total time: 15.14 minutes
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[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Medford 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 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 provided on the meeting agenda posted on the City of Medford's website. If despite our best efforts, we are not able to provide real-time access, we will post a recording of this meeting on the city's website as soon as possible. A reminder that given the remote nature of this meeting tonight, all votes from the board will be made by roll call. Please know that the project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed on the city's website at medfordma.org and by clicking on current city board filings. Danielle will provide the link in the chat. I'm going to do a roll call attendance. Sally Akiki. Present. Sharad Bajracharya. You have 30 seconds left on your 20 minute time. Peta Cowles. Here. Irie Fishman. Here. Pam Marianski. Here. And myself, Jackie McPherson. Danielle, can you introduce any staff on the call?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, I'm Danielle Evans, senior planner in the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. With us is Alicia Hunt, the director of the department, and Clem Doucette, who is a graduate student intern in our office.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, so tonight, the city will present a zoning ordinance amendment to establish a new zoning overlay in the Wellington Station Multifamily Overlay District that would allow multifamily housing and mixed-use development as of right, and comply with Section 3A of MGL-40A, MBTA Community Zone 1. I will read the public hearing announcement. The Method Community Development Board shall conduct a public hearing on Wednesday, November 15, 2023, after 6.30 p.m. via Zoom. remote video conferencing relative to a proposed amendment to the City of Medford zoning ordinance and zoning map. The purpose of the amendment is to comply with Section 3A of MGL 40A, which is also known as MBTA Community Zoning Law, by establishing a zoning overlay within a half-mile radius of the Wellington MBTA Orange Line Station that would allow multifamily housing and mixed-use development as of right. The public may view and participate in this hearing by assessing the link included on the meeting agenda that will be posted on the City's website. no later than November 10th, 2023. Questions and comments may be submitted via email at ocd-medford-ma.gov. For accommodations or aids, call 781-393-2480. A subsequent public hearing on the same matter will be held by the Medford City Council on December 12th, 2023 at 7 p.m. in the Medford City Council Chamber. second floor of medford city hall 85 george p has to drive medford mass and via zoom a link to the public hearing will be posted no later than december 8 2023 again for accommodations or aids call 781-393-2425 a copy of the full text of the amendment is available in the office of the city clerk the office of planning development and sustainability and on the city's website Okay, so for, um, the city staff that's present, um, um, Danielle, you want to take the lead on the proposed ordinance?
[Danielle Evans]: Sure. So, um, I think everyone is familiar now with the, um, Section 3A of Chapter 48 of Mass General Law, but I'll go over it. Um, basically, um, several years ago, the Baker administration, under the Baker administration, the, um, 2020, One, I don't know, it seemed like a long time ago. But there was a law passed requiring that all MBTA served communities adopt a zoning district that would allow multifamily by right. The language of the act was very sparse. So the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities issued guidelines. They were updated several times, most recently in August. So every time they change, it's taken a bit of a catch up. But they determined the amount of units that have to be produced for each municipality. And Medford's is 6,443. And 75% of those have to be within a half mile of a station area, an eligible station area. Back in the summer, we got a technical assistance grant to hire a consultant to crunch the numbers. The state created a compliance model where you would basically upload all of the city's parcel data, and then we would put in all the zoning inputs, and it would spit out how many units could be produced or they could be yielded in any of those districts. And we tested the station areas, all of the station areas in the city. And because of excluded land, other areas, big parks, Tufts, City of Somerville, which we can't count, because a lot of the stations are right on the line, that the only real place feasible area that would work is the Wellington Orange Line station. So we moved forward with that, taking the approach of creating an overlay, which would be superimposed over the base zoning. So it wouldn't touch the base zoning at all. We want to do that eventually to implement a comprehensive plan, but that's a bigger project. So we're just doing an overlay. So let's see. I can bring up the map. Let's see. I'll share my screen. I feel like the button's all moved. Here we go. Can folks see that? So based on some assumptions that we put into the model, the shaded or the blue parcels would be included in this overlay. We didn't include some of these denser single and two-family homes. So this is the existing station landing area that's built out. This is the mixed-use zoning district. This is the newly rezoned to the MUZ as well. This is the... What the heck is the name of that? the roast beef place, Kelly's Roast Beef. And then this is all owned by the MBTA. So this is technically excluded because we can't, our zoning doesn't apply to them. And then up here is some existing apartments and then some other taller buildings, the Cappy's, The, yeah, this is the Cappy's here. And then the building with the tattoo shop, and there's some other stuff there. And then this is a piece of the Wellington Plaza over there. And that is based on, getting just a little bit over the number that we need to hit, the 6,443, based on, if you look at the zoning, minimum parking 0.8 per unit and five stories as the baseline. I'll stop sharing. So this is the proposed, we're calling it the Wellington Station Multifamily Overlay District. So because of some of the limitations of the law, where we can't require mixed use, we can't require anything that would be construed as somehow dampening housing production, that the way that we approach this was through a series of incentives. So because we want this area to be walkable and there to be amenities for folks, rather than just a bunch of standalone apartment buildings, we'd like there to be corner stores and places to go about your daily errands. So we set the floor at five stories as the minimum or as the max height, but with incentives such as, Should I put this up so people can follow along? I'm going to share my screen again. Can you see that? Is this the text of the amendment?
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, but it's very small.
[Danielle Evans]: I'm going to make it bigger.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's better, is that good enough for the members or should we zoom in further? Is that good? Yeah, that's good right there.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so just to briefly go through this, we have this. So the state that they've been trying to make it as easy as possible by providing technical assistance and then they had some kind of like a framework of model zoning that we adapted for Medford. So just like with the outline, so like the purposes, you know, the applicability, then we had to add some new definitions that we didn't have already. And then, so the table of uses and parking regulations. So the uses, the residential uses that would be allowed by right would be senior housing facility and multifamily. Currently multifamily is not In our current zoning ordinance, we have class A and class B, multiple dwelling, and those are convoluted and associated with maximum heights. So we just took that out and created the new category multifamily for this district. And then so some of the we were thinking about, okay, what other uses would we want to allow by right with site plan review in this district to have, you know, kind of like a live, work and play area. So community uses, some of the commercial uses like recreation, hotel, brewery or taproom, you know, some office uses, some of them we decided should be by special permit, because perhaps on certain streets it would make more sense to have more active uses and in other places it would be okay to have like a medical office or bank but we're trying to get away from banks and other insurance agencies from occupying like prime storefronts areas that could be more active. So retail sales neighborhood retail, consumer services, all by right. Drive-thru is by special permit from the Community Development Board. Currently in the MUZ, there's a drive-thru for Walgreens. So we wanted to be able to keep that option if there was a site-specific location, then it would be appropriate. So it would be, you know, It might be OK on a certain parcel, but we didn't want it to be by right across the board. In some parcels, it might not be appropriate. And then miscellaneous commercial uses, so parking areas or parking garages, but not surface parking lots standalone for themselves. Research and testing, home occupation, more child care, And then the scientific research development. I'm now just realizing that non-commercial greenhouse tool shed or similar accessory structure, we don't have anything in that column. I'll have to figure out what was supposed to be there. I'm imagining it was supposed to be a Y, yes. Do you recall, Alicia? I'm not sure how that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think I did, but at this point, anything that we want changed should actually come as a recommendation from the CD board to the city council. Let me see if it's in the other version that, sorry, yes, Emily sends us. My brain just blopped because Emily is on the board and Emily is our consultant. And just FYI, I did hear back from Emily and she's had something urgent come up and she can't make it.
