[Emily Hedeman]: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Community Development Board. My name is Emily Hedeman. I'm the board chair, and I'm going to call the meeting to order. Let's begin with some obligatory procedural matters.
[Unidentified]: Recording in progress.
[Emily Hedeman]: This hearing of the Medford Community Development Board is being conducted in a hybrid format, both in the Medford City Council Chambers, on the second floor of Medford City Hall, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford, Massachusetts, and via Zoom remote video conferencing. Anyone who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by attending in person or accessing the link that was included on the meeting agenda posted on the city of Medford website. A recording of this meeting will be posted on Medford Community Media website as soon as possible. A reminder that given the hybrid nature of this meeting, tonight all votes from the board will be made by roll call. And then before I keep going, can I just get a thumbs up from the Zoom crowd to confirm that audio is good for you guys? Great, thank you. And everyone in the chambers doing okay with audio? Great, thank you. Please know that project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed on the city's website medfordma.org by clicking on current CD board filings. For those on Zoom, you will also find the link in the chat. Alicia or Danielle, would you mind dropping that link in the chat when you have a second? All right, we're going to start with roll call attendance of the board. Vice Chair Peter Kalbs. Ari Goffman-Fishman. Present. Hey, Ari. Sabrina Alpino. Present. Hi, Sabrina. John Anderson?
[John Anderson]: Present.
[Emily Hedeman]: Hey, John. Good to be in person with you again. Adam Behrens?
[Adam Behrens]: Present.
[Emily Hedeman]: Hey, Adam. Ben Lavallee?
[Ben Lavallee]: Present.
[Emily Hedeman]: Hi, Ben. And myself, Chair Emily Hedeman is also present. Danielle, can you please introduce any staff at the meeting or on the call?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. We have myself, Daniel Evans, senior planner, along with Director Hunt. Sorry about that feedback. As well as Christian Cepeda. Oh, I have to read his name. Lepofsky, sorry, I couldn't. And who else? We have Jack. Again, I need Podolsky, who is the other graduate student intern on the call tonight.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thanks, Danielle. And before we begin, I just want to run down the agenda for tonight's meeting. We're going to be continuing our public hearing on Medford and West Medford squares. The board will hear a short presentation from Emily and Paula of Innocent Associates and then move into the board discussion and then public comment period. Like last week's meeting, depending on the amount of public participation, the board will take a short recess around 8.30, probably about 10 minutes, and then we're going to reassess at 10 p.m. whether to vote this topic out of the board or to continue to a date certain. That can also be influenced by the comments we hear tonight by the public, so it's not just the timing and logistics of the topic that we're discussing. I just want to make that clear. And part of the reason why we want to do these reassessments before it gets too late in the evening is because we do value your public feedback, those of you in person and those who have joined by Zoom. We want to make sure that we have enough time to digest the feedback and to adequately present it to our consultants so they can implement it in the next round of presentations. Last week, we did a physical sign-up sheet. I don't think we'll need that this evening. If we do get more people in attendance, we'll reassess. But I think for now, we could just keep it a little bit more informal than last week. And for Zoom, we're gonna use the typical raise hand feature. We are going to be prioritizing in-person comments, just recognizing that it is more challenging to attend in person than remotely via Zoom. So we'll likely process in-person comments and then move on to Zoom. And we appreciate everyone's patience with that approach. So with that, I'm gonna move into our agenda item, which is the public hearing for Medford Square and West Medford Square districts. This is the second meeting for the continued public hearing that was open on June 4th regarding the proposed zoning amendment for the creation of Medford Square and West Medford Square districts. Do we have anyone who is subject to who needed to sign their Mullen affidavits to confirm their eligibility for voting? I don't believe we did. We do? Okay.
[Danielle Evans]: Madam Chair, Benjamin Lavallee signed the Mullen affidavit for missing the first session of the public hearing on June 4th. So I received that today.
[Emily Hedeman]: Great. Thanks for confirming, Danielle. And thank you for taking care of that, Ben. I appreciate it. Danielle or Alicia, do you have any introductory comments before we hand it off to Emily and Paola of Innes Associates?
[Alicia Hunt]: I just felt like it would be good to make it just very clear that tonight is a public hearing, as Emily said, on West Medford and Medford Square, and that we had continued the public hearing on the residential and neighborhood residential to July 9th. So if anybody wants to make comments on that, they have to attend that meeting, or they can submit written comments. But because that public hearing is not open, that there will not be an opportunity to speak on that this evening and I just wanted to make sure that was clear in case somebody thought they were here only for that. That that is not going to happen this evening and we're not able to hear comments on that because of the legal process of having a public hearing.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, thanks for that reminder and recognizing that Medford Square and West Medford Square do not exist in vacuums. Those residential districts will undoubtedly come up, but I would say if you do have comments regarding the residential districts is to, as Alicia said, attend on the 9th, submit a comment virtually. There's a QR code in the back or through the ocdmedford-ma.gov email address. And during the break, if anybody has questions, happy to answer them. And Alicia, Danielle, Christian, and Jack are manning the Zoom chat. So with that, I'm going to pass it off to Emily and Paola.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. While Paula shares her screen, I will introduce for the record myself, Emily Ennis of Innes Associates, and I'm here with Paula Ramos Martinez. We are going to walk you through just the sort of the reminder and introduction for those who have been part of this process and for those who are new, and then turn over to changes that have been made based on public comment from your first meeting. So with that, if you'll move to the agenda, please. Next slide. Once you get to full screen mode. And we will both try, I know with it being in person as well as hybrid, that there can be a little bit of an echo in the city council chambers. So we are trying to speak slowly and clearly through these wires of computers. So if at any point you can't hear us, just let us know. So with that, I'm going to talk a little bit about the timeline, just in relationship to the squares, the no next meetings, and give a little bit of introduction, and then I will turn it over to Paula for the squares. Initially, just to touch briefly on the residential districts, initially they were ahead of the squares. And so the squares included some of the residential districts. You will see from the maps that we have removed those from the squares because we wanted, we didn't want the squares to get ahead of the discussion on the residential districts. So tonight we will be showing and talking about only the mixed-use districts, and that might make some of the what do I speak to tonight versus what do I speak to on July 9th a little bit of an easier discussion. So with that, if you'll go to the next slide, please, Paola. Thank you. This has been the process for the discussion of the squares. We introduced the commercial framework to the planning and permitting committee on March 12th, discuss Medford square on the 26th and West Medford square on the 9th. And then both of them together on April 30th. And these of course are all public meetings brought it forward because the city council referred it to this board, the community development board. So we discussed it at our first meeting with you on May 8th. We had a public listening session on the 4th of June, and then here we are today to talk about it for the second meeting with the community development board. Next slide, please. Um, these are the known, uh, dates, uh, based on discussions, uh, from the, with the community development board last week and some discussions with, uh, um, city staff and trying to firm up calendars. I believe I saw on the agenda that city staff is going to talk about this further, so they may have some additional updates, but just to give people an idea of what meetings we see, uh, coming forward. Uh, next slide, please. So we've often been asked why why we're doing a rezoning or why the city is doing a rezoning effort and why we're working with them to provide the information that's needed. This comes out of the Medford Massachusetts comprehensive plan, which was approved in January 2023 and has certain goal city over the next.
[Emily Hedeman]: Emily, your audio is getting really low.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you. I appreciate that. So the Medford Massachusetts Comprehensive Plan, which was adopted in January 2023 has certain goals for housing, economic development, preservation of open space, and other components. Some out of those goals come some zoning recommendations. In addition, the city adopted a climate action and adaptation plan that also had recommendations for zoning changes. It's these two documents that have kick-started the process of looking more in-depth at the zoning. The city has been working on zoning changes since the recodification began in 2020. Some of our language around corridors, squares, and neighborhoods is coming from this future land use map that you see in front of you. So just for those people who may not have been part of the earlier part of this process, that's what kicked all of this off were these two documents. And then we have been working with the city, as I said, to provide information, options, materials for discussion. And with that, for the next slide, please. Part of what we've been hearing is questions and concerns about what does this mean for my property or my neighborhood. So we did put all of the information onto an interactive online map and people can go there. If you go to the next slide, Pally, we can provide the link to you to that map. There's a lot of information. It is a little clunky, but you can change the layers, you can change filters, and you can also click on individual parcels and see what's happening on the different lots. There is a video on the City's website for this zoning effort that explains how to use it. So if you haven't used it and you're interested in learning more, I recommend that. We have also been trying to build additional tools, and you will see some of them today to understand what's happening where. And so with that, with that introduction and a guide to maybe some of the tools that we have available for you, and we are continuing to build more in response to public comment, to kind of parse this information, I'm going to turn it over to Paola talk specifically about the squares and potential changes for the board's consideration.
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Thank you, Emily. If I may, Madam Chair, I'm going to continue with the presentation. Let me know if you hear me okay. It's pretty low. Okay. I can maybe rise my voice. Maybe it's that.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah. It's going to feel like you're yelling, but just yell.
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Okay. Perfect. So I'm just going to start with the zoning and the proposals. I'm going to go fast because we've already seen this and I want to focus more on the recommendations, but if anyone has any questions feel very free to ask and we can go back, we can go to the draft and we can answer and take the time that you need. So this is about the existing zoning. We are looking into two squares, Medford Square and West Medford Square. We are going to start with Medford Square. So we see it here, the location in Medford and we are going to have a zoom in This is the existing, the current condition. What you see in this dash black line is the first or the boundaries of the Medford square. As you can see in here, the existing districts you have are these pink ones, is the commercial one. Here we have in the slides all the things that can be done. It can go up to six stories with residential. Then you have apartment two, it can go up to six stories for residential and then for hotel 15. And then we have some general residential, and that is more for single and two units and then single family on the north part of Terrell and Governors Avenue. Here are all the existing and current dimension standards for these two districts. This was the second proposal and the one that was referred from the city council. The proposal that we are bringing here today is going to be the same, nothing changes except for those boundaries. What we are going to do is just to take out all the residential areas and only talk about the existing, the mixed districts. And so what you're going to see in both are going to be the same districts. We're going to talk about mixed use 1B. This district will only appear here in the Medford Square. We have it in the narrow areas and narrow parcels next to the river where we have some historic buildings. And so we propose the mixed use 1B. It goes up to four stories. Then we have the next one in intensity will be the mixed use 2A. This goes up to five stories by right and plus two with incentive zoning. Then we have the purple one that's mixed or used to be more intense. That is seven-story by right and two with incentive zoning, and then mixed-use three, that is only this area next to the 93, and that is mixed-use 3A, actually, and that's eight stories by right plus four with incentive zoning. So this is mainly, there are no changes from the one that we've seen in the previous. It's just the boundaries that have changed to only focus on non-residential. exclusive residential districts. Then when we go to West Medford, we also have the same or similar, at least we have that concentration of that commercial one along the high street and then the place where the commuter rail is to stop. There we have that commercial one that goes up to six stories by right, Then we have the general residential, single-family, and apartment one. There is no limit of residential units. There's no cap. It's with the height. It's permitted three stories by right in those areas. This is the existing. Again, we have all the table and dimensional standards if anyone has any question. about the existing, we can talk about it. Then we have the first proposal or the one that we've shown here in the previous. Again, we've done the same, basically take out all the exclusive residential districts and bring only that core of the of the square. So in this one, we don't have so many different as we had in Medforska, we have four gradients of intense mixed use. Here we have two that mix use 2A and mix use 2B, which are up to five stories by right with two with incentive zoning, and then mix use 2B, that purple that goes up to seven stories by right plus two with incentive zoning. So what we have prepared, and we can go through them if anyone is interested, is these different boards where we can have the summary of the square. districts and so we have one board with both of the maps with the districts and then we have the information by building types and then we see the district. So what can I do in each of the districts? And so we see that, for example, mixed use 1B we have from three unit dwelling that is permitted. It's not permitted in the other districts. Historic conversion is permitted only in MX1B and 2A. Minimum three units for 1B, minimum four units for 2A. etc. And so what building types are allowed in each of the districts in a very simple way that we can see that bigger picture. And then in case it's difficult to understand what we are talking about, there is a definition of each of those building types. Also, whenever applies incentive zoning, we have also clarified that in this table. And then We do another table, and that is with the dimensional standards. So that is also easy to see all of the dimensional standards in one table. And with all of the districts together, we have all the different standards, and then the diagram to understand better, and then words in an image. You see what we are talking about, what is the frontage, what is active ground floor, and all of these different standards. And so that is easy to compare.
[Emily Innes]: And Paola, if I could just jump very quickly in, just so everybody online or in the room knows, we have provided these as PDFs for the city to post on their website. They've been great about posting the materials, but they are also set up as full-size posters. So either we can print them out and give them to the city or they can print them out. to be available for people to see. So although it looks small on the slide, they are actually 24 by 36 poster size.
[Emily Hedeman]: You and I think alike, Emily, because I just dropped a link to the presentation in the meeting chat. So if anybody wants to zoom in a little bit extra on those tables, which I know I am going to do, that link is in the chat.
