AI-generated transcript of Community Development Board 11-10-22

[Amanda Centrella]: Hey David I think we're, most of us are in so I pass the torch.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you. Good evening. Welcome to tonight's Medford Community Development Board meeting. That's for November 10 2022. As always, I'll begin with some obligatory messages for you. 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 107 of the Acts of 2022. A reminder that anyone who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by accessing the link that was included in the meeting agenda posted on the city of Medford website. If despite our best efforts, we are unable 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. If you are interested in additional materials, please know that all project materials for the board are available on the city's website, the easiest way to find them is to navigate to the departments and boards tab of the main page, click through, look alphabetically for Community Development Board, click through and you'll find the materials for tonight or for other meetings in the future as well. We'll start with a roll call of the members in attendance. And my name is Dave Blumberg. Welcome again. Deanna Peabody.

[Unidentified]: Present. Tyson Andresen. Present. Christy Dowd. Present. Emily Hedeman. Emily, do I see you? Present. Okay, sorry. Sorry, I was on mute. No problem. And George Fisher. George, we see you out there.

[Amanda Centrella]: He may have had to step away for a second.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Well, we know George is with us. Vice-chair Jackie Furtado is not here tonight. And just for the record, Emily will be leaving at some point in the proceedings this evening. So we'll make note of that at this time. Okay, so we have one primary item on our agenda tonight. And that is site plan review of 121 Riverside Ave. So let me go to my next obligatory step which is to read the public notice to you. Metro Community Development Board shall conduct a meeting on November 10 2022 at 6pm. We assume remote video conferencing relative to an application for site plan review submitted by metric housing authority to increase the number of apartments from 200 to 2000 222. on lot 010-121 Riverside Avenue in Medford. Project is subject to a site plan review per the city of Medford zoning ordinance, which states the residential projects containing six or more units, which this certainly qualifies for, including conversions of existing dwellings constitute a quote major project as defined in the ordinance requiring site plan review by the community development board. So with that out of the way, let me turn this over to the proponents. Who would like to take the floor and start the presentation to the board tonight?

[Ciccariello]: Sure. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for your time. I'm Gabriel Ciccarello. I'm the Director of Modernization and Procurement with the Medford Housing Authority. I know, should we do some introductions first, or do we want to? Should we let everyone introduce themselves, or do you want to just get into the presentation?

[David Blumberg]: Well, the floor is yours. We always like to get right into the presentation, but if you'd like to have folks say hello real quick.

[Ciccariello]: Yeah, well, let me have at least everyone who's going to be presenting this evening just say hello. Dan, do you want to start?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Hi, my name is Dan Chen, architect, DH plus A. Welcome.

[Steve Sawyer]: Good evening, Steve Sawyer, GM to the civil engineer.

[David Blumberg]: Hi.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm Curtis Puncher, Ground Landscape Architects.

[David Blumberg]: Hello.

[Unidentified]: And I'm Ben Wilson, BHSA Architect. Welcome. Great.

[Ciccariello]: So will we have the ability to, so we have a presentation for you for, can we give Dan Chen the ability to share the presentation?

[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, should be, should be all set.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have a choice. Try share.

[Unidentified]: Sure. Got it. Great.

[Ciccariello]: So as I stated before, I'm Gabe Ciccariello, the director of modernization procurement with the Medford Housing Authority. I've been in public housing for about 20 years. 15 of those years were with the Somerville Housing Authority, and I've been acting as a director of modern procurement for Medford for the last five years. We are here before you tonight regarding the proposed comprehensive and transformative modernization of the salt and salt building. Dan, if you wanna go to the next slide. So then a little bit about the housing authority for those that aren't familiar with what the Medford Housing Authority is and what we do. We are a local housing authority established under Mass General Law 121B, and we provide housing and related services within the city of Medford. And we're governed by an executive director who serves at the pleasure of our five member board of commissioners. And our housing authority portfolio consists of, we have 840 deeply affordable public housing units within eight developments all in the city of Medford. Six of our developments are elderly disabled developments. The other two are family developments. We administer just over a thousand section eight vouchers also. 987 of those are housing choice vouchers and 15 of Massachusetts rental vouchers. So what is Salt and Stall? It was built in 1968. It's our flagship building. It's located at 121 Riverside Ave, right across the street from City Hall and highly visible from Route 93. Anybody that drives 93, you see this building, you can't miss it. It's an 11 story high rise that's been owned and operated by the Medford Housing Authority. So it's currently 200 existing units of elderly and disabled federal public housing 180 of our units of one bedroom currently in 20 or two bedroom units and. Our main administrative function and maintenance function all works out of 121 Riverside out of Salt and Stall. We have an administrative force of about 30 full-time employees. We also have a fair amount of part-time employees and resident coordinators that assist the Medford Housing Authority with their day-to-day function. As I stated, our maintenance function also works out of Salt and Stall. We have about a 15-person full-time maintenance crew. And Edgeley Hall, which is the Medford Housing Authority's largest community center, is also located at 121 Riverside Ave. Not only serves our residents, it serves other Medford Housing Authority residents within our portfolio and also the greater community. It gets a lot of use. We hold things from flu clinics, like I said, not only for our residents, but for the greater Medford community, COVID clinics, food programs, exercise classes. So it's a very busy building. It gets a lot of use. And as I said, the community room serves a great function to our residents and also the greater Medford community. So the current building conditions, as you can see in these pictures, the building from far away looks okay. But when you get up close, it's far from okay. So as you can see in these pictures, the majority of the brick is scaled and pitted. We've had to vacate several units because of severe water intrusion. So the building's structural beams need to be reinforced. The exterior masonry wall, as we say, is severely deficient, has cracks and leaks. The ventilation system is poor. The plumbing and electrical is all original to the building. The fire protection systems are not functioning properly and need to be upgraded to just get up to today's code, to be code compliant. The unit bathrooms, they have bathtubs in them, which are not great for accessibility for elderly disabled people. And the kitchen's in poor condition and they warrant replacement. The common area corridors are not properly ventilated, as you stated, and they do not meet ADA requirements. And a portion of the units need to be upgraded to become fully ADA accessible and code compliant. But with this transformative kind of modernization, all of the units that we're going to be modernizing will be, we're getting rid of the tubs to put the showers so our residents and future residents can age in place better. I'm sorry about the dog. So what is proposed? So we just signed a guaranteed maximum with our seam at risk contractor for $103.2 million. As you can see, we're looking to replace, you know, for it to be transformative, replacing the exterior of the facade with a new building envelope and new windows. We're going to be modernizing the unit interiors, bathrooms, kitchen finishes, and common spaces, and the replacement of the obsolete plumbing and electrical systems. And we're also looking to bring central air conditioning and heating and modernizing the elevators. And with new residential amenities, upgrading the community spaces and outdoor roof deck for the residents. We're adding fire protection upgrades and installing a fire command center. And by messing around with the unit configurations a little bit in the unit layouts, we're gonna be able to add 22 new deeply affordable units within the building. We're not adding square footage, but just messing around with the unit configurations, we're gonna be able to go from 200 units to 222 units. And so the project timeline. So as I stated, we just entered into our GMP with our contractor. Our financial closing is anticipated to happen before the end of January and construction will start soon thereafter. So early February, we are looking to start construction. With the construction anticipated end date, hopefully May, it'd be June, 2025. We're looking at a 30 month construction duration. And so for our existing residents that are on site, the resident relocation process. So we're looking to get up to 70 vacant units during construction. That's not going to happen right away. It's going to be a phased ease kind of progression. But we're hoping by maybe the summer or the fall of 2023, we get up to 70 vacant units. And we've been working for the last year with our residents on temporary relocation options, and all residents were presented with three options. One of the options is to move within the building, because I stated it's gonna be phased construction, starting from the top of the building and working our way down. So we're looking to vacate the top two to three floors to start, and there'll be residents living in the floors below. And so there's three options to stay within the building, to move to another MHA elderly disabled property, or to take a mobile Section 8 voucher. And all residents have the right to return to self-install when construction is complete. And kind of our processes are how we communicate with our residents. We have a variation of methods. We have robocalls that are translated in multiple languages. We send out regular newsletters. We have hard copy notices that are also translated that are dropped off at resident stores. We have monitors in our lobbies, like large kind of television screen type monitors. where we post notices, we update residents, you know, there's just lots of information. It's a screen that scrolls, so the residents are always kept comprised of what's going on, not only in their building, but in other Medford Housing Authority properties and other things going on within the community. I'm going to pass this on now to Steve Sawyer. Thank you.

[Steve Sawyer]: Good evening. Steve Sawyer with GM2. Amanda, would it be possible, sometimes it's easier for me when I present the site to have control and point and zoom and stuff. Would it be okay if I could take over and share my screen or is that a problem?

[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, no, that should work just fine.

[Unidentified]: Okay. Does Dan? Okay, perfect. Here we go. All set? Yeah. Okay, great.

[Steve Sawyer]: Okay, so here's our site, Riverside Ave to the north, Interstate 93 to the east, Mystic River to the south, Clippership Drive, I believe there's an apartment building to the west. Currently, the site access is an enter only and exit only, counterclockwise circulation around the site. Well, as part of the building improvements, we're going to be reconfiguring the parking and improving the access, the vehicle access on the property. We are going to maintain the two curb cuts. Those are not going to be changed. There is currently a front drop-off area that is going to be improved with a tabletop area flush, so it's all flush entering into the building here, ADA compliant with no curb. There's also going to be added a 20-foot wide fire lane here in the front. It would be a paver surface, so decorative and appealing, but it provides access for fire truck. There is a mountable curb here, so the normal drivers would know not to drive over it, but it's easily mountable for a fire truck, fire apparatus. Also, as far as the parking, the parking now is on the outs. It parks to the right. We're going to be shaving this down a bit. We don't need the width. maintaining parking here. We'll be centralizing some parking down to the south. As you can see, actually what I did here, you can see in the red, the slight faint red, that's the existing parking and curb line. So currently the circulation loops way down towards the river and runs back. We're going to tighten that up, keep it tight to the building, better access for fire, more more centralized access to the building. We are adding a rear building drop-off area here at that location. This large parking field here is existing. We are expanding in a couple locations very slightly. That's not going to change. And then there'll be sidewalk improvements and pedestrian circulation improvements. I think that Curtis will address and Ben and Curtis will address later as far as the overall pedestrian circulation. And when one of the comments from the engineering was about ADA along Riverside, currently these have tactile and looks like they've been replaced recently. The exit though, those are not compliant. And we'll be bringing those up, bringing those compliant as part of that project. And as far as any of the frontage, any of our frontage that's non-compliant will be working, we'd be making those improvements to bring it in ADA accessible compliance.

[Unidentified]: Let's see. This isn't good. My, my fingers should say boom. Just bear with me a second, hopefully it'll come back. Oh, that's not good. Hold on, just bear with me, I'm gonna reboot my Adobe, sorry.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you want, I can share while you talk.

[Steve Sawyer]: Yeah. I was trying to get to my next slide. Hold on a second.

[Unidentified]: All right. Well, I guess that ain't going to work, unfortunately.

