehicle storage. The lot located at 104 Winchester is a corner lot with frontage on Winchester and Albion. It's improved with a two-story residence that's been deemed preferably preserved by the Medford Historical Commission. The site is mostly located in the GR zoning district with a small portion in the commercial C1 zoning district. They are currently owned by 96-102 Winchester LLC, which is the petitioner before you tonight. So the development which Peter Coonan's team will go through in a moment is a four-story, 65-unit residential building with below-grade parking, a two-story, 4,000-square-foot commercial building, and a community pocket park. This would all be located within the new PDD in a portion of the block bound by Wichester Street to the west, Newburn Avenue to the north, Alfred Street to the east, and Albion Street to the south. The proposed developer will raise all existing structures on site. with the new four-story building measuring approximately 63,000 square feet with 65 residential units on the first and fourth floors. There will be 46 one-bedroom unit, 19 two-bedroom units, 51 parking spaces below grade, 56 long-term bicycle parking spaces, a roof deck with a pergola, and rooftop solar arrays. The existing historic structure that I mentioned momentarily at 104 Winchester will be fully restored and a new addition will be added to the rear to form an L-shaped building measuring approximately 4,000 square feet. This is the only real commercial use in this development. It's going to be used as a commercial space such as a daycare, office, and gym. You might recall that all of those uses are going to be allowed by right under this new PDD. 104 Winchester will also be improved with a pocket park for public use with new landscaping, hardscaping and benches. As a quick refresher on the PDD, the proposed heights were created in line with recent developments in the area. The setbacks were created similar to existing conditions at neighboring properties. We have below-grade parking that's in excess of the parking requirements in the underlying zoning district with reasonable open space and lot coverage requirements for the area. The PD was created and approved by the City Council with the intent to create a gradual transition between the commercial C1 and the GR zoning district. And while the property is primarily located in the GR, it abuts and is partially located in the C1 to the south and west. So we believe that this project meets all the requirements for approval for the PDD special permit under 9.27 and anticipate that the board will find the design and development proposed tonight are consistent with the goals of this PDD individually, as well as more broadly met for its comprehensive plan. And so that's the general overview. I know we want to dig into the engineering as well as the the renderings here, so I'll turn it over to Peter Quinn's team to walk through the architectural renderings.

[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you. Thank you, Adam, and to the board. Thank you very much for this opportunity to present the project. My name is Peter Quinn of Peter Quinn Architects, 259 Elm Street, Somerville, in Davis Square. So the project as we're presenting this evening is not substantially changed from what we presented last summer. But nonetheless, I will start from the beginning and go briefly through what we're proposing to do. I have with me also tonight Katya from Verdant Landscaping and David Gene Grande from GM2 for both civil and for the traffic study. So to begin, I'm sharing my screen first here. All right, so big picture. We have a lot that is a through lot. And you can see this is from Winchester Street. And it goes all the way through to Alfred. And then there's a corner portion, which has an existing historic structure on it. This historic structure will not be raised. This will be actually retained. There's a small part of it that will be taken off in the back that's a later L edition. And I'll go into that in a little while. But the main things I want to point out about this building, the new building, is that we are trying to break down the mass of this building as much as possible to be compatible with the neighborhood. We know it's a large building, but it actually has a lot of lovely features that I think will add to the neighborhood. So for instance, you'll see that there are these paneled projected bays. These are elements that we're trying to introduce to give it a townhouse-like quality to the project. I think nearly all the units have personal balconies, unit balconies, one kind or another. Some are quite generous, others are smaller. These are often at the corner or they break up the mass as the building works its way down through the site. One thing I would like to point out about the site is that it has a tremendous amount of slope to it that we use to our advantage. The slope begins at this high end, at the right-hand corner, where Winchester meets to the back corner in Alfred. And I think it's approximately one story, but difference. So that has actually helped us with the massing of this building. And you can see in this drawing here, how we are dealing with the massing, I think fairly easily. So on the right hand side, you have Winchester Street, and it's a sidewalk and generous setback with lots of room for landscaping. That part of the building is actually four stories, even though we've broken it down so that there's a three-story portion sitting on a brick base. This brick base is exposed because this is our driveway down to the underground garage. Above the three-story portion, where you can see how the balconies break up the mass and create these townhouse-like structures, above that is a four-story that is stepped back five feet in order to have a fourth floor, but also to reduce the mass of it, and we darken the color of it with a wood-like finish that will help the building meet a little better as a kind of broken-down mass. And then as you enter the site or you travel across the site, as I mentioned, the grade steps down. So we've also stepped the building down. And the building is divided front to rear. There's the Winchester portion, which is on the right-hand side here, and then the alpha portion. So the Alfred portion is three stories with a small amount that's four stories that's also stepped back. So really by the time you get to the far end on the left, you're only seeing a three-story building. And that I think helps with the transition to the neighborhood scale that Alfred Street has, and also allows us to work with the grades of the site much better. So connecting those two wings, left and right, is a vertical core. That's where we have our elevator, one of our stairways, and a lot of other features going all the way down into the basement that are important to distribute through the building, such as our bike room, our electrical room, and our trash core as well, trash chutes. Just to give you an idea on the appearance of this. The building has these projected bases I mentioned. These are fiber cement, rain screen with windows that are most likely casements, high energy efficiency windows. Then as I mentioned, as you layer back toward the fourth floor, that would go to a wood finish type material. The whole building is sitting on this brick base, as I mentioned, and that base does provide some terraces around the perimeter of the building as well. The commercial building to the right consists of the original portion that we hope to restore and actually enhance with the front porch. doesn't have now and then to produce a wing off the rear as well as a connecting core that has an elevator in it. The idea is that this is a commercial building and would be suitable for any number of uses that are allowed in this district. And its primary entry is through the back, not really the back, but from the Albion Street side where there's some drop-off locations. And you can see there's a tree here. It's actually, I think the existing tree is much larger, but that tree would be preserved and made into kind of like a center of a courtyard. So that would be a lovely kind of commercial space as well. I'll go a little farther into the 3D models. First, I'll show you the bird's-eye view. So this one I started with earlier. You can see how the terraces here are formed by the way the brick base is set on the ground. The building also has a shift in it, where it has a point at which the building shifts to the left or to the right if you're looking at the front. And again, that also helps reduce the apparent mass of the building so you don't leave it as a 200-some-odd-feet-long building. So the roof, of course, has lots of room for solar panels, which we're hoping to install, as well as high-efficiency heat pump systems that will be placed mostly in the center so that the neighbors won't see them or hear them. And then further back, we just go around the building a little bit. This is a view where you can see our driveway coming in off Winchester Street. And that is the regulation 24 feet from Fire Chief. But you can also see the terrace here. These would be usable for the residents of those units that they cross from them. And again, now the massing is broken up by these townhouses. At the bottom of the ramp, there are two garage doors. That's our trash room that is directly connected to some trash chutes that come down through a core. And all the trash is handled, you know, that way. Fresh truck would simply back down here, open up, you know, the garage doors would be opened up and they'd roll out the bins. So it's very efficient. And similarly, there's a door that leads into the garage where we have two levels of parking. Just to show you that briefly, the parking is, excuse me, split between, this is the rear half here. There's actually 49 spaces. We originally had 51, and then engineering asked us to eliminate two of them that were problematic for clearances. So we're showing those two as eliminated. And they're approximately 50% split each way, half and half. The lower garage has 26 spaces, and the upper garage has, I'm sorry, 25 and 24. As we go up to the building, we have a simple entry vestibule, and then some amenity space off to the side of it. We pass through a security area, and then we're into really kind of generous layouts. They're quite nicely sized. Most of our one bedrooms are in the 650 to 750 square foot range, with the exception of some smaller studios on the roof. And most of our two bedrooms are 950 to 1050 square feet as well. So they're mid-size plus these outdoor spaces as well. And that layout continues right up to the building. As I mentioned, we have our central area, which has core functions such as a trash and janitors' closets, and then the stairway elevator. The buildings are front to rear three feet different in height, so we have an elevator that has doors on front and rear in order to allow that to happen. And also on our roof level, we have a common deck out here. This is completely screened from our neighbors with a six-foot high screening and planters. Of course, that will need some design detail. It also has a pergola to provide some screening and shading in the summer. But I doubt very much that anybody will see this from the street, because as you can see in these renderings, it's pushed back quite far. So this, for instance, is the Albert Street view, but you can't see very much up there at all. And likewise, even From this corner, you're just seeing the stair tower and a few other things up there, but no mechanical equipment or anything like that is visible. In the aerial view, I already showed that one. Here's another view looking over our driveway. You can see how this building steps back as it goes. And this is the enclosed deck area in the rear here. This is a view looking over Alfred Street. Again, you can see how the building steps down as it goes. And this is our screened deck area as well. So lots of room for solar panels. We're excited about that. And what we've shown here is just simply schematic. There'll probably be room for even more when the final layout comes. The final aerial view looking over the whole project from Alfred Street as well, different corner. The building has a lot of interesting features, but it really does come down to the way you have these recessed balconies and then a kind of townhouse area with the bays. And this constitutes three units stacked one over the other. And then we just repeat that around the whole building. Let's see, what else? I mentioned right now our unit count is we have 46 one bedrooms and 19 two bedrooms. So it's mostly one bedrooms, which we believe is appropriate for the location of this building, so close to the T. It would provide a good price point for either rentals or sales. And it is very much in demand, as you can imagine, to have these kinds of units available. What else can I show you at this point? I think that pretty much covers it. I can go into some statistics on the building if you'd like. I also have a shadow study, which I'll show you briefly if you'd like. Madam Chair, is that something that would be useful for the board to see? Shadow study.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, please. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, sure. No problem. So, the way we laid this out was starting in spring and fall, March 21st, which is coming up. So, we, we 1st, look at the existing shadows that the building produces the buildings that are there. We have the benefit here that most of the two existing warehouse-type structures that are on the site are right on the property line or close to it, and therefore, they cast quite large shadows on their neighbors even though they're essentially just one tall story high. So in the early morning, we would add some additional shadows across the street on Winchester. That's what the yellow represents. That yellow represents increased shadow over the existence. By noon, most of our shadows are very minimal, mostly staying on site. So this is what we would witness in a month from now, almost exactly one month from tonight. date that I'm looking forward to, getting some spring around here. And then later in the day, when the shadows get a little longer, we do have a small amount of shadow on our neighbors. So it's actually quite minimal that time of year. And as you can imagine, in summer, It's virtually non-existent. So a little bit in the early morning, you get some shadows across Winchester Street onto the commercial structures over there. But by noon, they're all completely on site and well into late in the day. In the winter, of course, everybody's shadowing everybody else. And we would be no exception to that. Early in the morning, there's actually everything that's pretty much in shadow anyways. But there'd be small pockets on the rooftops and the like that would get more shadow. By midday during the winter, this would be December 20th or 21st, we would have Some increased shadows on our neighbors, mostly in backyards. As the sun moves around, it's quite low at that time of year, as you can imagine. And then finally, late in the day, we had shadow back into this corner on Elkwood Street, most of it affecting one or two neighbors. But again, for the most part, for such a fairly large building, we are really minimally casting shadows. You have some images of the materials that we're using. So this is the lap siding, the blue siding that we have on most of the building. And then this kind of rendered wood material. This is actually a material that has a variation like wood, but it is kind of recycled base. And then we had the white bays are actually fiber cement rain screens with a nice joint detailing on them. We have some thin brick in here that we would put on the base of the building dimension. And then our railings would be like a metal screening with post and caps and so forth. That's a basic guide to the materials. So I think I will stop there, take questions. I'm happy to answer those. And also, at this time, I'll pass on, if there are no questions immediately, I'll pass it on to Katia Posadilo. And we will have a presentation on the landscape I think we have that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Peter.