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: And later I can go through the if anyone asked I can go through the tables, so we can see it with a little bit of more high quality image. I will continue now with the recommended changes. As I said, we can go through the draft. If anyone asks for, we have the draft, we can go through all the changes. Here are only the ones that we are recommended from the version that was referred from the city council to the suggestions that we have for the For the city board to consider. So, the 1st thing is to update the draft. It was updated to exclude all the references to the residential districts. Since we are not going to vote on that on those residential areas. Then the second will be to update the section 94.3.2 and these are the table of use regulations and so we have several modifications and so we have all the different uses that are from the table of uses. I will go through them because they are not a lot. So A4 is the three-unit dwelling detached. This will be also added by right to the MX1B, and it's the only one that has changed. The other districts do not allow a three-unit dwelling. The MX1B is the lowest from all the four that we have seen, so we think that adding that smaller scale would be would be good for this to show a little bit of that diversity in skills. Then we have 8.5, that is the multiplex, that building that holds from four to six buildings. Again, this is also by right and it's going to be by right for MX1B and as well for MX2A. In 2B and in 3A won't be allowed. Then we also have the townhouse. In this case, again, depending on the units that we allow, on the minimum units that we allow in the different districts, we would allow a townhouse with those minimums. In the MX1B, a minimum townhouse of three units would be allowed, which is the minimum for a townhouse, and the MX2A would be allowed a four-unit townhouse. Then we have added the I.6 and this is municipal parking area or garage as a principal use and this is not allowed in MX1B and MX2A but will be allowed by right in more intense districts MX2B and MX3A. This is a new use that we are adding to the table. Then we have new numbering because we added this municipal parking. We need to renumber the open storage, moving of land, radio and television tower and solar energy system. That's the only thing that changes. There is no added or change in the by right or allowed or not allowed. Then we added a footnote referencing K1 accessory dwelling units, which states that subject to change for the revision of the new ADU ordinance. Again, as we haven't gone through residential ADU, we don't feel comfortable in placing something that hasn't been updated and approved. We want to wait until that is approved and then this will change and add those protected ADU uses, local ADUs and by special permit ADU. Then we have some recommendations for the table of dimensional requirements and is all the highlighted in yellow that you will see here. For the lot area square footage, we have MX2B and MX3A. This was answering to a comment that we got in the last city board meeting. which state that 5,000 was too big for people that wanted to do something. So we checked the areas, how many were from 3,000 to 4,000, and we had a few from 4,000 to 5,000. So we lowered into 4,000. So, more will be conforming and we would be able to have something with all the requirements in a 4000, we cannot have very tall buildings, but we could have some 2 layers of commercial, you know, so we would have that info possibility. instead of having a vacant land. Then we have the frontage, we reduce as well the mixed 3A to 40% and then the active ground floor it's now reduced to 60%. Since a lot of the lots are smaller with small frontage, so we have the entrance to a garage or parking, then we need that active ground floor gets reduced. And then we have Setbacks, this was also from a comment for historic buildings. We had a front minimum of setback of three, from three to 20, so we have changed that so that the historic buildings, so that doesn't fit as it was like zipper, I think she described it, so that it's more aligned. We don't mind to have that zero setback. Then the rear setback, we changed it to zero. We also had some comments on that end, but we do have a protection that whenever any of these districts abuts a residential district, we have a 10-foot rear and side setback so that it protects the residential neighbors. Then we have the updated, we continue with the dimensions in this case is the stormwater and landscape. We have a building coverage of, we updated to 90% on the more intense ones. So that's MX2B and MX3A. And we have the open space permeable. So we had now two. One comes from Salem corridor and Mystic Avenue corridor where we use permeable open space. Now we're using pervious. That is a more general definition. So we want to continue with the pervious and that's why we are cleaning a little bit that remnant from the other corridors. That will be fixed also at the end of the process when we do a cleanup. And those are reduced to 10% in MX2B and MX3A. We have green score. So whenever the project has a bigger impact, has to go through green score. So that is to be clear. And then we have open space landscape that also changes to 15% and 10%. So these are changes from the previous. Then we have updated definitions. We want to add building coverage. The current Medford, what it has is lot coverage, but the lot coverage actually does not take into account any accessory buildings, accessory structures, So it's only the principal building. So we want to update that the maximum area of a lot that is permitted to be covered by the combination of the principal buildings, accessory buildings, and accessory structures. And then the building coverage of the structure is measured from the outside of the exterior walls and the ground story, including covered porches and other building components. So this is the one that we would like to recommend as the new definition and new dimensional standard. And then we have the section applicability. Again, we need to exclude the residential districts from the definition and description of both areas, of both squares. Then we change the district name of Mixed Use 1 to Mixed Use 1B. There is a difference between, for example, the Mixed Use 1 that we had in Salem, and the mixed-use that we are proposing now. They are quite different, so that's why we want to bring the new name. Then we would have mixed-use 3 to go to mixed-use 3a, since in Mystic we have another 3, which is even more intense, and so that will be 3b in the future. Then we go to dimensional requirements and waivers section 94-9.x.3. Here we have some recommendations and what you see that is changing is what I have highlighted in yellow. Sometimes it's just a way of making it more clear in the way it's written. We just change for the front setbacks. the language of a maximum setback of 20 feet that is allowed for the purpose of creating an active public plaza. That language is changed. Then there were some districts that were bringing something from a different. There was a commercial district here, so it's changed to MX3. We don't have commercial districts here. Um, then we don't know exactly because we don't have the residential districts yet instead of going the explaining which residential districts and then change it. And again, we just generically call that anything that abuts that residential district. The height setback is required. It was very specific to Salem and Mystic, so in here we had to change it to the four-floor and above, since now we have higher buildings than six stories. For the ground floor active frontage, we changed the definition of active uses. And so we use this as follows. Active uses include retail, restaurant, cafes, personal services, other active commercial uses, publicly accessible office or residential lobbies, and active building amenities spaces, example, gym, residential, common space. Where active commercial uses are not feasible, the following may be substitute, a residential stoop, a setback of green, open space, or a public space with seating, public art, such a mural or sculpture, or another use that provides an engaging ground floor. Then we wanted to also bring here the daylight minimum standards that we are working on. It's not yet fully drawn, but we wanted to introduce and just tell the community that will be defined. It's just a little bit more complex, needs time. We wanted to make it well. We just wanted to introduce it and say that we are working on it. So this is the end. These are all the recommended changes that we have. If there is any question, if you want me to go through any of the development standards or look into the different sections that we have prepared before, just let me know. I'm going to stop here.
[Emily Hedeman]: Great, thank you for that. I really enjoyed the visual, the table. I think I mentioned it as you were doing it, the table that kind of compares all the different districts and then all their features. I think that's something maybe we as a board want to go back to and really dig into. So the next thing that we have is board discussion. And I have a couple of questions for Paola and Emily. Let's see. I guess I just have one to start off with, and then I want to kind of send it off to the rest of the board. So for the ground floor active frontage, I noticed that you mentioned publicly accessible lobbies. I've read some stuff lately about a proliferation of banks being occupying first floor spaces and some of our most dynamic squares. I know we obviously cannot prevent specific uses, but is there a way that, you know, we can look for active uses that are active for longer than just a workday that kind of give us like a vibrant nightlife and provide services for residents outside of, you know, Monday through Friday, nine to five.
[Emily Innes]: I'll jump on that and then Paula, feel free to fill in as well. The act of ground floor is a really tricky definition to parse in some ways, because I think all of us who have been working in this field have heard of places that have required ground floor commercial that hasn't been filled. And so the way we try and think about it now is, What is, to your point, Madam Chair, what's going to draw people at different times of the day and increase that foot traffic? So a lot of places, this has been slightly amended, but this has actually come from another Massachusetts city that we've been working with, where they've expanded the definition of active use. It's interesting you're bringing up the bank because of course we've always thought of banks as being static places, but a lot of banks are starting, I know of one for example, and I think it's in Brookline, and I've seen them in other places, where the bank has a cafe, they have a co-working space as part of their ground floor lobby because they're trying to attract a different level of customers. So I think it's important with this idea of we're requiring a certain percentage of ground floor active frontage, but we need to be flexible about what counts as ground floor active. So I agree with you, the ideal is something that encourages activity for more than just nine to five, but how we get there and how we define that so that it's flexible, not just for now, but 10, 15, 20 years from now is a little bit of a challenge. So I'd love to hear more from you board members and from the public of other ways we could also think about this.
[Emily Hedeman]: I'm curious what precedents are out there around. you know, more consistent activation at different times of the day. You know, what popped into my head was, you know, can we, can we require that, you know, a business is open X number of hours or, you know, X number of evenings, you know, per week, but, you know, we don't want to mandate how businesses do their business. So that feels like we're getting into kind of tricky territory. I see Ari's hand, curious if they have any other ideas or any other questions.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, so I'll start with commentary on what we were just talking about and then the question I had. I agree that the banks are a very good example, especially for Medford Square. I have yet to see someone express excitement about Chase moving into the old vault space. I know there's nothing we can do about it, but I think it is a problem for our public squares. I am very cautious about mandating the specific hours because when I think about a space like that, we would love a daycare there. I know it's a loss to the square that the one next to Abisuya is moving, although they did find a new church. They by definition just have very limited hours. I don't think that's going to be the tool we want to use, but big fan of thinking creatively about this and taking in public comment to think about how we can do this. The question I had was just maybe like 5 extra sentences about the daylight thing kind of obviously it's not created, but like, what is the broad shape that you're trying to get wording for? Thank you.
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Madam, if I may, yeah, I can jump into that. 1 thing that we were working also for the. Question that was the precedent question, if I just can. Best answer a little bit more. We have some in the incentive zoning, some. Incentives for local. commerce, local business so that they can get, if they rent it or sell it to a local business, they can have some incentives there to move that more local economy. Then there's also design guidelines. Sometimes it's not about that we're not working on that. That's for the future, but just to keep in mind, sometimes it's not as much of what business is but that is transparent enough and that there is a connection between the outside and the inside and there is an exchange of people walking in by a lot of times the banks have or banks or real estate office where they have all the windows completely covered and you cannot see really into the office, that doesn't create a very active. So having certain standards for design guidelines that open that transparency makes it, even though it's not a super active intense business, but that at least there is some kind of transparency. So that would be another way of at least activate a little bit more. about the daylight now. So we are looking into different options. One that I find very interesting is more about, so the sun study, it's never static, it's very dynamic. So you need a very broad study, not only for a day, but for the year. And so to have, At least we're looking into finding the months that are the worst case scenario months. Then from that, having a certain amount of hours a day in those months that are protected from your neighbors. The impact that these new developments need to study is how much they are going to impact the residential neighbors. And so we will, there are many different ways to do this, but that is the one that I think worked best and it's more realistic and also gives a lot of flexibility for the architecture, how that design could help instead of being a static block, if they start to play with the form. they can get those minimum hours a day protected without compromising too much the development of the building. So that is, I think, the one that we're exploring the most, but it needs to be, it's not well-established in the US, so we want to get it right and also look in nationally other strategies that might be interesting.
[Emily Innes]: And just to piggyback on that, I think what we're all talking about is how do we set standards for certain things, certain results, certain conditions that we want to have happen, but then it's up to the applicant with an actual project to come forward. So for example, on the daylight, the zoning was set the standard, the applicant would come before the CD board for either a site plan review or a special permit, and they would have to do a study at that point. to prove that they met the requirements. And so getting the standards right is critical and understanding how somebody would be able to prove that they met those conditions as part of setting the standards. I think there was a trend a few years back for noise ordinances and other ordinances where the ability to measure, it's like, okay, we can have the standard, but how do you measure it? The ability to measure wasn't something that was practical or cost-effective. And so we want to make sure that we get it right so that somebody comes in front of the board, you all know what's being measured and why and how.
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: And also, these are studies that are easy to do for an architecture office that basically every program right now does it in this way. So there is no extra cost that they have to call to an engineering firm to do it. It's just very easy to do with the programs that we have right now.
[Ari Fishman]: Thanks, both of you.
[Alicia Hunt]: I see Alicia's hand. Oh, I'll defer to Ben. When the board has finished commenting, I actually have a couple of questions and thoughts that I just wanted to make sure the board heard and considered too.
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_43]: All right, thank you. Board member Ben.
[Ben Lavallee]: Hi, thank you, Emily. I have a couple of different categories of feedback, I guess. The first is that the changes to terminology and definitions are quite hard to follow, even for me on the CDB. And so I imagine, and this is a bit of feedback that we've had from the public repeatedly. So for example, MX1 in April is now MX1B in June. I would argue that when we're distributing materials to the public or presenting in a public forum like this, that we should actually just write the words out because it's very hard to keep track of all the different acronyms. So I don't want to nitpick, but there were several slides with tables with MX1B and 2A and somebody, you know, in the community trying to keep up with that. It's just overwhelming, frankly. And I know everybody's, everybody's working hard. So that's a commentary just on sort of simplification, not, you know, not anybody needing to do a better job or anything. So I just want to be clear about that.
[Emily Hedeman]: So I think the term... Can you give us the ambiguity now before you go further on those?