[Steve Sawyer]: Okay, all right. So, as far as stormwater, as you can see, so what we're doing here on the property on the. On the East side on the East side, I'm sorry on the West side on the entry side, we've pulled the parking back. A bit the edge of payment back currently there's just it's only. catch basins at a daisy chain that pretty much fire the water right out into Mystic River untreated. And what we're going to do, if you zoom in, you can see that the heavy green is the new drainage. So we're providing new deep sump catch basins along at the entry. And then you can see there's a new catch basin on the west curb line. The left curb line is a new catch basin. So what we're doing is these catch basins will be a deep sump that removes the heavy sediment, and we're tying into the existing drainage as a 15-inch concrete pipe that runs down along the west property line as we work towards the Mystic River. So that you'll see if you work down a little further down and see the next catch basin on as you work, work down South work to the South. So, that catch catch base will be offline. There'll be another catch base and offline deep some for sediment removal. At the very end, you'll see there's a, the last structure that's gonna be added will be a, they call it a swirl particle separator. It's enhanced removal. That'll be installed prior to the water being discharged to a new, to the swale. Currently, that's a paved swale. It doesn't provide any treatment. It just shoots the water right out into Mystic Ave, I mean, into Mystic River. untreated. So this is going to be a vegetated swale. It'll direct the water into this now, into this bioretention area here, where the water will be held, treated, infiltrated, and then during the larger events, it'll be directed back out to the swale and then into the Mystic River. This system is going to be designed, is designed to treat all of the pavement, full treatment for the paved areas. I think, as you're aware, there'll be DCRs working to put a trail along the top of the bank, and we'll be tying in, they're going to be making some improvements where the stormwater ties, where the stormwater flows into the river, we'll be tying into their improvements. On the east side, you can see there's another large basin that's going to take the eastern half of the site. Most of that site's all sheet flow, flows over the parking through a swale and then into that basin at the bottom of the site. We will be installing a new overflow structure that will convey the water into the Mystic River. Once again, All of the paved areas will be removing the full 80% TSS removal and recharge of stormwater back into the ground. One thing of note, I think one of the comments that Owen had mentioned was resource areas. I believe that you may be aware we're actually in front of the Conservation Commission now. So they really delved in detail into the stormwater. We did get some comments from conservation. We are responding to those comments. These systems will be updated. These systems will be updated to address their comments. They won't change. Maybe they might grow slightly. But for the most part, they're going to remain in both of the locations and operate as operate as shown in the intent on this plan. I think in the comments, Owen, the city engineer, agreed with the approach, but he said prior to building permit, he'd be looking for detailed stormwater calcs, which actually were submitted to the Conservation Commission. I'll be submitting revised calculations probably on Monday, and I'm going to forward him a copy for review so that he'll be reviewed concurrently with the Conservation Commission. And as far as the water utility up and off of Riverside, we're going to be providing, you can see the blue there's going to be a new fire and potable water. One of the comments was that we couldn't do tapping sleeves. Owen asked for a triple gate, that has been added here. What it is, you add a gate on the existing line to the left and to the right, so you can isolate if there's issues left or right of our system, the building can stay in service. One of the items that Owen had brought up, was providing a looped water system around the entire building for fire service. We are not providing that. That was one of the comments that we disagreed with. Currently, there's four hydrants at the front of the building, and there's fire connections all around the building. And this design, the access, and the fire connections have been reviewed and vetted by the Medford Fire Department. And they're on board, or they're OK with the design as is. And at this time, we don't see the need to go through the expense of looping a water line around the entire building. That would be a tremendous expense that's not necessary at this time. I think that I'm trying to keep it brief. I think I'll stop my presentation now and then take questions at the end.

[SPEAKER_03]: Great, thank you.

[Steve Sawyer]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_03]: Next is landscape architect Curtis.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, thank you. So the main sort of landscape interventions here are improving sort of the building entry points. creating some amenity space for the residents and as well as the Riverside area. And I'll sort of dive into each of these after the overview. So overall, the permeability of the site is being increased from 78,000 square feet of permeable area currently to over 80,000. or from 42% of the site area to 43% of the site area. We are planting, so we're, of the pervious space, most of it currently is lawn. It's a lot of lawn, and there's some mulch beds. There may have been planting in the past, but there's a few sort of scraggly yews that are yew shrubs that are left So we're putting in over 15,000 new square feet of planting beds. We're adding 53 trees to the site. Many of these will be beside paved surfaces, so we're targeting that heat island effect, and those trees that are adjacent to paved surfaces will have structural soils, so we are going for healthy, large trees that will survive the long term. The focusing on the building entries, a lot of the improvements are aimed at accessibility and drainage. The current condition, many of the approaches to the building were not accessible. They're not compliant with, or at least not compliant with ADA or MAAB. Either non-compliant slopes or residents have to navigate drive aisles. to get to the building entries. So most of the building, the two main building entries at the front and at the back will be flush conditions. So residents can be dropped off and they don't have to navigate a curb or even a ramp to get to the door. It's a flush condition from the drop off to the door. Um, also at these sites, um, you know, that's where we're concentrating our planting. We also have, uh, seating for residents, both fixed seating and, um, movable seating, um, or, or sort of tables and chairs. So, you know, we're, we're seeing these sites as maybe opportunities for residents to socialize outside to gather. Um, And speaking of gathering, we also have a small sort of resident amenity space adjacent to the Edgeley Hall. So the idea is that this sort of community space can open up and still outside, we're gonna have outdoor grills there, some more seating opportunities. So improvements for residents and users of that space. Moving on to the Riverside area, We are moving the bocce courts, which are a city of Medford amenity. They are being moved closer to the river. We're gonna maintain the dedicated parking spots for the bocce courts. They will be reconstructed as per the originally constructed size for the courts. We are adding seating. Um, we'll offer opportunities for seating around that site where we are concentrating, uh, planting around the bocce courts, some trees to, to get some shade. And, and really we see these bocce courts as we're, we're tying it in to the, the clipper ship connection path along, uh, along the river. So we see it at the site as sort of a node along this path where, um, users of the path will hopefully stop and stay and visit the site and use the bocce courts. And I also want to note that within the 200 foot sort of buffer of the boundary, the vast majority of the planting is native. We do have a small clump of hydrangeas that we're not married to. If people have an issue with that, we're happy to change it out. But most of the planting there, 95% of the planting is native shrubs and grasses mainly. I too want to keep it brief. I'm happy to respond to any questions going forwards.

[SPEAKER_03]: Great, thank you. And I will move to the building with Ben Wilson.

[SPEAKER_15]: Hi, thanks again for having all of us. I'm gonna address primarily the pedestrian circulation and how we're sort of treating the site and the pedestrian connectivity. And then I'll get into some of the exterior envelope issues. Next. So starting with the site, this is the existing site plan. And I just want to point out a couple of the major obstacles that we came across when we started working on this project. almost a year ago. The first issue was really the biggest and most obvious was the access to the maintenance facility that is operating out of this building, which is in that corner, that Northeast corner. And all of the access, vehicle access into that area is from this larger paved area to the right. And that created a situation where there's a lot of conflict between traffic and pedestrians coming from any of the parking areas. And so that was our first sort of, oh no, what do we do? The second one is at the front of the building, one of the big challenges that Medford Housing put in front of us is that this existing drive loop here that looks like and should be a nice functional driveway for drop-off type of access is also the fire lane. And so there was a real conflict. Every time an emergency vehicle comes in here, it would create a backup of traffic circulation and people double parking and all of a sudden it's, a log jam. So that was an area we wanted to address. One of the third item that I'll just kind of mention is that the southern portion of the parking that extends out past the botchy courts and creates this loop around sort of an outer loop of parking. It was felt that that aspect of the parking one removed vehicles away from the building but it also creates a buffer between the residents and the waterfront amenity. So we're trying to create more of an expansion of the site outward that way, that direction. So moving to our proposed plan, addressing the maintenance vehicle problem, that was easy. We convinced the housing authority to move their maintenance department somewhere else. So that was a relatively simple fix, and that the space that was the full maintenance department is now mechanical equipment and a smaller building specific maintenance, which accesses off of the driveway instead of the pedestrian area. The parking is all now, circulating so that it feeds to identifiable walkways. One of the other problems from the original plan is there was no very clearly defined, unless they really painted out pathways, but there was a lot of sort of open no man's land of asphalt, and we're trying to create more of a identifiable circulation that really could be more functional. And you can see Steven mentioned the passage past the west side of the building where we've flipped the driveway and the parking. So now the parking is on the building side of the drive aisle. And that is also the area where there's an entry into the administrative wing. You can see in that corner. So their administrative offices are accessed from that point and the parking then serves for that sort of dual purpose. Another sort of simple benefit that we gained out of the parking modifications is that the nine spaces that correspond with the botchy courts are actually adjacent to the botchy courts instead of across the drive while. So we're kind of trying to get things to be more defined and isolated. The two entry areas of the building, we really do have sort of a double entrance on this building and they're connected on the inside of the building through the lobby space, but the entry from the north, we're trying to reduce to bus traffic and foot traffic from town, as well as the use of Uber and drop-offs. And then we've emphasized on the south side of the building, a more resident oriented, this is where your front door is as a resident using, that has vehicle access. Another drop off was mentioned by both Steven and Curtis, the flush paving tabletop access to it. And The last thing I'll comment on in terms of circulation and pedestrian flow is the connection from the public right-of-way to the right-of-way of the riverfront. And we've maintained a sort of a continuous walkway surface that on the east side of the building, there were dense pointing, that access, and it's a nice wide, very public kind of sidewalk that accesses from the public right-of-way of Riverside Drive Avenue to the past the bocce courts and to the Clippership Trail. with a couple of separate spurs to try and tie in some additional options as walkers might prefer. So pedestrian-wise, I think that's really where we tried to target it. This is just a slightly different view, giving you a sense of the resident entry area with the drop-off and the maintenance buildings, and you can see it kind of projects out into that space. And so we really been able to, and the current maintenance use of that building with the beam being specific to the building will be quite light. So again, you know, the circulation of the parking can channel on sidewalk and a simple crosswalk into the building area. And I think next slide, this slide is really just the ground level of the building to show you how the two different entries the South side and the North side really sort of tied together into a common space, trying to sort of bring that outdoor public sense or community sense into that center area of the building in the elevator and mail area. And the South wing on that you can see is the Edgerly Hall spaces that are multi-use type of spaces that's quite a large space and has a fairly significant capacity. And before you go, Dan, I'll just quickly comment on the parking. We started with 153 parking spaces and the And there's a breakdown in the presentation here. of what was resident, what's office. So existing, we had 70 resident users, 27 visitors. The bocce courts were a lot of nine spaces. Office and business for the building itself was eight spaces. And then staff for the Medford Housing Authority was 33 spaces and that left nine unassigned spaces. And of all of those, 12 of those are accessible. So moving to the new, and was I just reading the new plan, we actually picked up a few parking spaces by some more efficient use of area and everything. So we're up by seven parking spaces. But as was mentioned, we're adding 22 units to the building. So we're adding 22 apartments at a 0.5, ratio, we are looking to add 11 spaces required. So what that does is it reduced, well, we maintain the 70 listed here because that's the number of residents that actually have the vehicles that are being driven at the time, but the code required spaces, we're about six spaces over what's required by code at this point. So moving on from the plan, I think we can address other pedestrian questions that you may have. I think I covered the main points. There were a number of questions related to how we approach the exterior of the building, the envelope modernization. Go on to the first slides. What I'll start with here is just kind of a recap of the challenges. I think there was a couple of comments made about thinking that the condition of the building was really pretty good. And as we got into the project, there's some significant issues of, we knew there were problems with water and sometimes that can be pretty easily addressed. But the extent of the water problems is pretty dramatic. There are areas that are, water is penetrating through into the structure and energy wise is really quite a very inefficient system. The water penetration has been such a long lasting problem here that we've created some pretty serious structural issues of corrosion in particular related to the balconies. The framing members from the balconies, which were structurally actually undersized to begin with, have actually been in some cases reduced by 20% in terms of steel thickness, just from corrosion related issues. Water is penetrating in through the concrete systems and right into the floor areas. And the other aspect of the envelope that we have determined our strategy here is to remove all of the brick masonry infill, or most of the brick masonry infill, also conditioned. But in terms of the upper floors of the towers, we'll be removing almost all of that brick infill. And the reason that we're doing that, rather than trying to repair and patch and protect, is that structurally the masonry walls were not reinforced. and they were not connected to the structural frame of the building, the concrete beams that are exposed on the outsides. So that deficiency essentially makes the masonry walls non-functional structurally from a structural design standpoint. So we have to go into the building and actually add brace framing to accommodate the requirements of the current code and the new loads. that we are also removing that all of that masonry from a standpoint of making a much more effective envelope. So there's really some benefits in doing that. And we removed the balconies because the cost of replacing them, which would be what would be required is way outside of our reach of our budget. So the building design, the way we've approached this is we're proposing a fiber cement panel system that's on a rain screen. And what that means is that there's a framing system attached to the building, the wall substrate, and there's a waterproofing barrier and the insulation is applied outside of that waterproofing barrier. And what that does is it allows the building to be insulated in a continuous way and without thermal bridges and whatnot. and the system drains and ventilates itself. So what we're essentially, we're adding about five or six inches of wall material to the outside face of the building. And that's what we are referring to as a rain screen. And the panel system is, you may be familiar with fiber cement panels that are made more locally by the name of, I won't use any names actually, that could get me in trouble, but there are low grades of fiber cement panel and there are high grades. And what we're dealing with is what's considered a high density through body color fiber cement panel. So the panel has the coloration through the entire panel. And the intent is that it's a much higher grade longer lasting durable panel that can really can withstand the weather exposure of this environment here with a 12 to 11 story building as it is. And the effort and some cost savings in the project and in dealing with the design that we have, the end walls of the big wide design, we have gone to an EFA system and quite often the Ephesus is kind of frowned upon, but the beauty of it is that it really works almost exactly like that rain screen, except the water protection is a little better off on the exterior. It still drains and it's still the same kind of insulation system. So it's not a flammable foam. like many people have seen EFIS applied on, but it's a mineral wool type of system. So what we're doing is really using the more costly panel system and the rain screen around where all the windows are on all faces of the building. And then sort of using a cut section or a cap at the ends of the wires with this larger panel, you know, larger scale kind of panel on the ends, it's Ephus. And then at the base, when that all comes down to the base, the base is where we're treating as more of a monolithic, different treatment of panels. So the detail of the panels breaks down into larger, as you would call a rusticated aspect of scale at the grade level. So working with joints, with panel joints, that are more related to the openings of the walls and the scale of that first floor level, which is a little taller. So the general concept then is that the detail and the pattern is contained on the window walls. They wrap the corners. You have these corner windows that alternate floors. and give it sort of a variety of scales. So I think I'll stop here. I've probably talked too much already, but we can answer questions as they come on this.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think at the very end, we have received multiple questions response or agency comments and questions we have tried to sort of address them here. I'll very quickly go through. We have received comments from the fire department. We have received comments from the engineering division. the Health Department and Medford, the Housing Planning CPA Coordinator, as well as Historic. And so as we've categorized the questions on the left, we have provided responses rather than going in. We're at, you know, 6.54 today. The gist is that we have The project is meeting, if not, and are well aware of what is all the constituents requirements at this project. And so we're happy to jump in and answer any questions, the team, full teams here tonight. So thank you. So we will open up to any questions from the board here.