[SPEAKER_07]: Let me bring it up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. So my name is Katja Posadlo. I'm the principal at Verdant Landscape Architecture. And what you see here is our overall landscape plan for the site. You see the largest light green circles are the existing trees to remain. And then the other shaded in slightly darker green circles are the proposed new trees and vegetation. So I'm going to walk you through the design around the site, and I'll try to be brief so we can get on with the presentation. So first, I'm going to go through the ways in which we support residential use around the larger of the two buildings here. And then we'll look at the landscape around the existing blue house to be retained at the corner, along with its addition. So how is the landscape designed around the residential building? Well, the building is designed with sort of like two faces because it spans the whole block there. One on Winchester Street, which is on the left, and then one on Alfred Street to the right. However, those areas are a little bit different because along the left, Winchester Street is really the primary front door entry. and the one on Alfred Street's a little bit more like a backdoor and that faces the residential zone. So thank you. We're going to zoom in and look at the area along Winchester Street to take a closer look at the front entry on Winchester Street here. We also have the driveway located along the top of the page there that goes down to the garages. So most of the cars will be coming and going from that location, not on the other end, and those driveways do not connect through as Peter described. But what you note here is that we have some more formal plantings and symmetrically arranged plantings because of this slightly more formal use in the front entry. There's some front steps going up to the front door and we also have an accessible route along the bottom part of the page here to get to the front door. We go to the next slide you see on the other end of the building how we've treated the Alfred Street side of things a little bit differently. It's a little bit of a quieter yard area. It's a little more naturalistic in its composition. There's some existing trees along the property line at the back of the sidewalk existing sidewalk so we're proposing to thin those out. There's some invasive species in there, as well as. Some other things we want to promote some better growth for a few that are that are there and you know provide more enough sunlight for the some existing trees there so we're going to protect a few of them and remove a few of them and then under plant with a lot of different shrubs and small trees, as well as a new street tree up near the driveway. And the driveway that you see here is really not a driveway for any residential use associated with this project. It's just an emergency driveway for fire trucks that was part of the requirements for this project development. But in lieu of a 24 foot wide drive aisle, which is the requirement, we're reducing the paved appearance of that driveway by dedicating a portion of it to be what we see in the picture there, which is checker block paving, which will appear more like lawn. Although it's structured enough for fire trucks to drive over. Um, we could go back to slide one for a moment in the landscape just want to point out something else, Peter had mentioned and maybe I don't need to go into too much depth here but the north and the south sides of the building have unit balconies and porches and things. Along both edges, and we have provided a nice green backdrop to the locations where we have ability to plant and where there are private terraces, like on the on the garage deck areas, there'll be I'm sure the residents who live there will probably place planters and patio furnishings within their terraces where. there aren't plantings able to be planted like within the locations that are on top of the garage structure. So there'll be, you know, small, small and large size, different various kinds of patios and porches for the residents to enjoy. Now I'd like to go back to, I think we can move on to L4, which is the fourth page, obviously, I guess, yeah. I'm going to look at the landscape around the historic home that's being renovated to be a retail use. So as Peter described, we're maintaining the historic core of the building. We're also going to be protecting the shade tree that's located just to the south of that existing house. And once the addition along the right hand side of our diagram there. will be added. It will create a really nice central shaded courtyard area formed by that L-shaped building with the focal point of that existing tree. But in order to keep that patio area more or less level, we need to add a small retaining wall along its left side. It's just about two feet tall to help mitigate the slope that you know, goes down the corner of the property there. And while we're maintaining the historic front door and there are some steps to access the house from along Winchester, the primary entry will be an accessible route from the Albion side of things going in through the courtyard there as Peter is indicating. The final piece of the project is this proposed pocket park that we've designed at the corner of Winchester and Albion. We had originally tried to design a semi-circular sort of like a little shortcut through the corner with some benches, but because the slope changes from one sidewalk to the other, it would be too steep. So instead we created a more contained and enclosed green space with these three benches that you see positioned along the backside. So you can sit within this little mini paved patio area and you can watch the intersection or people coming and going on the sidewalk in a nice green space. Now we can go to the next slide and take a look at some plantings. This is our overall planting plan that provides a full plant list in the center there. What you'll note is our plantings rely heavily or the selections rely heavily on native or native adapted species. So they're very drought tolerant, trying to support biodiversity, very hardy and low maintenance as well as trying to provide four seasons of interest. So we have things like surface berry trees, sugar maples, hornbeams, summer sweet, that kind of thing. Lastly, the last page shows some details, which we don't need to get into the nitty gritty, but if anyone has any questions, there's some details associated with the landscape, like for those checker block pavers and the unit paving and planting details. Now, that's all I have, but I'm happy to answer questions. Maybe we should run through the traffic and civil engineering design that David will share. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yep. Thanks, Katja. And now we're going to pass it on to David Giangrande from GM2, representing both the civil design and the traffic. I'll bring up the drawings, David. There you are. You may be muted, I think. Let me see. You're muted.

[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, could you just, could you raise his hand? That'll help us find, or say his name again, and I'll- David, David Giangrande. Sorry, thank you.

[SPEAKER_07]: I don't think it's his first rodeo in Medford either. But maybe on Zoom. There we go.

[Alicia Hunt]: Well, I clicked the Ask to Unmute, and I can try it one more time. I'm going to click.

[SPEAKER_07]: You may have to unmute, David, yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: The host and participants are unmuted.

[SPEAKER_07]: There you are now. Now we hear you mobile.

[SPEAKER_01]: Can everybody hear me? Yes. Great. I'm David, I'm with GM 2 and we're responsible for the civil and traffic transportation piece of this project. I'll first talk a little bit about the civil aspects and this site plan that we have up in front of us. This happens to be the existing condition plan. And I think a lot has been said about the topography. And as we look at a site, initially we start looking at the topography and the constraints. Well, in this particular case, our constraints are Winchester Street and Alfred Street and Albion Street. And then we have some abutting properties. So we want to respect those properties when we're looking at things such as grading and drainage. So I'll focus predominantly the civil part of this presentation On grading and drainage and what we've what we've done and how we're going to manage that. Peter, can you go to C103 please? Fantastic. This is actually 102. Can you go to 103? Great. All right. So as we said on the left side where Winchester Street is, we have an elevation of around almost 44. Elevation 44. But as we go through the site, we drop almost eight feet to an elevation of about 36 on Alfred Street. And a lot of talk has been, there's been a discussion about how we segmented the driveways, et cetera. All of that is important in how we're gonna handle our drainage and runoff and protect the abutting properties. So what we've done is we've started with trying to take and emulate the existing condition plan that we just saw earlier. and well what we do is what we we're taking with the drainage we're taking the the drainage from the roofs etc towards winchester street on the left hand side so if you look closely um just in front of the building and adjacent to winchester street there's two very large tanks we're gonna we're gonna uh infiltrate much of the clean roof water back into the um back into the aquifer. We want to always keep moisture in the soil and so it's very important on any site and it's part of stormwater regulations that we actually infiltrate water back into the natural aquifer. Also connecting to that, if you look at the driveway on that north side, can you zoom up there a little bit, Peter? Thank you. What we've done is we've got two trench drains, one at Alfred Street and also one at the driveway entrance. So if you look at the one to the far right on Alfred Street, we've connected that to its own infiltration system. Right? So that again, we're maintaining discharge of that groundwater back into the areas where it always absorbed. Can you scan to the left a little bit, Peter, towards Winchester Street? In order to stop water from running down the driveway and into the basement, into the parking garage, we have a trench drain. And because it's gone down eight feet, we have to lift it up to, so what you see there in that larger box is a trench drain connected to a pump station and pumps it up to the left where we have a particle separator where we clean the water. before we put it back into the tanks out front. So I think it's important that we always balance flows. So we had a certain flow that was going towards Winchester Street. We have large tanks so that we can balance what still goes out to Winchester Street. And that's what we've done here. The other piece I want to look at is there's another infiltration for the smaller building. If you look in and around that pocket park, what we'll do is before they do all of the beautiful landscape, we'll get in there and we'll do another small infiltration system there. Now, most of these infiltration systems have an overflow to the system, and what we're doing is we're balancing flows that run out where they always ran, and we hold the rest and we infiltrate it in. That's the drainage in a nutshell. Again, taking the clean roof water, delivering it to the infiltration systems, taking the site water and sending it through particle separators and again, delivering to the infiltration system and then having an overflow. So that's the drainage in a nutshell. The other utilities that are vital on something like this, a large building, we're going to need fire suppression, right? So we'll take the fire suppression off of Winchester Street. It's in the middle of the site there. It's still on that 103, should be. Yeah, right to the top of the screen. So we'll bring domestic and fire suppression lines in from Winchester Street. And we will also bring our sewer out and stormwater connections to Winchester Street for the bulk of this sewer overflow. Now for the smaller building, we'd like to try to utilize, if possible, the existing sewer connection. So what we'll do, and we've spoken to engineering about this, and we've got some comments that I'll go over in a minute relative to the sewer and water and drain. But what we'd like to do is use the sewer line if we can. So in order to do that, what we typically do is we'll video it as part of the process. So these plans are vetted so that we can identify all of the big pieces. And then there's a lot of nuance that we'll have to continue to work with the engineering staff to work out as we go towards building permit if we're successful here. Um, so what we'll do is we'll video that sewer line for the small and if we have to, we'll put in a new sewer line. We do know that there's a 3 quarter inch. I believe there's a 3 quarter inch lead line service going into that. So we'll probably have to figure out. We want to change out the lead line, obviously, and the building's expanding a little bit, so we'll be increasing the size and want to change out the lead surface, so we'll probably change the water to that building. So that's water, electricity. So in the center of the core, we always wanna identify where we think we can fit a transformer in early in the process. Although we don't have all the control over that, we'll go to the various, we'll go to the electric company and we'll work with electric and communications and we'll, We'll work through the process. We are proposing a transformer in the center of the site. So, um. Yeah, that's pretty much drainage, grading, utilities, and I'd be happy to ask, you know, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer what I can. The next piece I want to discuss, if that's okay, is the traffic. And if we can, do you have the, The area map, sort of the study area map?