[Ben Lavallee]: I don't, I don't need it now. I think I, I think I'm, I think I'm caught up. But I think it leads into another point, which is around the timing of distribution of materials, right? And so in the preparation for tonight's meeting, you know, watched prior videos, reviewed prior presentations, looked at all the materials that were available in our file shares. And even now, in the public file shares, the presentations that are being reviewed tonight weren't uploaded until less than an hour before the meeting, right? And I would put forward that with everything that everybody has on their plate, people's clear passion for this topic and the future of this city, that we should give the public time to digest. And if that means that we need more time, then so be it. These are important decisions, but uploading the presentation less than an hour before the public hearing, just people's heads are spinning and it's hard to have any meaningful feedback when you're just like trying to make sure that you understand what's been put in front of you. So I think that we should consider, for example, public distribution of presentations several days in advance with some sort of notification from the city that materials are available for review and so that the public comment and the dialogue can be grounded on people having had a chance to digest it versus trying to digest it in a meeting like this and provide feedback. I think that's just a lot to ask of people. And then I do wanna clarify, because again, this changed for tonight's meeting. Tonight, we're talking about the squares with the updated boundaries, not the residential areas, because there are certain corners of Governors Ave, Ashland Street, which is where I live, Oakland Street, where those lines have moved since the last meeting. So can somebody please clarify exactly what's being discussed tonight? I believe it's after we've kind of moved the lines. Is that true?
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, Emily. Yeah, just just to be super clear. This is not something that has been confirmed. This is a recommendation that we as a board can discuss to see, you know, do we think it makes more sense to restrict that boundary for West Medford Medford Square and only talk about these commercially focused zones? so that we're not conflating them with the residential. But I'll pass it to Emily just to double confirm.
[Emily Innes]: Yes. So a couple of things, and thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Ben. I'm going to work my way backwards. So for tonight, initially, the squares came, were recommended to the CD board after the residential districts were recommended to the CD board. So the thought was that the small areas of the squares that were the same as the other residential districts, those residential districts would have gone through the process and so we could keep them. But now the squares are perhaps, we don't know because it depends on the discussion today, but there's a possibility that they could happen, they could be voted back to the city council. prior to the residential because the residential path as of last week has now slowed down. And so we didn't want the city board, we didn't want, we don't want the city board and we didn't want the city council to be ahead of the rest of the residential district conversation. So our recommendation and Chair Hedeman is absolutely spot on when she says all of these are recommendations. Our recommendation is let's pull the neighborhood residential districts out of the discussions of the square so we don't inadvertently get ourselves cross-tied on this. Same thing with the ADUs. The ADUs are now part of the residential discussion that's been slowed down. We can't pass the ADUs as shown because we would then be ahead of ourselves. So that's part of it. That also, in many ways, feeds into the discussion of when materials are getting to you, because we've been trying to respond to public comment on several different topics, and we've been having about a public meeting with you a week, whether it's been a a public listening session or community development board meeting or a planning and permitting committee meeting. In a couple of cases, we've had two meetings a week. We are working pretty much as fast as we can to meet the meeting schedule. And, you know, that is what it is. That's what we do as consultants. So we're not happy that we're not getting it to you further in advance. We would like to be a little bit further in advance. And maybe the summer is- Emily, your audio is going out a little bit. Sorry. And maybe the summer is an opportunity for us to catch up to that so we can get it in advance. Yeah. So there's an apology from me to all of you that they haven't been as fast, but we have been working as fast as we can.
[Ben Lavallee]: Thank you so much for the clarifications, Emily. And just to be clear, like totally recognize everybody's working as hard as they can, uploading materials as quickly as they can. It's more so, you know, the reasonableness of the timing for everybody to do a comprehensive job. And put me, now that you've clarified, I appreciate that. I do think it's good to separate neighborhood residential from the squares. I like the redrawn lines that remove some of the residential properties from the Medford Square conversation, for example. I would recommend that you know, some of the materials that were just presented and that are in the public folders now, I think it presents an opportunity. By doing this, it gives us an opportunity for simplification of the materials. So, for example, a lot of the maps, while they are focused on the squares, they continue to show the residential neighborhoods, and they're all color coded, and you just run into a situation where there's too many colors, and they're too closely aligned, and it makes the maps kind of harder to read. So I would posit that for the squares, we should just gray out the whole neighborhood residential areas and use nice, bright, easily distinguishable colors for the different areas in the square. So totally recognize the pace that we're moving and the changes. And I do appreciate Innes Associates' responsiveness to public comments. I'll be quiet here in just a minute. I have one more thing. And this also I think is in line with what we've heard from the public. There happens to be, in one of the areas that's designated as mixed-use with like a five-story limit, I forget which mixed-use category it is, is a National Grid substation, right? It's on Salem Street, kind of right by the bus stop there across from City Hall. And I'm curious, you know, I think we should, I feel uneducated and I think by extension, we can assume that most of the public would benefit from some education around what does this mean for the city's infrastructure, specifically power, sewer, right? Does this mean that National Grid can sell that building and there's going to be a five-story apartment building put there? If so, what are the implications for the city's electric distribution? So I don't know sort of who owns that piece of it, but I do think that there should be a public dialogue around the infrastructure and its ability to support this increased density, increased commercial usage, that little substation on Salem Street is kind of a good case study for the type of thing that I imagine people are eager to hear about. I took a lot of time. Thank you for listening to me. Appreciate it.
[Emily Hedeman]: It's all good time, Ben. And I, I'm going to hand it off to Alicia. Yeah, we were just talking about this earlier. So it's a perfect question.
[Alicia Hunt]: So actually, I'm going to answer that in two ways. And one is that they're two completely separate questions. So can you hear let me move the mic closer to me. Can you Okay, is that better? Can you guys hear me on the zoom? And does that make a difference? Okay. question. Um so let me answer that. And there are two completely separate questions here. One is what does it mean for the existing parcels? So that parse that substation, for example, has been zoned commercial for the last 60 years. So why would they sell now? Because we re zoned it something else. So they've had six stories by right as a residential So there's no real reason to think that rezoning it to, and I'm just going to be very specific, five stories by right with two of incentive zoning is any reason to think that they would sell that property and suddenly move that substation. And they certainly could not legally do something that would hurt the city's electrical infrastructure, right? The utilities have a legal obligation to pre-providing adequate electricity natural gas to the city, and they can't say wow we could make a lot of money by selling this and now the city doesn't get as much electricity, like they just they can't do that. So that's sort of one piece of it. Um, so this this zoning wouldn't impact that at all. The other question, though, is how does all of this impact the city's infrastructure? And again, there's one thing that I've said in the past that I'll repeat, and then I have sort of a new new offer new information. So one is that if somebody is building a really big building, then there is analysis done. We've got a building permit going through right now for 250 units over on Fells Way. It's one of the 40B properties you're all familiar with. And when they went through their permitting process and they went through their site plan review at that time, engineering looked at their water capacity, their sewer capacity, they looked at all those types of things, the roads at that time, what's the safety, do they need crosswalks? And all of that is put on at the time a big project is actually proposed. And so that's when you're getting, that's when the rubber hits the road. That said, people have been asking about sort of the big picture, like incremental change, you know, how does DPW look at this stuff? How does fire and police look at this stuff? And so one of the things that so Danielle and I have sat down with the fire chief, and we're discussing potentially asking him to provide a letter, sort of documenting what he and I discussed about how the roads and increased density would infect affect the fire department and I've also spoken with our DPW commissioner and he would be more than happy to respond to specific questions from the board in writing. He would also be happy to come to a meeting and sort of take questions and some questions he could answer on the fly but really he would then follow that up with responses in writing, but sometimes it's easier to frame the question when you have the person in front of you. And so he and I have talked about him attending one of your upcoming meetings to be able to do that. I think that's sufficient. Does that sort of get at it?
[Ben Lavallee]: Yeah, it does. And if I could just take another 30 seconds here. Thank you for kicking off those conversations. I think it's been a repeated bit of feedback from the public. So that's really important. And I appreciate that you've started that process already and that the fire chief and DPW are willing to be participants. And on the utilities thing, frankly, I think that this is a great opportunity just to educate the public. I think there's a little bit of, fear, uncertainty, and doubt out there. And the fact that there are, you know, legal protections that the city has around service levels from our utility providers, this is a great opportunity through this rezoning process for us to evangelize that with the public and make sure that people, you know, that if they do have fears, that those fears are put to bed. And if there's something that is legitimate, that we address it, right? Because it is something that people have brought up. over and over. So thank you, Alicia.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, Ben, I think those are some great opportunities to maybe add to the FAQs of the zoning website that we already have up. Maybe it's also an opportunity to include as part of a future presentation, specifically thinking about the next residential zoning meeting that we're having. But yeah, I think you're asking some good questions. And Ari, I see your hand. I did want to kind of just If the board isn't already thinking about it, I just kind of want to throw this out, because this is a discussion I'd like to have in terms of our comfort and confirmation of the renewal of these residential districts from the boundaries. So if you, board, Adam, Sabrina, Ben, Ari, if you haven't been thinking about it, just start thinking about it, because I'd like to kick off a discussion with us after board member Ari's comment.
[Ari Fishman]: Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm happy to say that I think that's a smart move. Let's not confuse ourselves. And Medford Square is my neighborhood. I think it makes sense to separate them out. And I do want to second member Ben's suggestions about kind of very intentional simplification for the purpose of clarity for public materials. The public has shown a huge appetite for wanting to be involved. Let's make it possible. The comment I wanted to make with Medford square kind of. Pet gripe the. Pedestrian crossing at Salem street coming out of Ashland is a death trap. I have complained about it many times. I know my neighbors have. I've almost been hit multiple times. People are flying off of the exit from 93. And I will use my opportunity on this board to say that we're rezoning this. We're trying to make it an active pedestrian-friendly area. That crosswalk is a problem.
[Emily Hedeman]: Well, I wish that wasn't your experience, but this is a great time to note those things. I see board member John's hand.
[John Anderson]: Thank you. Can you hear me okay? I guess so.
[Emily Hedeman]: Zoomers, can you hear him?
[John Anderson]: Yes, great. First, I wanna thank Ben for bringing up the issue of materials and when they're posted. Because I made the mistake of yesterday, printed out what I thought was the latest version of the memo. So I was sort of confused for the first 20 minutes or so of the presentation because things didn't line up. So I'm glad I understand that now. Just for me personally, I need to be able to page through stuff. Just presenting all the tables linearly, it's kind of hard to piece all that together. and understand the real impact. So thank you for that. Also, adding to Ben's comments on the infrastructure, I think impact on the schools should also be considered. You talk about adding 200 units on the Felsway. I don't know how many kids are gonna be there. What schools will be going to? I've heard, I don't know this for a fact, but I've heard that some of the schools are getting overcrowded. So I think that should be added to the mix too. And then I have some more specific questions on historic conversions, which I see are part of what's allowed in MX 1, 2, and 3. It's been stated that historic conversions are allowed if there are no changes to the outside of the building. But then at another meeting, I heard someone say, Oh, well, unless that's required to provide access. And I just like to get some clarity on does no changes to the exterior mean no changes or just necessary changes might be okay. And my other question on historic conversions is, I wonder where the 70 years came from, a building of more than 70 years. Because a lot of Medford is, a lot of Medford was built before 1955. And I think most of the buildings that we're talking about were built before 1955. And then my last question is, I think it would be of help to me and perhaps the community, if somebody could pull together the vision of what you're going for for these squares. Is the idea to be a sort of mini version of assembly row? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Or what exactly are we hoping for that we're going to see there? Sort of what it's like now, but with sort of apartment buildings on top of the retail? Are there going to be garage entrances for cars to enter the apartment buildings from the street? I'm just at a loss to sort of visualize how this is going to turn out.
[Ben Lavallee]: Would it be OK for me to react to John's feedback quickly?
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_43]: Yeah, go ahead.
[Ben Lavallee]: I think for Medford Square specifically, and I'm less familiar with the West Medford Square history, but with Medford Square specifically, there's kind of like three Three like anchor documents, right? And I do to John's point, I think it might be nice if we could somehow tie these together for public consumption. There's the city's comprehensive plan, right? Which has been around for several years and has a whole section dedicated to Medford Square. There's the recent development proposal from Transom and the responses to the RFP for the city owned parcels, right? The three big city owned lots with the parking and the mixed use development and the grocery store and all of that. And then there's this rezoning conversation. So there's kind of like three separate categories of information that ultimately will come together in the future of Medford Square. And I do think that it might be worth figuring out how to kind of tie those all together so that the public doesn't feel like they're, and the board frankly, it doesn't feel like they're having to kind of hop between three different stories about one part of the city.
[Emily Hedeman]: I just dropped a link to the comprehensive plan. And in terms of the 70 years, I mean, John, I'm not sure of your exact background, but I remember it had some connection to the Historical Commission. Is that correct?
[Emily Innes]: I can answer that, Madam Chair.
[John Anderson]: I don't believe so. The Historical Commission... The Historical Society? No, no. Commission reviews demolition of buildings that are over 100 years old. And the Society, by the way, has nothing to do with any of this. We're a 501c3.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, you were part of the Historical Society.
[Unidentified]: Correct.
[Emily Hedeman]: So I would say if you have a more appropriate recommendation than 70 years, you might be a good person to put something forth.