[David Blumberg]: Yeah, sure. Ordinarily, we'll go to city staff, if there are any city staff in attendance tonight who would like to post questions or comment on the development. Amanda, anyone in the queue for us tonight?

[Amanda Centrella]: Nope. Okay, that I'm aware of.

[David Blumberg]: And we do have a public comment time. Before we get there. Is there anything that a board member would like to say or ask just just to clarify from a big picture point of view or can we see what the public has to say. All right, Amanda Do we have some members of the public would like to speak tonight.

[Amanda Centrella]: So I'm pulling up our inbox to check. But if anyone is here tonight who would like to speak, feel free to use the raise your hand function or put a note in the comments. I'm happy to call on you. And I'm just going to give folks one minute to do that while I check our inbox for any messages.

[David Blumberg]: And while she's doing that, I'll read the email address of ocd at medford-ma.gov would be the one to use if you'd like to send a quick email, which we would read and have as part of the record if you send one to Amanda now.

[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, so I'm not seeing any messages yet and I'll let you guys know if that changes. I'm also not seeing any hands or notes in the comments.

[Alicia Hunt]: While you're doing that, I don't believe that we have received that response document from the MHA. So the board members, I mean, you put it up on the screen, but the board hasn't seen any of your responses. We would love it if you could send that over to us.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'll speak for the team. I think the intent tonight was to gather any comments that was going to be presented here and to hear your thoughts and then have a comprehensive response and then send over to Medford in terms of whether there's any additional questions that came from tonight's presentation.

[David Blumberg]: Amanda, any updates there?

[Amanda Centrella]: Nope, we're all clear.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Let's go forward then and open it up to a board members who would like to start things off with some questions for the team tonight. Who would like to go first.

[Unidentified]: I guess I can go.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Thanks. Thank you for your presentation tonight. Seems like a nice project to upgrade this building. I don't have, I don't have much to say. I read the memo from the historic commission. I mean, obviously, I sort of agree with what they're saying nobody really wants to do Ephesus. I think it's a little unfortunate. I think, I think your concept of using it in non sort of conspicuous locations is a good one. Although I would question whether the short ends of the building which have are the best locations for that I was also wondering, we didn't get too much into the plans, but it seems like all the exterior balconies are gonna be removed, and in place of those, there'll just be a blank wall, which happens to be the walls where the APHIS is going. So maybe you can talk about that a little bit. The other thing sort of regarding the facade is I see you put pretty, I think there's a little bit of a. Elaborate pattern on facade, which I think, um. You know, has some visual interest. I I'd actually like you maybe just say a few words about. The concept behind that. Um and then just maybe one further comment on that. About. Color sort of seems like you're visually have any kind of problem with, but having lived that close to Route 93 for almost 20 years, I can tell you that the building is gonna get filthy. And that color will not stay that color. So white seems like an odd choice to me, that close to the highway. I think, The landscape plan seems really nice. I wonder if the connections to the bike path or the future bike path or river path could be maybe a little more deliberate. But I do thank you for sort of highlighting those. I think the bocce court is a great solution. I don't know. Not too much. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. Ben, you want to take the comments on the facade?

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, maybe you could share the elevation sheets. And I appreciate your comments. I think you're right. We all kind of cringe at the idea of the aethos, but it was Uh, we had a pretty, pretty serious budget challenge when we, when we got to, uh, close to the end of design here. And, uh, we found ourselves in really, really struggling to get the project within budget. Uh, as you know, the bid market right now is really quite. Unpredictable and kind of crazy. Um, so I'll just, I'll comment on the, on the. end wall concept, it does change. One thing we didn't try to do is be true or attempt to replicate that existing building in its form and design. It's a very much of a clear grid and frame, frame and infill type of high rise now. And we really sort of stepped back from that And in losing the balconies, it was a change in that quality. But I think what we're proposing on these end walls, the idea is that each of these corner apartments, we're trying to maintain a pretty consistent quantity of window exposure for each apartment. And so, and we have this wraparound window on every other floor and that sort of helps kind of make it makes a scale transition as you come around the end of the building. And then the panels increase in size and the sense of floor to floor scale changes because of that every other floor strategy. And the apartments that don't have that wraparound corner they get a kitchen window. So there's sort of this trade-off, but we're trying to keep the sort of democratic fairness of what individual apartments have as an amenity. So yes, we lost that balcony texture on the ends, and we're sort of treating it in a, taking a different strategy on how it works. The, I'll say a little more about the APHIS on the ground floor. You know, we did, because that was also another fairly large area. We could apply it to the existing masonry and it's not 12 stories in the sky. So it may not, we don't have to worry about the seismic stability of that masonry. So we utilized that masonry for Um, and, uh, you know, we have a, uh, if it's application as well, and the again the idea of the panels, the sense of the panels being larger. And, uh, sort of, you know, we have a steel base to it so that the grade level is pretty well protected. And, um. I'm I'm quite comfortable with the with how it can And one thing, just as an add, that detailed panel work that we're playing with, we are also applying to the fascias of the two entries, front and back, as well as this on the left-hand side there, Dan, can you point to that? The mechanical space on the left, over at the left, south end, no, the south end of the building. these mechanical screens that are shown here. And in this image here, they haven't been completely modeled, but we sort of use that detail of the window facade to create these screens that are a little more of a, you know, it's a decoration, if you will. And then around the front side of the building, the same thing with the screen that screens the trash enclosure. We'd also have sort of that, and in this rendering, again, it's not complete, it doesn't have the detail, but it would have the color and patterning translate more from the window walls down to that panel. So it sort of identifies, in this case, identifies more of the entry of the building. From the other side, it identifies the sweep around the end of the building. I think that's kind of key to the, and one other comment is that the front facade that you see underneath on the right-hand side, which is the front exposure of the administration area, actually, that is also fiber cement so that you have that sort of finished quality of the fiber cement carrying across that whole front facade, and you don't have the ephus at your, at your hand. If you can go back to, Dan, I'm sorry, one more comment. If you go back to that first axiometric you had from the back. The other comment I just wanted to put out there is that what we have done is also now the, go back to the other side, southeast side. We added, no, southeast, that one right there. We have a roof terrace, a common area roof deck on the second floor. And we've expanded the common area of the second floor lobby space with an adjacent laundry room. And so there's more of a community area at the second floor level that spills out onto this roof deck. And what we found in a couple of recently completed projects is that the residents a real valuable space to the residents because it is private. It's kind of a gesture in replacement of their loss of their own balconies, but it is something that does get used and it is part of their community as opposed to something at grade that maybe feels a little less protected.

[Unidentified]: I don't know if I got all of your answers, Klaus.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think you did. How about the color class? You brought up the color.