[Unidentified]: Yes, I did.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that would be wonderful. Give me a second to bring that up. So in terms of a traffic study, MassDOT has guidelines in putting together these traffic studies so that the way we do the work is consistent, whether I'm doing it or another traffic engineer is doing it, so that we can, that's great, Peter. So 1 of the 1st things we do before we do much is we meet with the traffic engineer in the town and it's great that you have a traffic engineer Todd Blake. I've known Todd for a long time. And so we sit down and we talk about the site and the extent of how far, are there any issues, et cetera, before we even start digging in and collecting data. We look at it sort of at 30,000 feet. And in this particular case, obviously Winchester Street at Albion and Broadway, that makes sense to do that intersection. The intersection down at Winchester Street and Harvard at the other end, very important near the bridge in St. Clemens. Then we talked about, okay, is there a need to do other intersections? And there is a one-way peering, which is Morton to Winchester Street, and then New Bern to Medford Street, right? So we get in having very close relatives on Winchester Street. I was in that neighborhood all the time growing up, and I'm still over there occasionally. And you'd always be cutting down those side streets out towards Main Street and Medford Street. So it was very important we looked at those. So we ended up looking at five intersections total, which is what we agreed on. And that was our study area. So the intersections were Broadway at Winchester and in Albion, Harvard in Winchester Street, Morton Ave at Winchester Street, Newbern at Medford Street, and then Alfred at Albion. So, the next phase of putting the other traffic study and maybe I'm being a little long winded and I'll try to pick up the pace here is collecting data. We want to look at everything. We want to do a field inventory. We want to get. ATRs, which are the tubes that you put out in the street and you read all sorts of information from that, including speed, the gaps between vehicles when they're arriving and hitting those tubes. It's very important on an unsignalized intersection to understand, can somebody choose a gap to pull out in traffic? We look at signage and striping and parking and the width of the road and the sidewalks and collect all sorts of data. So we then did that, collected all that data, including crash data. When it relates to the crash data, we do three years. There's sort of a delay in collecting accident data because it's always lag time. So we did collect three years of, I think it was 2019, 20, and 21. found out that three of the intersections were way, way below the average crash rate. There were two intersections we really wanted to look at, and I think they were pinpointed through the neighborhood in talking with Todd, and that was New Bern and Morton Streets, those intersections at Winchester and at at Medford Street. So we looked at that. We actually did a crash analysis on those locations because we wanted to find out if you look at it and see if there's a bias. Are the conditions creating potential accidents? They're not grossly over the average statewide or district average crash rate, but they're slightly elevated. So we looked at a number of things, and we're going to talk about that in a minute, about what can be done at those locations. So the next part is we start looking at how will the proposed project impact roadway traffic. But before we do that, we do an analysis, a capacity analysis of the existing conditions. Then we do a second analysis at the design year, which is seven years forward. which happened to be, we authored this report and collected the data in 20, I think that the design year is 27, 2027. And we do a growth rate to say, okay, if we didn't do a project, how much additional traffic will happen just by organic growth or planned projects? I'm sure at that time we went to Alicia or Danielle and said, hey, do you guys have any projects on the horizon? We talked to engineering any projects in the neighborhood that would impact and we would add trips to that as well. So, we did then we did we did the existing conditions analysis. We did the. We did the no-build design year analysis, and both of them showed only one real capacity issue as an existing condition, and that was the intersection at Winchester Street and Harvard Street. Right, because you come out to the end of Winchester Street, you've got often traffic going underneath the bridge and backed up at the set of lights. So it's a difficult area to negotiate. I think you also have a lot of cut through traffic, which again, we'll talk about. in a minute. So we get these levels of service for an unsignalized intersection ranked from A to F, an A being less than 5 seconds per vehicle of delay, 10 seconds per vehicle of delay, and F is greater than 50 seconds of delay per vehicle. So that intersection coming off of Winchester is at a level of service E in the existing, F in the no build, right? So we haven't even done a project yet. The next thing we do is we look at, okay, what's our project going to generate for traffic? So we go to the IT land use codes and the trip generation manual, and we figure out that, OK, we're going to have residential units, low rise, plus we're going to have some commercial space. We put that all together and figure out what our trips are. But those aren't our actual trips. Those are just trips from the subject site. They could be trips for a single occupancy vehicle, carpool, they could be walking or bicycle, or they could be work from home trips, and most important, transit trips. So then we make an adjustment for using the census track data. We use that census track data to adjust those trips to vehicle trips because what we're really doing is we're analyzing the impact of vehicular trips on the adjacent roadway network. Right? So in this particular case, and I think it was mentioned in Todd's comments, that we were very conservative. And we're conservative because really we're using census track data that is four or five years old, right? And now we've got a brand new, T Station right in Ball Square, so less than a quarter mile away. So the attractiveness of living there and not having an automobile or using transit is one of the reasons why you make a choice to live there. So we developed a fairly conservative the amount of new trips, new net trips, and the total net trips were, let's see, total new net trips are 19 new net trips in the morning, 24 new net trips in the p.m. peak, and 225 net trips in the p.m. peak. So then what we do is we lay those on our capacity analysis and we review it. And basically, when you're looking at 19 or 24 peak hour trips, that's a very low amount of trips. So we knew we weren't going to have real capacity issues. And basically, all of the intersections stayed very consistent. And there's a comparison here that you can see. And highlighted in yellow is that intersection of Harvard Street and Winchester Street. It's a level of service F with the site. It was a level of service F without the site. And I want to say it was a level of service. I'm going by memory right now. Yeah. So this is the no build condition. It was, I believe, a level of service E under the existing condition today. So even it went to level of service F even without the site. That's the 2022 existing conditions. Yeah. Let's see, what else do I have? There's a couple other things I did want to go over. So as I had mentioned earlier, there was a review by Todd, Todd Blake, and it did mention the two streets, that there are issues there now and there should be some mitigation. So he has recommended some mitigation. Just look at that traffic mitigation. So for traffic mitigation, he's looking to do or wants as part of this, would like to see as part of this project, some stop bars down at those two intersections we discussed earlier. and also some additional signage, maybe pulling back some of the parking in close proximity to the corner. Because, you know, anybody that drives in this environment, you come to a stop and then you've got to inch out because you've got cars parked in close proximity to get a proper sight distance. So yeah, he's also looking for a MUTCD stop sign warrant analysis. Not a heavy lift. It's fairly routine to do. And he also was looking so that these vehicles that are parking close to the corners do not continue to encroach on the intersection. He's looking for some pavement markings that would identify in a different color maybe a bump out and maybe put some delineators or commonly referred to the baseball bats around those areas so that the cars won't park right up to the corner. So, the other thing on any site like this, it's important to do some traffic demand management having a. a meeting once a year to discuss modal options, anything that changes, identifying all of the, having in the community space or in the lobby, identifying the bus routes, what's available so that there's just this information available to people that live there and want to want to partake in the transit use. Yeah, and structurally, I didn't talk about bicycles. I think it was brought up earlier. We've got ample bike, secured bike racks and in convenient locations. So that is also a very important concept while you're looking at, you know, reducing trips and making the network efficient. I want to say that I covered most of what I wanted to cover. I did also get some comments from the engineers relative to the civil stuff. A lot of it is information that we would work through the process as we're going through to the next level of plans. If we are making any changes to the drainage report, they want a new drainage report issued. There was a curb cut on Alfred Street that they wanted to make sure that we're putting new curbing in there. The video that I mentioned earlier, So yeah, I think that all of the comments we've received to date are very valid comments and can be easily incorporated into our plans in our work. So with that, I'm gonna turn it back over to Peter, I would assume, and we can answer questions or... Actually, back to Adam.

[SPEAKER_07]: And we're happy to answer any questions, as David said, both teams still here.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Yes, that concludes the initial presentation. I know that was a lot to digest, but yeah, happy to answer any questions the board has. Thank you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you all for your presentation. I do have some clarifying questions, but I think they'll probably be better fleshed out as we go through the department head comments, because there are plenty. I was looking at the traffic and you had mentioned that there was a level of service F, which is the worst of the levels. I'm trying to wrap my head around the mitigation that you were trying to explain for that. I'm trying to see what the level of service F had to do in regards to the mitigation that was suggested by the traffic engineer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I think it's important to identify that the level of service F was during it was engaged at the no build situation. So, even if there's no further development. You're going to end up with a level of service F at that intersection and, you know, within that design period, which was a seven year horizon, right? So you're at a level of service F, even if there is no site. And And it just, you know, we're putting a handful of additional trips there. So it just continues to be an F. There was no mitigation there in particular. It's. The mitigation really was more to do with speeding along Winchester Street. I think that that was his primary concern. And also accidents at the two corners off of Moulton and Thank you. I'm sorry. Excuse me, Morton Ave at Winchester Street and New Bern at Medford Street. So the mitigation was more in line with creating a safe environment for for the pedestrian, for the bicyclist, for the motorist. That's what his mitigation was based on. He also did mention mitigation that included pavement markings for a potential bike lane on Albion Street as well in his comments. But I think that everybody knows that in order to create capacity at an intersection, we need to add lanes. I can't add lanes in an urban environment. So what we are trying to do is encourage other modes of transportation. And that's where the traffic demand management comes in. That's where the bike lane comes in. That's where supporting and advertising the transit availability comes into play here. And I would say also in our numbers, even though it was only 25 trips in the AM of 19 and 25, something like that, which is minor, minor, small amount of trips, that was conservative. And the reason why it was conservative is because we were using old, older census that we had. We use what was available, the older census data. The census data doesn't consider that we now have a major transit hub right within a quarter mile. So sometimes what we'll do is we'll make further adjustments in our analysis, but we put forward this conservative, and I think Todd mentions that in his review as well.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you for clarifying. I just want to clarify my inquiry was that I understand that the no build scenario, but however, it's like, it's you create. no matter how many new cars you add to that intersection, it's still creating, it's adding to the instability of that breakneck point, right? And it's like, just like if you were on, I don't know, intersection 495, whether you build something new, intersection 495 is going to always be unstable at a loss of F. And I just want to know what were the other scenarios that you would do to create mitigation for that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't fully understand that. You're very, very limited with the unsignalized intersection right up against that bridge abutment right there and then the intersection a little bit further down. It's not something we can, oh, we can just add a little lane here or do something like that. So that would take a major study.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Peter?

[Peter Calves]: Thanks. Just as a member of the board and as a practicing traffic engineer who's been on the other side a couple of days, just to kind of further explain some of Jackie's concern. A lot of those type of intersections, like the Harvard at Winchester intersection that are those two-way stop controlled, when you encounter those kind of conditions, You are going to see a low service F in a lot of conditions, even when it's not that bad, because it does show a lot of delay at the stop control. Because in that case, Harvard Street doesn't have to stop. So it doesn't take a lot to get to that F just in the modeling. And someone just had to do a lot of it.

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

[Peter Calves]: No problem. Just wanted to, as someone who understands where the traffic numbers came from, kind of show how that works, and especially how it can look really bad at those kind of intersections, just because the stop sign controlled legs will look really bad, even though there's usually not that many cars waiting there.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: OK. Thank you. Do any other board members have clarifying questions? Okay, so I actually I'm not sure if there's so we this public comments and I just want to remind public or actually I haven't read it. I am not able to put on record anything that's sent to me and by chat. So please do not use the chat feature. So I'll open up the public comment now. So anyone has comments, they can speak. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Alicia 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 to alert myself and staff. And depending on how many people we have, how many commenters, I will determine the limit. We'll start with three minutes per comment. And I see the first hand Martha, and I believe Martha, you're the one who has sent a message, so you can go first.

[WGpYlC7_Nvc_SPEAKER_01]: Yep, hi, Martha McPartland, 8 Alfred Street, so directly across from this. Understanding, this is a question directly to the architects, understanding that this building will be a dramatic change to our neighborhood, will increase the population of our very quiet, small neighborhood by times 100. Why on earth would you include a party deck on top of this building directly across the street from several quiet single family homes? I'm not sure how more squarely to put this, but I will continue to fight this project, including leveraging the multiple lawyers in my family that I can get for free to work on this till the end of time, until that roof deck, party deck is gone. I don't understand why it has to be there. It seems an insult to the neighborhood, given how much louder this thing is going to make our neighborhood with another 150 people in it. Everybody, every unit having a deck, traffic and everything else. It's an insult that you would put a party deck on top of this as well. Please explain yourself.

[SPEAKER_07]: The idea is that a building of this size needs to provide a certain level of amenities for its tenants. And one of those, of course, is, you know, it's a roof deck. You call it a party deck, that's a management question. A deck like this would not just be a free-for-all. It would have to go through building management for anybody to have a party, and something like that could be controlled. We've also enclosed it in a six foot high screening, which could have some acoustical treatment if needed. But for the most part, you know, we found in all the projects we've done, these kinds of roof decks are really just kind of for small groups that you know want to have a picnic or um you know a family that wants to get outside maybe do a little bit of playing and um and um and uh have a picnic or you know something like that so it's not i don't know i think it's a little bit of a broadside to call it a party deck but i understand your concern um that's not its purpose actually um so i i think you know that that's something that uh The occupancy of it will probably be limited to, you would not see anywhere near all the people in the building out there, probably more like, you know, 20, 30 people at any one time at the most, and more likely, you know, just half a dozen people in various furnishing configurations with tables and umbrellas and all that. So I mean, these people who live here would be able to benefit from that. I don't see it making a lot of noise. You do, but I think that's something we'll just have to disagree about. But it's certainly not labeled and intended to be a party deck.

[Adam Hurtubise]: All right, that's through the chair. Those comments.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. And anyone on the city, I'm not sure if we receive Ms. Martland's. I'm sorry, I believe she has another question. Before we go back to Ms. Martland, is there anyone else that has a question and we will circle right back to you. I'm sorry, Ms. McPartland, I apologize for saying your name incorrectly. Alicia, do you see any other comments or if you have anything to read from the queue or previously sent emails or letters?

[Alicia Hunt]: I do not see anything else, anybody else with their hands up. Some people had sent me some direct messages earlier and I had said that there would be a public comment period when they could raise their hands and if they wanted to comment at that time. I will say that if anybody doesn't know how to raise their hands or is having trouble, you can certainly send me a chat and I can send, I can use that to know that you need to unmute. And I will just ask the other staff, does any, I don't see anything in our email box that's come in recently. I just am confirming with Aditi and Clem that there weren't other public comments in a file to read.