[John Anderson]: I guess my question more broadly is, why is there a particular age of the building to qualify for historic conversion? I mean, if it's a good idea for a building that was built in 1955, why not one that was built in 1990?
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, that's a great question.
[Emily Innes]: Madam Chair, I can address the year if it's okay. The 70 year is a typo, it's 75 years. I think we corrected a few meetings back from when it first came in there. And it is from the Medford Historical Commission. The commission, I'm just reading from their website and then I'll put it in the link. But the commission is charged with reviewing all requests for demolition of buildings constructed more than 75 years ago. So that's where we got the 75 years and we would be happy to hear reasons for changing that to another number. But I just wanted to let you know the origin of the 75 years.
[Emily Hedeman]: But if we change that 75 years, would we have to update it with the historical commission so that they're aligned?
[Emily Innes]: No, that's just for the demolition bylaw. It does not have to be the number. And so that was the number. But they don't have to be aligned.
[John Anderson]: Can I just point out that we're talking about two completely different things here? The historical commission has some influence when someone wants to tear down a building or tear down part of the building. Exterior changes, that's all they're concerned about. You can do whatever you want inside the building, no matter young or old, but what we're talking about here is really this idea of converting a building to a more appropriate use if there's room inside it. And I don't understand why, how old the building is, has anything to do with that if you're not making any changes to the exterior?
[Emily Innes]: Excellent question. And Madam Chair, I can answer the purpose of the historical conversion. So the reason that we were doing the historical conversion is because we had heard fairly early on that people were worried about the loss of historic buildings. And so the way it was, and historic homes in Medford, because Medford has many of them. So the way it was originally structured is that it would give an incentive to retain a historic home because you would be able to create more units out of it. So you're absolutely right, there would be interior changes that would allow those units. And then the idea is that no exterior changes would be allowed except for those by building code to provide access to the new unit. So that is the exterior change that would be allowed. It's building code recommendations. But the idea was to give an incentive so that those buildings would be retained rather than being torn down. So in this case, we were asked to align the age with the age that the Historical Commission uses for demolition of buildings for their review. Again, happy to hear another number, but just giving you the background of where those numbers and where the intent came from.
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_43]: John, do you have any reactions to that?
[John Anderson]: Well, I mean, I don't think this is the point. This is the time to sort of debate that particular point, is it? But I thank you for clarifying that. I would like to hear the idea of the vision for what's happening here, a broadly stated vision from our planners.
[Emily Hedeman]: Let me find the page in the comprehensive plan and then send that to your way. But Alicia and Danielle, if you can provide a summary while I look for that. Did you want Madam chair?
[Danielle Evans]: I just wanted to talk about address the historic conversions a bit more. Would you want me want to come back to that? Or because I wanted to address that I as staff would be recommending changes to strengthen those design standards. I think that additional Egress doors should be on side elevations and on the front facade so that it still reads. You know, is that original structure was built and the idea. of some of these areas that may be not being up zoned as much because of the large amount of these older, like larger historic homes, that that would incentivize adding the units within the existing structure so that the built character does not change as much. because we're hearing a lot of, you know, this is the look and feel, you know, the historic fabric of this old historic community, some of the existing mature trees, mature landscapes, and this could be a way to add gentle density in some of these historic areas so that density doesn't have to be at odds with historic preservation.
[Emily Hedeman]: Great, that's helpful information to have. So in terms of what we're talking about today, just to kind of recenter us, I'm going to go back to the PDF. All right, so just to clarify, is historic conversion present in the mixed-use districts that we're talking about today?
[John Anderson]: My version of the document has it a yes for MX1, 2, and 3.
[Alicia Hunt]: So, Madam Chair, one of the things that I wanted to raise is that I'm unclear that there are any properties in those areas that would qualify, because my understanding was that it was a single family home, that might be a moot point anyways. That's what I was actually just going on Google Maps to see if there were literally any and in Medford Square.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, it's in 1B, 2A. Oh, for removing the residential, where's that?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, but it's, right, so it's not in the 1A. So it's allowed, what the Innes Associates put in their presentation was to recommend adding historic commission to MX 1B and 2A, which is the pale blue and the dark blue. And in West Medford Square, if you don't mind, I kind of want to group the three unit dwelling in with this. So in West Medford Square, there's none of the light blue area at all being recommended at this time. There are, however, in some of the purple areas, so there may actually be some some houses along some of the roads in the dark blue areas in West Medford Square. That's what I was trying to figure out. Are there any of these areas that could be either commercial? So this is the question. Ground floor commercial also, or the mixed use also has a strong active component. This is where having residential stoops would be allowed because you wouldn't necessarily need to make it be a house it could be and it could be it's actually I think in the corridors where you'll see areas where you'll say well actually you could put houses in between these stores and that would be lovely but in Medford Square you don't want somebody putting a house along High Street or Salem Street in the areas that are highlighted those are already more dense than that right if you if you look at those areas and that was some of my My question here, and are there any houses that would qualify? Because if the properties don't exist, then the conversation is not an it's not unuseful because it does need to happen. But it's appropriate to happen in the residential zoning. Kieran.
[Emily Hedeman]: So how do we get an answer there? Hi Emily, I see your hand.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm actually looking at the interactive map where we have the age of buildings and we can sort it by the districts that we're looking at. There are buildings of an age that would qualify for historic conversion. It would take us a little better that are within the districts we're looking at, but it would take us a little bit more time, I suspect. that most of them are commercial, but there might be a scattered residential or two. So we would need to confirm that for you. I do agree, however, that while this is an important conversation, there are probably fewer buildings that would be affected by this, especially now that we've taken the residential out than would be affected by other parts of the zoning.
[Emily Hedeman]: So I want to toss it back to John as the person who brought up the historic conversion. Is this something you'd like to continue discussing? We can come back to it.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, I would like to.
[Emily Hedeman]: Related to the West Medford Square and Medford Square?
[John Anderson]: I'm hobbled a bit by the fact that I'm looking at the April 30th maps. So it's hard for me to figure out which buildings are in which color. April 30.
[Emily Hedeman]: Let's see if we can get you updated ones. Danielle or potentially Christian, would it be possible to print the updated, just those like couple of pages so that John has those physical copies? Cause it sounds like that's what he's more comfortable with. Would we be able to do that in the next couple? Yeah. So maybe we can take a break. This might be a good time to take a break and then John will make sure that you have the, all the updated information, physical copies, and then we can come back. I wanna look at the rest of the board. Are we okay with like a 10 minute break? I see some thumbs.
[Ari Fishman]: Yep, I do wanna flag that I got a message that a member of the public was having trouble at the front door. So if we can just have someone make sure that that's appropriately open.
[Emily Hedeman]: The front door of the city hall? Yes. Oh, shoot, okay, yeah. We'll go check that for sure. Thank you, Ari. All right, 10-minute break. We will return at 8.15. And before we went on break, one of the things we were talking about is kind of the vision for these squares. And I was going to pass it over to Alicia, who's going to share some more information about that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Alicia. Thank you. So one of the things that I feel like we talked about very early on and a while ago, but wasn't sort of talked about tonight was the looking at what actually exists in the squares and what the current zoning is and what we would really like to be seeing and. There is the current zoning actually allows four-story commercial, it allows six-story residential, but it doesn't have a type called mixed use. So when buildings want to have ground floor commercial with residential above, they have to jump through extra hoops through zoning. And that becomes kind of problematic, more expensive for developers, they're less likely to do it. So it's easier for them to build a single-story commercial building, or a multi story residential building. And so that's what you see in several places in our squares and not completely there are some mixed use buildings. But there's even some of the ones that are mixed use today have gone through the variance process over the last three years. So what we know from economic development is that small businesses thrive on having people nearby, who frequent those businesses, and that if you have people who live in apartments above cafes and bakeries and little stores like that. they are dramatically more likely to go downstairs and buy from those stores regularly and frequently than somebody who lives even just three blocks away or four blocks away. And so having a density of people who live above the stores is actually a really good thing. So making that a simpler path for developers so that we would see more apartments above businesses is something we would like to see. And that's what we already have a lot of in Medford Square and West Medford Square, but we'd like to see more as we modernize this as a regular type. And it also signals to developers we'd like to see this and not it's a special hoop you have to jump through. I think that that kind of hits it. It's not like that we're going for assembly row, so much as we're going for small walkable downtown districts that are nice for people to live in and shop in, and also having the additional residents living in your downtown means that you have people coming and going at night, so you automatically have a more vibrant community, because there are people there in the evenings, even if they're not coming going to the bank, they're going home to their apartment upstairs. The other thing, is it okay if I sort of mentioned the garage that I mentioned garages that I mentioned on the break, because that's just sort of another piece of this.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, this is a slightly new topic, kind of going specifically into the table of uses just to flag that for board members, right.
[Alicia Hunt]: So in our table in the table of uses, we didn't allow or the currently recommended version is not allowing all the different parking garage types. Including allowing principal parking garages accessory, but nearby a couple blocks away. And so something that I think we would benefit from is the idea that developers could build a private garage. two blocks from their apartment building or their mixed-use building, and then their tenants could walk over there to get their cars. So they would have some place that they're able and illegally allowed to park, but it doesn't have to be them turning off of High Street to go under the building, you know, next to the businesses on High Street or next to the businesses on Salem Street, that they might have a separate parcel where they park their vehicles. And that would allow more development and residential development in the area. So that was one of the things that we we've been talking about is this idea of allowing parking garages. I know there's a lot of interest in the city building parking garages and that's one of the things that's under discussion, but also private developers may choose that that is the better way to take advantage of their properties. So I just wanted to put that out there. It's my recommendation that we allow all the parking garage types in all of these zones in order to incentivize less parking on site and more parking nearby.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Kind of a critical mass of parking rather than a sprinkling of it throughout the squares. Um, one thing I'd like to add from my own experience is developments like Assembly Square and even what's happening in Union Square in Somerville right now. Those were part of urban renewal areas where a master developer was selected. I don't believe we have plans to select a master developer. Yeah. Yeah, but not for like the entire square, like we're not. Yeah, we're not declaring anything. What is it blighted decadent decadent or forget what the third thing is, but this is definitely prioritizing.
[Emily Innes]: What'd you say, standard housing, blighted decadent blighted area decadent or substandard housing.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you. I was pulling from the recesses of my brain there. But yeah, there's there's, you know, I think that this work would support smaller scale development. Some of it might be capital D developers, but then some of it might be, you know, your your neighbors and your friends on this call right now. So I think we're taking a smaller approach to development in these squares. So I think the two topics that we were talking about as a board were historic conversions and then the confirmation of residential removal from the boundaries. But maybe before we get back to those, what I'd love to do is open it up for public comment so we can start to hear some input from the public. I'm already seeing some hands raised. Thank you, William. Thank you, Paige. I do have to read my standard blurb. But if you know you want to comment, please go ahead and raise your hand. And just as a reminder, we'll be hearing comment. Awesome. We have an in person commenter, so we'll be hearing from them first. But just a reminder in terms of commenting topics. The focus of this hearing is on Medford Square in West Medford Square. If you have comments on the residential zoning, you can, of course, mentioned them, but they wouldn't be entered into public record for that topic. So feel free to chat about them, but the most effective way to get that feedback heard is to complete the feedback form that was dropped in the chat earlier or to send an email to the email address that I'm going to mention shortly. So I will now open the public comment period. Those who wish to provide comments can either come up to the podium or use the raise hand function on Zoom. You can also send an email to OCD at medford-ma.gov before providing your comments. Please state your name and if you're comfortable, your address for the record. A reminder to all meeting participants on Zoom to please refrain from using the chat function to message any comments to city staff or board members, as it is not part of the public record. However, if a participant is having audio or other technical difficulties, you may message staff in the chat for assistance. That is Jack. Jack's still on the call, correct? Yeah, Jack Podolsky is handling some of our technical support through Zoom. So thanks for that, Jack. I see a slightly smaller crowd than we've had at previous meetings. So I'm gonna say each person is gonna get three minutes to speak. As in the past, I encourage you to wrap up your thought within those three minutes, just out of respect for the other people that would like to comment. Alicia or myself will give you about a 30 second warning. If I don't give you the warning on time, then that's my fault. And you'll have 30 seconds from when I warn you. three minutes. Okay. Sure. Well, gentlemen in the chambers, I believe you are our first public commenter for this. Thank you so much for being here in person. We really appreciate it. And just I want to make sure we start the timer. Okay. Yeah, good. Hi. Oh, hold on. Sorry. I have to turn the microphone on. OK, that should be good.