[SPEAKER_15]: Oh, yeah. Yeah, the color, I think in a couple of those renderings, it's lighter than the actual materials that we have selected. I think these elevations are a little closer. It's a combination of grays. And we're working on the color still right now. And to some degree, we're under a little bit of mercy of the manufacturer that's ultimately provided by the bidder. And being a public bid, we have that little bit of lack of control on that. So we're working on that color selection. But the idea is that there's some reference to the brick of the neighborhood and the adjacent buildings. and a sort of more of a richness in the pattern. And in this elevation, it really doesn't show the darker of the grays we're pushing to get something that's really quite, actually the sill of the big windows is a fairly dark band. And we're gonna work more of that darker tone into the full pattern so that there's, it gives a little more richness and almost effective shadow. So, there are some bugs. We're still finishing on the color and the pattern, getting the costs and everything in line.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, thank you. I guess my only follow-up comment is, you know, before I asked the question, I was sort of under the impression that the ephus was going sort of on the ends and then maybe on those inside corners. seems really risky to do it at the ground floor. It's just going to get destroyed. But I suppose that's MHA's maintenance problem going forward. But yeah, and I just encourage you to keep looking at the color because I suppose you mentioned why you're removing the balconies. I'm sure you're as unhappy about that move as, as I am, because it's, it seems like it was a really nice amenity I'm looking at, you know, street view of the image and it does seem like there are those balconies are fairly well used with furniture and plants and things and I just beyond the functional and. use of those for the residents. I worry that their removal is gonna really flatten that building to a point that it's gonna be pretty conspicuously flat and uninteresting. And so, yeah, I would just ask you to just keep thinking about that, maybe think about maybe some sort expanded patterning and neafness areas that may sort of add to the complexity and the look of those ends, because obviously those, you know, without the multicolored panels, those ends are going to be very flat and they have those tiny little windows, which are obviously either kitchen or bathroom windows. So thank you.

[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you.

[David Blumberg]: I just jump in and ask a couple of questions I think there are relevant to places and that's operable windows is there a chance for some fresh air in the units in lieu of having a balcony.

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, yes, they all have the apartments would have, I guess, for four to five operable windows. And we have been using a awning or casement tilt out that has a very simple mechanism that elderly people can operate that gives them a full four inch opening that's controlled, but is quite effective. And the windows are, there's a fair amount of an increase of glass area as well. all of the, even the bedrooms are larger windows, but the kitchen and what was, what's replacing what was a kitchen door, solid kitchen door and a window the same size as the bedroom window is now a rather dramatic improvement of a large almost picture window with some operable windows up and down, you know, down to 18 inches from the floor with a large sill. So our strategy, we've been in situations with other projects where we had to get rid of balconies, in some cases infilling balconies that were recessed and other cases where they're projecting. Ultimately, when we are in that situation, the goal is to give extensive daylight and extensive airflow, because ultimately that's what most of these people want from their balcony. And the results have been pretty positive. You know, it's hard to lose balconies, but I think if you are in the design world, you can also understand all of the thermal and waterproofing issues that are constantly a problem with balconies. And we're at this stage with this building now because of that. Really, that's what, you know, these balconies have gotten to the point where they are so bad that you know, they started off questionable and now they're really at risk. So I think this is a wise move in the end.

[David Blumberg]: Thanks for that information. Also, in what class was saying, part of the historical commission as well. The first floor. You've been showing us a picture of the large building and we don't usually see buildings this large in our board meetings but it will focus on the color on the upper floors. I've seen, I think I've seen different renderings of what the first floor is going to feel like to the pedestrian on the ground. Can you kind of give us the one that's most realistic or just give us a shot with that or no, is that not possible?

[SPEAKER_15]: It's a little bit of a challenge because of where our our renderings, you know, what we were doing was doing nice renderings back when we were in sort of schematic and DD. And by the time we got to the CDs and working through value engineering, we we're finding ourselves at a loss for good rendering. What I'll say is that I think, you know, Dan, maybe you could pull up the Axon images. Those are probably the best to speak to. We had hoped to be able to expand the, What was the east side of Edgerly Hall, which is sort of attached to the resident entrance? We had hoped to expand that and create more of an arcade along the side of the building. And we just, we didn't have the funds to do that. So if you go to the East side, I think that's the other side there. Yeah, they're right there. So in lieu of that, we've been working with the access of the windows along these these lower levels that are exposed to streets. We're also trying to reuse the existing window openings on the ground floor because those windows were put in quite recently and serve the functions that they're serving quite well. So we're kind of working within that framework. And a lot of what you're seeing in these images are, a little bit harsh because there's no reference to the site, but there's really just a few pathways that go into these active areas with, for instance, this east wall here, there's really just two doorways that are serving Edgerly Hall that have access to them, and then that's landscaping on either side. So, we're trying to sort of buffer some of the aphid surfaces that have human direct contact potential. And I think if you go to the west side, Dan, I'm not sure if I'm answering your questions very well, but the entry around the, around the west side, Dan, the other one. No, there you go. The area around the, this is the administrative wing entry. And that area there, that box around that, that would be fiber cement mill. So you're kind of pushing where the people are coming closest to the building, which is the doorknob. pushing the aphids away from those spots as much as we can.

[David Blumberg]: I thought there was at least one that had some red.

[SPEAKER_15]: I purposely pulled that back because that color was an earlier scheme that I apologize, we didn't have that updated.

[Unidentified]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_15]: So, so again, back to Dr. Kleist's comment, we're really working through those color issues and the APHIS because that was the last transition we had to make is the last color selection we're making.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Is it, is it paintable? It does, it does have different color treatments, does it not?

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's effectively a very heavy you know, paint surface. Our intent with these large surfaces, and this may address some of the issue of these, we were, you know, we're architects, we like big flat, you know, monolithic shapes and forms and stuff like that. So these end walls, what we were conceiving is that there'd be just very subtle changes of tone of the same color throughout all of the IFAS panel. So there's a little bit of a variegation or, you know, float in the color between panel to panel. And one that helps facilitate if you do have to do repair work, you don't, you know, you're not having spots everywhere. And secondly, I think it creates this kind of an interesting tonal quality to a big surface like that.

[David Blumberg]: Other board members have questions they'd like to pose to the group.

[Amanda Centrella]: Mr. Chair, could I pause for a second because I see we have a hand raised from a member of the public, Roberta Cameron. I was wondering if you felt like now was a good time. Awesome. So yeah, Roberta, if you'd like to speak, share your name and address for the record.

[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Roberta Cameron, and I'm at 12 North Street, and I'm here representing the Community Preservation Committee as chair of Community Preservation Committee. We have funded- Welcome. Yes?

[Unidentified]: Welcome.

[Roberta Cameron]: Oh, thank you, thank you. So Community Preservation Committee has a couple of concerns about this site. We have in the past funded two projects. that are on the property of the site. One was the creation of the bocce courts, and the other was, what was the name of the project? It was stormwater improvements to, to design stormwater improvements that would improve the quality of the water that's being sent into the river from the site. And it's my understanding that the design of the site plan for this, the design of the parking is going to interfere with both of the projects that the city has funded in the past. And I wanted to see to suggest that we should be looking for ways that we can avoid the the destruction of either of these assets that we've invested city money in to date to avoid having to move the bocce court or remove the bocce court and to preserve the area that is under the auspices of that study for stormwater improvements. And that in order to do that would require a change in the parking area that has been designed. I don't know whether a reduction in parking could solve this or if there's any other way that parking could be oriented on the site. I certainly, if there's the possibility that not as much parking as has been designed for is needed to serve the site, that it would be preferable to to be able to protect these assets that the city has invested in by moving the parking. I mean by removing some of the parking, reducing the amount of parking. But if not, to be able to find a design that will protect the site would be our preference.

[David Blumberg]: Is there someone from MHA's team who could respond to Ms. Cameron's questions and concerns?

[Steve Sawyer]: Yeah, actually, Mr. Chair, I could do that. Actually, I got my screen back. I could actually let me share. I have some pictures and such. OK.

[SPEAKER_15]: And while you're doing that, Stephen, I just would also like to just say that we actually did study a number of different possibilities that would allow the bocce court to remain in the location that it currently is. And there was, I mean, if you can kind of see that it's in the plan that's on the screen there, the bocce courts are sort of pushed way up into the middle of that site area. And it became a rather challenging trying to, the solution for that became a little bit awkward and quite awkward and difficult to work around. So we did do a pretty significant effort at trying to maintain it. And in the long run, the design intent of bringing it closer, bringing the bocce courts closer to the river, we felt were worth that investment of moving them.

[Steve Sawyer]: Okay, and as far as the, you know, my understanding, so we... As part of the conservation commission, Heidi Davis is the chair. She's intimately familiar with that. I guess the CPC project for stormwater, there is nothing, you know, nothing, nothing's been constructed right now. This area here at the, at the bottom is just a paved swale. And my understanding that we're going to convert that swale sort of a linear, linear improvement of a, uh, convert the paved swale to a grass or vegetated swale. We are actually doing that as part of the design and also we're redirecting the water to a large bio-infiltration area here. So just for purposes, there's a grass swale that I had designed in a project to get an idea. You have some uptake and some vegetation at the bottom, grass sides. This swale would be a little bit wider. This one's a little narrower than what we'd be providing. Also integrated into our design is the is a forebay and an infiltration, a bio-infiltration area. So it'd be a sort of a stone area that you detain and infiltrate and clean the water prior to overtopping it into a bio-filtration area. I'm working with the landscape architect now Regarding the planting right now, I think we have some switch grasses, some milkweed. Here's a project that I had done. Unfortunately, it's in the fall, the grasses have all turned, but it ends up being a very natural, very natural low impact design. So, Heidi Davis, who was aware Of I think of that CPC project, I am not sure where if it was ever if any money was spent on it as of yet, maybe on the design. I'm not sure. But her comment was that what we're providing here. is basically the intent of what that CPC funding was directed to do. And we'll end up actually paying for it in providing these improvements. We'd actually greatly appreciate and accept any CPC funding as part of this low impact design green infrastructure to be applied towards this portion of our stormwater, which I believe was part of that CPC project. So that's it.

[Roberta Cameron]: I think that's a fair question that could be brought to the committee of whether if you're if what you're going to design is consistent with what we funded in the past, then. It may be possible to explore the CPA award of that $40,000 being able to contribute toward the design of this system. So that's a conversation that could be brought to the CPC via Daniel Evans.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. And have you heard enough about the budget court they did address it earlier in the presentation tonight I just didn't know if you had follow up or maybe you would like to hear more of what they said earlier in terms of its relocation and the other things they're doing to that area. Would you like to hear that or ask them?

[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, perhaps. I apologize for coming late to your meeting, but it would be helpful.

[David Blumberg]: No, no, no. I wasn't saying it to be condescending. I want to make sure you get the information you're looking for. And I think the team is more than prepared to give you some info that's relevant.

[SPEAKER_15]: Dan, maybe you could put up the landscape plan, I think is maybe the best way to show that.

[SPEAKER_05]: You want me to talk to that, Ben, or you got it?

[SPEAKER_15]: I'll start and if I lose words, jump in. Roberta, I think what we, let's see, can you pan a little bit to the right? That was the right page, just... Yeah, if you can pan to the right, okay, here we go. So what we... liked about this strategy is it, it one is it, it allowed us to get the parking closer to the building, or as much as much as possible, get get closer to the building. And and what it also does is it allows us to expand some of the space around the bocce courts, so that we have a larger sort of gathering space over to the on the just to the left of the court, man, just to the left of the court there. Yeah, that area there is sort of identified and prepared for some sort of, you know, a gathering place possibly in the future, a structure or some furnishing. And so more of a gathering space and the tie-in to the river walk, the clipper ship walk ends up being something that's a little more obvious and integrated into that public space of the bocce courts. And the other benefit has come with this move is that it puts the parking of the spaces allotted to the bocce court directly adjacent to the bocce court and the clipper ship block there. So I can say that. Maybe you have some other thoughts, Curtis, about planting?