[Danielle Evans]: So for the dimensional standards, and so this is actually different than how most of the rest of our ordinance is treated where uses are tied to a dimensional standard rather than the zone. So we're trying to get away from that. So this table reflects that. So we have a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet. Maximum building coverage, 80%. And then, what is that? Oh, yeah, and then the maximum height, minimum stories, two, maximum five. And then maximum with bonus incentives, nine. And then 80 feet, 140 feet. And then the setbacks, zero to 15. And then there's some development standards of what can be within those front yard setbacks later on in this document, as we're trying to get away from front yard parking and other things like that. And then we have the setbacks, side yard or interior rear yard setbacks. And then the table of development incentive bonuses, And I would love any feedback on this. So, some of the. Provisions that we thought to, we would like to see. In this. district that we can't require, but we would like to incentivize, is providing active ground floor space would get you an additional story added. So you could get six stories if your ground floor is active. Another way to get an additional story is to provide below market rent for a commercial tenant or nonprofit or local business under 10 employees, and we're trying to create a space where small businesses can thrive and don't get priced out. So this is kind of experimental. We'll see how it works, but I've always wondered why we have affordable housing and subsidized housing, but we don't have subsidized commercial spaces for nonprofits and small businesses and things like that. can't compete with some of the bigger chains and banks and things like that. So we'll see how this works out. A lot of zoning is just testing it and seeing what sticks and if anything comes out of it. And then additional incentives is for deeper affordability of the units and increased affordability. Currently, Our inclusionary zoning ordinance that we have is not allowed unless we can prove through a third party economic feasibility analysis that it won't stymie housing production. And so that's currently being performed by MAPC. And they expect that the findings will be that our existing ordinance is economically feasible and will be able to apply it there. So currently we're operating under the assumption that we will be able to. Right now the state is saying the baseline is 10% of units at 80% AMI is allowed, but anything more than that, you need to prove that it's viable. And then some of the other incentives are for if you have a net zero emissions building or build to different LEED certification. Initially, we were going to require more things, but the city recently adopted the specialized stretch code. So folks are going to have to do them anyways. So we're like, what can we require that won't already be required? And our climate planner identified that these were feasible things that folks could do to achieve some density bonuses. And then so there'll be exceptions and exemptions from setbacks for certain things, like renewable energy installations, you know, some exceptions from that, from going into setbacks or height. And then for parking, we are proposing to use the same parking standards in the rest of the city for within half mile of high frequency transit, which is 0.8 spaces per dwelling unit for market rate and 0.5 for affordable dwelling units. But one of the things that's different is that we actually putting a maximum parking on this so that you can only build one and a half spaces per dwelling unit. That's the max. So a developer can't say we really need two spaces per unit and build that. It wouldn't be allowed unless they got a variance. And then we have some biking parking. Bike parking spaces, one per dwelling unit is the minimum. Bike storage, EV parking. And then this section is the design guidelines and development standards. So this goes into different aspects of site design, which would supplement our site plan review criteria and performance standards elsewhere in our ordinance. to specifically speak to this district. And does anyone have any questions about any of these? This talks about like building placement and where parking should be. That is it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'll stop sharing my screen for the moment. Daniel, thank you. One of the questions I wanted before you went through is, can you explain to the board and to the public exactly why this district was chosen and how it relates to, like for instance, why not West Medford? Why not Medford Square? Why is it at Wellington?
[Alicia Hunt]: Can you answer that? I'm just going to mention that we have the presentation that we had done for the public that has the map that shows those other areas. Would that be helpful to have to illustrate your answer? I realize that I don't have it open on my computer, but I can get it up.
[Danielle Evans]: First to the draw. Do you want me to do it? Sure, you can do it.
[Alicia Hunt]: I was actually just talking to Clem that we should get these up onto our web page. I apologize that we had not. Oh, Clem just sent me a link. I have also the presentation that we did. All right, let me. I'm just trying to share this. Actually, what I want to do is just share this image. So let me share my screen. So part of this is what Danielle was talking about is, let me see if I can figure out a good way to, if I can view that into a little bit better. Fit to window, view.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And Alicia, one of the things that I was hoping that can be illustrated here is myself as a planner and knowing more about the law, the MBTA law and how it is, I know, and just speaking with the city that moving it, moving it to another part of it, the city is not feasible with compliance. But if you can paint out what that looks like for the audience, for the public and for the board.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. So there's a couple of things and what part of what you can see here is that huge swaths of the two Green Line stations, the half mile are actually in the Somerville area. Huge amounts of that is actually taken up by Tufts. All of this pink here is Tufts. land, all of that doesn't count. And the other thing is you have to have reasonable minimum lot sizes. And almost all of this area, although I'm afraid this image doesn't show it either, are lots that are on the order of 5,000 square feet. They're like single family lots. And so it would be effectively not making a district because it would be extraordinarily hard to assemble any parcels to make multifamily housing in these areas. There are a couple of locations and we're starting to see those spring up. But a lot of it was all the very dense single and two-family housing in all of this area. In this area, it is all these very tiny lots all over the place. There really isn't space for multi-family except for a very small area around the train station here. Danielle, you want to add stuff to that as well?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, because when you Enter these into the model, even with a zero, or with no minimum lot size. The model tests real parcels. So it's not just land. If you have a 3,000 square foot parcel, what could conceivably be built on that? with the push and pull of all the dimensionals. So if you have even like an 80% lot coverage, and then fitting in any kind of parking, and it's just, it starts to, you only get like a handful of units. And also it's the land area and keeping it contiguous, you just keep bumping up against things. And also one of the issues with, spreading it around is we lose a lot of the local control over what we can have here. So in West Medford, you have this village center that's very vibrant and walkable, and we're trying to make it more vibrant. We can't require retail or commercial So we can't require mixed use. So having a 3A overlay there wouldn't match the historic built environment of that village center. It gets difficult because of the things that we can't require. And also in the beginning, The first guidelines was you can't have inclusionary housing. You can't have it at all. And then there was outcry. I wrote the senator, Jaylen, being like, this is nuts. We need to be able to allow it. And then DHCD, as their name was at the time, kind of backpedaled on it. It's like, OK, you can have your inclusionary zoning, but you can only do this if you already had it before. And then there's still outcry, like, but we just adopted it and it wasn't in place then. And so it was just a lot of uncertainty of what we could require it would be allowed to do. And the more it spread out, like, having different rules for different districts. started to get very complicated, especially since we're trying to embark on a full-fledged zoning overhaul that would change all of our base zoning and the overlays might not be appropriate in all of these different spaces. So the simplest and most straightforward one was feasible was Wellington because of the lot sizes, the land area, and what we could get there. There's just too much excluded land around the Tufts Station, not enough land around Ball, and the West Medford was also very complicated. It has excluded land too, but you have Playstead Park and then some of those very, very small parcels.