[Adithi Moogoor]: Yes, there aren't any public comments in the file.

[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, there's nothing new in the email box. Madam Chair, I've been advised by our DEI director that if we don't know somebody's full name or name to just read out exactly what they have written there, I think you have maybe parsed Martha McPartland's name.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, I believe it's Miss Martha McPartland. And if I have it incorrectly, if you can please unmute her and As you speak, I'm sorry, I'm not sure of your pronouns. I apologize. Please introduce yourself and give your address as well.

[WGpYlC7_Nvc_SPEAKER_01]: Yes. Again, it's Martha McPartland. The address is 8 Alfred Street. To Mr. Quinn, 30 people on your roof deck is more people than live in this neighborhood. So you seem to think that that is not a big deal. Everything out of your mouth is completely qualified by they probably won't or it's up to the management, whatever. There's no way that Anyone could tell me with a straight face that someone is making a decision on whether or not to rent or buy here based on whether or not this building includes a roof deck. I'm saying to you that it is going to dramatically harm. It is insult to injury with this. I see this building is going to go through whether we like it or not. It is insult to injury to include that. as because these new people need that amenity. What about the emotional health of this neighborhood based on the potential and likely noise impact of that? I mean, forget the whole building, but the noise impact of that deck. I need to understand why you and your team feel that it is critical to include that as part of this plan when you are already putting another 150 residents in a neighborhood that doesn't even have 50 residents in it. Explain to me why that roof deck has to be there.

[SPEAKER_07]: Madam Chair, I don't feel that I can really address these questions. I mean, this butter is certainly welcome to. petition to have that removed and see where that goes. But I'm responding to a program that was given to me by my client and what we're seeing in the marketplace.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Madam Chair, if I may respond, thank you. We do appreciate the feedback on this. I can tell you that in regards to the roof deck, the intent is I think for the roof deck to be utilized in the same fashion as a as a backyard would be. We can certainly speak with our clients. I don't know that the time restrictions and those sorts would be best dealt with on this meeting, but I can speak to our client to discuss what their intents are as far as timing. Because certainly, the objective here is not to create a scenario where there is an intensification of use that would bleed into the neighboring properties, particularly during hours where people are sleeping and late at night and things of that sort. So we can certainly talk and inform you of any limitations that we'd be willing to put on that roof deck because the concerns you're raising are certainly, you know, well spoken and and we respect your concerns as a neighbor. If we may, let us speak to our clients and the developers and see what they can do with this amenity space to help to address some of the concerns you've raised.

[WGpYlC7_Nvc_SPEAKER_01]: Sure, I'll be happy to hear the result of that. I mean, what they can do, of course, is remove it. It is not necessary to this building is not necessary to sell units or rent units in this building. It is not a necessary feature. It's a, it's an optional feature. I would also say it's like a backyard. If anyone on this call. who is not part of the neighborhood, has ever been to this neighborhood, even during the summer, we all understand that we live in very tight quarters and we're all very respectful of the noise level. No one has anything going on loud in their backyards or especially at night, anything like that. When someone does even have something in their backyard, more often than not, we will go around and tell the neighbors that we're going to have something and to please let us know if it's going to be too loud. You're talking about Adding a backyard that is accessible to probably about 150 people at any time, at any hour. I will not be satisfied by some restriction of plants in front of it, or it won't be accessible after 10pm or 11pm, something like that. That is not going to be... I mean, you guys are literally, this is just insult to injury. You're putting this in our neighborhood, and then you're putting a cherry on top of this ridiculous roof deck on top. And I'm not buying that it is critical for this project, its success, or anything else. So thank you. Please do take it back to your client. And then I would ask the board if they have any instructions they could provide to me or who I can contact in order to petition its removal in a formal way. I don't know how to go about doing that, but if someone could let me know, I would appreciate it.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you so much. I will have, we will have the city follow up with you if you can just hold tight. Alicia, can you please have one of your staff members follow up with Portland? And thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: I'll have to speak to the applicant to understand what they have in mind. Certainly I will say that there is a, this board tonight is making recommendations to the city council, including recommendations of conditions. The city council at their meeting will have the ability to add additional conditions if they were to so choose to. If you give me a minute to scroll to the beginning of our, your public notices should have said exactly when that meeting is. March 12th. But the applicant perhaps would plan to have a response from their client for that meeting, if not before that time. And if the resident would like to email us at OCD at Medford-MA.gov, we can put it in the chat. Can one of the staff put that in the chat? to have your contact information. So if we do hear from the applicant before the city council meeting, we can let you know that. And if the applicant wants to clarify for me what they meant by petition for it, that would be, we can discuss that and I can provide that information via email after the meeting.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you very much, Alicia. And again, thank you, Attorney Borowsky and Mr. Quinn for following up. I do see one other comment from Jack's iPad. Alicia, can you please unmute and for the commenter, can you please identify yourself, state your name and your address?

[Alicia Hunt]: So I clicked the app. Oh, there you got it.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay. Yes, it's John Carroll Lamont Warren, 35 Clayton Avenue. I don't know if this is a time to bring up road and control. I know with the excavation with the underground parking, I anticipate we just went through the green line extension. And there was certainly a lot of issues around road and control and what are the plans for this development to mitigate some of that. Is this not the place or the time and the process to bring this up or?

[SPEAKER_07]: I believe I can answer that just conceptually through the chair.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, you can actually, yes, Mr. Quinn.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, so when the demo permit is drawn and issued by the city, there will need to be in place a complete road and control program. This includes traps, a contract to have these checked regularly, rebated, B-A-I-T, and so forth. So, of course, this is probably done for the Green Line. This isn't, you know, nowhere near the scale of that. But that is how that's controlled.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: Chair, if you want sorry to interrupt. There is a condition for that. That was drafted by the health department. And I will drop the exact language in the chat. For that particular condition, if you'd like. You want me to read it out now? Are we going to whichever view I just felt since it was answering a specific question. We could read that one particularly. Do you want me to find it? It's the last one. It's number 41 on the list.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, I can read it now, but we're actually closing the public comments to go through all of the conditions and the department head comments, correct? I'll highlight this one for the commenter. Pre-demolition and pre-construction. They in our requirement for permit sign off from the board of health, ongoing reports from a licensed pet control company will be required. That will be a condition upon approval if approval is made to the city council.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay. Thank you very much. If I could add one more comment, I'd like to throw my support behind Martha McFarland's comments concerning the roof deck.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: And I just checked her email again. There were no new emails in the last 10 minutes.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Is there, I'm not sure. Okay. You can stop. I'm not sure if we're going to keep the sharing going for now or.

[SPEAKER_07]: I can bring it back up whenever.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, if needed. Actually, I couldn't see anyone else. I just wanted to make sure before I close the comment period. Thank you.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Understood.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. All right, so I'm going to close the comment period now and I'm going to bring it back to the board to see if there's any clarifying, again, any clarifying comments that you are looking for or want to deliberate on now, especially to discuss the criteria for approval under site plan review and the PD special permit and potential conditions for approval actually. Alicia.

[Alicia Hunt]: You're on mute. If the board doesn't have any more clarifying questions, I actually had two that I just thought we should ask if they weren't. Is that all right? I didn't want to jump ahead of the board though. No, I don't see any board hands. Go right ahead, Alicia. So I did want to, how the front lawn area of the small house is being treated now. I heard it described today as a public park. And I wanted to confirm that that was, in fact, that I heard that correctly, that it was designed for the public, but that they will be continuing the ownership of it and they will be privately maintaining it. That wasn't an intention to turn it over to the public. I thought we should have that clarified tonight.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: I can answer that, yes, that is the case. It will not be conveyed to the city or conveyed by way of easement, but the intent is to have it be a pocket park for use by the public and open to the public, and it will be privately maintained.

[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, thank you. And then the other question was about the retail. There have been over the past several years, several discussions of how that building would be used. And I don't feel that that was really touched on really at all, other than we appreciate that you're maintaining the look of the historic house building. But what is the current plan and thought for that property?

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Well, I think that the it's kind of a yet to be determined. The thought was that it would be used as something a commercial use that would be the ancillary to the building residents as well as the community, potentially a daycare, potentially a gym, some sort of a convenience retail, certainly with with the project in the state that it's in pre-approval with you know likely two years of construction there's not been a tenant secured at this point so really this this just remains the use will be you know by right pursuant to what's allowed under the PDD but the thought is to have it be something that you know that that will be of benefit to the residents and the

[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. Given that you just said the magic word daycare, I will actually tell you, I think that we've mentioned that there is a childcare, both daycare and afterschool, extreme shortage in our city. And our office has been talking to private providers who are interested in coming into Medford, but need suitable spaces. So if your client would like to connect with us, we would be happy to connect with them with we've actually talked at this point to two different private daycare providers interested in looking for spaces in Medford.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Great, thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: That's all, Madam Chair. Thank you for accommodating those.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. So before we can even go into this, we have to make sure that The site plan is actually in court. With the method zoning ordinance, the Community Development Board shall approve a site plan if the board finds that the site plan is consistent with the performance standards. for multiple dwellings or non-residential use described in section 6.4, and that the proposed development meets the standards listed in section 11.710. I will not read out all of those. However, that's where we're pulling from. So again, the standards for site plan review listed in section 11.7.10 of the zoning ordinance. And we're also looking for the criteria for approval for a special permit granting authority may approve the PDU special permit if the SPGA finds that all the following, that there are, I believe there are nine. And Alicia, usually Danielle will put these on the screen for the public to see. There are nine criteria that need to be met for the permit. And I'm not sure if you want to share those for the public or if we can just go over the conditions that need to be discussed and hashed out per the department heads prior to us even getting to that.

[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, sorry. I think I'm sharing the wrong thing. Let me try.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So again, there's seven criteria under the site plan, and then there's about nine under the special permit granting agency. And our due diligence would be to make sure that we, that the proponent in the project is covering all of them. And based on city department head comments, if we were to approve this, there are conditions that would need to be met. specifically speaking, 41 conditions in total. And the city at this point will highlight those conditions for us. Or Alicia, would you like me to highlight them?

[Alicia Hunt]: I could do that. Do you want me to... So these are the conditions you were referring to. I assume everybody can see them now. I can't make it small enough to put all on one screen at once. if you want it legible. Do you want me to switch over to the conditions file? And so I think that it would make sense. I haven't heard any additional conditions from the board unless they want to do that through deliberation. Or if you'd like to start, has the applicant seen all of the department head letters and had a chance to review the requests and the conditions there?

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.

[Alicia Hunt]: OK, those are the 41. We actually put them into a document and numbered them. I'm going to stop this share, and I'll put that up for a minute. Let me make sure I have it right.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Yes, and we did review them as a team. And please, if anyone else on the team has anything contrary to say, please let me know. But I believe I'm speaking for everyone to say that there were no objections to the conditions that were detailed in the various department recommendations.

[Alicia Hunt]: Maybe madam chair, if you like, we could touch on them just quickly section by section. Sure. The 1st, 3 were actually just about the. Documenting what is the control plan? Um, that it'll be dated and that you have to any changes to that you have to come. to the Office of Planning to determine whether it's a modification that we can just administratively approve or if it needs to go back to the board. And the third one is about recording the decision. The traffic and transportation conditions, I think, tend to be of the most importance to the public. That was around bicycle parking, EV parking, sight lines for drivers, stop me if there's any concerns on this. A few of these require approval by the Medford traffic condition. traffic commission to be clear uh a recommendation by this board would be that the applicant would take would apply to the traffic commission for these um if the traffic commission denies them then the applicant would not be held to them but um the applicant must make make due diligence to attempt to get them and i'm on that board so we'll know um uh just for the benefit of the public the um There's a request from the traffic commissioner for a speed hump on Winchester Street. I was thinking that that has to go to traffic commission. That does not have to go to traffic commission. That should be coordinated with the traffic director though. Better sight lines, painting of crosswalks and stop signs, blinking stop signs. bump-outs, painted bump-outs at corners and flex posts. And then the MUTCD warrant analysis to determine if an all-way stop is warranted. And then to provide the results of that to the city. To provide sight lines and then a painted bike lane. on Albion Street from Medford Street to Winchester Street, that a concept for that would have to go through the traffic commission. Sounded like that you were comfortable with those. Engineering, I don't know if we want to go through all of these.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: If you can specifically touch on the water, because that was one of, I had a question, but there's a condition that captures.