[SPEAKER_05]: I'll just note that we have tracked down the landscape architects who designed the original bocce courts, and we are reproducing their construction details and material specifications. to whatever extent possible, we are trying to reproduce the bocce courts as they were constructed initially, so.

[SPEAKER_11]: May I ask what is the cost to reproduce the bocce courts?

[SPEAKER_15]: I don't have a breakout of that. I think we can probably get it, find it, or have them do it. It was included in the in the overall, all of the site hardscape work.

[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, I mean, I don't have an objection in principle to the design, but it's simply the investment that we've made then being unmade is the principle that the that our committee has a concern about.

[Ciccariello]: So Roberta, let me speak to that a little bit. So I know so far the MHA had covered 100% of the construction costs. We have not received reimbursement yet for that. Let me speak with Jeff, our executive director, to see if Um, let me just speak to him about if it's more regarding the financial commitment from CPC. Like I said, we have not got reimbursement we have covered 100% of the construction costs.

[Alicia Hunt]: So, that sounds very weird because when we do CPA projects. Usually the invoices are given directly to the city and the city pays them directly.

[Ciccariello]: No, we covered the cost because there's something regarding, we haven't finalized the Bocce court agreement with the city yet. So that was holding things up. So we have, it's a couple of years old and we have covered the cost for that in the last two years, but no, we have not. I think some A and E fees may have been covered and it's so long ago, but I'm pretty positive and I'll get confirmation that we have paid for all of the construction costs. and have not gotten reimbursement for those.

[Jenny Graham]: I would just like to say, I think I'm on CPC as well as a community development board representative. And I think this project is just highlighting that we probably need to speak amongst the CPC if there's mechanisms that can be put in place in the process to ensure that any funds invested in projects if there needs to be sort of like a look ahead or understanding of future projects and like how you actually deal with situations like this. It feels like it's a bigger discussion because there could be, I think there has been other past projects that this has happened and there could be more. And I think it's more like communication and figuring out a mechanism to handle this No, no, I agree.

[Ciccariello]: There's no bigger fan of the bocce courts. You know, we try to use them on lunch breaks once in a while on Friday afternoons. And we love them. I knew this was going to be a contentious issue. I didn't want to lose them. And that's why I feel like it's an improve. We're trying to make them better, incorporate them more into the community. But we understand the CPC's point of view that we we made an investment towards this. And like I said, this wasn't taken in jest or lightly, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we can keep them right once we made a decision that they needed to be moved, how best can we construct these and make them better than what the initial intention was.

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, I'll repeat that. It wasn't done lightly.

[Unidentified]: In principle, I agree wholeheartedly with you.

[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. That's what I wanted to bring.

[Roberta Cameron]: I would invite you to, as I said, submit a request through Danielle Evans to consider using the award for the stormwater improvements toward this project. We can see whether that's that's a possibility, it would make sense. And then we'll have to have a discussion amongst ourselves about what to do about this investment.

[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you. I mean, did we have any other participants non board non presentation participants for tonight.

[Amanda Centrella]: Not yet, no, I'll let you know if that changes. Okay, very good.

[Alicia Hunt]: David, usually I let the board ask their questions first, just in case there's, you know, occasionally like I might have something that they didn't ask, but it occurs to me that there's been something confusing in some of the materials that is my field, my original field, so I thought I should just ask that now.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, sure, go for it.

[Alicia Hunt]: It appeared to be, so this building has solar thermal on the roof and some of the images appear to show solar panels of some sort, which I assumed on the roof would just be that staying. And I also saw what appeared to be some on the lower roof. And I'm curious, what is your plan with the solar thermal and or solar panels? If you could just explain that and clear up the discrepancies.

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, I'll take that. The solar system is being taken down because the entire roof is being reworked, both from a roofing standpoint as well as from equipment standpoint. We're adding to the roof a fair amount of equipment that is serving the ventilation of the building. energy recovery ventilators and that equipment that is, it's actually in response to one of the other questions that was raised by, I think the health department in terms of what are we doing for air quality as a building adjacent to an interstate. So what we are trying to do is bring all of the fresh air intake for the building from the roof level, which is, significantly higher than the highway, the interstate output of fumes, and the higher you go, the cleaner the air is, just in general. But back to the solar, because of that loss up on the roof, what we've done is we've reduced some of the equipment, some of the panels, we've shifted some of the panels on the roof, we've reduced the panels on one wing and are relocating what was being eliminated from the roof to the lower roof. So there will be the two areas of solar panels. So essentially the same level of equipment or collection quantity and just a different distribution.

[Alicia Hunt]: So those are solar thermal shown on the lower ones. I will say that I am less familiar with the technical behind solar thermal, but I do realize that there is fluid that runs through them. So it's much more complicated in my mind than relocating solar PV, although I've never done it, so I wouldn't know.

[SPEAKER_15]: It is.

[Alicia Hunt]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_15]: It will require some new equipment, but it is reasonably doable.

[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, that's good to hear. And actually, I have to say that I've always been very concerned about people living directly next to the highway. And so the idea that you're working on the air intake being so high up to provide clean, fresh air is very reassuring actually. It's the only argument I could ever hear for why you wouldn't want operable windows on a lot of this building is because of its proximity to the highway. But that's so hard for people to live with inoperable windows that I'm glad you found a balance with that and that you'll be bringing in clean air from the roof. And maybe there's some opportunity for resident education that they may not realize this, but that the air that comes in through their ventilation system may actually be, if they ever have trouble with asthma or air quality, better for them than what comes through their own windows. It doesn't seem logical, particularly to somebody who has grown up with the idea that fresh air comes in through the window. So thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Alicia do they have a, is this the type of project that would have a requirement for additional solar or solar ready roof or we at that.

[Alicia Hunt]: So I think there would be an argument, but frankly, the fact that there's solar thermal on the building, I think complies in spirit, if not to the exact letter here. Normally, what we would ask for is a study that shows whether or not solar is suitable. And I'm fairly confident, I mean, that any study would say if you remove the solar thermal, you could put the solar PV on. but that doesn't make logical sense to anybody. And we don't actually ask anyone to remove equipment to put solar PV on. It's more that we don't like a wide open empty roof with nothing that could actually have PV on it. And I didn't get too technical, right? People know those terms now these days. Okay, just checking.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, back to the board members. Questions? I have a question, comment, please.

[SPEAKER_18]: Thank you. I guess I can provide these in a more, I think the best maybe way to answer these questions maybe is in this order. So I heard a little chatter that the first floor is publicly accessible. And I was wondering, looking at the first floor plan, it looks like there are some restrooms and maybe some areas that are labeled common spaces. And I was just wondering, you know, how accessible is the first floor? Is it just a lobby or are those areas included as well? And then I also had a question about the lawn in the bioretention slash infiltration basin. And I'm just referring to the drawings that were submitted, the site plan review drawings 9-20-22 that were submitted on sheet L-102. I've just seen lawn fail in a couple of buyer retention basins because, you know, the possibility of being submerged underwater. And so I'm wondering if that's also another appropriate area to include more shrub planting or some more wetland resistant plants there. And my last comment slash question was if there's any possibility to provide trash cans along the proposed DCR path along Mystic River. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_15]: I'll take the first question. The first floor, I think if I understand what you mean by accessible, do you mean ADA accessible, or do you mean access to public?

[SPEAKER_18]: Thank you. Yes, I did mean publicly accessible.

[SPEAKER_15]: I understand the confusion there. The first floor is about one third maintenance and building systems use, or maybe less than that, maybe a quarter. And about a third of it is administrative space that is Medford Housing Authority operational offices, central offices. So this area on the bottom of the page there, the office looking area, that's the Medford Housing Authority's primary office with the entrance at the southwest corner. And then, and there's a kitchen, if you move up in the cursor there, that area there is a community kitchen, which is in place to serve the Edgerly Hall. So the Edgerly Hall is the piece of the long wing to the right and, That we, it's actually a bigger space currently, and we had to break it up a little bit because of structural bracing that has to come down to the grade level. And so functionally we have a sort of modifiable with with partitions and, and And then we've created a couple smaller usable spaces. But this is all, it's all Medford Housing Authority space property. So it's publicly accessible, but it's controlled by, access is controlled by Medford Housing Authority. The center portion between, I should say the portion on the top of the plan there, that's all the, maintenance area and equipment. And then there's a cluster of offices right there. Those are a couple of maintenance offices, as well as some of the operational offices for the housing authority for the resident services types of access. So that center area there, there's some public restrooms, there's a mail space and a fairly large lobby that's circulation with some seating areas and a couple of TV locations and that type of thing. Now access into that lobby is controlled. There's those two points of access, one on the north side of the building, one on the south side of the building, left and right. The direct public access is into the vestibule where they have to get released in by a resident or employee. So does that answer that question of accessibility? Okay.

[SPEAKER_18]: Yeah, yeah, it definitely does.

[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you. And I believe that the Medford Housing Authority uses the Edgerly Hall for various functions that are sometimes outreach programs or for programs that are related to some of their other facilities. So they have people coming from all around the city, from other Medford housing facilities that come to programs or functions at this space. Which is one of the reasons why we've actually have maintained some of our parking overflow. We have a little bit of excess parking beyond code. And that is one of the reasons we have done that because there are times when they have functions within Edgeley Hall. with other housing sites and they often, they max out the parking capacity.

[Steve Sawyer]: Um, and I guess I can, I can address the infiltration areas. So, so, yeah, so the submitted the stormwater report initially, the design was for infiltration, basically a bio infiltration areas, basins. Um, we did do test bits out there and. In the areas of the 2 basins, it's good. You know, it's decent gravel fill. in the groundwater is substantially below, I think it's like five, four or five feet below the bottom of our basins. So there's good well draining material underneath the basins. Actually, you can see the test pit locations on that. So 1, 1 thing that, you know, this system actually, it's under quite a bit of scrutiny between Owen, the city engineer, Heidi, Heidi Davis, um, who's with the DP, um, as the chair of the conservation commission and also the DEP, um, this is subject to the mass stormwater regulations. So as such, um, there's a, it's kind of a convoluted, uh, convoluted, um, kind of gray area on the regulations, that infiltration basins are not allowed within 50 feet of a waterway. So that being said, we're in the process of redesigning those bases from infiltration basins to bioretention areas. Either way, given the good soils below, they'll drain and it'll readily drain from underneath. I'm going to be working with Curtis as far as, I'm still confident that these will drain dry, what you need to be very careful of. I've done plenty of rain gardens slash or infiltration areas by retention areas that are lawn and they work. Actually, I had some pictures I probably could have brought up. They look great. Those are particularly in areas where you have decent gravel underneath. A lot of times where I've got into trouble is actually with the rain gardens is the actual material that compost sort of that filter soil media. You gotta be very careful about putting too much compost in it, very careful about overcompacting it. Because what ends up happening is, if it's not installed properly, that media, that soil media, ends up being quite impermeable, and your basins don't drain. And I'm acutely aware of that, and need to be very careful. If we do go to a bioretention media, I typically like to not put as much compost in it, just for the fact that you need to be very careful of that soil media becoming impermeable. And we're looking to, you know, I, I want them to drain. Typically, I want them to drain within 72 hours for sure. More, so I'd like to drain drain after storm event within 24 hours. But so those are this those basins right now. I'm currently. Really looking at them for the fact that we're converting from. We can't call them an infiltration basin. A bioretention area still infiltrates, but it's called something different, and it basically slows the water down as it passes into the ground. So we'll be updating the stormwater calcs and resubmitting to the DEP and to the Conservation Commission and to Owen, the city engineer. But I appreciate the comment. I have seen that where they do clog and they end up wet. And it's just, I've seen it on a couple of occasions. And mostly that's because of over compaction of that soil media when it's installed.