[Alicia Hunt]: And actually, I just want to touch on something that Danielle just said that I just think, I think that this board is very aware of, but I don't know that members of the public are, is that this is not like, oh, we have to take advantage of this bite at the apple to change zoning because it's so hard to change zoning in Medford. That is actually very true historically, but we actually have an RFP out right now to hire a zoning consultant jointly with the city council to do a full fledged redraft of zoning throughout the city of Medford. And so what we really focused on here was the state is putting heavy pressure on us to pass this residential multifamily as of right by December 31st. So let's do that and be in compliance. And on Tuesday of next week, we are getting our bids back for hiring a zoning consultant jointly with the city council. And so our office and the city council are going to hire a zoning consultant with the intention of spending 18 months. looking at the entire city and how do we use our comprehensive plan and everything in our comprehensive plan that said what we wanted to see and how do we actually change because if you start digging into our zoning it's bizarre. It's just really weird and so how do we just throw out all of it and start over clean and For this, we wanted to, what can we do that is clean, straightforward, everybody can understand, shouldn't have any unintended consequences, and meets the regulations? Does that answer your question? And I'm going to take the chair down.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So because this is one of the questions that I have, and I think one of the only other questions that I have, And then I'll open it up for the board for clarification. It's the parking minimums. Since we're doing this in a transit oriented development and we have 0.5 at this point, and we can actually really go big and create more density. No parking minimums. Get rid of them. Is that feasible? Is that something that And if I'm not mistaken, Danielle, you've ran the numbers. Can you share with the board what that would mean if we were to get rid of the parking limit?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so I ran the model with zero, with a parking minimum of zero spaces. And the number jumped up to, let's see here, it was 11,000 745 going from 0.8 to zero. The only thing with that is we would want to bring down the height so that developers would actually take advantage of those incentives. Because instead of putting a couple floors of parking wrapped with housing on top, then they would just build the housing without any of the other things that we're looking for. So then I ran it with 0.5 rather than 0.8, and that gets you a little over 7,000 units and dropping the height down, let's see. So I can even
[Alicia Hunt]: share this so you can. But while Dania's doing that, I actually just want to raise, like, do we think that allowing people to build housing there with no parking is actually a good idea in Medford? Do you believe that people would move into apartment buildings? And I look at it and I see it's right next to Route 16, Route 28, and it's about four blocks from 93. And they wouldn't buy cars. And then what would they do? Or they would live there and then they'd realize that they actually need a car to get to Medford Square and to do other things. And all of a sudden, we have housing built with no parking that residents are buying cars and now they're parking them in the neighborhoods and in the parking lots and stuff. We're already seeing overflow parking in Hormel Stadium from the apartment buildings around it. That's just my concern. Incentivizing fewer cars makes sense. I'm very nervous about the developer that actually builds the building with no parking there. But I would be interested in hearing what the rest of the board thinks.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, I guess I'm not sure if I'm alone in this one. And I understand your reservation on it, but we, our car dependency is the reason why we're in trouble with the house insurance now. So I just saw it as an opportunity just to not to be so car dependent, but I can also understand on the other side, because I happen to live in one of those apartment buildings near Homel that you just referenced.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I mean, I think there is a concern with that and I don't know. I mean, there is a part of me that likes to think that if somebody is signing a lease or whatever for a building that they know doesn't have any parking or a unit that doesn't have a parking space attached to it, they know what they're getting into and they're not going to suddenly decide they need a car after the fact. But I can't understand that that's not That's not always going to be the case. And sometimes people are going to do that and it's going to put a, you're going to, you're going to end up having a car with nowhere to go.
[Ari Fishman]: I also do understand that concern, and I think there is an element of it. That being said, being connected to the Green Line does give access to most amenities that people starting leases would need. They may not all be in Medford. They might take the Green Line to, say, Somerville.
[Peter Calves]: The Orange Line?
[Ari Fishman]: Yep. Wellington, not Ball Square. Thank you. I do like the idea of at least lowering the parking minimum. Maybe thinking about that 0.5 instead of 0.8. I am definitely excited about the idea of disincentivizing car ownership where it does not already exist.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Is there any other board input on parking minimums or anything else? Are there thoughts on the actual development incentive bonuses that Danielle wanted input on?
[Evangelista]: I think lowering the number of parkings is more acceptable in my mind. Not having a parking spot for guests, for instance, is okay, but for residents, Especially if we want, for instance, families to be living in these multifamily housing. Starting from myself with my kids, it's very hard to imagine myself without a parking spot which is close by. to my home. So if we're planning to attract families also to this area and not only youth or young people, then definitely parking is required in my opinion.
[Ari Fishman]: I'm also in favor of keeping the parking minimum above zero.
[Danielle Evans]: So I ran the model through the chair with 0.5 And that would get you 0.5 spaces. And lowering the height to, let's see, four stories would get you 6,595. units, which is more than the minimum that we're required to do. And again, the reason why lowering the height was to make sure that we could get some of the incentives, that developers would take advantage of those. Because you can go up to nine stories if you incorporate those other provisions. I think if we keep it five stories as the baseline, with 0.5 spaces as the minimum, I'm not sure that we'll get the other kind of development that moves forward all of our other goals as well.
[Evangelista]: One thing I think we should also keep in mind is the accessible parking spaces, like to ensure that individuals with special needs have convenient access and we're not excluding them from the multifamily too.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, actually, that's a good point. I'm so against car dependency that one of the things that made it a little bit more humbling was I attended a conference where there was someone with a disability who had kept saying, you know, you keep talking about no parking, no parking, but what about my caretakers that come to take care of me? All right, so it's currently at 0.5, Danielle, or?
[Danielle Evans]: The draft zoning that you have is off of 0.8 as the minimum. And 1.5 is the max. Well, actually, no, it's 0.8 for the market rate, 0.5 for the affordable units. So the same as it would be in the rest of the city if you're within half a mile of high frequency transit. And so with the one and a half spaces per dwelling unit would be the max. What is the comfort of the board with that? Because that definitely sends a message of don't over park these developments. if you build it, they will come. So they can, a lot of developers we talked to say, our market demands that we provide at least one per unit. And so they'll want to build that because either they can get more rent or the investors will get on board because they don't wanna see empty apartment complexes. So they will build more than what is required. So there's nothing, that would prevent developers from building up to that maximum one and a half. So I think that there will be, and if we unbundle the parking from the units, that there could be X amount of parking. And if you want it, you can pay for it. So if you're a family and you have two cars, you could lease two spaces or purchase two spaces, say if it's a condo. And if you don't own a car, then that's unbundled from your rent and your housing costs. So it's not that people that would want the spaces couldn't get them. If there's enough housing production, then hopefully that there will be housing of all types.