[Ren Bean]: OK. Ren Bean, Woodrow Abb and Medford. I took a quick glance at the most up-to-date zoning proposal, and I just wanted to comment and say it generally looks pretty good to me. I heard a little bit of detailed discussion about kind of technicalities about how we can best activate spaces and maybe trying to encourage certain types of uses. I think we all in the city agree we would like to see more of, particularly in Medford Square, which is where I live nearest to, but I think the same is true. West Medford, we'd all like more places to go out to eat and hang out with friends into the evening and get a cup of coffee. For a town of 60,000 people, having two or three coffee shops is really sad. Having the city feel like it's closed at 6.30 is really sad. know, so and I think that we all kind of agree on the goal. And you look at the master plan, and that's kind of laid out in big ish, but you know, a fair amount of detail, we want to densify, we want to create mixed use, we want to activate commercial nodes. And I just I just want to say on the public record and to this council and to anyone else listening to the call that I mean, that there's been a lot of public participation for years and that's kind of been the message that the city has been saying for a long time. And and I just think Now is not the time to go incrementally. You know, I think I was really excited to see up to like, I think it's what eight by right plus for incentive zoning on that big empty lot near 93. I think that's a huge opportunity to create a lot of housing right downtown and I was really happy to hear Alicia talking about. you know, the best way to support small businesses is to give them a lot of customers. I just went out to lunch in Malden earlier today, and just walking around, you can feel that their population density is, what, 60 or 75% denser than ours. And what you feel when you're walking around Malden Center is there's a lot of small businesses that can survive without charging $25 a plate because there's a lot of commercial space for rent and there's a lot of customers so they can do a good trade. And I just like to say, I think I'd like to see that happen in Medford Square. 30 seconds. Yeah. I'd like to see more commercial space available for small businesses at a better rate, you know, bigger supply, it makes lower prices. I think we all agree we don't wanna see so many banks and insurance agencies taking up the prime storefront, but one key solution to that problem that it hasn't been explicit in a lot of these conversations is, well, okay, they're on a 15 year lease. They're not going anywhere, make more commercial space. So yeah, I just wanted to say, I hope this happens soon. We don't get bogged down in delays. I know there was a sentiment from another topic, the residential. I think we've been doing this for a long time. This proposal looks really good. And if there, you know, are really big problems, City Council can hash them out. Please pass this quickly. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Red. Really appreciate you being here. Have a nice night. We're gonna move over to our Zoom commenters. I see William Navar. going to get a request to unmute.
[William Navarre]: All right, I seem to have gotten that. Thank you for recognizing me. William Navarre, 108 Bedford Street. I'm supportive of this moving forward. Basically, it looks reasonably good to me. I'm particularly supportive of zoning for more housing potential in our squares. I want to make the point that When we increase housing potential here at Medford, we're inviting people who might otherwise have to live in yet more car-dependent suburbs and exurbs to live in a more urban environment, and that's good. And in particular, when we grow our squares, we make them livelier urban places. I mean, that's the magic of urban squares. They get better when more people are there to enjoy them. And we are ready to embrace that miracle without reservation or apology. I also just want to say that thing Alicia was talking about where the parking can be located off-site. That's a really good idea. You should do that. To the extent we're requiring parking, which we shouldn't, that's the direction we should be going. What's really sad about parking minimums is when they make projects impossible. And this will help with that somewhat. So if that's not in the draft, it needs to go into draft. I didn't really catch exactly where that is procedurally, but Alicia described it very well, and it sounds very good, and we need that. Also, I just want to say, I mean, the amount of public participation there's been on all the zoning, it's a lot to come to. I'm very happy that I'm going to complete my comment before the 9 p.m. fireworks here in my neighborhood, but I do want to say the volume of opportunities to comment can actually be a little bit exhausting. And I think that that side of thing needs to be heard as we go along and we think, do we want more public comment? That has a cost to people coming to so many meetings. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, William. I appreciate your comments. The next Zoom commenter we have is Paige Boldini.
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_28]: Hi, Paige. Hi there. Thank you so much for your time tonight and for all the work that's gone into this process. I appreciate the effort to be proactive, not reactive, but in this case, we need to slow down. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Paige Boldini, 37 Winter Street, and my business is my skincare salon on 319 Boston Ave. The zoning reform affects everyone in Medford, and the questions from the communities are still piling up. If we want to be successful, we need more time, more transparency, and more clarity. First question, can this zoning reform strengthen how we address accessibility, especially in affordable and mixed-use housing? Will affordable units be required to meet ADA standards in practice? Will they be located on accessible floors? And is the Affordable Housing Trust involved in making sure these units are truly livable? I appreciate the comments about parking, but also are they accessible for those that need that? Second, what's the plan to support small businesses, especially those leasing space in our squares and corridors? How will we prevent displacement or pricing out during redevelopment? Has there been any research on how these zoning changes might affect rent, parking, or business continuity? Will the city create a transition plan to support businesses facing construction or economic shifts? And how will we make sure mixed use spaces include room for local businesses, not just chains? The third question was kind of asked already, but I do appreciate it. And I love that we are going to get feedback And I would love to hear and see feedback from our fire, DPW, police, traffic, and superintendents. I would love to hear what they think and how they feel about the impact of services, staffing, and the infrastructure. And if we can see those public comments, that would be great. Thank you again for your time and continuing this conversation with the community. I hope you consider slowing this process down so that Medford can get it right. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: And just to confirm, Paige, when you talk about slowing it down, are you talking about the residential, you're talking about the squares, you're talking about everything? Do you mind unmuting, Paige, again?
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_28]: I'm good so I couldn't unmute it. Thank you. So obviously tonight is about West Medford Medford Square and as an honored board member of the Chamber of Commerce, I'm speaking specifically to those neighborhoods, because I obviously don't want to mix up my questions. And I know I've emailed you all These questions. So again, I'm hopeful that this is a great way to be respectful of your opportunity in your space. And I think asking these questions is really important because as I shared before, I just want to be a great advocate for those specific businesses slowing down. It's because These questions keep getting asked. And I have yet to hear great responses from everyone. I think that should be able to. I have had some responses. So slowing it down to make sure that we can just really incorporate that and hear from everybody what they think too.
[Emily Hedeman]: Great, thank you, Paige. And we're working hard on getting some of those responses. Alicia mentioned some of the efforts that we're taking around public services, and we're also taking note of the rest of the questions we're hearing tonight. So thank you, and appreciate your participation in this process. The next Zoom commenter we have is Ken Garrow.
[Unidentified]: Hi, Ken.
[Ken Gareau]: So Ken Garrow, 52 Lambert Street. First of all, thanks for this. I'm very excited for everything that you guys have been doing. Obviously, you've all kind of heard from me for a while now. I've been kind of tagging along since earlier this year, back in January, paying attention to all this. Really nice updates. I appreciate Emily and team kind of also updating the MX11A1B terminology. I did agree. And I think that came out of a planning and permitting committee discussion. I'm really happy to see that kind of getting disambiguated over the long term. In general, really like what I'm seeing for Medford Square. I am, you know, a 15, 20 minute walk away over in Haines. Similar to what Director Hunt said earlier, I walk around all the time in Haynes Square trying to get a bunch of stuff. I wish there was more density in this area for additional kind of living things. Obviously that holds true over in Medford Square. I lived outside of Medford Square over on Emerson Street for the better part of a decade. So I was in the square all the time. Couple kind of questions. Maybe just one because of the incentive zoning I know going back to almost to that historical note. Is it possible to add into the incentive zoning. I'm a kind of historical aesthetic. I know a number of people are kind of afraid of. general box stores, right in the modern kind of 2020 aesthetic of just steel and plastic. And if there's a way to kind of incentivize developers to kind of mesh the existing architecture, right, because those four story center portions of Medford Square, right, very, very character driven, and being able to maintain that. And probably actually more of an ask from Emily as a direction. If there's any suggestions around the concepts of parking maximums instead of parking minimums. I'm in general kind of okay with lowering parking minimums. Everything I've seen in writing so far has been kind of saying to get rid of them. But I've kind of been running dry on the concept of parking maximums. But in general, really like everything and keep on keeping on. hope it gets passed relatively quickly.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you for your comments, Ken. I'm hearing something about, you know, potentially incentivizing historical aesthetics, which may or may not be addressed through design guidelines, which we've talked about, and then parking. Well, I agree with you. I think, you know, we need to do something about the the parking minimums. That's unfortunately not part of the modifications that we're proposing today, but it is an active topic within the city. So I encourage you to stay tuned.
[Ari Fishman]: Anything else?
[Emily Hedeman]: No. Okay. Our next Zoom commenter is Michael Corbett. Michael?
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_04]: Okay. Hi. Can everybody hear me?
[Emily Hedeman]: Yes, thank you.
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_04]: Super. Michael Corbett, 26 Jackson Road, Medford, Massachusetts. Admittedly, late to the game here. I joined the meeting last week and I'm happy to now be part of the process. And so once again, thank you everybody for all your work that you've put into this. I think there's a lot to like here. I really like the mixed use vision and starting with the corridors and attracting businesses to the commercial centers of Medford. I'll kind of just add an anecdotal story. My wife and I moved here 11 years ago. We lived just outside of West Medford. And we were excited to see the rejuvenation of the square. And within a few years, Snappy Patties moved in. And we're like, OK, great. Soon we're going to have four coffee shops and lots of stuff. And now here we are. And we still have Snappy Patties. And we're excited for more things to come. All that said, I do want to echo some of what Paige had said. I do think that my recommendation would be to not refer this back to the City Council at this time. I've heard many questions tonight from the CBB to INEZ that seem like they need answers and clarification. Um, and so I, in my opinion, I think the board needs to really truly understand the material that's getting referred back to to the city council. Um, some of the specific things, um, echoing what page had brought up is a holistic understanding of how this impacts the school system, the fire system, the DPW. Some of the other things that have been brought up by Alicia Ben and john tonight and then one specific thing that I would like to see some more information on and this came up both tonight in the context of the. city centers, but also in the context of residential, is what is the legal definition of historical conversions? And I think that really needs to be interrogated through the lens of how it could be exploited. I'm a little concerned about a unintendedly perverse incentive to keep historical buildings, but then allow them to have a larger ability to go to more stories or more units. And so I guess to me, those seem diametrically opposed. And so I don't quite understand how one cannot change the facade of a historical building. while still increasing the capacity of it. And if that's the case, if it can't, then why do we have historical conversions in there in the first place? I just, I don't quite get that. And then the last comment related to that is if we are going to go forward with that, we really need to look at the legal language to understand how a developer will look at that and potentially try to exploit it. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Great points, Michael. Thank you. The next commenter that we have is Cheryl R. Hi Cheryl. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street in Medford. And I know I've said this first part before, but this board and the public have been asking for documentation ahead of meetings. I didn't have time today to look an hour before the meeting, which is actually early for us, as most of the time it's posted during the meeting. How often am I expected to check if I want to look at the data before the meeting? and I often come up empty. It feels deliberate and disrespectful. If we can't keep up, we need to slow down. We aren't setting this pace. The public isn't setting this pace. There is no rush just because people who haven't read this are saying because it isn't available or saying it looks good to them. It doesn't look good because it doesn't really exist. We need to do this right. I had seconds to review part of this, so I'm not sure if this question is valid or not. Is the new building coverage definition going to include the state required to be allowed ADU in the percentage, which I thought was not allowed to be included in the density amount. Could this prevent most homeowners from adding an ADU if they aren't adding it to an existing structure? It appears that a covered porch will count towards the lot coverage and could prevent someone from having an ADU. So that's my one question. And then just another part is that we're keep referring to the comprehensive plan, which was mostly a wishlist and a list of studies to conduct and strategies to come up with before we zoned. It was written by a group of consultants, including Ennis and maybe members of the planning department with slides being created before any community feedback had been gathered that had selected quarters and such already in them. and the pictures and the colored circle stickers at some community events during COVID with a majority of the public participation. I don't know why there's so much confusion that this is being used as a roadmap for zoning changes without any study, even if it was based on community feedback. The old slide decks still exist online and I have read the plan and the slideshows shown to the public and encourage others to do so before claiming it's supposed to be informing our zoning. Please do this properly. Sound Street is an example of doing things poorly and quickly, and that also deserves to be revisited later. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Cheryl. I appreciate your feedback. And I appreciate your consistent participation in this process as well. I do want to kind of elevate your question on the ADUs. Those weren't something we've really talked about with these districts. Let's see, I guess MX1B in Medford Square. Well, I guess and townhouse MX to a Okay, so those both have a D use as part of it. Can you.
[Alicia Hunt]: So Alicia, sorry to clarify in the MX districts, ADUs will not be as of right per state law. So that would be a choice that would be under these proposals. And I would actually look to Emily, but I don't think we discussed including the ADUs in the MXs. Separately in the ADU proposal, they could absolutely be a recommendation here to include them as of right in existing one and two unit, one, two and three unit buildings? Does it say ADUs?
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, I'm looking at MX-1B. Okay. Three unit dwelling has one ADU by right and one by special permit. And I know we haven't confirmed the ADU language yet. And I know, I think in this document, we have like, you know, subject to kind of future What do we say here?
[Alicia Hunt]: We have a proposal, and I think the comment was about whether increasing the definition of building coverage would prevent people from creating ADUs. It certainly would have no impact on somebody creating an ADU within their current existing structure. And so I think the question is really about the other piece and the idea of having the building lot coverage, the building coverage include your ADU and your maximum is to guarantee that neighborhoods that have nice big open yards continue to have nice big open yards. And if your property is large enough to also have an ADU, then your property is large enough. But to make sure that we're not building lot line to lot line in some of our districts. That's what some of this is about.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay. And Danielle, I see your mic is on.