[Alicia Hunt]: And that's pretty much the... Do you think that was that number 20? Several of these say water. There was a stormwater report, cutting and capping. Cutting and capping. The applicant shall incorporate cutting and capping existing water services at the main within Winchester Street. Tapping sleeves will be permitted for new water connections.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And then the city's coals drainage system. Applicant shall update the plans to show the overflow pipes and connections, if any, to the city's coals drainage system. That's number 17. Okay.

[Alicia Hunt]: Do you want to ask a particular question about any of these?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And that will be a condition to get the stormwater permit, correct?

[SPEAKER_07]: Right in column.

[Alicia Hunt]: So we do require stormwater permits, and this is in compliance with our updated stormwater regulations. Is there, I'm not sure. Nope, there's no other. Okay. City standards, so these engineering are all now our new standard engineering requirements. The fire department conditions are all extremely standard about what is required in your building. I assume there was nothing as a surprise here. And then the health department, which of course included the plans for the road and control and sewer disposal, dust remediation during construction, streets being clean every workday, demolition and building dumpster permits have to be obtained through the Board of Health. The Board of Health also asked for a solid waste plan. I do just want to advise the applicant that the city has recently updated our waste standards that all Waste haulers that provide trash services in the city have to also provide recycling services at no additional cost. Recycling is mandatory in Massachusetts. We expect to see that in all our buildings. I also just wanted to, as an FYI, The city is in the process of implementing a composting program for all residents on the city's trash service. So there'll be curbside commercial composting. And we wanted to let developers building buildings know that because it is likely that residents in the buildings will start to ask for that, especially as we'll be implementing composting in our schools and teaching the children about it. We have started to discuss with some developers that if you're doing trash shoots to consider a third shoot in addition to trash and recycling for compost that we think this is what's going to be happening in the future. Happy to discuss that. Obviously that's not at a level that would be controlled by the site plan but felt I should toss it in there. Those are all the conditions and I see Ari's raising their hand. I'm just checking with the staff. I don't think we heard any additional conditions yet that were not in here.

[Ari Fishman]: Ari? Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is, I think I had seen earlier, and I know I've seen in past projects, standard boilerplate about city noise standards. And in light of the conversation I was hearing from public comment, And those may be about construction specifically. I see Alicia nodding that that was a helpful clarification. I did want to bring up that that may be worth us discussing or specifically putting in, since it does seem like there are neighborhood concerns about noise and disruption, both during construction and long term. So I'm curious about what our tools and options are there to try to set everyone up for a mutually agreeable situation.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And that would be a question, Attorney Baranski, for the proponent of Mr. Quinn.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: And Madam Chair, just so I understand the question, is the question what tools can the board utilize to limit construction noise? Or is it more what mitigation efforts is the applicant able to provide? I just want to make sure I'm answering the question correctly.

[Ari Fishman]: I am curious about hearing what you'll do, but the question was specifically around the tools at the board's disposal. Thank you for clarifying.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: I mean, I think I think that that question would be more more for the board. What I can tell you as far as the. You know, I think there are standards for noise during construction. I believe to the extent that the city has a noise ordinance, that regardless of any limitations or lack of limitations that will put on use, hours, et cetera, that the applicant, once the building is constructed, would need to comply with any noise ordinances during operational hours regardless. But as far as the, and I don't anticipate there being any significant noise during the operation. And as I mentioned during public comment, we'd be happy to discuss and bring back to the city council to discuss any mitigation efforts we can make relative to the roof deck.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Tony Boranski. Ari, did you have a further question?

[Ari Fishman]: I would be curious if Alicia has anything in mind, but otherwise, no.

[Alicia Hunt]: In theory, the applicant, the owner could offer, you know, they would put things into their condo docs or their management documents or whatever about the use, the hours of the deck, stuff like that. That is stuff that is legal. Let me put it that way. We don't actually have very many roof decks in Medford, so I would be surprised if we had any precedence here in this city. But there is, you know, precedent for just saying like, oh, the city, they will put this or that into their management document. I've seen it around snow and removal and stuff like that. I was double-checking what our ordinances are. I mean, we do have a certain amount of nuisance. There's a nuisance control ordinance around noise about harm caused by loud and or unruly gatherings on private property. And Then it goes on to say, public nuisance, a gathering which constitutes a violation of law or creates a substantial disturbance of the quiet enjoyment of private or public property in a neighborhood. Behavior constituting a public nuisance includes but is not limited to excessive noise and excessive pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Unrelated, unrelated. And then there's response. Response costs, so the costs associated with responses by law enforcement by other emergency response to the gathering, which resulted in a public nuisance. Let me, this kind of goes on for a while and I've not actually ever worked with this, so I'm pasting the link to that ordinance into the chat. because it does kind of go on for quite a while. And there are fines, $300, $400, $500 for subsequent responses. And that this can be enforced by the police officers of the city, which in Medford means that it's enforceable 24 by seven, as opposed to things that have to be enforced by city staff during business hours. Is that helpful? I'm afraid we don't have very much precedence around this.

[SPEAKER_07]: Madam Chairman, may I? Yes, please. I also noticed that in the NODES ordinance, there are restrictions on when construction should take place. But they're breaking the cake, if you will, with any building permit drawn from inspectional services in that regard.

[Alicia Hunt]: Correct, sorry, I didn't the construction noise is covered very separately and I exactly in our zoning ordinance around construction noise 7am to 6pm.

[SPEAKER_07]: If I may.

[Ari Fishman]: I do want to take the neighborhood concerns seriously. I don't feel like we can. I'm not sure what we can do at this point prior to hearing the response of the applicant's clients. But I would be curious, for example, continuing to explore putting that language around what must be in the management documents to make sure that things will be quiet and respectful.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And looking over the conditions, what is the board's temperature on even grant and approval tonight? I'm not sure. I'm not sure that we're able to get, are we going to continue this or is this something that you feel comfortable with approving or suggesting, recommending for approval to the city council with so many things that are left open?

[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, most of these are not things that they could actually do for another meeting. They're actually items that have to be done, particularly the engineering ones during construction, most of them.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: If I may, Madam Chair, I just wanted to reiterate one thing relative to the roof deck, if I may. Yes. It seems to me that unless I'm mistaken, this does seem to be the only open issue, which is one that I believe we can address before the city council. I would just reiterate to this board, if you look at the drawings, which I am now. Number one, the footprint of this roof deck in relationship to the entirety of the building is relatively small. It's not significantly larger. I think on a square footage basis, it is significantly smaller than the yard area on Alfred Street. But I think one idea, to note is that the roof deck is directly, it's contiguous and directly abutting a unit. If you zoom in right there, you can see there is a one-bedroom unit with its windows facing the roof deck. So I would anticipate that there will be condominium documents or management documents, rules and regulations, which would control the reasonable use of that roof deck for the exact purpose of the concerns that were raised during the public component here. Certainly, any concerns that an abutter on Albion Street has would be echoed by any of the individuals that would be purchasing or living in one of the units that's directly underneath or next to that roof deck. So I think that it will be some sort of self-regulation. I know that's easy for me to say here, but I do believe we can have a more concrete answer for you there. But this is not a situation where we're creating a roof deck that's going to be open all hours of the night or creating any sort of nuisance to people that live in the building themselves. People are not going to be interested in living here if there are not regulations on outdoor space.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Peter, thank you for asking.

[Peter Calves]: To your point on being comfortable approving given the open conditions, partially echoing what Alicia said, I think most of these conditions are just, in a lot of ways, kind of matter of fact that will be addressed as the process continues. Attorney Bonaparte can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they said they are, the project team is comfortable with moving forward with accepting these conditions as applied. So I don't think, I personally am comfortable, would be comfortable moving to approve it because it seems that while these conditions are here, the project team has reviewed them and these conditions will be met. These are not surprises to anyone.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So hearing the city's stance on where they stand with these conditions, as well as the board, at least one board member, and the proponent being amenable to adhering to these conditions. I'm looking for a motion to recommend approval with conditions of the plan development special permit and site plan review for 96 to 104 Winchester Street. However, before we go there, is the board open to add a condition just for the city to explore more on the noise ordinance issue or the noise nuisance issue? Is that something that we can even condition at this point without having determined what that would be? Don't everybody answer at once?

[Alicia Hunt]: So Madam Chair, because this is going to the city council for special permit, I'm actually thinking about this the way recently the board heard another, did another recommendation to the city council for special permit and the board attached all their conditions and then recommended that the city council add a condition. And so in theory, If this board wanted to, you could recommend to the city council that they explore and attach a condition of their special permit to mitigate noise concerns for the roof deck. It's not just that it's passing it down the road, but it's giving the applicant a little bit of time to come up with a proposal that they could come to the city council with saying, here's what we think would be reasonable.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Vice Chair Hedeman.

[Emily Hedeman]: Thanks, Chair McPherson. Through the chair, I think that sounds like a reasonable approach. Um, you know, I agree with fellow board members that I think that this is an important topic to discuss, um, and, you know, adequately address this community, these two community members concerns, which, you know, it sounds like there might be additional concerns beyond, uh, those in attendance at this meeting. Um, you know, it seems like the, The team for this project does want to be a good neighbor. So I'm hoping that, you know, to continue those efforts in good faith, they'll address this prior to the city council meeting. So I'd be comfortable moving forward with the proposal that Director Hunt mentioned where, you know, we approve with conditions and then we recommend the city council revisit this topic. And I would encourage the members of the public to also attend those meetings with city council or send in their comments as well.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And did we draft, I did not do any notation. Did we draft the actual approval language, the suggested approval language to city council for the noise nuisance?

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm not sure anything down, but some of the, I was just checking with the staff. Sorry, I have two screens and way too many windows open right now. I will encourage the other staff to have something they could raise their hands and say so. All right, I think that we could recommend, give me one minute and I'll write this down first.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Alicia. I was negligent in grabbing it. Usually I have an open document with the city and I will turn back and see that it's already there.

[Alicia Hunt]: We do have a document where we were going to take. So one was that the applicant shall comply with the city's noise ordinance. But honestly, I will say they have to do that whether you make that a condition or not. So I meant that the city council explore a condition with the applicant that manages that includes management, a requirement for management of the sound on their deck, management and mitigation of mitigation as like permanent parts of their management documents.

[Ari Fishman]: I'm not sure what the formal language for that would be.

[SPEAKER_14]: Maybe the City Council Explorer can jump in.

[Alicia Hunt]: recommend the Community Development Board recommends that the City Council explore a condition with the applicant that includes a requirement for management and mitigation of sound on the roof deck as part of their permanent management documentation. To be clear that that is clear to everybody and that we would actually recommend to the applicant that you come up with a test, provide some ideas in advance. Our office, our staff would be happy to review ideas in advance as well. Is that? All right.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Let me just.

[Alicia Hunt]: One question that I have for the board, I think that we should just have clarity is, is the board at this time asking or allowing the applicant to decide to remove the roof deck. There are certain levels. If this, interestingly to me, if this was a ground level patio, it would be very definitively part of the site plan. If it was approved by the CD board, the applicant could not actually remove it without coming back to the community development board. Because this is a roof deck, I can't tell you that I know off the top of my head without checking with somebody. If it is part of, I believe it is part of the controlling documents of the site plan. And therefore, if applicant were to choose to remove it, I'm not saying that I'm recommending that. Would that trigger their need to come back to the Community Development Board? And if the Community Development Board was open to it being an optional item, you could include a condition that says that the Community Development Board is neutral on having the roof deck and it may remain or be removed at the applicant's discretion. determination, or you may choose that it needs to be there and it's a controlling document and they need to come back if they want to change things. I just thought we should be clear about that.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So what you're saying is that in exploring and management of the mitigation of sound and the city council was to come up with the condition. And therefore the applicant decided that they just wanted to totally remove the roof. That could actually trigger a trip back to us for site plan review. And you want to stop that ahead of time.