[Peter Calves]: I think that makes sense. I especially like unbundling that from housing, because I know plenty of people who who don't own cars and have no use for a parking space and wouldn't want to pay for one in their rent.
[Ari Fishman]: Can you tell me more about the mechanism of unbundling it from the housing units? I'm certainly interested. I'm just not sure I've seen an example of it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Where I live, if you have, you can have two spaces per unit. And it's like, I don't know, there's different levels because we have a garage. It's not part, it becomes part of my rent if I take it. If I don't want any, if I want no parking, then it's not part of my rent. And I'm guessing that that's what the idea is.
[Ari Fishman]: So I guess my question is in terms of the zoning, it makes sense to me in how it would be written into a lease. What I'm not sure of is how it plays into what we're writing, if that makes sense.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think that we can refer that back to our consultant, but I don't think Danielle meant that we would require that. What we are seeing is that we're seeing more and more of that. I actually found out from one of the staff in City Hall that the big apartment building across from Wegmans, if you want to park on the surface parking outside, it's free. But if you want a garage space, you have to pay $200 a month. And what he tells me is that there's not enough surface parking. So if you want to be guaranteed a spot when you come home, you have to pay $200 a month. It's sort of interesting for me because this particular staff person actually bikes to City Hall fairly regularly, but he and his wife also have a car. So. But we're seeing it more and more. I don't think we can require it. Dana, you can correct me if you think I'm wrong. We can also just bump it to Emily just to check.
[Danielle Evans]: I don't think you can require that the parking not be associated with an individual unit.
[Alicia Hunt]: So something that we want to research, but I don't think we're ready for it here, is that Somerville has some regulations written into their zoning and into their conditions about how the housing is marketed and how the parking is described and marketed. And that they have to be explicit about whether or not you have parking, whether or not you're allowed to park on the street, For example, a lot of their new apartment buildings, you're not eligible for street permit parking. The way that's successful is that they actually enforce that you have to market in your apartment marketing that there is no street parking and that you're not eligible for it. They've been successful, but it's a chicken and an egg problem here too. They have much better intra-city public transportation than we have, right? You can get all over Somerville and all over Cambridge and Boston, well, most of Boston, without a vehicle. And Medford, it's dramatically harder. And so we would love to improve the MBTA services. I'm actually sidebar, asking MAPC for a technical assistance grant to start to pull together a group to look at these intra-city transportation issues. And we're going to be talking about that shortly, the MAPC and I. But it's this is this is a problem. We are seeing more people charging for it. But I don't think it's something we can add here. So one thing, just to be clear with our timeline, and I do want to remind you, this is a public hearing, so we have to open to the public for comments as well, is that we've structured this so that it's easy for you guys to have a lot of questions and thoughts and stuff for us to run some more things by the consultants and for you all to vote on this at your next meeting. And we'll have to talk about the timing of that. And then the city council public hearing was advertised for December 12th. for them to give them two meetings to be able to talk about this as well. And if all of that works, we meet our deadlines. If that doesn't work, it's the prerogative of the board and the city council. We can't make you do anything. But it does mean that the state is going to be extremely unhappy with us about not making their timelines. We actually had a conversation with them today. They don't have amazing sticks. But we like them to like us because then they give us grants and more assistance. So I don't know how else to phrase that.
[Danielle Evans]: So if you, through the chair, if folks want to have three meetings for this, so tonight and then the 6th.
[Alicia Hunt]: We don't need to go there yet.
[Danielle Evans]: Let's just have the conversations. Yeah, I'm just saying so people don't feel like they're under the gun, that we could hold a special meeting on the 29th. because we will have to continue this to a date certain. So it'll either be the 29th and you'll need to let us know if we can have a quorum that night or we continue to the sixth. But that's your prerogative, but I just wanna not feel, people feel rushed.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No, thank you, Danielle, because one of the things, and it does seem, and we understand where the city's, I understand where the city's situation is, but it's also very, important and pertinent to let the board know that you're expecting to vote by 12-6-23. And if that's the case, then we're going to have to hold another special meeting because who's going to do Thanksgiving?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. You could just have one more meeting on the 6th. It was actually our recommendation that if we are going to vote on the 6th, we actually have to turn around the decision to the city council the next day on the 7th. So it's our request that if you think things are going to change a lot the week, so what we'd like to know is all the stuff that you're interested in getting more information from. We'll take that to the consultant. She can run more models. She can draft additional language. She can make changes. She can do all that. She can be here on the 29th to meet with you all. She is probably not available on the 6th. But if we meet both times, then we could have stuff ready for the 6th. Did that help? I think I was just more confusing. But we also, rather than getting into the dates now, we also should talk, are there other things in the zoning that the board would like to think about or discuss?
[Ari Fishman]: Given the conversation we just had, can we also get a model on changing the maximum, say, from 1.5 to 1.3 or 1.4? I understand that we probably feasibly can't go too low, but since they're going to be going above the minimum, thinking about the other places where we can move around. I don't know if that's for sure what we'll go for, but I would be interested in seeing that.
[Alicia Hunt]: So the model says how many units would be generated if this is built out to its max? The max parking with the maximum number of units, it assumes all the developers build to the lowest number of park, like the lowest parking spaces and the furthest setbacks that you build out as much as you can. The maximum parking is just something we put in because we thought it was a good idea in Medford, but does not impact production, Does that make sense?
[Ari Fishman]: It does. haven't drawn the connection to how the model works. But I would be interested in other people's thoughts about playing with the maximum. I really like the idea. I wonder if anyone else is interested in playing around with it.
[Peter Calves]: I also like the idea of maybe leaving the minimum where it is and taking the maximum down to some above 1, but still less than 1.5 number. just because maybe that's where we can trim parking a little bit, if not at the minimum level, then at the maximum level.
[Danielle Evans]: And then another thing that we could think about is, if we lower the parking and it's increasing the potential unit yield, we could shrink the zone to keep it all on the Wellington side of 28. And I don't know, because I feel like there could be pushback for parking with some of the neighborhood behind Cappy's. It was just a thought.
[Peter Calves]: I don't know. I think coming to you live from behind Cappy's, I think we have plenty of parking. But that's just me.
[Ari Fishman]: Maybe I'm being overambitious, but it seems like the spirit of the law is to kind of put in zoning to build a lot of housing. There is broad interest in Medford in building a lot of housing. I know that's simplifying things enormously, but just throwing it out there.
[Alicia Hunt]: So another thing that I've asked the consultant for, but she wasn't able to get it for tonight, is to do some visual modeling of what this would mean and what this could realistically mean. in terms of development. And I'm wondering if it would help this board at all for me to actually show the Google map of what's currently there, like the thing, and walk through what we think will actually get changed and redeveloped under this or what could, and what do we think is not changing in the next 30 years? I don't know if that's a helpful exercise. I kind of expect it's going to be for the city council.