[Danielle Evans]: Did you wanna add something? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to echo what Alicia said that because these districts don't allow single families by right or by special permit that the protected use ADUs are not required in these districts. I would not recommend Um, eliminating. 80 years being subject to the maximum building coverage because we do want to have, um. Green space impervious surface. We don't want to create heat islands. We want to have a little bit of space. Currently there are no, um. I think this is a step in the right direction to start requiring that.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, thank you. I appreciate that clarification. The next Zoom commenter that I see is Cynthia Kuhn. Hi, Cynthia. Hi.
[SPEAKER_26]: I'm Cindy Kuhn at 602 High Street in Medford. And I mainly have a question. NS Associates indicated that the daily minimum standard is still to be determined. And so my question is, in determining that standard, will you take into account the effect on adjacent homeowners who have solar panels?
[Emily Hedeman]: Cynthia, did you have other questions? I just want to make sure we're using your time.
[SPEAKER_26]: No, that was mainly it.
[Emily Hedeman]: OK. Emily or Paula, I know that the daylight minimum is to be determined in recommended changes, but can you give us a little bit of insight to address Cynthia's question?
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Um, if I may, Emily, you can answer whenever you want, um, complete. Um, that's one of the things that we are looking into. Uh, we had that comment from several, um, uh, community members. So we will like to also look into, into that, uh, to, to include it in, in the daylight minimum.
[Emily Hedeman]: OK, so once we. Once we have some more information about that daylight minimum, would we then have to, but then that that would come before the Community Development Board and we would. We would update the zoning with that language, is that correct?
[Emily Innes]: That is correct Madam Chair, everything goes, we go from the City Council to you, planning and permitting to City Council, City Council to you, you back to City Council. So any, any changes would follow that process, including updates.
[Emily Hedeman]: So the same process that we're following with these squares with the zoning. So there would be opportunity for public comment specifically on the daylight minimum.
[Emily Innes]: Absolutely.
[Emily Hedeman]: Great. Awesome. Thank you. The next Zoom commenter that I see is Melanie Tringali.
[Melanie Tringali]: Hi, I'm Melanie Tringali. I live at 116 Forest Street, so I live right outside of the main square. And I just want to, I have a couple of comments. 1, I want to thank, I don't, I remember their names, but there was 2 board members that specifically talked about providing information prior to the meeting. Thank you for that we need that information. I like Cheryl would not was not able to review the information so a lot of this, I didn't have time to really delve into it. To the acronyms, I think someone else had mentioned that. I think that's really helpful, especially for Layman and the majority of the residents here in Medford. And also there was a comment from one of the board members about an overall plan for each of these squares. And I think that's really important as we look to how we want to zone these squares for the benefit of the residents. To given the timing of the information that was received tonight, I agree with page and Michael that this needs to be slowed down and that I don't think there should be moved to the city council for next week. I think there's a lot of things that still need to be reviewed. Development of commercial being outside of West Medford Square. I love to walk to the square. I love to go to the restaurants and the bars. I wish there was more shopping. I'm not sure that we need more density. I think we need housing, but not a ton of it. There's tons of traffic in Method Square as it is now. Adding more density is only going to increase that traffic. I think there's tons of people in the neighborhood that I know of that want to walk to the square. and frequent businesses, small businesses. And I look at Melrose Square, Winchester Square, there's not a whole lot of density there, but those are very vibrant squares with small businesses, lots of restaurants, lots of activity happening, lots of coffee shops. Winchester Square, I think has three to four different coffee shops, but you don't see a lot of density there. And they're vibrant squares. With regards to keeping historical preservation, I actually worked, was on the Historic District Commission for a while. I know there was a purpose of them of making Medford Square a Historic District Commission. I don't know where that is, but I'm all in favor of keeping our history and reducing destruction of any of our history for that in the square. And lastly, we need parking. I live on Forest Street. When there is a show here, the side streets are filled with cars. No one parks at City Hall. No one. No one parks there to visit the show. They all park on Forest Street. the residential streets and in the square. And removing parking within the square puts an onus on elderly and other people that can't walk from distances to go to the bank and to run their errands. That's it. Thank you very much.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Melanie. I appreciate the comments. The next Zoom commenter that I see is Gil Gabay.
[Gil Gabbay]: Hi, can you hear me?
[Emily Hedeman]: Yes, thank you, Gil.
[Gil Gabbay]: Hi, my name is Gil Gabay. I live at 48 Almond Street. I'm speaking in support, in full support of the current Medford Square zoning proposals. I feel the board should act quickly and decisively on the matter. I, as well as the people of Medford look forward to a forward thinking and modernized 21st century city. Walking down Salem Street can be sad at times. I wish there were, and also Medford squares, I wish there were a lot more housing density as well as small businesses. I would also like to see a higher minimum green score for higher, for larger commercial projects. And I also want to say that I'm getting, I share another commenter's feelings of exhaustion from the meetings. I've been following many of these and I appreciate all of your hard work on the proposal and I implore all of you to pass it on to the city council. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Gail. I appreciate your comments. The next Zoom commenter that I see is Zachary Chertok. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you.
[Zachary Chertok]: Awesome. So Zach Chertok, 5 Almont Street. I wanted to build on Paige Baldini's question that in the spirit of favoring small and more local development in the mixed use zones, is the city preparing to ensure that there's not going to be a scenario where one developer will dominate ownership to the point that you could actually end up with a super zone where one developer could lead a consolidated development plan as happened in Harvard Square recently? Another question in the same line is around the zoning is that I also want to echo concerns about accessibility with regard to some of the parking narrative as well as the residential access narrative in those zones and what measures are being taken to ensure that regulated affordable housing in the zones and the squares will not simply be placed. In the back of the building on a semi accessible floor and what building type designation definitions can account for that outside the building code, meaning as part of the zoning and building designations and how is the city coordinating across agencies to manage considerations like that as part of a broader planning initiative. As one final note, there are urban planning precedents for managing use case designations in tandem with zoning to create a more favorable environment for certain types of businesses over others. We've brought that up back when we did Salem Street that that could be something to consider. A commonly cited example is not necessarily the first phase of urban development in Downtown Crossing, which was an issue of blight, but the second wave that took place to weather and ultimately build the Millennium Tower. Designating spatial zones for consideration with requirements for urban development plans is actually very integral for that. So that leans back into the second question I asked about cross-agency collaboration within City Hall to hedge against a super developer zone in places like West Medford Square. and to make sure that ADA considerations are factoring into things like affordable housing and general commercial access in the zone.
[Emily Hedeman]: Zach, did you have any other questions? You have about a minute left.
[Zachary Chertok]: That's all.
[Emily Hedeman]: I would like to pass it over to city staff, specifically Danielle. I know you have a Danielle, are you able to speak to Zach's question about affordable housing? You know, are they able to put it anywhere in a building? Can they have it be different quality? And then, you know, if there's any kind of notes on accessibility that you're aware of.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Through the chair, we I want to say it was last year we updated the inclusionary zoning ordinance to specifically require that the units be equitably distributed throughout the building so they don't just, you know, cluster them all on one floor or in one area so that it's spread out and that also that there is no distinguishing characteristics, at least Yeah, for these units that would be different from the market rate ones. So they are, you know, exactly the same except for that they are less money and they're open for income qualified folks. And what was the, there was an additional question or the ADA accessibility?
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, making sure that these affordable units take into account any accessibility guidelines.
[Danielle Evans]: I think we always encourage developers to develop to a universal design standard so that when they're laying out and organizing their floor plans, that doorways are wide and And some of the the spaces could be accessed by someone using a wheelchair that if they wanted to you needed the counters lower that they're easily modifiable to do that. But aside from that, it's all required in building code. So I believe there's a certain percentage that would need to be compliant with ADA. I don't know the building code by heart, but I think it kicks in at a certain unit count threshold. And then the elevator requirements are at a certain number of stories, I think four stories where you have to have an elevator served building.
[Emily Hedeman]: Maybe this is something we can bring up at a future meeting. We can get some more information on this just to clarify, because we've had at least two questions on this. So I think it would be beneficial for the board, for the public, for the city to get some clarity here. But I appreciate the insight, Danielle. Thank you. The next Zoom commenter that I see is Steven Pompeo.
[Steven Pompeo]: Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Can you hear me OK?
[Emily Hedeman]: Yes, thank you.
[Steven Pompeo]: It looks like a few things that I had brought up at the last meeting were incorporated, and I appreciate that. And I just wanted to confirm the non-conformities that were created in West Medford. Was that corrected with the reduction of the lot size in that zone to 4,000? I'm gonna refer that.
[Emily Hedeman]: Steven, did you have more questions?
[Steven Pompeo]: Yes, I did, yeah.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, why don't you keep going and then we'll come back to the answers.
[Steven Pompeo]: Okay, that's question one. Thank you for including the parking as an allowed use. That was really important. And the third question is, In Medford Square, the MX1B zone, that was the zone that was being reduced in allowed height from what it is currently now, and also substantially lower in allowed height compared to all its abutters. And it was pointed out the reason for that was that those properties were historical. However, I know that the first four starting on the West side of that 1B zone aren't historical properties. And there are many, many other historical properties in Medford Square that are in the 2A zone. So I wanted to see if we could abandon that 1B zone in Medford Square and make that the same as it's a Butters, which I think is a 2A zone.
[Danielle Evans]: Madam Chair, if I may.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, sorry, Stephen. I was just looking.
[Danielle Evans]: I won't speak to changes from the last zoning, but I just want to state that the way the Medford does their zoning, there isn't a minimum lot size for the entire zoning district or maximum heights. It's always been by use for the last 50, 60 years, which is kind of odd. So how many stories a property owner can build or what the lot size requirement will be is determined by what the use of the building is. So that's why when you look in the square, you'll see that there is a tall hotel. That hotel is conforming because hotels can be taller. But apartment buildings can't be so the the tower, um, like the salt and cell towers is actually non conforming because it's even though it's about the same height. They can only be, I think, three stories or four stories right now apartment buildings in the square. But hotels can be the 15. So it's not a There isn't a blanket up zoning or down zoning of the uses of the properties in the square because it's not been by zone, it's been by use.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, I was just pulling up the tables. So the current recommendations from the consultants was to go for lot sizes in the 1B and the 2A to 3,000 square feet and to the 2B and 3A to 4,000 square feet. Um, and I do see that Emily and Paola have their hands up now. I suspect they were looking some things up as well, because part of the question was all about, um, the group of buildings that are along the river, um, and why those are still recommended to be shorter, that maybe some of those property owners would like to develop larger buildings along the river there.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, Emily and Paola?
[Emily Innes]: I'll speak first and then Paula can join in. The mixed-use 1B was not just the historic properties. There are historic properties, both conforming and non-conforming throughout both squares, including commercial and residential only. It is to do with the lot depths. Those buildings are right along the river. They are quite shallow parcels when compared to the parcels in most of the rest of the square. And the thought is that so right now the proposed zoning is four stories by right and one story as an incentive zone for a total of five stories. The thought is that it might not be as easy to go above five stories there because of the shallowness of the lots. So that's why, it's principally why the 1B is there. We do recognize that there are historic buildings. It would be nice to keep them or at least keep the facade, but it was most definitely the shallowness of the lots and their proximity to the river compared to the others.
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: I would like to complete some of that if it's possible. Um, there in that area in high street, we see a topography change going towards, um. The the ones that he's mentioning, um, that have a higher. that have the permanent higher buildings. And so that is going, it's going lower towards that area to the west side. And so we can go higher because we can profit from that topography change. that we do not have in that area. Also those are specifically south oriented, so if we have them too high then it can cast a lot of shadow on the other side. So we always try to to have a little bit of more sunny areas. Then as we said, we have the river just next to it. It is not just one reason, there are several why we chose to also give that diversity of the building landscape. So that is one. And then the first question that he had, we selected all the lot sizes. So the lots that were from 3,000 to 4,000, they were very, very little, just a few. And so we just reduced from 5,000 to 4,000. So we could include most of them mainly. So yes.
[Emily Hedeman]: So you're saying that the mixed-use one in Medford Square went from what had previously been zoned as commercial one, which allowed a six-story residential building, a four-story commercial building. We're just gonna ignore the 15 stories. But it went from six and four stories to a max of five stories. For by right one. For incentive zoning and the reason for that is because the lot depth. Are we thinking that because. You know, looking at the rest of the. the nuances of the zoning, whether it's lot area, you know, facade build out, setbacks, building coverage, was the thought that you just, you could never do more than five?
[Emily Innes]: With respect, Madam Chair, it's zoned for six now and it hasn't been done. It's zoned for six residential now and there are no six-story residential buildings on there. Those permissions have already been in place. It's one extra story if you're commercial, you're zoned for four. If you're residential, you can do a six-story building. So we're kind of going up for mixed use from the commercial and down from the residential in that it's still four stories as of right, but we're allowing the one incentive zoning. So as Paula said, and I should have trusted Paula to remember about the sun, the implications of the sun and the topography. So it is the shallowness of the lot. It's the relationship to the other buildings as the topography of the area changes. It's the impact of taller buildings on that side of the street. It has multiple reasons. However, that is just our recommendation. And we're here is to listen to public comment and understand where other people, whether it's somebody from the public speaking or yourselves or city staff or other city officials have a difference and a reason that they would like to consider something else. But those are the reasons for our recommendation.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, when we go back to board discussion, that's something I'd like us as a board to chat about, that MX1 in Medford Square. Thank you for your questions, Steve, and I appreciate them. The next Zoom commenter that I have is David McKenna. Oh, and I can hear fireworks in the background.