[Alicia Hunt]: I would actually ask the board, do you feel that that would be something that would need to bring them back to the Community Development Board for approval? Or would that be something that could be administratively approved? Would that be considered a change to the site plan? Because it is part of the open space calculations of the project, I believe.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: But it's not a major project. What determines it to be a major project? No, this is a major project because it's 29 units.

[Alicia Hunt]: The removal of the roof deck. A major change? A major change. If they had a ground level patio and they decided not to include it in the future, I would consider that to be a significant change. Vice President Hedeman?

[Emily Hedeman]: Vice President Hedeman? Thank you, Chair McPherson. Through the chair, it sounds like You know, maybe we just better be safe than sorry. You know, if applicant does decide that, you know, potential conditions are too onerous and the best path forward may be to remove the deck, then I would hate to, you know, you know, cause any unintended consequences towards their timeline or towards the progress of this project. So if we can embed some flexibility, I think that that would be the best path forward for us as well as if the applicant is open to that approach. Thank you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Attorney Barofsky, what is your take on this?

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I think at this point, I think we're willing to work with any approach, of course, if we could streamline it. So a modification of the roof deck would not require a secondary visit to this board if you're kind of agnostic as to whether or not it's there. I did receive a message from our client, the developer, who is you know, more than willing to work with the concerns addressed by the neighbors. And, you know, the biggest issue here is to make sure that people feel comfortable with the proposal. So we're going to try to determine what will work best. And to Alicia's comments, we can certainly pass those modifications or mitigation efforts through the Community Development Board in anticipation for a hearing for City Council.

[Alicia Hunt]: Do you know that member Fishman has their hand up? I also realized that as you said that we could include a condition that says a modification or removal of the roof deck would not be considered a significant change to the site plan and could be approved administratively by the director of PDS. If the board chooses to, I'm not saying you need to.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Try that language one more time, Alicia. A modification or removal of the roof deck will not require a return trip to the Community Development Board.

[Alicia Hunt]: That's what it means. A modification or removal of the roof deck would not be considered a significant change to the site plan and could be approved administratively by the director of PDS. That would allow them also to make changes to the roof deck that might in other situations be considered significant. But in this case, you would feel as being compliant with your request. Member Fishman's hand blends in with their background.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Oh.

[Ari Fishman]: Go ahead Ari. Thank you chair and thank you Alicia for flagging that I had not noticed. I think that this, I agree with vice chair Hedeman and Alicia that putting in that flexibility serves all of our interests. And while in general modification is a very broad term, I do trust that the checks of Director Hunt and the City Council will be more than sufficient to ensure that this goes in reasonable direction. So I feel comfortable with that as a path forward.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, I'm just wordsmithing some language here. So for the record, Alicia, I've sent you the language.

[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, I didn't catch that. You think something language? I've sent you language. Sent language, sorry, in the chat? Yes. I don't see anything in the chat or via email.

[SPEAKER_14]: close my chat and reopen it.

[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, Jackie, you may have sent it to somebody else by accident. Because we have it turned on that you can only send it There we go. A modification or removal of the roof deck will not be considered a significant site change requiring a return trip to the Community Development Board for approval. I'm gonna send that to everybody so that the other members, personally, it's helpful for me to see the writing. Member Hedeman has her hand up. Vice Chair Hedeman?

[Emily Hedeman]: Thanks, Chair McPherson. I think in the context of this conversation, that condition makes sense. However, I feel like we should potentially put some upper bounds on modification. I by no means assume that the applicant would take this approach, but a modification could be understood to be, you know, an increase of the size or, you know, maybe removing those six-foot screens that they've already suggested. Again, I'm not suggesting the applicant would do it, but I think just to provide you know, extreme clarity in terms of what our intents are would be helpful. Open to other suggestions from the board if people don't think that's necessary.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'm just at this point, not sure how much we can condition. Sort of like a condition that we're not even, I just want to make sure that we make it as easy and transparent for the proponent going forward. We don't want to add any undue hardship on them. But at the same time, I want to make sure that we capture it clear here. And that's why I'm looking for direction from the city on how to move forward with that.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Madam Chair, if I may, I don't think that there would be any objection if the language said something to the extent of any modification which does not expand the outdoor patio or something to that extent. There certainly would be no objection. There would be no intent to utilize that language to create an expansion or take away any of the mitigation efforts there.

[Alicia Hunt]: So if we said, and I think the question is, there are two options if we're pursuing this line. One is to just say it doesn't have to come back to the Community Development Board. The other is to say it could be approved administratively by the office, which means they have to tell us, they have to run it by us, they can't just do it. But we can approve it, it doesn't have to go to the board. So, The language we have, this would be any modification or removal that does not expand the roof deck would not be considered a significant change to the site plan and could be approved by the director of PDS. Or if you, so the other language was, um, would not be considered a significant change and would not require a return trip to the community development board.

[Emily Hedeman]: I support the former language where we specify that it's not an expansion and it may not require. Sorry.

[Peter Calves]: I also support the formal language for the inclusion of the administrator approval, because I want to make sure that there will be some oversight.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: All right, so I have a couple of, I have language to read, and I want to make sure that I grab that. Alicia, have you written that out? Can you share that with me? We've been along.

[SPEAKER_14]: I apologize. I think this is the one you were asking for. OK. All right.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Vice Chair Hederman has, just before I read them out, she'll be right back. As soon as we get her back, I will read them out and then we can go. Back. Awesome. Okay, so this is in reference to 96 to 100 Winchester Street. I am looking for a motion to recommend approval with conditions of the plan development special permit and site plan review. We are also recommending that the city council explore condition with applicant that includes a requirement for management and mitigation of sound on the roof deck as part of their permanent management document. Any modification or removal which does not expand the roof deck will not be considered a significant site change and may be approved administratively by the Director of Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. That's the motion.

[Peter Calves]: Is that moved?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Second. I'll second it. Vice Chair Emily Henneman?

[SPEAKER_14]: Aye.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Peter Cowles?

[SPEAKER_14]: Aye.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari Fishman. Aye. Pam Mariansky. Aye. Myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm an aye. Thank you so much, Attorney Baransky, Mr. Quinn, and the rest of your team.

[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you very much. Much appreciated your time.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Have a great evening.

[SPEAKER_07]: Thanks. Bye-bye.

[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, as you switch between to the next item on the agenda, I don't know about the rest of the staff, I need a two minute break. Is that okay with the board if we just take two minutes? Sure. Extremely.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: The board's saying yes. Okay. Thank you.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Madam chair, the staff are back when you are ready.

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm not sure if all the members are back.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Hi, thank you. I had actually. Thank you, I was on mute. I had started reading the agenda item and didn't realize I was on mute. So the next item on our agenda is 290 Salem Street, a special permit and This is for a special permit for neighborhood retail use and site plan review. The Medford Community Development Board shall conduct a public hearing on February 21st, 2024 after 6.30 p.m. via Zoom relative to an application by 290 Salem Street, LLC for a special permit for neighborhood retail use and site plan review to permit the construction of a three-story mixed-use building that would contain seven residential units and two ground floor commercial units. at the site known as 290 Salem Street, comprised of properties located at 290 Salem Street and 209 Park Street, Medford, Mass. So I believe the staff has some introductory comments on this.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, Madam Chair. So this is one of the projects where the process is a little complicated. This project requires site plan review because it's a major project. It's more than six residential units. It needs a special permit to establish the retail use in this zone. Retail use is not actually allowed. In addition, however, there are multiple zoning variances that are necessary from the zoning board. The zoning variances need to be granted before the CD board can approve the site plan. Tonight, we need to legally open the public hearing. We will, the plan is to then, we need to actually continue it until after the zoning variances are granted. to understand whether or not the relief is granted. Depending what the zoning board does, it could impact that the project could change. However, we strongly recommend that in the interest of respecting everyone's time, we allow the proponent to present tonight and allow the board to ask some questions, because if the board wants additional materials or clarifying materials that the applicant can provide, When they return after hearing the zoning board, this will allow them to prepare that additional material and bring it back. Additionally, there was no way to notify the public of this back and forth. So there may be members of the public here tonight who would want to provide comments on the project or learn more about the project. We would then recommend allowing public comment after the zoning is approved in the event that there are any changes or to reflect any additional material that the board may ask for. So Madam Chair, back to you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. So just to be clear, we are listening, we are opening up the hearing this evening, but we would not be considering a criteria for approval this evening. We will be providing feedback to the proponent. And with that, I'm gonna ask the applicant to introduce themselves and to present a proposal. Sorry. Yes, I'm Terry Vonosky. Thank you.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: I see you all again. For the record, Adam Barnosky, 255 State Street in Boston, attorney for 290 Salem Street. In the interest of time, this late hour, I will try to keep the introductory remarks brief. With me tonight is Fernando Bento, the principal and owner of the property, the project architect, Jacob Levine. project engineer Patrick Bauer and landscape architect Katia Pazzallo. Here regarding the site plan review and special permit for 290 Salem Street. Specifically, the special permit is to permit neighborhood retail use in the apartment 1 zoning district. I'm going to provide a background and overview of the projects, and then the design team will give some more detail. 290 Salem Street is the record owner of the property, which is located on the northeast corner of Salem Street and Park Street. It is comprised of two parcels measuring approximately 8,842 square feet. The property is a polygonal lot with 96.6 feet of frontage along Salem Street and 145 feet of frontage along Park Street, the entirety of which is located in the apartment one zoning district. This was formerly a commercial space. The prior structure has been demolished and the property is now vacant. The applicant seeks to construct a new three-story mixed-use building consisting of two commercial units, seven residential units comprised of six two-bedroom units and one one-bedroom unit, eight parking spaces at grade, a roof deck, and other amenities including a mailroom and covered bike storage with charging capabilities. The two commercial units will be located on the ground floor with entrances off of Salem Street and are intended to be used for neighborhood retail and or a coffee shop. It's that first component, the neighborhood retailer requires a special permit from this board. The second floor will have three two-bedroom units and one one-bedroom unit. The third floor will have three two-bedroom units. The development will consist of a single building having gross square footage of 12,522 square feet and net square footage of 10,018 square feet, excluding the roof deck. The proposed building has a total lot coverage of 5,093 square feet or 57%. Based on publicly available records, there are no existing easements or encumbrances affecting the lot. The applicant does not propose any new easements or encumbrances as part of this proposal. The estimated time for completion of this following receipt of all permits is 24 months, subject to labor and supply chain availability. a dignity to relief, we do need it under use table AF3 and pursuant to section 94.32. A special permit is required from this board as the special permit granting authority relative to that use. We do have a hearing, as was mentioned at the outset of the meeting. We have a hearing before the zoning board, which is currently scheduled for next Thursday, February 29th. This is regarding the zoning relief required for the project, which includes dimensional relief for lot area, front and side yard setbacks, lot coverage, and the proposed eating establishment use. And so with that, that's a very succinct overview. I'd like to turn it over to Jacob to discuss design, then Katya to discuss landscaping, and Patrick to address engineering. Jacob?

[Alicia Hunt]: Can you let us, sorry, which, thank you. And does anybody need to share screen for this? Okay. Sorry, I should have asked that while I was speaking. You're all set now.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you very much.

[Alicia Hunt]: I did want to just mention there was an account, a Verdant Architecture account that had repeated problems coming in and isn't currently connected. I'm not sure if that's important for you.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: That is Katya, the landscape architect. I do believe she intends to present. So I guess we'll see if she's able to make it. She was on the last hearing of that issue.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Katya has entered. Katya? Yes, she's here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, everybody. Sorry, I was having trouble. I don't know what happened, but I'm on now via my computer. Thank you.