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: I think it's going to be really helpful, yeah. One of my questions would be where exactly, like where do you think realistically development will occur? Because like station landing, I don't think much is going to change in station landing. A lot of the apartments behind Cappy's are pretty good as well. I see very low number of spots where development actually can happen. And one other question is, I know there are a lot of places which has smaller lots, but there could be instances where two lots, one person could buy two lots and maybe demolish single families' houses and make a bigger house there. Could that even be a possibility?
[Alicia Hunt]: So if the chair wants, I'll share my screen and walk through some of this. OK.
[Danielle Evans]: And to answer, sorry, just to answer Siraj's second question, so the model just speaks to existing parcels. If parcel lines change or are combined, then. they could potentially yield many more parcels because the model only looks at what's actually there, the constraints now. So there's nothing that would prevent merging parcels to- How about lowering the 10,000 square feet minimum to 8,000 maybe?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[Danielle Evans]: That's something we could look at.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will tell you that if you, there is a point at which you, no matter how small you make the parcel size, you can't actually put like a five-story building there unless it's a pencil, right? Like, although I am not an expert with those numbers, I think the model has actually some controls in it. So if you split it down to the parcel size of zero, it makes some assumptions about what your reasonable parcel size is. But that's a good question for Emily. So this is the whole area that we're talking about. And I'm going to zoom in a little more. And I'll tell you, so this is Wellington Station. And this here, we actually are getting this is what was recently rezoned. And there is a special permit site plan review application coming in for a multifamily building here. I don't have it in my head, but my gut, I think it's like 250 units and it's like five stories to go here. So that's actually happening regardless of the zoning. This is the whole MBTA area and its change depends on the MBTA and the air rights. And nothing can be built as of right on this entire area, no matter what the zoning is. Over here, this is stations landing. It's all new. It's not changing, but there is some space between stations landing and the MBTA here. That's a little less clear. So, like the Kelly's roast beef parcel. It's developable. We haven't heard anything. Nobody's approached us about it, but it's possible. There's a little bit of surface parking here, but I don't know that it's really enough to make a difference. I believe most of this may actually be owned by the MBTA. Wow, it's like popping up pictures for us. The CAPI site, that is completely in play. It's actually on the market and there is a housing developer that is very interested in building housing there. This is a relatively, so then these apartment buildings, I think I can actually do the 3D thing here. Hold on. Tilt view. See if I can do this the way I think I can do it. I'm going to try and tilt this so you can actually see. There we go. Brilliant. Isn't that brilliant? Now you can really see what I'm talking about. The station's landing area, that is not changing. Cappy's, it has potential. Some of this maybe, but this is owned by the MBTA. I think this is MBTA through here. And the Yacht Club, this is state-owned DCR. Sorry about the pop-ups, I don't know how to stop that. So the CAPI site is in play, but these apartment buildings, it's really hard to think that somebody's going to do something else there, but those apartment buildings actually exist right now between the area we've been talking about and all the single and two-family homes. It would be quite a feat for somebody to buy up a bunch of these two-family homes and put a bigger apartment building on it, which is why we haven't even bothered to include these in this space. This is a relatively new Wellington Place. It's a relatively new development. In theory, with the right rules, somebody could come in and put a building on their parking lot if they incorporated enough parking so that they didn't push Wellington Place out of compliance. Then is this section over here. So this is a new multifamily building. This is a pretty good shape commercial building that's been doing some renovations and all. We see these two commercial buildings back here actually as being a potential for either conversion to housing or this giant parking lot. Could they incorporate a housing development into some of these two parking lots? Maybe, not unheard of. I will just so you're aware, this up here is Rivers Edge. Rivers Edge has its own very weird zoning and regulation section. I'm not going to go into that tonight, but we left this out because we're not sure that we legally can mess with it right now. But that said, this is housing. This is housing, and they're planning to come in and do a development here as well. So we're actually talking to Rivers Edge and a developer about a housing project that they would like to bring in and file in the next couple of months to do housing there. This one space, they're reserving for some additional commercial space, but they're not prepared to start development yet. That's really all of it. The only other piece that's in play is where Danielle was talking about this section across the way here. This is an interesting parcel. It is all strip mall. I do believe there are some long leases in here and it might not be so easy to just redevelop it. We didn't even try to touch this up here because the reality is they all have long-term leases that require crazy, crazy amounts of parking. We've been dealing with this property owner as she's been bringing in new businesses into her her building. And we've talked about the fact that we'd like like a whole new, like, let's just redevelop the whole thing there. And basically, because of their current leases, that's not on the table. But we would talk to them about rezoning as part of a bigger rezoning effort for the city. Is that, oh, and in case anybody is wondering, people don't know, this little corner here, that's a state police station. So it's state-owned land. We can't touch it. Does that help? And the one other thing, we didn't include this one, which is actually in the residential zone. That's Bianco Sausage. So that's the one other. And if that, yeah, so we didn't include that parcel.
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: What about the green space behind Felsbury Plaza?
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, this, that, that is a fascinating parcel of land. It is privately owned man-made wetland. And now that it's been in existence for quite a while, we can't touch it. In fact, and if you look really closely, you can see here the circle and a dot and a circle and a dot and the line through it. It was AM radio towers. And back in the early, 1900s when they built AM radio towers, they had to surround them with water to reflect the radio signals off the water. And so that's where there are actually a lot of different storm drains that end up in this area that create this wetland. So it's protected. We have talked to some developers who would love to think big about redeveloping this whole area, including that, and then cleaning that area up and turning it into a beautiful wetland with boardwalks the way they have in Cambridge. But that would have to be part of a massive development to be able to afford something that cool. All right, any other questions?
[Peter Calves]: I think you answered this in there somewhere, but just how does this play with the air rights at Wellington Station, which would fall in this zone but might fall into the Wellington Station, our zoning doesn't apply area?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, so the whole air rights is over the land that is owned by the MBTA. The MBTA is not bound by our zoning. And apparently we can't regulate them with zoning at all. In order to build above it, we have to work through the whole air rights process where we have to provide the parking and be above their stuff. and work out that agreement. This would facilitate that because what we would probably want to do would now not be against zoning if it fell into all of these categories and stuff we just described. We've always been under the assumption though that at the point that this actually went out for our P, there was a developer that in the end we might need to do a planned development district in order to accommodate whatever the end results of all of that is. But it might make it easier, but I don't think you could do any of it as of right because of the weirdness of the property ownership.
[Peter Calves]: All right. Thanks.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: While you have that up, Alicia, I think I'm going to open it up for public comment in case the public has any questions. If the board doesn't have any questions at this point. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Danielle in the comments. You can also send an email to OCD at medford-ma.org. Individuals may have up to two minutes to provide comments. Before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. A reminder to all meeting participants to 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 city staff. Danielle, can you please manage the public comment queue and read any previously sent emails or letters that the students received?