[Unidentified]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_15]: Sorry, George, what was your last question?

[SPEAKER_18]: Thanks, yeah. I think it was a trash can along DCR path.

[SPEAKER_15]: I'll let Gabe answer that one.

[Ciccariello]: Yeah, I know we currently have some trash cans by the bocce courts. And that's something I think we can definitely take care of, maybe put one at each end of our property stores and that.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Since we're on the subject, what is the timeline of that path versus this project. Maybe Alicia knows a little bit better. Yeah.

[Alicia Hunt]: I actually checked again recently. So the DCR has every expectation that it is going to go out to bid this winter and built in the spring. I have the bid documents. What it's waiting for is a final easement agreement to be signed with 99 Riverside. When I checked last week, they were still trying to get that easement agreement. It is the only thing that is holding up bidding out that project and going to construction.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: And that would be the entirety of it, yes?

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, and just to be clear, we could ask the lawyers for 99 Riverside why this is taking so long. Not like the DCR lawyers. Yeah. Yeah, that would be the whole thing from the end here by Clippership all the way into Riverbend Park on the other end.

[Unidentified]: George did you have some more follow up.

[David Blumberg]: No, sorry. Yes. Okay. Oh, okay. Another board member.

[Deanna Peabody]: I had one question, whether I'm not sure but if if noise was an issue given the different materials of the building compared to what it is now given the 93 is right there.

[SPEAKER_15]: someone could address that. We're adding a fair amount of material on the outside. What's replacing the masonry is just metal stud framing with sheathing and drywall. However, the insulation on the exterior is a, I don't know if you're familiar with mineral wool, insulation is five inches of mineral wool. And it's a, so we're going for as, as much exterior, you know, thermal performance as possible, but it's also extremely good thermal, I mean, acoustical absorption kind of quality. It's, I will admit, it's not exactly the same as, as the masonry. And it may be that it actually performs better in some sense because of the reflective quality of the panels versus the masonry that is more of a coarse surface. So I will say that I'm curious because the question came up and I think it's a very reasonable question and I think we'll be following up on that. but I'm quite confident in the performance of that exterior rain screen. It's a significant panel of acoustical absorption. And the window systems are equivalent to what is currently there, which is a double pane, fairly commercial grade, heavy aluminum system.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Will this building be going for any sort of LEED or other kind of certification?

[SPEAKER_15]: We'll be going for an Enterprise Green Communities certification, which is a program that's designed specifically for affordable housing and multifamily affordable housing in particular. And it's very much designed and modeled after LEED program. And as I believe, I'm not sure Natalie, if you'll know, but I believe just passing, they don't have different grades of performance, but just meeting the passing performance for enterprise green communities is equivalent to, I believe a silver in their lead ranking. And we have to go through and do a comparison of, of the enterprise to lead, I believe.

[David Blumberg]: Anna is a good you have some more follow up.

[Deanna Peabody]: No, the only other thing. I know they mentioned the water loop that they didn't agree with the city comments but I was wondering if there are other comments that.

[Unidentified]: the team didn't agree with or that weren't going to be met.

[Steve Sawyer]: I can speak for the, I think as far as the engineering comments, uh, engineering board of health, uh, that water loop was the only, only comment that we didn't concur with that, that we took exception to and wouldn't be incorporating into the, into the site, at least the site civil and stormwater.

[David Blumberg]: And is that could you just explain to the, to the uneducated on that on that topic. It sounds like it's a fire safety, kind of a question or water availability question. And are they, are they looking for it to be a certain way but you've got a covered like, give us, give us your read.

[Steve Sawyer]: So, yeah, so I think Owen's comment in speaking with the owner, he was talking about putting a hydrant. You're having a hydrant in the back of the building, right? But as part of the building design, I'm not as far as there is fire connections that are. the buildings, well, number one, the building's all sprinkled, it's sprinkled fire protection. And then also there's a system that the Siamese connections or fire department connections on the rear of the building that they can hook up to right on the building, right at the bottom of the building where they'd hook hoses to fight the fire from that location. And, you know, as far as Owen's comment was, well, what if there's a fire and a car catches on fire? We said, well, it's about 400 feet of laying length from the, probably 300 feet of hose length from the nearest hydrant, which isn't too bad. And I don't believe, I don't know if those connections aren't, I think they have to hook up to the connections to energize those connections for, you know, they'd have to hook up and energize the connection if they're gonna pull a hose to fight a fire off in the rear. There's really no, you know, health safety, you know, as far as safety of people in the building, it was more for some sort of remote, remote fire out, out in the rear. Um, so that was, you know, that would, there was a specific, uh, comment from the city engineer, not the fire department. And he, and he actually said, well, if the fire department's okay with it, he's he'd be, he'd go, he wouldn't be asking for it with the current design.

[David Blumberg]: I was trying to see if that was something that was in his written comments, or maybe he told you as you've been working with him.

[Steve Sawyer]: It was in the written, I think it was one of his written comments. There was a comment about the looping the water, a water loop around the building. I think it started off by, there was a, there's one fire connection in one It was like a one fire and potable water connection, which there's currently there's 2 separate, but we'd be the typical typical connections to a building or there's 2 separate. You provide a fire connection and a. Yeah, there is the existing building has 1 water. Yeah, the existing building has one water service from the 12-inch main located in Riverside. The engineering division recommends a water loop around the building and recommends providing additional hydrants on the site. There are two hydrants on the site. They're at the front of the building. But our feeling is, and I believe as far as the fire department agrees, or they do agree, is that what they have is there's two on Riverside on either corner, and then there's hydrants on the front of the building too.

[Unidentified]: It's right about there.

[Steve Sawyer]: Then there's connections on the building itself where the fire department can hook up in the rear of the building. And from that meeting, Owen agreed. He said, well, if the fire, he would not push it if the fire department was okay, is okay with the design as is, he wouldn't ask for it. And it is quite expensive. It's not an insignificant cost to loop an eight inch ductile ion pipe around the building. We're talking, it's gonna end up being around a thousand feet. of ductile pipe, which, you know, given the cost these days, it's a significant, significant added cost to the project.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I may, I would just add, it's not just a cost. It would not be used for that because fire department specifically told us that it would like to access the front of the building, which they have two connections, which they would connect to the building at that location. They would never go on the farthest possible location to connect because they only have connections at all three sides of the building. They always want to be closest to the building, the first entrance to the building, not to loop around. That's why we're creating their main goal when we met with the fire department was actually to create that specific access lane for their trucks because they've seen through the years that people are jamming exits and they cannot access the building. I'm sorry to interrupt.

[David Blumberg]: That's helpful. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_15]: I think I'll respond to your question, David. Sure. Or maybe it was Dean has other questions that we are in disagreement with. I don't believe there are any other questions that we actually disagree with. I think some of the questions from the historic commission on the envelope and some of those are a little more subjective. So we'll be submitting to you all of these responses and we can respond further as needed. But I believe we addressed them all.

[Alicia Hunt]: Is the board ready to vote if they had the responses tonight?

[David Blumberg]: I'm not sure.

[Alicia Hunt]: I thought that's where you were going.

[David Blumberg]: I'm not sure. We'll have to ask that question. I do have a number of questions. Christy, if you'd like to go before me, I'm happy to yield the floor. Okay.

[8msxsKW1z_4_SPEAKER_26]: And I'll just jump in and say, if the board would like us to review each of the responses to the questions or comments we received in writing, we can do that as well, if that would be helpful for the board to take action tonight, rather than having to revisit it in the future. Okay, thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Can you give me a sense, I think Gabe put up a timeline. It looks like it's pretty long construction schedule, obviously a very large project. What is the community going to see? Is the building going to be like fully scaffolded for a year and a half? Like what does that look and feel like to the public?

[Ciccariello]: So we were originally looking at fully scaffolding the building, but we're going now with a combination in the areas where There's like the first floor roofs. We need to go with scaffolding, but we're trying to implement mass climbers throughout the majority of the building. That's how we are going to, as he stated, work from the top of the building down using a mass climber system. But there will be sections of the building that will have some scaffolding around it.

[David Blumberg]: the on the your landscaping plans there's some sort of storage yard or something that's adjacent to the parking lot to closest to 93. Can you give us a little more on that?

[Ciccariello]: So in Bend, so that's an existing condition that is where are kind of we have large trash containers located there for just, you know, large items and we have vacancies, a lot of residents will leave furniture behind. So we put couches back there, electronics for weekly or monthly pickups, depending on what the material is. I think we also have some vehicle storage. Is that what we're referring to?

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah. Dan, could you go to page 11 on the video or 12? 12, I'm sorry.

[David Blumberg]: Now as I look at Google Earth, I see it.

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, so David, what we're proposing is that the, what is currently the space that's used now with for, as Gabe mentioned, it's equipment storage. There's some, I think it's for the entire, the entire campus of properties for MHA, you know, waste, recycling, equipment, et cetera, that zone is going to become, actually is an extension of this parking lot, which adds, I think, about seven or eight spaces. And then if you go to page 12 on the, on the PDF or page 13 on the PDF, what we've done is we've, so that area that what was the storage area becomes parking spaces and we've extended the storage area, which is it's a gravel, but I believe it's non-permeable into that area there. So we've actually pulled it. Currently, it splits the property line division between the highway department and Saltonstall. And what we're doing is getting it so that that space is entirely on the property of the MHA.

[Unidentified]: I see.

[David Blumberg]: OK. The, on the other side, so now West, it looks now like the parking lots all just sort of come together. Maybe there's a fence there. This design would actually give you a little bit of landscaping, buffering MHA from the senior center and the other residents to your West. I believe so.

[Steve Sawyer]: Yeah, we do pull the pavement back. It's only a few feet. Curtis, I think you can sneak in a little bit of landscaping along that edge now. Actually, I can hold on.

[Unidentified]: I think I still have that up. Hold on. Yeah, hold on. Let me share.

[Steve Sawyer]: Yeah, so if you look, so here's the red line is the current edge of pavement. So you can see we pulled, we now have additional landscape area that we've added on that edge.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Is the gazebo underutilized? I see that it's going away, not anyone's favorite these days.

[Ciccariello]: Yeah, the gazebo is really just... birdhouse kind of residents, it's weird, they'll pull up lawn chairs and congregate outside the gazebo sometimes. We find that all of our developments, especially at our elderly disabled developments, all of our residents like to congregate in the front of the building. They like to see the comings and goings of people when the mailman arrives and everything. It's very rare. to see our residents congregating. You could build something beautiful in the rear of the site, they want to be out front. So at our 22 Alston Street development, we had a gazebo in the rear of the building. No one ever used it, we're tearing that down, we're building a new one in the front of the building because everyone just pulled up lawn chairs and bring up their kitchen chairs and just sit in the front of the building. So it's like you learn these kind of traits after a while. So it is trying to get the residents to also, we're trying to as, as we stated earlier, create spaces like right outside the community center, right outside Edgeley Hall to kind of bring them closer into the building. so they don't have to travel as far either for some of the more disabled residents.