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: All right. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I'm the architect, Jacob Levine, representing S.L. Haas Group from 27 Congress Street in Salem, Mass. As Adam did a great job kind of giving a little background on this project. As all of you know, this is a really prominent corner in Medford. And we're really excited about this project and kind of what it's going to bring to the neighborhood compared to what was there. So we have seven units, six, two bedrooms and one, one bedroom, including that roof deck, which it's a little different in this case than what we saw in the last project, but we're going to kind of get into the floor plans a little bit, not too much detail tonight. Essentially, we're going to provide eight spaces with two EV ready with covered bike parking. So essentially the mass of the building is going to sit over these eight spaces, so to provide covered parking, to which a mail room, two commercial spaces right off Salem Street, so majority of the traffic would be coming in and out of Park Street and not directly off Salem Street, room for dumpsters, and then the egress up into the units. We have one unit that's the single bed on floor two, and then floor three has all the two beds. The Biggest challenge with this project would be the site and just its odd shape, which kind of dictates the building to have this jagged corner. And we kind of studied what happened with this corner, which we'll get to a little bit more on some of the 3D images. We are proposing a roof deck with solar panels in the back. We feel it's important at this part of the city to have some outdoor space and outdoor amenities for the tenants. You know, this is only seven units and it's on a busy street like Salem. So it is a little bit different than the last project. And we feel like it's a good opportunity to provide outdoor space and not necessarily balconies or Juliet balconies. So this would be a shared amenity between the seven units with EV panels in the back. Next, just kind of starting to look at the massing and the elevation. So you could see the parking is below the two stories. We want one story of brick or terracotta and then a hearty plank of some sort or fiber cement on the top floors. You'll see it a little bit better on the 3D image. So the building across the street is a really historic, important building that the design team has been studying and using as a great example of what we want to fit into the context of this triangle lot, if you will. There's been a few modern multifamily buildings built on this lot with metal panel that somewhat stick out and we really feel like trying to play with these bay windows and the architecture of the ornateness of the building across the street is something we want to capture in our new design. We want the roof deck to kind of have a natural parapet so you really wouldn't see anything that's happening up there. It would be almost feel like a real private area and just trying to use it for light. And then this corner, we're still trying to figure out the best use for it, rather if it's enclosed or open, but essentially that's a great little spot for a deck and look out and see what's happening on the street side. Then you could see the brick to match across the street, almost a reverse instinct with the red brick down here, and then the commercial spaces off Salem Street. We're providing two commercial space in this design. Most people would enter the main building right here, as said, and not necessarily off Salem. That is what we have tonight to show for our beautiful seven-unit building. I'll turn it back to Adam, and thank you very much.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Thank you. Katya, do you want to talk a little bit about the landscape plan?

[SPEAKER_03]: That'd be great. I am hoping that someone has access to share their screen and show the drawings as part of the presentation. I don't have them open on my computer to share.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Jacob, do you have those available? No. Alicia, are there plans that are uploaded on the city that you might be able to walk through?

[Alicia Hunt]: Hold on, yes. Sorry, I still had the previous project open.

[SPEAKER_14]: 290 Salem Street, final application materials.

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: Sorry for interrupting, I have it pulled up. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much. I apologize. I figured it was like the last presentation that my drawings would just be tagged on to the architectural things. I appreciate you pulling it up for me. So again, I'm Katja Posadlo with Verdant Landscape Architecture. We approach this project with the primary goals of supporting the mixed-use program of the building design, but also to really enhance the public realm and the streetscapes, since we have two fairly significant frontages, both on Salem and Park Street. When I first visited this site, what really struck me were the two wonderful street trees that are out front on Salem Street. They're two London plane trees that are pretty good sized out there. And, you know, they're the kind of trees that have the really pretty bark patterning, so they look nice even in the winter. They have really good interest in the winter. So our plan shows that these trees will be protected and enhanced with actually slightly enlarged tree wells along the curb line to support their continued root growth to support them as they age. We also show additional plant beds along the frontage of those commercial uses that were described and in front of the parking area that you see in the plan here at the back of the sidewalk to develop a really nice green backdrop to that sidewalk experience. And those plant beds are in keeping with the planted frontages at both of the abutters on Salem Street to the east and then further north on Park Street up the page there. And then to highlight each of the doorway entrances, we're proposing a unit paving. That's what's shown in that sort of grayish purple color in all the doorway areas, both to the commercial spaces of Salem Street, and then also to the residential lobby area and the bike room that is shown off of Park Street. We're also proposing to provide a couple of benches out in front of the retail to make it more welcoming, provide some seating opportunities, and a few other furnishings to note include some visitor bike racks out on Salem Street. We've got a couple in the furnishing zone there. We have three additional bike racks for visitor bike parking in front of the lobby entrance on Park Street, so that's a total of 10 temporary or visitor bike parking spaces and that's in addition to the interior bike storage room for the residential use. We've carved out some green space within the surface parking area outside that building footprint. You can see here in the sort of northern corners to provide some shade and some buffers up towards the neighborhood there. And also along those property lines at the side and the rear, we're proposing a wood fence. You can see the imagery on the bottom of the sheet there for the six foot height solid wood board fence. And then the last amenity area that I wanted to point out would be the lawn space that spills out from the retail zone. And so there's direct access from the commercial space on the ground floor on the right-hand side there to the side yard area. And we thought it could support some additional, maybe like a lunch area or something for employees to come and have just a little bit of green space and respite from work. Or maybe it's part of the retail use spills out there a little bit. And at the very least to provide a nice green backdrop and something to see from the windows there. And that sums it up for the landscape point of view. I'll pass it back to whoever needs to present any more pieces of our project. Thank you.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Sure.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Patrick, do you want to walk through some of the engineering? I believe that Patrick needs to be unmuted, Patrick Bauer.

[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, I clicked it. I'm going to click it again. There you go. We cannot hear you, Patrick. You're not showing unmuted. You're not showing muted, but we cannot hear your words.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: I'm not sure what the issue is here.

[Alicia Hunt]: It worked that time.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: Oh, good. We hear you. Oh, good. Thank goodness. So I'll jump right into it and be as brief as possible. So you see the site here. You see as you follow. Through the middle of the site, you can see where the footprint of the building is outside that area. You see some shading that is going to be paving to the limits of the property. You see the parking underneath the parking underneath as Jacob mentioned is access from Park Street. We have down at the bottom left corner of the facility or the new building, we have domestic and fire water services going in as well as a sewer service. And then a new drainage pipe service going out to a proposed manhole, which is near the entrance to the street level parking. And that's where our overflow from our stormwater system will be. The stormwater is a subsurface system of three dry wells embedded in stone and will capture runoff from the roof as well as a series of catch basins throughout the site that will pick up runoff that lands on that paved area. We did receive some comments from the engineering department that will incorporate into the next revision of the site plan. And that's really it in a nutshell for the civil portion. Unless somebody has questions.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Thanks, Patrick. I'm sure that's all from the applicant side. I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. I should have actually had you keep up the engineering documents. One of the things of note were the dumpsters. Can you explain how you could access those two rectangular dumpsters?

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, so actually what we're going to do is they'll be wheeled and they'll be delivered to the curb side. It's my understanding unless, Adam, there's been a change in that perspective. But so yeah, so there'll be wheeled dumpsters that will be taken out and then emptied at the street level.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So help me understand. So I can see how you can get the one next to the car out. How do you get the one behind that out?

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: So they'll have to be taken out in series. I actually have an updated site plan, if I can share mine. I'm not sure if I can share my screen. Let's see here. Alicia, I don't know if you provide me the ability to do that.

[Alicia Hunt]: Just gave you permission.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: All right, thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: As you're doing that, will you explain between the dumpsters on your plan and on the site plan, they were different.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: Right, so this is a revised plan that came up After our original submission, the city had formally changed their stormwater requirements, and we had some additional, some landscape stuff that we incorporated into a subsequent plan. So you see that this one's a little bit different from the one we saw previously. It has some landscaping here that Kathy had talked about. But again, here are those dumpsters. So those dumpsters will be wheeled out to the street level. I assume you can see my cursor moving. or at least wheeled out so you know so it's going to be a you know a solid waste vehicle is going to have to access those so either they would traverse underneath that that level that you know the second level would be the overhang and access those dumpsters or they will be wheeled out so you'd you've probably all seen those dumpsters they're covered typical metal dumpsters but they're on wheels so that they can be wheeled out

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: We don't have the city engineer here to say whether or not that that would be. You said that you had received his. actual comments, is that something that he referenced?

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: We did some preliminary comments, yes, and I don't believe there was a comment on there about the dumpsters. I can't say off the top of my head. There was, you know, there was maybe a dozen comments, but nothing that was going to really affect the design. It was more or less, you know, some additional sidewalk replacement and things like that. I don't recall, Madam Chair, that there was issues related to the dumpster.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: No, I'm sorry, I don't have his comments up.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No, thank you. Alicia, did you have any questions regarding this?

[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, there were a couple of notes that I'd put in. I have more. I just didn't know if that- Oh, about the dumpsters? Yes. No, but given that this is going to be continued, I think that we might just ask for some images. I picture a dumpster, it can't get wheeled out. You're obviously picturing something much smaller if you want to provide that.

[Unidentified]: Sure. Absolutely.

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm perhaps used to dealing with much larger dumpsters than you're thinking of.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: Right. Yeah.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. And so going back to the design, if you can go back to the design, actually, and one of the things that was mentioned is that you wanted it to fit into the context of the lot, like the corner of the way that the, not the, I'm sorry, this was the actual design of the building on the outside. That's what I'm looking for now.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: Back to the architecturals.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Back to, yes. Right there on the corner, it was mentioned how we wanted it to fit into the context of the lot and then play off the buildings across, but how does it fit into the context of everything else that's there? Can we have some site plans to show how it would actually fit into that context, like something from the back, the top, the side? And if you don't have them now, it can definitely be for the next time you before the board.

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: I think that's right. Well, Madam Chair, I think that's directed towards me, the architecture team. We will have something prepared for next time. We have a few kind of 3D context imaging. just to show how we have a 40-foot pretty much max height we want to hit with the parapet and just showing how that contextually fits into some of the neighboring buildings. Massing-wise, it fits context well and holds the street corner, especially with what's across the street and what's coming up and down Salem Street. We can show either site section or a 3D image like this that shows the building. with its neighboring context, massing wise. When I was kind of talking about fitting in, I was talking more materiality and visual look more so than the massing. I mean, like the one story building that was here before didn't really hold the corner as well as something like this, but we will certainly have that prepared for next time.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Vice Chair Heidemann, you have a question?

[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, I would encourage the applicant to refer to the prior presentation and some of those visuals that were provided. Obviously, one project is not the same as the other, but I think that they offered some helpful perspective about how their project fit into the neighborhood and to speak specifically to the design considerations that SL House Group has made for the materiality and aesthetics of this proposed project. I would encourage you to maybe simplify a little bit. You're referencing the bay windows, the siding, the brick. But I would encourage you to maybe take a deeper understanding of how those materials are used in the surrounding context. For example, the building across the street, the bay windows are wood with ornamental designs. um, that extrude out of a brick volume. Um, and then the, the base level, um, is, is highly ornamental. So maybe think about some of those things with the materiality of your building. Um, additionally, you mentioned that this is occupying the corner, um, on the ground level. Sure. Um, if you go up to the, the two flights or the two stories above, um, we have negative space for those balconies. Um, you know, perhaps those balconies could be adjusted to shift into the volume of the building to, you know, to your point, to occupy the corner, provide a strong presence. Because I really do see a lot of potential with this project. But I'd encourage you just to kind of simplify and, you know, maybe make some more direct connections to the aesthetics in the area. And also, like, feel free to have like some fun, like you don't have to do one for one, you know, maybe instead of these being, you know, three window uh, bays, you know, maybe they're more of a abstract volume to match, um, you know, match the sharper angles that you have in your, your building facade as well.

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: That was really great advice. I appreciate that.

[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah. Thank you for, um, for providing these drawings for us to, to, you know, provide feedback on really appreciate it.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And do you have any actual shadow studies, especially with it being on the corner like that?