[Danielle Evans]: I don't see any hands. I believe that we did receive some public comments.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: There was one, and the resident is present this evening. I don't know if you wanted to read his comment or have him read it, or I don't know how that works. William Nabari?
[Evangelista]: A thing where you can just say it yourself, I guess.
[Danielle Evans]: Okay, I see the opening it now.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Oh, and congratulations William on your marriage.
[William Navarre]: Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for recognizing me. I actually sent in a written comment, which I can pull up if you want me to, but I actually raised my hand to ask a different question. The incentive it says provided additional 20% additional affordable units above the required number. I'd argue that's pretty ambiguous because is that 20% of the required units? For example, you're required to put in 10 and then you put in 12. or is that 20% of the entire development? Like you're required to put in 10% and now you're gonna put in 30%. So I would argue that that language, maybe there's a legal, maybe a lawyer could tell us which it is, but I would argue that it should probably be understood by somebody who's just reading it.
[Danielle Evans]: So- I can tell you what the intention is. And we did talk about that. It's 20% or more than what is required. So if it's based on, if our current affordable housing requirements are approved by the state, then you would go by the table where, so say, of course I don't have this open right now. Yeah, so currently 10 to 24 lots or units is, you have to provide 10% as affordable. If you have 25 to 49 units, it's 13% and 80 or more, it's 15%. So say, so you would run the calculation and like, so say, you know, it's a hundred units. So that would mean they need to do 15%. So 15%, so they'd have to require So 15 units would be what they would need to provide. And so if they wanted to provide 18, which I think is 20%, then they could get a credit for that by providing more than is required. Okay, so I suppose- Yeah, the language is, I mean, that's the intent of the language. We did discuss this. We're like, okay, how do we word this? We're all ears if there's clear language.
[William Navarre]: Okay, maybe I'll send a written comment on that. Would you like to read my other written comment? I can find it here otherwise. I did send another, a second comment in advance of this. I don't know, I actually haven't pulled up.
[Danielle Evans]: I'm happy to read it if you'd like.
[William Navarre]: Okay, thank you. That'd probably be a little easier. Thanks.
[Danielle Evans]: So your first is about parking minimums. Parking minimums should be reduced to zero under the MBTA overlay. The overlay is intended to be a transit adjacent district. Promoting transit is also part of the purpose of the MBTA Communities Act. Promoting space for car storage also isn't consistent with our climate goals. and then two was setback buffers. Please consider allowing alternatives to setback buffers when a project under the overlay abuts a small residential building. The buffers tend to be non-play screen space that can counterproductively set apart the new buildings from the rest of the community in a way that isn't necessarily any more aesthetically pleasing than simply having a large building next door. I'm also concerned with the underlying attitude behind the idea that a large multifamily housing is a noxious use that needs to be buffered. A step back such as a three story limit within 10 feet of the lot line seems like an option that could be allowed while still preventing excessive shadowing.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Danielle or Alicia, do you want to address either of those questions by Ms. Navarre?
[Danielle Evans]: We did talk about the parking minimums already. Yes. I can look closer at the buffers. Just look at that again. Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will say that when we are looking at the buffers and all, we were also looking at the reality of the location and there's very little of the various small amount of this is up against. existing residential. And I guess the big question is do we, is it realistic to think that these existing buildings are actually going to get torn down because they actually provide buffer between any new development? and the currently existing residential. So honestly, we didn't look at that very hard just simply because we didn't think that in this specific case, there would be any issues. All right. Yeah, some of these are taller than we're actually even thinking of allowing. So we can see if we can see what the height of these.
[Danielle Evans]: And I think that was also to keep it from being a drive aisle or parking right next to someone's bedroom window or something. I don't think it's necessarily the residential aspect of it, but what is on the edges of a lot that might not be desirable, like the car exhaust, someone idling and warming the car up in the morning, which people do that.
[Evangelista]: This court's over here.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, there is one other resident who has his hand up.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, Mr. Matarazzo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you this evening. I just provided a comment in the chat. Just asking if the city had looked at dispersing the capacity throughout the city. I believe you answered it with the map. I know it's a challenge with the five-acre contiguous parcel requirement, but living in West Medford Square and visiting Medford Square frequently, I would encourage the city, as you have a new consultant on board, to look at ways to increase opportunities for housing that will support the businesses in these districts in the future. As you embark on this journey of the MBTA zoning, as new housing is infused into the Wellington Station area, I'm curious if there's going to be a correlation to transportation improvements as a result of this high density housing. We all love this spaghetti as we fly through the Felsway and the circle there. And are there opportunities to leverage this private investment to stimulate a transportation solution in the long term for this area? and or leverage the development to maybe get get the developer to pay for design planning to develop a solution and maybe leverage maybe some tip projects or monies from from the state mass works and or any other opportunities available to address this transportation issue today not just for vehicles but for the many pedestrians that would that live there today or that would call this area home in the future. Thank you for your work. I know this is challenging and I look forward to seeing this area infused with new growth. Thank you.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Mr. Matarazzo.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, do you want me to address one piece of this? Yes. Please. I think so. There's a lot of issues, but the biggest one is the Wellington Circle issue. Are you aware of the Wellington Circle study being done by MassDOT right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: I am loosely following it just, but I'm glad that's ongoing and anything the city can do to leverage the backs of the private development to help move this project forward would be a welcome addition to all residents in the city and the region.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Just because I want to be careful about not over saying, so I just dropped a link into the chat. So this study is, you can sign up to get study updates from the study directly, but they are moving this forward. There is a recommended solution for it. And it is prioritizing walkability, bikeability, and rapid bus to come through this area. So the solution that is being moved forward has no change to the level of service for vehicles, but does make significant improvements for walkability, bikeability, and buses to come through with the express bus lane in one of the directions. So that's the biggest thing and I think that I believe that that is going to be moving forward and onto the tip regardless of any development in the area which is kind of lovely because then we can take developer funding and put it into other efforts. So we did put in the zoning some language about the interior roads, so that if there were changes to the interior roads, how that would be handled. But that's the big issue. Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just, I think that's excellent. And so as you shift the focus of maybe mitigation dollars, other opportunities to explore maybe accessing the water and the access of maybe water shuttles to connect to Somerville, Medford Square and points beyond. There's a renewed focus on the Mystic and accessibility to water and transportation as an opportunity. We have all this water frontage again. something maybe to consider. I know there's been all types of interest in and aspirations of shuttles in the city, and with this density, it might be an opportunity to explore it further.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. So one of the difficulties with the water shuttle is that this the river does need to be a low wake. It's a low wake river because of the environment. So you can't have fast water transportation. We're also limited by the Amelia Earhart Dam. I'll just zoom out a little bit. And so this is the casino down here. And as part of the casino discussions, there was actually money put into an account to do work on water transportation. However, and the casino is willing and they were doing, they're doing shuttles, water taxis to Boston. The difficulty is because of the dam, none of their water taxis would fit through the Amelia Earhart locks. And so anything that is going to pass this point in the river has to be a fairly small boat and they were going to have to be made custom made boats, which suddenly made this an extremely expensive proposition to have custom made boats that could come up to Medford but then might be too small for a lot of the main part of the harbor. So really we're only looking at getting to Somerville's assembly row and station landing upstream with it, which suddenly made it not really a viable commercial enterprise. One thing that's been suggested, and I'm just going to throw it out there for people to ruminate on, is the idea of blue bikes for canoes. So right now you can actually rent canoes and kayaks here in Somerville and then upstream just past Medford Square and it is the same company. I don't know that they have one-way service but this was an idea that maybe there could be other locations that you could rent and then drop off boats up and down the river and would that be a Fascinating, interesting commercial idea. So that's being floated by staff at the Mr. Rivership Association.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that idea. I like it too. I take it downstream, not upstream.