[David Blumberg]: And your roof deck, obviously, as well. Okay. Yes. It sounds like you're adding a little bit of green space, at least we're not losing any overall, and putting in a lot of trees. Is the area in the back where the gazebo is now, you're pulling back some asphalt, you're adding more lawn. Will there be more trees in that area? Is it going to be kind of an open lawn? I wasn't quite sure because some of the renderings differ. And I'm just, I'm just trying to get a sense of it because I think more and more, you know, if we get these enhancements and the river becomes more of a front facing feature to the city than a back of the house feature, you know, it would be great. The more vegetation you're putting there, the more paths and just more you beautify it, the better.

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah. Well, the, the, uh, and I'm sure you're all familiar, but there's, we are looking at potentially a future development building in that general area. So we've addressed that landscape more as sort of an open space. We've planted and populated with some trees around the the periphery that's adjacent to the primary walkway that passes through here. So trying to create somewhat of an LA through here and really are just leaving this as essentially as a lot of this site is currently, which is lawn. And I don't know if you have anything you can say about that, Curtis, other than You know, we sort of trying to minimize the scope of work in that area currently. And then, you know, it may be something that we, as time rolls, we may take a different strategy, but I think this is kind of a clean and non-invasive sort of approach.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and the extent of planting, we sort of wanted to walk the line between, you know, providing as much interesting planting as we can, but at the same time, we don't want to overwhelm the sort of maintenance staff at the MHA. We know that, you know, the lawn is pretty straightforward. It's easy to, you know, get out there with the with the mowers, but the planting beds, you know, a mix of grasses and perennials and shrubs can, sometimes it can be a little more challenging for maintenance staff. So we, you know, we did have earlier versions where there was a lot more planting, but some of these properties that, you know, it's a double-edged sword, some of those beds may, you know, not be maintained properly. Um, we have scaled it back, um, pulled it back towards the building, kept it tight to the pads. So it's, it's easily accessible, easily maintained. Um, and you know, we'll ideally, um, you know, look good for, uh, the indefinite future.

[David Blumberg]: You mentioned solar, do you put charging infrastructure in a facility like this? Does that make sense for staff and residents?

[SPEAKER_15]: We did not. At some point, I'm sure it would make sense, but we do not have that. The capacity of the building had gone up significantly because we've gone to more internalized equipment and upgrade on elevators, et cetera. But we did not add any charging stations.

[Ciccariello]: charging stations for vehicles, is that?

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

[Ciccariello]: Okay. Yeah, it's not part of this project, but I have been in discussions and I know there are some, a lot of great government incentive, like rebate programs going on for those. So it may be something that we'd definitely consider putting in in the future, but it is not a part of this project. But if we have the ability to, and we have the residents that, that would like that, it's definitely something we would entertain. And like I said, I have been in discussions with a few vendors that do provide those electronic vehicle charging station.

[Alicia Hunt]: David, if I might, I'll just reach out to our office because you've been in my office is managing grant opportunities and stuff. You're likely eligible for a lot of what we're eligible for, and should be happy to share what we've been working like what we've found and been working on. We actually did find that we now have to staff in City Hall that own charging own electric cars, and do not have chargers at home. And the fact that we had a charger at City Hall was an incentive for them. So I just put it out there. So, but yeah reach out to my office and with you.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Any other questions or numbers. I have one really silly question. Hopefully, really silly question. Can't be silly.

[Unidentified]: We're getting rid of the white picket fences. Yes, yes. Completely. Yes. Okay, thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, absent any more questions, board members, how are we feeling about things? We've got one kind of category that's a little bit open, although we can work around it, which is the response to the various department letters. Sounds like the MHA team is, other than the Waterloo question, which would need to be satisfied to the fire department's satisfaction, it seems like they're prepared to accept the recommendations and requirements of the city departments. They've certainly provided a lot of additional information we haven't had a chance to read yet. Any thoughts on how we're feeling about the project tonight? Do we need to see more? Would you like to ask more questions at another event?

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I mean, for me, I'm intrigued by, you know, Ben's responses and the things that he talked about that they were going to continue to study. That being said, I have every expectation that they'll do that. But I don't know where other people land on that. I think they have a little bit of work to do in response to the things that were brought up tonight, but whether it merits another meeting, I'm not sure.

[Unidentified]: Other members, how are we feeling?

[Deanna Peabody]: I think they've answered most of our questions I think we could probably move forward. There doesn't seem like there's that much outstanding.

[Jenny Graham]: I agree I think we can move forward.

[David Blumberg]: I think so oftentimes we'll ask for you to come back and so we can get a view or see how you might be responding with some of our comments or input. And we can have, you know, that's a nice step for us. We, I think, feel good about our contribution when we see the improvements that you've made and the responses that you provided. I do feel, however, that I don't know how much you're going to be able to do because you have things out to bid and you're waiting on contractors that are discussing about colors and features at the ground floor being one example. I'm not sure that that's something you're going to have clarity on in two weeks or four weeks. Is that fair to say?

[SPEAKER_15]: Um, I think that in, uh, in within, within a few weeks, we'll have, we'll have, we will have some clarity. I think part of the, uh, uh, process we need to do is, is complete, get, get internal MHA buy-in and agreement with any adjustments we make in the, in the design. Um, I mean, I think that, you know, I don't, I don't think we're going in in a whole flip-flop of direction. I think we're kind of on a path that we're all pretty comfortable and sound with. So, I mean, I think some of the comments have been great, you know, and it's always helpful to have that review process and be happy to engage your group as you choose. I could bore you silly, I'm sure.

[David Blumberg]: I think we all enjoy this stuff, so it's all good. But okay, I mean, I suppose if you deviated enough, you'd have to come back to us anyway, but I imagine you're not talking about, at least at this point, anticipating any significant deviation from where you're at and what you've presented. That being the case, do we have any conditions? Amanda, sometimes you take notes for us on that as we go.

[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, let me share my screen really quickly.

[David Blumberg]: Board members feel free if we're going to try to identify maybe some potential conditions to attach to an approval.

[Amanda Centrella]: So, I just took a couple notes here, and folks, please feel free to jump in if I've missed something. I just I remember discussion about potential for adding some trash cans, maybe at the entrances to the connections to the clipper ship connector. But there was talk of pursuing an enterprise green community certification, complying with the recommendations of all the letters and I'll make a note here. um, accepting the, um, the loop waterline mitigation, um, from city engineer. Uh, but yeah, if, if folks have other things on here too.

[Deanna Peabody]: Amanda, that top part is left over from like the last meeting, right?

[Amanda Centrella]: Thank you. Yes, I was, I had pulled that in case anybody wanted to suggest that, um, that the applicant come back, but it sounds like perhaps not.

[David Blumberg]: Yeah, accepting the, what do you call the water loop?

[SPEAKER_15]: Amanda, the Enterprise Green Communities, I believe, and maybe either Margaret or Natalie can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's a requirement for the financing. And so it is a part of the project. Natalie, can you confirm that?

[Qf7XgUqJFIM_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm sorry. My voice is slipping away. But yeah, we will be seeking Enterprise Green Community Certification. It's something that the state looks as part of their low-income housing tax credits. We wouldn't have that in place of course before getting the building permit. This is something that once the project is completed, you would get.

[Alicia Hunt]: So actually, let me clarify, check something, because we put conditions on projects that some of which have to be done before the building permit, but others that have to be done for the occupancy permit, right? Like sometimes we require a certain number of trees and that doesn't happen until afterwards. But I haven't tried to do an Enterprise Green Community certification, but I am pursuing LEED certification on our library. that building has been open and occupied, has had an occupancy permit for a year, and we are still working on the documentation for the LEED certification. Is that Enterprise Green Community Certification something that you would have before you would be seeking an occupancy permit?

[8msxsKW1z_4_SPEAKER_26]: No, I can answer that. The answer would be no. I think what we can do is provide evidence of the process that we go through to be considered for enterprise green communities we do an application up front and then we will be doing a follow up report at the end of the project. But, you know, we certainly can provide the applications as part of the building permit fee the copy of that.

[Alicia Hunt]: I don't know how the board feels about it but I'd love to see those documents for myself. For the, I know Gabe knows this, but for the rest of your team, I'm the planning director, but I'm also the sustainability director, and I started as our energy coordinator in the city.

[SPEAKER_15]: There you go. We'll get you the full checklist.

[David Blumberg]: Amanda, I think it's the water loop around the building. Accepting installation of the water loop around the building. How do folks feel about a recommendation not to increase the parking. They wouldn't have to follow it but as a recommendation.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: David, the only thing that I'm thinking is that they're in, they're increasing the number of units. But Gabe, what percentage of your... Let me ask it a different way. What is your typical parking ratio?

[Alicia Hunt]: Amanda, you're sharing your whole screen, so we can see the window you switched into.

[Amanda Centrella]: Oh, sorry. Let me get out of there.

[Ciccariello]: We generally plan for one parking space for every two units. It's so weird, certain developments, there is a higher percentage or we have a wait list for parking. Salt and stall, the parking is adequate right now, but there's so much turnover in elderly disabled housing. One month, you can have X amount of residents with permit parking passes, and three months later that changes because of, like I said, there's just a lot of turnover. But in general, we try to plan for one parking space for every two units.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: And what do we have now?

[Ciccariello]: I believe we're meeting that, right Ben?

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, I believe it's basically meeting code. We have our notation that we shared earlier is more specific to how it's actually being used. And so it's, but it's ultimately the numbers reflect the one for two units. What I'll add to what Gabe was just saying is that there's something sort of inversely happening here with the elderly population. The fewer cars there are, the fewer residents that have cars, the more likely they're having visiting nurses. And so the visiting, the needs for visitor parking seems to kind of go inversely with that count. But it seems that with that, one space per two units works well with the population that's been going through Salt and Stall over the years.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: So is the new layout taking into account the new units?

[SPEAKER_15]: Yes, yeah.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: So you're adding 10 spaces?

[SPEAKER_15]: We're adding 11 spaces effectively. We're adding seven spaces to the actual current count but we had an overflow of I think nine spaces previously. So in effect, we have added for the additional units and we've reduced our overflow by four spaces.

[Unidentified]: Does that make sense? Yeah. So David, are you suggesting you'd like to

[David Blumberg]: No, it sounds like they've got a pretty good pulse on on what their needs are but yeah.

[Deanna Peabody]: Yeah, I think, I think we should keep the parking they have.

[Alicia Hunt]: If I might say that.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Sorry, sorry, just just quickly I was just gonna say that, you know, to me, there's plenty of parking in the vicinity.

[Alicia Hunt]: So if I might add something that's been coming up that you might say that there's a lot of parking in the area, but the city is very actively looking to redevelop those other lots. We put out a press release about that last week, but we've also been in conversations with the senior center and the visitors to the senior center, and they are very concerned about parking. and that if we redevelop lots, they will not have adequate parking. So if there was ever at a point that the housing authority had excess parking, I think there'd be a lot of interest from the senior center to figuring out a space sharing situation. They're very, very tight and really do not have adequate parking for the senior center.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: It seems like for the, five or seven or whatever parking spaces we're talking about here it's not worth it. Yep.