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: Not today. Okay.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: That would be something for consideration, just to let you know.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And one of the comments, actually, that came up with, if you can clarify it, 30% of the usable open space, that was calculated. it would help if you have a plan that actually clearly shows that open space. And this goes back to engineering. But before you go, sorry, not to go back and forth, but on this one, on the ground floor, actually, sorry.

[Adam Hurtubise]: I'm sorry. So you're okay with my ground floor plan? Yeah.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: How did you calculate the open space? If you can clearly show that.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And then there were some traffic comments actually, the parking lot allows for at least one, the parking lot should strongly consider allowing for parking space associated with commercial uses. And that's just to enhance the area.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Just to clarify on that point, that's a recommendation from traffic, but would that have an impact on or be required as part of the site plan approval?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: One of the things that the city is concerned about is that residential parking always takes precedence over the commercial. And then the commercial will have to come back and get like a parking. So it's strongly recommended that the board requires a parking space for commercial at this point.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: So one per unit?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: One per unit, allowing for parking. Alicia, can you clarify the city's preference for parking there?

[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, finding my zoom button. Um, so. The, we're looking at whether this is transit oriented or not, we'll ask the, the applicant to just show that there's more than 3 buses in a direction to comply with transit oriented. If it's not so not transit oriented would be 1.5 spots per unit transit oriented. I think we had discussed that in the office that we had discussed that with Danielle. There was an attempt to do more parking in a way that literally did not fit on this site, and we actually sent that back to the applicant. Because we couldn't figure out how the parking literally worked. Pardon me if I am not fully remembering the conversation, but I do believe that we thought this was going to qualify as transit-oriented development. And you had the requirement. Sorry, it is getting late. I looked at that number earlier today, and I think that the 0.8 is in compliance if this is considered transit-oriented development.

[Adithi Moogoor]: Yes, it's 0.8 for dwelling unit.

[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Yes, it was our understanding that this qualified due to high frequency transit in the area. And that's one of the reasons why the parking requirement was not cited on the building commissioners refusal letter.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right, that he actually agreed that this would qualify. So eight spots for seven units and two commercial was allowable at this location. Yeah, I think how that parking is managed is something the applicant will want to consider. Will there in fact need to be a spot for the commercial? But we didn't see any way to add any additional parking to this spot without creating additional curb cuts, which was very much not desirable by the planning office and the engineering office. Does that help? There was the comment, so the traffic, it was just forwarded to the applicant today. Because of the nature of this back and forth, we asked for preliminary comments from the department heads. The Director of Traffic and Transportation said that the parking lot should consider allowing one of the spaces to be associated with the commercial uses because we have been getting cases residential taking precedent over commercial, and then often the commercial then comes and looks for an accommodation from the city at a later date. So understanding that, figuring that out, there isn't really like a parking lot nearby that employees could park in and get a business permit in this area. However, I will say that the planning office really thinks that a coffee shop or something like that. On this corner, I do encourage you when you show the context. It may not be. The boards both planning and CBA may not be familiar with the site context. There is a elementary school essentially across the street from this location. So we do think that there is really high potential for a coffee shop or I hate to say a candy store, something that would be of interest to the youth or preferably the parents at this location. Yeah.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: Thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, I know it was Mr. Bauer with the presenters.

[rHW3832dHik_SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, I'm sorry. I just wanted to clarify for the record, Madam Chair, that I looked at the engineer's comments. He did have a comment about the dumpsters, but more or less how we would access. He was asking if there was an additional curb cut for that. So I just, I didn't want to leave that issue hanging. I just, I looked it up really quickly and wanted to let you know.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. And to reiterate Director Hunt's comment, this is a huge opportunity to pretty much live in that ground space for the pedestrian experience at this point. Keep that in mind, especially with how it's situated.

[Alicia Hunt]: If I may, Madam Chair, I think that it would be helpful when you return to get some better views of what the ground space can look like. This architecture view does not reflect the site plan that was presented to us. The site plan had plantings along. Um, Salem or Park Street and Salem Street, the architectural view does not, if we could have something that shows us actually what the pedestrian experience is going to be, I think that would be really helpful because at this time the plans kind of conflict with the two different views conflict with each other. I would like to just note that, um, You know, I actually have now, I'm just second guessing myself. We appreciate the solar on the roof from the city's perspective. And I was thinking, but I think actually the solar ordinance is six units or higher, requires solar on the roof, which is something we may wanna note for future conditions, but it is part of our zoning. So we appreciate that. And we do ask that you provide solar assessment showing that the amount of solar you're displaying up there is actually practical.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Director Hunt. Does any of the board members have questions? Or any input at this time? Anything to add?

[Peter Calves]: I just have a clarification on the process. So basically what we're looking to do tonight is continue this to, I believe, our next meeting, which I don't have the calendar in front of me.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: It would have to be a date certain. We're not able to approve anything prior to ZBA's actions.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah, okay. So we'd be continuing to... A date certain after ZBA's... Yeah, a date certain after ZBA. At which point they'd come back.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And if ZBA, and I don't want to speak anything into existence or anything like that, but say, for instance, ZBA denies their variance, they're back at square one for a design. So there's not much we can say or review tonight.

[Alicia Hunt]: Well, approve tonight. Sorry, I have the list. Right. It's my recommendation that so you've let them know a number of different things. additional information you would want to see when they return. Your next meeting is scheduled for March 6th, if the applicant felt that that was soon enough. The ZBA's hearing is next week, February 29th. They meet once a month. Assuming that they close on the 29th, would you be ready to come back on March 6th? The meeting after that scheduled for this board is March 20th, if you, for some reason, felt you needed more time.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Just to clarify, the options would be March 6th or March 20th?

[Alicia Hunt]: Unless you'd like dates further out.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Well, I would probably it seems as though most of this is, is in Jacob's realm. So I think, you know, potentially, you could give us an indication as to as to what is feasible. Certainly, I think we want to make it realistic, if that would be the March 20 date, as opposed to March 6. But Jacob, what are your thoughts on time?

[Alicia Hunt]: You're muted.

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying. My computer is a little tired. It's been solid hours. I mean, for me, just hearing the board's comments tonight, you know, looking for some more 3D views and more context. So I'm not necessarily upgrading the design in that much. I'm just providing more content. I do think that at this point, just being completely transparent, these are still a schematic level design. We haven't completely detailed out the facade in terms of, is it a terracotta, is it a brick? But I think things like the shadow study, A couple of 3D context renderings can definitely be achieved by the March 6 deadline. But if we had to, by the recommendation of this board or by the ZBA, take the design back in-house and start taking things apart and putting it back together, that's a different conversation. But it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, you are just looking for a little bit more information similar to the presentation you just saw before.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Exactly. And just keep in mind that we understand that the ZBA needs some kind of design and that it's just a schematic at this point. So you want to keep in mind how much more of a percentage of design are you going to get to before you bring it before us. Because we're giving you this information that we're going to be looking for when you come back.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: And when would the board, I mean, if you're looking at March 6th, when would the board want to have the plans submitted? Because I also want to be realistic time-wise being that a week from Friday, for example, is March 1st. Would you want them, is it a 48 hours beforehand, is it a week beforehand?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Alicia, what's the timeline for this?

[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, I believe the preference of the board is to receive the files at least the Friday before, with the understanding that we close at 1230 on Friday. So we appreciate receiving them before we leave for the day. Well, before we technically close for the day. That's the shortest window.

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: So pardon me. That'd be March the 1st. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Alicia Hunt]: We would need the files.

[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_04]: That's fine with me, Adam.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Well, then we can we can aim for that. And certainly if we if we come up, you know, against any deadlines, we can coordinate Alicia with with your department.

[Alicia Hunt]: I will say that because this is a public hearing, that's to be continued to a date and time certain. If before the public hearing, you become aware that you're not ready, you can let us know that, and the board can open the hearing, continue to a date and time certain, and close the hearing. We can do that in about three minutes. I once watched the ZBA do three of them in under five minutes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: At this time, it may in fact be the only, I believe it is the only item on the agenda for March 6. I do want to check that with Danielle because she manages the agenda.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Any other questions from the board? Well, because we've legally opened a public hearing, we can also do the public comments and that does not mean that we can't open the public comments again at the next meeting. So I will open them for now if there's members of the public. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Alicia 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 a part of the public record. However, if a participant is having audio or other technical difficulties, this may be entered into the chat to let myself and staff. Depending on the number, we will limit it. As of right now, I don't see any hands, so I will say it was about three minutes per person. Are there any members from the public present that want to... Alicia, have you received any comments, previous comments or emails or letters on this item?

[Alicia Hunt]: There's nothing in our new email box at this point. I just want to double check with this tab. I'm checking. I don't believe that I saw a comments folder for this project. Is that correct? Yes.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: If I may, I do believe that there were approximately 20 letters of support that were submitted by email by the applicant.

[Alicia Hunt]: Clem, is this the project that something was hand delivered and scanned in?

[Ruseau]: Yes, I was just about to jump in and say as a packet of 20 or so signed support statements, letters.

[Alicia Hunt]: Is that, are those in, sorry, I lost, are those in the folder for the?

[Ruseau]: Yes, it's a 290, stay along support letters. In the project folder.

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm, oh, okay, often we'll have a folder called comments, just because that flags it for us, so it's just a single PDF. And for the board, They're all identical. They have the person's name and address. And it says, please allow this letter to serve as my show of support for the proposed project at 290 Salem Street.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: What is the exact number of letters?

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm trying to see how many pages are in the PDF. Seven. 19. Yes. I will say that this is a location that I hear about frequently in the public that people want to know what's going to happen would like to see something built here. But I don't haven't heard anything specific, like, we haven't received anything formal, other than please build something there already. They, they jokingly, the kids refer to it as the pit, because it's across the street from the elementary school, where Danielle's children go. So

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, we'll take that into record. I'm going to close the public comment period. Just keep in mind that we will reopen when there's additional materials to consider. So again, the board's not going to consider criteria for approval on the site plan review and special permit this evening. We're going to allow the zoning board to review the variances before completing that process, all those two processes. I would not, at this point, I'm not sure if we should deliberate on anything until the proponent is before us, but I'm open to hear what the rest of the board is saying or thinking.

[Peter Calves]: I would think for now we should continue and deliberate when we have additional materials in front of us. But that's just my thought.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: That's my thought. Vice Chair Hederman.

[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Chair McPherson. I agree. Okay.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I just wanted to get the temperature from the board. Normally we would still deliberate because we open up the public hearing, but I didn't think it was necessary. Allow the proponent to go before the ZBA and then come back before us and then we can save everyone's time there. So I will look for a motion to continue the actual address, 290 Salem Street, special permit and site plan review to March 6th, 2024.

[Adam Hurtubise]: So moved.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Second. Vice Chair Edelman. Aye. Peter Coutts.

[Peter Calves]: Aye.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari Fishman. Aye. Pam Mariansky. Aye. And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm an aye. We will see you on March 6th. And as Alicia has said, if you feel as though you can't make that date, please contact the city.

[2H_zQ7mI46g_SPEAKER_07]: Thank you very much. We appreciate your time and your input tonight.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Have a great evening.

[Unidentified]: Thanks.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'm not sure that I saw minutes. The next item are minutes. No, the draft minutes are there. No, there were no minutes.

[Ruseau]: I didn't fully complete those yet, but those should be ready next hearing.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: That's totally okay. I know that I didn't, I thought I was remiss in seeing them. And the next item is miscellaneous or anything like that, that the city or the board want to discuss. Hearing none, the next item is a motion to adjourn. So moved.

[Peter Calves]: Second.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Vice Chair Hedlund? Aye. Peter Cowles?

[Peter Calves]: Aye.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari Fishman? Aye. Pam Arianski? Aye. And myself, Jackie McPherson. I am at aye. Sorry, Emily, for pronouncing your last name wrong, but if you heard, I just pronounced my own incorrectly. I know what you meant. See you on March 6, everyone. Thank you.

[Emily Hedeman]: Good night, everyone.

[Unidentified]: Have a nice night.

Paulette Van der Kloot total time: 29.0 minutes total words: 2208