[Alicia Hunt]: Maybe we can get some other people to bring the boats back upstream sometimes, right?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: There's one thing I think I should mention, and only because it's a public hearing and Mr. Matarazzo brought it up as far as leveraging private development. I just want to make a public disclaimer that myself being a senior program manager for the MassWorks Infrastructure Program, I am in no way consulting with the city on leveraging state grants administered by the Executive Office of Economic Development. Just wanted to put that out there. And also, Mr. Matarazzo, congratulations to you and the town of Andover. Bye.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. Thank you very much.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Do we have any other public comments? Okay. I'm going to close the public comment section. And I'm going to come back to the board and see if you want to deliberate or just further discuss the drive zoning ordinance amendment. I'm not sure that we're prepared to vote or if even the city is asking for a vote this evening. So there is a couple of things that they want to get ironed out with Emily Enns, which is Emily Keyes Enns, who is the consultant for this. But if there's any other questions that we want to give the city now, or we can email, But I guess we should get this date certain on the board if that's on the table.
[Alicia Hunt]: You're welcome to decide to vote on this tonight and recommend your decisions, but we're expecting you want to take two meetings.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I think that would be fair. This is just me as secretary trying to put together a resolution. Do we need to have a motion to continue? Or does that have anything attached to it? Or can we just motion to continue and then kind of hold that we've been talking about these things and that we'll come back on either the 29th or the 6th new information or additional information.
[Alicia Hunt]: So if you don't mind me answering, there are two things. One is a simple motion to table it to a date certain is fine for that piece of it. For our staff sanity, it doesn't need to be part of the motion, but we would like to make sure that we are all on the same page about what are the things we're asking from the consultant, what is it that we're looking to change just so that we make sure that you get what you need before or at the next meeting and there isn't any confusion.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so I'm trying to figure out what my marching orders are. Was the consensus to keep the minimum at 0.8 or was it 0.8 spaces per unit with a five-story baseline height? Or was there desire to lower that to 0.5 and then lowering the height to four stories? What would you like us to present you two options?
[Ari Fishman]: I think descriptively what we talked about was essentially seeing the two options. Would that drive you all up a wall?
[Danielle Evans]: No, I don't think so. I think because I do think with lowering the parking minimums, then I do think that we have to lower the height so that we can make sure that folks would take advantage of those incentives. But they would still be the max of nine stories. I feel like I don't have any like hard data to let me know what developers would seek for incentives. I feel like the market is always moving. It's like interest rates. It's costs of disposing of earth. So many different things that I feel like if we keep the baseline low, Because maybe we'll get more uptake of the incentives with the deeper affordability and things like that. I don't know what you all think.
[Peter Calves]: I think that seeing the, in terms of concrete things to bring to the next meeting at a date certain, would be to see that, parking minimum, two options with the 0.8 and the 0.5 with the five stories versus four stories. I think just to kind of spell out what we would be looking to see. And the other thing I have written down is the parking maximum. I believe we said that wouldn't materially move the model. So it doesn't, in terms of production of units, which is really what this particular ordinance is about, it's not something we need to look at.
[Ari Fishman]: But I would like us to look at it, if you can bring what that language Would there be anything other than us just saying instead of 1.5, 1.3? Or whatever number we arrive at, I'm not saying that's what we will definitely arrive at.
[Danielle Evans]: And I could see what that looks like. So say if it was like, how many units do we think? I'd have to go through. I could send you guys the model. for you to play around with on your own. And you can kind of adjust things. It's really complicated. But if you have the desire to look at it. Because it goes down parcel by parcel and spits out how many units each parcel will produce. And so I could figure out. If the max parking was lowered, what is the effective reduction in parking spaces that could conceivably be built? Maybe lowering the parking maximum would encourage the creation of a parking structure that could be used by more folks. I don't know. OK.
[Peter Calves]: I mean, I think I would agree with Ari that at least that's something I'd be interested in seeing, if moving the parking maximum just for sake of argument or for sake of presentation of the data from 1.5 to 1.3 would move things meaningfully. And if it doesn't or is inconclusive, that's fine.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: The city of Somerville has parking caps. They have parking maximums on their line, on the orange line for Assembly Square. I wonder how, but I guess that's more car dependent over there because it's a huge commercial area. I'm just wondering. Destination. Yeah. But even that, with that, they have parking caps. Yeah, I guess. I'm not so much concerned with the maximum, the parking maximum, but if we can decrease it a little bit somewhere. Then I guess I would be interested in knowing what the benefits are if there are any, but if there's not a significant incremental change, then. I guess just so that the board is able to vote with confidence to supply that information, Danielle, so that board members can just look at it. Okay, so what... And I guess we can decide on the next date, and then between now and... Now and then we can send you other questions via email.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, and just make sure when you're emailing to not copy other board members because that would be a violation of open meeting law. Yeah. Feel free to call me on the phone, email me. You can ask as many questions as you want to staff. Yeah. Do you all feel like you need another meeting before the 6th? Or do you think that this is kind of small stuff?
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I mean, I would be interested to hear the rest of the board's opinion. But I personally, I don't think this is as much to rise to the level that we need another meeting other than the 6th. I think this is stuff we could get more information on the 6th and pretty simply vote on it on the 6th.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, any questions or suggested edits, as I agree with Peter, any questions or suggested edits should be able to be ironed out prior to, without another meeting.
[Ari Fishman]: I'm inclined to agree.
[Peter Calves]: Listen to the chair, do we need a motion then?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Do we need a motion to for a day starting to 12, to continue to 12, 6, 2023? Okay. I'm going to start in alphabetical order here. Sally Akiki? Yes. Sharad Bajraj Sharir?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Peter Cowles?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari Fishman? Yes. Pam Mariowski? Yes.
[Alicia Hunt]: And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm a yes. Sorry, for the minutes, I didn't catch who seconded that motion.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I don't really care, just pick a name. I second the motion. Thank you. Was it? Okay. I know PETA made the motion, right?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. The next item is approval of minutes. Is there a motion to approve the draft minutes from 9.6 and 9.20 collectively? Are there any edits or anything? I motion to approve. Both 960 and 920?