[8msxsKW1z_4_SPEAKER_26]: Any other in, in terms of the linkage fees. And that's not something that, you know, at least I know you know in other communities don't usually impact affordable housing. But, I mean I guess you have a question on whether it's even applicable.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, I'm 99% sure that. I am certain because actually when I look at, when we do our linkage fee calculations, we always take out their deed restricted affordable housing and the linkage fees apply to only the market rate units. So because of that, I'm confident it doesn't apply here. Literally it applies, but then you subtract all the affordable units, which is a hundred percent of the unit.

[8msxsKW1z_4_SPEAKER_26]: Right, and then the net effect is that it comes out to zero net zero.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, I don't have my book in front of me with my numbers but I'm confident.

[Unidentified]: Okay. Thank you.

[David Blumberg]: Okay board members so unless we have additional thoughts conditions to add to our, our list. Good entertain a motion to approve with conditions, or otherwise. Motion to approve with conditions. And those conditions are old Mandy took away the screen.

[SPEAKER_18]: As, as, as was listed on was listed. Excellent to provide evidence of its pursuit of an enterprise green community certification. Provide traffic cans at the path connections to the clipper ship connector path and shall comply with recommend the letters from the relevant authorities and other departments.

[David Blumberg]: Okay, excellent. Let's proceed then. The motion and second with our We'll call vote. Yeah. Hi. Hi.

[Unidentified]: Christy down.

[David Blumberg]: George Fisher. And I'm an eye as well. Thank you to everyone who presented tonight and participated. We definitely appreciate all of you being here and Gabe, thank you for leading the group. I thought your initial introduction was excellent and very informative. So I think everyone did a nice job just in terms of your presentation and helping the board understand what the project is all about. You're obviously very well prepared. lots of things taken off my question list from your presentation alone. So it's a it's a credit to all of you. Thank you. Thank you.

[Ciccariello]: Thank you. Thank you so much.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you.

[Ciccariello]: Have a great evening.

[David Blumberg]: Thanks. Okay, friends on the board was going to suggest if folks are okay with this to to defer the vote on the minutes from the October 26 meeting, more involved meeting, I haven't had a chance to read them quite as much as I'd like to, maybe others are feeling the same way, but if you don't mind, if we can punt that one to our next meeting. I agree. Okay, excellent.

[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry to interrupt, just for the sake of formality, can we have a motion?

[David Blumberg]: Oh, a motion on the minutes.

[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, motion to continue it to the next meeting.

[David Blumberg]: Please, if someone can present one of those, that would be great. I will make a motion to continue the meeting. In a second. And do we have a second?

[Deanna Peabody]: Sure, I'll second.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you. Roll call vote, starting with Deanna.

[Deanna Peabody]: Aye.

[David Blumberg]: And Klyce. Aye. And Kristen.

[Jenny Graham]: Aye.

[David Blumberg]: Hey, George. Hi. And I'm an eye as well. So we will continue that discussion in those minutes until our next regular scheduled meeting. Speaking of meetings, Amanda, am I to the point where we should be talking about our upcoming meetings?

[Amanda Centrella]: What a great segue.

[David Blumberg]: Maybe a segue now and then.

[Amanda Centrella]: Well done. Yeah, so I kind of, I wanted to confirm with the group. I think we had talked tentatively sort of about the potential for holding a meeting December 1st, the first Thursday of December. As of right now, there's nothing that's been submitted that would be on the agenda, so it may not even be the case that we need this meeting, although there's a couple weeks between now and then. But I kind of wanted to confirm with the folks here to see that that was still available to them. And in the event that, you know, nothing is submitted to us, we would just cancel it.

[David Blumberg]: folks feeling good about the first.

[Amanda Centrella]: Cool, okay. Wait a minute, you said December 1st? I think so, yeah, the first Thursday. First Thursday, yeah, I'm not available.

[Jenny Graham]: Okay. Sorry if I messed that up. I didn't know that I responded yet. I can't remember.

[David Blumberg]: We didn't put it on our calendars I think we were planning it out.

[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I'm available.

[Jenny Graham]: I don't know about George, whatever, whatever works to get warm.

[David Blumberg]: George is in, and I'm feeling like Jackie is so solid that she would almost undoubtedly be available on the first for us, right? Thursday, I don't think, was a tough one for her. It was Wednesday, I think, where she had some questions. So if it's okay, I don't want to be rude to Christy if you, because you're- Oh, no, don't, that's fine.

[Jenny Graham]: That's fine.

[David Blumberg]: No, no. She's calling me business. Yeah, Amanda has a date to work with that way.

[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah.

[David Blumberg]: Okay.

[Amanda Centrella]: Okay, great. And so, again, nothing is submitted that would lead me to believe that we need something in place for later that month. And David and I had talked about like, you know, what about the 15th holding it, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not even sure. I mean, we could like revisit that over email or even if we have the December 1st meeting, if something comes up.

[David Blumberg]: Because the activities light enough that maybe we don't even need to put it on the calendar.

[Amanda Centrella]: Right, right.

[David Blumberg]: Okay. Let's just go ahead and do that then. Okay. And I know we were going to perhaps look to flipping the calendar to 2023. And Emily spoke with me offline about her class schedule. And she was thinking Wednesdays would work best for her next year and in the spring semester in particular. And Jackie, I think had some question about Wednesday or like she needed to start later or something, but they're both not here. So I feel like that's a conversation we should save for a future meeting as well.

[Amanda Centrella]: I think a question to this group is traditionally we've been meeting around six o'clock most nights. And again, would need to confirm with Jackie, but I think that she in the past has been able to make Wednesday's work if we start at 6.30. And so kind of want to see if that's a possibility for the folks here.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I just have to say that Thursdays work way better for me. But I can do Wednesdays.

[David Blumberg]: I could do the 630 question I can answer with that's fine. Whether it's six or 630 is fine for me.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, same for me.

[Amanda Centrella]: Okay, yeah, let's, maybe we'll continue this offline. I can send out like a when to meet or a doodle poll or something just to gauge people's availability and preferences. But sounds like potentially maybe Wednesday, 6.30, or we talked to, or we could, we had talked last time about like, if we had, you know, one, the first Thursday and the third Wednesday of each month, to kind of split the difference a bit. So I can, I'll lay it out over email and we can figure it out there.

[David Blumberg]: Well, that sounds good. And that'll be really for, we're talking 2023. So we've got our December 1st date and then hopefully we have our next meeting in the new year. Okay, great. Any other general updates or anything? that we want to cover. Alicia, you usually have a note or two for us, but if you don't, that's fine.

[Amanda Centrella]: I have one last thing. Y'all may have seen an email from me earlier today about conflict of interest training. This will be less relevant for George and Emily, who are newer members and so had to do this as part of kind of onboarding. But if you want to check out that email, it has some details about how every two years, all city affiliated staff, of which you guys are considered as appointees from the mayor, have to undergo this training. So feel free to reach out to us if you have questions about that. It's laid out a bit in the email. And our office manager, Teresa Dupont, is happy to go over it in more detail. I copied her on that thread. So please feel free to reach out to me or to her.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Can you give us an idea of How long is this going to take? Sorry.

[Amanda Centrella]: Oh, no, that's fair. Alicia, do you remember? I probably honestly have to do mine soon again.

[Alicia Hunt]: I'll tell you that my feeling is that it takes on the order of 20-ish minutes. depending how familiar you are with all of it, if you have to read it all or not. The key thing to know for it is that you are considered a municipal employee for the purposes of this training. When it talks about employees, that means you, because that's not obvious to people who are appointed to boards. But it does, I think it takes about 20 minutes. And actually, Amanda, it is my understanding that Emily and George were not sent it. One of the things that we recently realized is that there was some confusion and that the person who was passing these out didn't realize that employee included appointed people and thought that board members were exempt from this. And that is not true. Okay. I will double check with them then. That is one of the reasons why it's being circulated now. We realize that for a period of time, new appointees were not receiving it at all. So, and if you're wondering if you have done it recently for the city of Medford, it's incredibly likely you have not, because it was not sent to all boarding commission members with the new administration. So now we've been here two and a half years.

[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: So, like I did it way in the past but

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, Mark Romley used to send it to all staff and boards and commissions, and it got lost in his transition with leaving that it didn't get picked up with somebody.

[Unidentified]: I'm glad I asked 20 minutes.

[Alicia Hunt]: And you can take a lot longer if you really wanna study every question and think about it and dwell on it, but it doesn't need to. So I have one update that's not related to that, if you want. I just want you all to know with zoning, what's going on. So the thing that's making me very happy right now is that our new building commissioner is being, He cannot handle that we do not have a GIS-based official zoning map, and it is within his purview to help fix this problem. It was something that just kept getting kicked down the road. So he is very actively working, and he's connecting with our GIS staff to get an official digitized, the version that's online, to get it officially digitized in GIS. So hopefully that will be coming pretty soon. It's unclear exactly how long it's gonna take, but he's on board to get this done, and our city engineer is, and they would be the ones who would adopt it. That process does not involve any changes, so it doesn't go to you or the council. It's just a matter of taking the hand-drawn map and certifying that the digital version reflects the hand-drawn map. So that's coming. And the city council met about hiring a zoning lawyer, and I met with them in a committee of the whole, and they understand that they actually want planning to be done with this, and that they don't just want a lawyer but they need a planner and a lawyer. So we'll likely need to get quotes. And they and the mayor have also agreed on a process where the city council president and I are jointly drafting a scope. I'm drafting a scope and providing it to her. And it's gonna have like a base scope and then like additional things we could be doing. And we are looking to hire a lawyer and a planner together jointly between our office and the city council, so they would work for both of us, we would both speak to them directly to move forward. And we do think that we can move forward some very simple changes to the zoning pretty rapidly, possibly even before bringing a specific, a particular zoning lawyer on board for very minor changes. And then we're looking at sort of a bunch of, you know, things that need a real study, things that need a little bit of analysis, and then things that are, you know, more, you know, simpler. So we're trying to put together a scope to then hire a planner and a consultant to work on this together and move that forward in the very near future. I have gotten some example scopes from other communities that we're looking at, just to sort of, because we haven't hired somebody other than for the comprehensive plan in a long time. and the comprehensive plan consultants are putting some best practices and some examples of stuff into the implementation section of the plan for us. So that is also coming and they'll be reviewing scope. If anybody is aware of similar, like starting to do more wholesale updates, broad changes to zoning, and thinks we should look at what that community did, their process, or their scope, or what they hired, I'm happy to get that. I'm happy to take recommendations on that as well. Right off the bat, we're looking at some of the stuff Arlington's done recently, because they've done some types of changes that feel like in line with what's really coming. from us, and they're acting city planner happens to be on our comprehensive plan committee, because she's a Medford resident.

[Unidentified]: So, thank you for the updates.

[David Blumberg]: Motion to adjourn, perhaps I will make that much in a second, I will second it. Okay, the roll call. Chrissy doubt. Yes. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. Thank you very much everybody tonight for your efforts and we'll see you virtually on December 1st, right?

[Alicia Hunt]: Possibly, yes.

[David Blumberg]: Thank you very much.

[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you all. Have a good evening.

[Jenny Graham]: See you later.

[David Blumberg]: Happy Thanksgiving.

Jenny Graham total time: 1.26 minutes total words: 83