[David McKenna]: Hello, thank you for your time tonight. I want to thank you for your work in this process. I think this is the third meeting I've been to about the zoning in. Downtown, I live at 2 Vine Street, which is just a 7-minute walk from City Hall, so very close. I often visit the square, and I'm really excited for this new zoning to revitalize the square, to bring more existing development into conformity, and to allow more development consistent with what's already there. I just to respond about the process. I definitely think the CBD board should understand what you know what it's recommending before it makes the final recommendation. So I don't want to rush anybody. At the same time, you know, I think if we do continue to have these meetings, you'll have the same people showing up making the same comments, as you know, has been happening at the last. couple of meetings. So at some point, I think maybe when you feel that there's nothing new being said, it might make sense to end public comment. Because we could have the same people show up for a year every two weeks to say, I don't like the square, or I do like the square. So I think it's a great proposal. I agree with Stephen's suggestion that I think there could be a little bit more height along that section of High Street. I would also suggest that on the north side of High Street, that the zoning shouldn't just stop when we hit the library, that the north side of High Street could actually you know, maybe a lower, like a MX1, given the topography, you know, but there could be some new, that is really part of the square, I think, and it would make, you know, some of our West Medford neighbors who live closer to the square, instead of closer to West Medford Square, it would be more walkable for them if there was businesses or mixed use, you know, on that section of High Street, maybe with not so much height because of the topography. I don't share a lot of the concerns that I've heard. You know, why wasn't there, why didn't you talk to the police chief about this proposal? Why aren't you collaborating with the fire department? Because maybe just because I've been to so many of these meetings, I think the answers are pretty clear. Like the fire department gets involved during site plan review. So maybe I'll just say what I think the answer is and you all could tell me if it's correct. But the fire department gets involved during site plan review to make sure whatever building is accessible to the fire department and there's not a problem. So when a development is actually proposed, and we know that seven to nine stories is not gonna be a problem for the fire department because Medford Square already has buildings up to 12 stories. So this is not anything new. And, you know, I think it's the same with the police department. The police department is not really involved in the zoning. It's just not, you know, the final point, the ADA is a federal law. I'm an attorney. It does apply to larger projects. And so people who don't want the density, don't want larger projects means that we're not going to have ADA accessible units. And so I really do think that it is advantageous to have some of these larger developments. And the final point about one developer buying up everything, the city cannot control who buys what. It would be illegal for the city to say a developer is not allowed to own two different lots. So some of these concerns, I understand people have questions, but there's pretty straightforward answers to each question, I believe.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, David. I appreciate the insight. And regarding your comment about MX one towards the north side to the was at the west of the library. I got to note that there's a good number of private ways back there, which, you know, we are kind of talking about through the residential zoning process, but that kind of prevents upzoning in those areas for now, for now. I mean, zoning is a gradual process. So, you know, we're doing our best to make meaningful, significant changes now, but also kind of set ourselves up for future changes. But I do appreciate your insight, and those are some really good specific points that you made. The next Zoom commenter that I see is Jean Nezzo.
[Jean Nuzzo]: Hi, can you hear me?
[Emily Hedeman]: Hi, yes, we can. Thank you, Jean.
[Jean Nuzzo]: Thank you, Jean Izzo, 35 Power Street. First off, you continue to refer to current zoning not being built. However, the own lot sizes are not in alignment with the intent. So one would have to stack parcels to build by right right now, where your new zoning is significantly decreasing the lot square footage requirements, and you could in fact subdivide and multiply the density result. So it's incredibly disingenuous to imply that the decision will not open the floodgates of development. A good number of Medford residents continue to say here tonight that they aren't feeling heard and that we need to slow down. As someone who has worked in the industry for decades, I find it abhorrent that we continue to move forward without the necessary studies that determine the feasibility to your concepts and proper iterative feedback loop. It's rapacious and reprehensible that we need to move at a speed that placates, quote, developers. And I use that term loosely. Make no mistake here tonight, predatory developers are already door knocking, turning up the heat. There's money to be made, hand over fist, buy right in some areas, thanks to the effort so far. And our at-risk and marginalized neighbors many of which who cannot speak up, especially in this current political climate, will be displaced, even though the studies that you guys continue to point to for justification call out that this should be mitigated. It isn't, it won't, and no one should pretend otherwise. You're putting developer profits over residents' needs, considering future potential affluent residents at the expense of the current marginalized residents, and you're putting the cost of development on residents and not where it belongs with the developer flippers. all of which will land us with a new age city on antiquated infrastructure. The MBT 3A zoning requirements, which we complied with as of December of 2024, sets a density rate of 15 units per acre. Your proposal for our city at last calculation is five fold over the state requirement. Your slide deck scenarios aren't even remotely in alignment with how a developer will approach their project and financial modeling decision making, no matter the spin. Thank God, or those playing developer may have taken notes. For some neighborhoods you continue to move the goal lines, and the public continues to get information, not in advance but instead during the meeting. It's not proper, it's not inclusive, and it's not just. Mass General Law 40A section 5, thank you, requires the zoning text be provided in advance. Please begin to do that. We need to be in alignment with the industry best practices and the secretariat and agency requirements. All have been outlined in previous emails to you guys under separate cover by resident industry experts. So echoing my fellow Medforians, I would like to say, again, we need to slow down, pause, pull the information into a digestible format, and take it back up. Expertise is the ability to simplify the complex, and this is what our residents are looking for. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Jean. I appreciate your comments.
[Jean Nuzzo]: Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: The next Zoom commenter that we have is Caitlin.
[Kaitlin Robinson]: Hi, Caitlin Robinson, 31 Everett Street, and I wanted to say that I support this proposal and I hope that you will pass it. I also wanted to mention some of the comments about how like currently six floors are allowed, but that hasn't actually happened. That in part is because there are like other regulations that have made that impossible. And so I hope that when we're looking at parking minimums and things like that, that we will not make like this current proposal impossible by continuing to have parking minimums that would do that. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thanks, Caitlin. And parking minimums are another conversation that's happening. So I encourage you to stay tuned in on that. The next Zoom commenter that I have is Milva McDonald. Hi.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi. Thank you. Thanks for taking my question, and thank you for your work. My question is about, I live near West Medford Square, and When I look at the map, I'm just curious about how the boundaries of the square were determined and how you made the decision to make some residential properties mixed use. When you walk out from the square, when you walk down Harvard Ave, there's maybe a block to max of businesses and then the residential area starts. And it looks to me like the, It's being stretched now further so that, for instance, there's a gorgeous old house on the corner of Harvard and Boston Ave that is being zoned for mixed-use 2A, which I believe means it could go to seven stories. And then I think the house next to it is mixed-use 2A. And then some of the other properties around are urban residential, too. So I'm just curious what the thought process was around that and how you decided to make some residential properties mixed use and basically change an area that is currently residential to something else.
[Emily Hedeman]: Melva, did you have any other questions?
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, what was the you mentioned the beautiful home? Do you have the address?
[Milva McDonald]: I believe it's Yeah. I mean, I think the house next to it is also zoned as mixed use too.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, I'm looking at the zoning viewer right now. And this sort of feedback is super helpful, especially with specific addresses.
[Alicia Hunt]: I can't speak to all of those. Danielle may have slightly more information, but several of the large buildings that face Boston Ave there that are more home-like are owned by the Catholic Church and are part of the St. Raphael's campus.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this one's not because I know who lives there and I've been in it many times.
[Alicia Hunt]: There was an iteration of this where I think they were all zoned for just residential and there was a discussion about the ones that are property of the church should be part of a larger like allow something larger so the church could do something like a bigger residential development if they were ever to sell. But I'm not sure that we recommended including all the houses on that block or maybe it just got squared off in order to make it a more attractive thing if that ever happened. I'm not certain. I do know that we asked to have the properties that belong to St. Raphael as part of sort of the same zoning together and not have them be separated. I'm not sure if Emily or Danielle or Paola remembers the details on that.
[Emily Innes]: Through you, Madam Chair, if possible.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yes, please.
[Emily Innes]: Yes. I do remember that. I don't think we squared it off by accident. I think we were thinking that because if I'm looking at the right one, there's three houses in a row that are older houses. We were looking, Paola and I were looking earlier at which existing parcels had housing on them that was historic in this area. And I think we were thinking that, you know, they could have gone either way for the residential or the mixed use. Either of them, any of them would be eligible, obviously, for the historic conversion if the dates in the assessor's data are correct. So again, if there's something where we need to change a boundary, we're happy to look at that. So I appreciate it being brought to our attention. Paula, I don't know if you remember further details about those particular parcels relative to others. I do remember changing the other parcels belonging to the church.
[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Um, so for that specific, uh, I'm not pretty sure this was. A map that had several iterations and discussions with the city council. Uh, so the city council asked to, um, increase the amount of to, uh, of the mixed uses. Um, in the area, so that's why I think that part was squared. Um, and then we had. Also the new corridors, that is Boston Ave, and so that would fit with that transition towards the neighborhood. So that came from those different iterations to be also included. I think in the beginning was residential. Just to clarify, it's mixed use to A, and that is five stories by right, not seven. But yeah, I think those are the
[Emily Innes]: Yes, I'm looking at the current zoning now. It's general residential, and I think we've recommended it as urban residential 2 in the first one, which I think the speaker said. Oh, no, it's still recommended as urban residential 2, so it's recommended as urban residential 2 at the moment, but we could certainly consider happy to take input. That's part of what we've been asking for at the public meetings is additional input on, is a boundary in the right place? It's not just, A, are these the right uses and standards for the districts? But B is, are the boundaries in the right place? So this is helpful information for us to have.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, thank you so much for this Melva. So I'm looking at those, the homes that you mentioned, and it's definitely 51, 47, 43, which are going north of Harvard Ave, which have more of a home appearance to them. And then looking behind St. Raphael Parish School, there's a couple more home looking buildings. I do see that one of them has child care. So those are like home based child care. I believe that's permitted in residential right now. So that's not like a business business. So maybe it's kind of that Similar to what was done in the high street kind of curve, how those homes were pulled out. Maybe those three homes are pulled out as well as, what is that? I don't know what number, 38, potentially 38 Boston Ave. No, where does that? Yeah, so maybe like 38 Boston Ave to. I don't know. Is that 24? Maybe those are ones we revisit. In terms of like, is this is mixed use appropriate for that or do we cut it out and? Think through it as part of the residential zoning. Yeah, really great feedback. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, I don't see any more Zoom commenters, but I want to provide a little bit of space just in case anybody was hesitant. Even if somebody has already said what you're planning to say, we would love to hear your comments. We do have a lot of emails. We do have a lot of... public that's already spoken, but please feel free to raise your hands. I got one more. Our next Zoom commenter is P.B.D.
[Cs57SkaizpQ_SPEAKER_07]: Hi, this is Patricia Doherty. I have a question for you about something you were just referring to. On Harvard Ave, you said there were three homes there that were home-like. What did you mean by that?
[Emily Hedeman]: Just looking at the roof shape, they looked like they may have been residences at some point. They didn't have a flat roof like a lot of commercial buildings do. That's something that we'd have to look into and confirm.
[Cs57SkaizpQ_SPEAKER_07]: So why then would you think that they are not homes?
[Emily Hedeman]: Because I don't pretend to know the occupants of every single building in Medford.
[Cs57SkaizpQ_SPEAKER_07]: I don't mean that. That's a neighborhood. And it abuts St. Raphael's. And St. Raphael's does not own a lot of property there. They have a rectory that looks like a house. And they have a convent, which is maybe two and a half stories of a beige color brick. And then the rest of those homes are older Victorian single family homes, well kept. And I think the residents would be horrified to find out that all of a sudden they could be in a higher density neighborhood. I don't think anyone wants to find out that they can have three or five stories built next to their lovely Victorian, particularly the one that, I forget her name, Miss McDonald, I think it was mentioned. That is what's setting Medford on edge right now. These boundaries are blurring into residential neighborhoods and no one's paying attention to it. That's my comment, thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Patricia. And just to directly address that, that this is exactly why we do have public comment periods. You know, we are looking for specific feedback, like what your neighbor Milva very thoughtfully gave about those specific properties, which then kind of opened up the discussion to the rest of the homes that were in that same general area. You know, we're all humans here. We're all doing our best, including you all as the public. You know, we don't, you know, we're very thankful for the public comments that give us specific feedback, like 51 Harvard Ave, that allow us to dig into these zones a little bit deeper. Rather than being critical of the process, I'd encourage you to flag any additional properties that you think may warrant a second look. We're doing the same here. So thank you for that. The next public commenter that I see is Michael DeBerry.