[Evangelista]: Both 960 and 920.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Is there a second motion?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: I second it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: All right. Roll call, Sally Akiki? Yes. Sharad Basracharia?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Peter Kiles?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari Fishman? Yes. Pam Marianski? Yes. And myself, Jackie McPherson. Yes. So the next item, miscellaneous or any other updates that the city wants to provide or the board wants to discuss? Besides looking forward to I-12-6 meeting for the continuation of the zoning amendment. Danielle, is there anything coming down the pipeline that we need to know about?
[Danielle Evans]: that might be coming to the board? Yes. Let's see. The pit on Salem Street. I expect to get a application from them at some point. They're revising the plans. They were working on different assumptions and we had to tell them that they had interpreted the zoning incorrectly. So they're fixing it and it'll be much better. Also, I'm expecting plan development, special permit and site plan review for Burden Bio, Walkland Court, and 100 Winchester. Those should be coming in. So we have three plan development districts that have been approved. So they'll be working through their process.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And there's a possibility that we'll be listening to them all at the same, because they're out at the same time.
[Danielle Evans]: I hope that they can be staggered.
[Alicia Hunt]: And it was just implied by that. Wachling Court's planned development district was passed unanimously by the city council last night. And by unanimous, I mean 6-0. One councillor has been absent. And then there's the Criterion Project at MBTA. They definitely are planning to come in with their permit application in the next two to three weeks. Also, just as an FYI, so some of you may remember the project that we were calling the pit, the gravel pit, which was the blasting over by the high school. And this board approved the subdivision, which allowed the road to be built and for the retaining wall to be built and for the parcels, 10 parcels to be created. If the developer decides to develop each parcel individually as a single family house, which has been his plan all along, then that would not come in front of you. If he decided to, as one developer at one time, build all 10 houses, or six or more of the houses, that would come in front of this board as a development. Right now I actually have in our permit software there is a building permit for one single family house on that road and I just wanted you all to be aware that as long as they are in fact building them as individual single family houses one at a time or even fewer than six at a time, they do not come in front of this board for site plan review. I feel like you might as members of the CD board get questions about that, or you might wonder about it yourself. They do come in front of our office, but I have very limited oversight in what I can shape as part of that process under our current zoning.
[Danielle Evans]: How many lots was that?
[Alicia Hunt]: They're 10.
[Danielle Evans]: And that was before our inclusionary.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, but again, if they build them one at a time.
[Danielle Evans]: It's written in, there's no segmentation.
[Alicia Hunt]: OK. Yeah, but it doesn't apply. It's not applying to build 10 houses right now. They're applying to build one.
[Danielle Evans]: It would have been at the time of the subdivision.
[Alicia Hunt]: OK.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, but this is before that. So that situation wouldn't happen again.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's a theory. If anybody doesn't know what we're talking about, we'll just have to discuss it over drinks sometime because that was a project.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: The long-term blasting over there at Windsor Street?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. Yeah. If any of you are familiar with this from any other communities, we actually don't have any regulation. in the city of Medford regulating blasting because previously it was never considered cost effective. And so we never, nobody ever tried to do real blasting. We are concerned that other developers will do it again. So it's on our to-do list, but not so high on it to find regulations on blasting from another community and adopt them. But if anybody wants to recommend some, please send them our way.
[Danielle Evans]: But we can always add that as a condition. No blasting.
[Alicia Hunt]: No blasting. So there was that. Oh, and I did want to mention that I always feel like you should get a hiring update from us. We are doing a second round interview for housing planner. We're trying to hire for that. It is hard to hire. And we I actually am asking our admin to set up interviews for economic development planner. We had an economic development director interview that was amazing and the person decided to go a different way. So if anybody want knows anybody who might want to leave their current role and come to Medford as an economic development director, please put the word out. We are still firing.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Felicia, I feel like I know that you use mass planners here and there, but I don't know. I guess I feel loyal to the state that I'm not supposed to be, like, doing all this advertising for the city. But I feel like if you use that, there's tons of people that will see it. And I know that you don't get enough chance, but they're always talking about it amongst themselves. The planners are talking about it across the state when you use that platform, the mass planners platform.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, we have to be better about that. I feel like we haven't... posted there recently?
[Alicia Hunt]: We haven't posted in a while. I will post the economic development director position there now. The planner one, I have three people we're going to interview. That doesn't mean if anybody knows somebody amazing, tell us. Usually when we start interviewing, we kind of stop looking at new resumes.
[Danielle Evans]: We're fun to work with. We're a fun office. I promise.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No, I definitely can, I say it verbally, but I feel like, I don't know if I put it on my LinkedIn, like my friends hire and I don't know, I just, I don't think there's a conflict of interest there, but it's just, it just feels weird.
[Alicia Hunt]: or I don't know. Here's the thing. What if you did it for other communities, too? You don't have to post just ours. That's true. Then it's not a conflict. It's just to get more people working in the government sector. Are you linked to people in the private world who want to come make the world more secure?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. The economy's a little shaky. Yeah.
[Ari Fishman]: And you guys have posted on the Tufts UEP and GIS job listings?
[Alicia Hunt]: We have, not in a while. I definitely posted the planner ones there. I could not tell you definitively if we circulated the director position there.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Oh, that would be huge, only because as an alum, I get those updates all the time. And I can tell you that if I do know of anyone, that's one of the first places I look. Because UEP is really good about doing a blast for alums. Yeah. For current and especially alums.
[Alicia Hunt]: You have to ask them, Danielle. You're an alum.
[Danielle Evans]: Do you have to be an alum to know?
[Alicia Hunt]: I can tell. They all know me at UEP. They would post it for me.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Just being with the city, that's your end.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm literally drafting an email to Mass Planners that starts with, we're a fun office to work with, and we're doing a lot of very exciting projects here in Medford.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, it just wouldn't be great only because I keep seeing different communities go by me every day. So every time like, I wonder if Medford's using that because I'm like, Oh, Lexington is looking for something. Oh, Burlington's looking for something. It's like, where's Medford? It's like Medford's not saying anything.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I think the problem is that we advertised and then I just got tired. Yeah. Oh, we get it. All right. Okay, so All right, anything else? That's all that we have. So this is where Ari comes in.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: This is Ari's favorite part. I'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn. Ari, not to put you out there like that, because I guess it's probably at this point, especially with the long meet, and it's probably everyone, so I don't mean to throw you out there. Sure, I'll present the motion to adjourn. Is there a second?
[Peter Calves]: Seconded. Okay.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: All right. Sally Akiki? Yes. Okay. Chirag Bajracharya?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Peter Cowles?
[O1CMBj7JDes_SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari Fishman? Yes. Pam Marianski? Yes. And myself, Jackie McPherson. Thank you, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone that celebrates. You on the sixth.
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