[Michael Dewberry]: Hello, Michael DeBerry, 50 Park Street. Thanks for, yeah, for all the time put into this and the. Well, yet another meeting a series of long meetings. Um, I, uh, I wasn't going to talk, but I, I had some comments from the previous meeting. I didn't get to deliver that. Um, I just saw that I wasn't going to share because they weren't relevant, but I just saw a hook for how they could be relevant. Um, I live in a, uh, as a part of Glenwood that is currently. Um, it's going to be zoned in our 3. And is already kind of at the, in our 3 maximum and we have, but directly a street that is, um, you are 2 and it's already like, you know, has 6, 8 unit buildings is already like, you're pretty close to the top of the top of the. The zoning and I think it's totally fine. I think a lot of the conversation of the past few weeks is like, acted like West Medford is some sort of beautiful utopia and. Good and what it needs, Benford is an apocalyptic hellscape and I think that is not true. Glenwood is still super beautiful with a mix of. single family homes and apartment buildings. I just wanted to say in response to the last comment that I'm not going to say whether all of Medford is or is not on edge, but there are definitely plenty of people who are encouraged to see density even next to their single family homes. Thank you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your comment. All right, so one last call for public comments. And I'm only closing the public comment period for this meeting because we're going to go into board discussion. All right, so I'm closing the public comment period for this meeting. Um, You know, while I am eager to move things forward in zoning, so we don't get kind of stuck in a loop, I do see a lot of merit to Um. You know, taking more time with the square proposals with this board. We have a lot of questions that we're hearing that I think. It would just it would benefit us to have concrete answers to really thoughtful answers, too. But I think the In addition, well, so I think we have all the questions, some of which is around historic conversions. Um you know, we had a suggestion to add parking garages, permitted uses. You know, we've talked about exactions. We've talked about, you know, MX1 in Medford Square. You know, we just heard about a couple properties in West Medford, but I think maybe what we can do as a board to continue to move this forward is kind of discuss this high level concept and just, if we want to, if we as a board see that it's fit, confirm the removal of the residential areas from the boundaries, at least the ones that we've already removed. Sounds like we may be able to remove additional properties, but like just as theoretically, do we as a board like the idea of only talking about the mixed use prop or the commercial zones? Ben, I see your hand.
[Ben Lavallee]: I like the idea of reducing the scope of the square discussion to include only sort of appropriate mixed use and commercial type Areas, I think we're closer on Medford Square than we are on West Medford Square on that front. I actually think on Medford Square we're quite close. I would add 17 Garden Street in Medford Square to the list of parcels that we should probably take out and sort of put in the neighborhood residential zoning bucket. It's like one or two houses on Garden Street kind of next to the pure hockey parking lot. that are very clearly historic homes. And in my mind, if we're gonna remove the others and put those in our bucket, we should do the same for a couple of houses on Garden Street. And I think, per the public comment today, there's a handful, probably a dozen or a couple dozen parcels in West Medford Square that we should take another look at. and see if they're more appropriately categorized in the neighborhood residential bucket. So yeah, all of that is a long winded way of me saying I would like to approve the updated boundaries and maybe, you know, take sort of one final pass there and then really kind of finalize those boundaries and move us into a situation where we can take some action. While I have the floor, if that's okay, Emily, I'll just finish my other bit of feedback that I was going to share in a few minutes, which is I think we should, again, in response to the public feedback and the fact that everybody's been sort of so overwhelmed with the volume of changes and the sort of, I appreciated your point, Emily, that we should all sort of assume good intentions and participate in the process here. And the public feedback has been super, super valuable. I think, you know, taking a good last turn at the maps, trimming a couple of parcels here and there to make sure we get the boundaries 100% right. I think we're much closer to that now than we were in the past, so I appreciate the effort. And then doing a very deliberate public distribution of the final version of that, you know, several days a week in advance, nice bright colors. I think some of the stuff that we have now sort of has NR and squares sort of on the same page. We can gray everything out that's neighborhood residential and really just make the square proposals super, super clear for people. I think we're getting there. So that would be my feedback on next steps.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, totally agree there. And Emily and Paola, before you write your resignation letters to the city, we would make sure that the deadlines work, because we want to make sure that you're producing like meaningful work, just as we're, you know, receiving meaningful work. So, you know, we can talk more about what those those timelines look like. Okay, so any other thoughts from board members around kind of removing the residential from boundaries plus a deeper dive into the map? It seems like we're all kind of on the same page with that. So what I want to talk about now is the specific questions and topics we want to address the next time we see this in front of us. And this could be for, I think some of these topics are valid for maybe only Medford Square and West Medford, but a lot of these topics are valid for all of the zoning reform that's being proposed. So my short list. is what does this mean for city services? People specifically mentioned power, water, sewer, schools. And I think we can review public comment, maybe add a couple more to that list. I think there's some poking we need to do at historic conversions. What's the right year for us to select, if any? In addition, Um, who was it? One of the public commenters kind of brought up the potential for exploitation around these historic conversions and like, um. You know, really nailing down like the legal definitions there. I agree with that. I think that would be helpful. Maybe look at, you know any precedents of other communities that have done something like this, you know, talk to their staff. Where is it going right? Where is it going wrong? Um and specifically for West Medford and Medford Square. looking at the age of the structures within those zones, is this a germane topic for those squares? Or is this something that we need to focus more on with the residential neighborhood and urban residential rezoning? I also think some education on exactions, meaning what fees do developers need to pay to Medford as it stands now, which were last updated 35 years ago, and maybe what the city's thinking moving forward. Kind of look through my notes, but I encourage other board members to kind of add to that list. I'm looking through my public comment notes as well.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Let's see.
[Emily Hedeman]: You know, there's some questions about, um. Affordable housing, maybe some education on that. Would be beneficial. The land that was that was possibility for greater density, greater height there. And then as stated by Ben, as well as a few public commenters, I think just being mindful of the timeline in terms of when we distribute this information. I know we're putting together a lot of requests now, but I think giving the board and the public at least a couple of days to review information would be good. And Emily and Paula, we look to you to help us influence those timelines. board members, what else are you thinking?
[hLm7uOhMYTQ_SPEAKER_43]: Adam.
[Adam Behrens]: Hi. Maybe I'm just thinking that general comments, it's not anything specific for like a recommendation, but maybe one thing that we could do better as a board as well is just kind of continually reframe like zoning, where zoning sits in sort of like the process of everything. And so for me, the helpful thing of a lot of like the zoning recommendations is that Medford put a lot of effort into the comprehensive plan and a vision for what we want the city to be. That was really informed through kind of the public election process. And that the zoning, at least the way that I understand the zoning and at least like my role as well, is that this is a lot of the specifics that are kind of meant to further that objective. It's not meant that like, oh, the zoning team and this board is pushing kind of our own agenda for how we think Medford should be developed. but that it's an attempt to get to the specific detail that has been sort of outlined sort of in tandem with the public over the past four years. And so I hear a lot of the comments about the process feeling rushed or being caught off guard or this or, you know, kind of that. And I think I have a hard time With that, just because, and I apologize, I have a puppy that's making noise in the background, but. Yeah, I have a hard time with that just because this is in the context of kind of four years of conversation that I think the city has been very proactive about. And so while the exact details might not have been sort of outlined in terms of the exact specific building height of an exact specific street, that's maybe to reiterate that this process is to get to the detail level, But it's not like we're going out on a limb and saying, you know, out of nowhere, we want to change the like nature of this square. So that's just the thing that's kind of top of mind. Sorry for the long comment.
[Emily Hedeman]: No, I think that's a great point. And yeah, I mean, the comprehensive plan was kicked off June 9th, 2021. I'm reading from the website right now, so I got my facts right. It was expected to take 12 to 18 months. There was a 21 person steering committee. They met six times over the course of the 18-month planning process. They served as liaisons between community groups, planning teams. So, yes, this isn't coming out of nowhere. But also, I do recognize the anxiety and kind of, I don't think fear is the right word because I think what we've heard at most of our meetings is people want, you know, Medford to grow and to kind of realize its full potential but they wanna feel more engaged in the process. So, yes, I agree, this is not something that the board kind of steamed up, but we also need to kind of be very responsive to the people that this is gonna impact, which is us as Bedford residents on the board, but the larger community. So I think it is the balance and I think you bring up a great point. that there's the zoning specifics in the short term, but then this long plan that we've been talking about for a long time now. Yeah, well said. Oh, John, sorry.
[John Anderson]: That's OK. You're hiding behind your computer over there. I'm gonna take another look at the comprehensive plan. I read it a couple of weeks ago quickly. I think there's a difference though between saying all the things we search for in the comprehensive plan, you know, grow the city, be more diverse, a welcoming place, all sorts of good stuff in there. But it didn't say anywhere that we wanted to densify the entire city. It said we needed, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it did say that. There's a difference between saying we need to provide more housing options and saying we want to change all the single family neighborhoods to three family neighborhoods. That's more of a strategy and While everybody's on board about providing more housing, it's how you do it. You know, mixed use is a great way of doing it. New developments like the one near BJ's, there are all sorts of places where we're providing more housing and Let's look at that too. And as I say, I didn't see the comprehensive plan being so specific about what we're talking about now. I'm sorry if I'm being a little bit incoherent. It is getting late.
[Emily Hedeman]: No, no, no, I think better. I think you're bringing up a great point. And it kind of an Adam, please correct me if I if I say this wrong, but it kind of harkens back to Adam's point in that, you know, the comprehensive plan spoken generalities, and non specifics. And then that work went to what, the planning and permitting committee, right? They came up with specifics that went to city council, and then it came to us. So it's our job to kind of nail down those specifics. So while the comprehensive plan was not prescriptive, now is the time for us to achieve that level of specificity with the guidance of the comprehensive plan. And if your perspective is, John, that certain neighborhoods should not have any additional density, then that's an opinion that you have the prerogative to express.
[John Anderson]: I'm not actually saying that.
[Emily Hedeman]: OK.
[John Anderson]: I do recall in the comprehensive plan that one of the criteria was that the history and general character of neighborhoods needed to be preserved.
[Emily Hedeman]: Just before we get too deep into this, is this something that we would want to maybe bring back up when we talk about the neighborhood and urban residential discussion. Okay, because I just want to make sure we're having the right conversation in front of the right group. Because if we talk about this and people didn't expect us to, then we're not, we're not doing right by the public. But I think this is an important conversation for us to have.
[John Anderson]: I'm just trying to make the general point. that we have, I think we have a responsibility to do more than just be very specific about what we've been handed.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay. Adam, I see your hand.
[Adam Behrens]: Oh, just to respond to John, at least like when I look, just a cursory search, densities mentioned about 70 times in the comprehensive plan. There's a section at the end that specifically goes through each corridor and area, talking about ways in which those corridors and areas could be improved. And while it's not specific to the level of zoning, it is directionally towards a denser city. So I just wanted to call out that specific point, I also hear the point, too, of that's the part of zoning is to get to the detail level.
[John Anderson]: I think you're correct.
[Emily Hedeman]: So in terms of what our next steps are for this evening, what I'm generally feeling is that we're not ready to recommend this back to the City Council and refer this back to the City Council. But I think we are, as a board, aligned with the removal of residential from these boundaries. Were there any additional topics that we wanted to include as part of the discussions for the next iteration?
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, while you were listing the things that you wanted a bit more information, the staff reminded me that also the daylight minimum that that either should be flushed out or we should remove it, but having something hanging saying TBD in an actual approved zone and wouldn't actually be great. And I think, wait, there was one other. Yeah, yeah, it's just that one. The daylight standards.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, so the daylight standards, adding parking garages as permitted uses in the table. Sounds like there's a couple of specific properties in West Medford, Medford Square, as well as along High Street that need a second look.
[John Anderson]: Excuse me, can I ask a question? Yes, John, sorry. We responded to specific comments by people in neighborhoods who recognized a particular building and said that shouldn't be part of the square. Do we have a process to actually do a quick look on these properties and to determine whether or not they are indeed more properly residential than in one of the squares? I mean, like drive by and look at them or something?
[Emily Hedeman]: So those properties that I mentioned on Harvard Ave.
[John Anderson]: Yeah.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah.
[John Anderson]: But I mean, there are other sort of blue areas as well, non-purple blue areas.
[Emily Hedeman]: So I think there's several methods. There's a visual check. There's database checks. I want to make sure that we're applying equitable kind of standards as we look at these things, as we look at these properties. So that's going to be part of my homework over the next X number of weeks. We haven't picked a date to continue this too. But, you know, I would consider, you know, members of the board that are maybe more familiar with areas, you know, Bennett, it sounds like Medford Square, you know, Ari, it sounds like you live near Medford Square. So I would say, you know, take a walk around. if you haven't already, I hope you have. And, uh, yeah, let's kind of poke and prod this thing until we feel like we've we've done our due diligence and done right by the public.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, as we start to look at specifics, um, we have already scheduled a hybrid meeting for July 9th to hear continued public hearing on residential and said there wouldn't be any new residential information presented, but this meeting could be continued to that. And I will share that I have confirmed that our DPW Commissioner Tim McGivern could join us on July 9th with the idea that he could answer some questions, easy questions in person at the time, and then help us frame harder questions for him that he would be happy to provide all of his answers in writing by August 6th so that the board would then have that information. And maybe we could ask him to make it like August 1st so that you'd have it several days before the meeting for August.
[Emily Hedeman]: So what I'm thinking when the July 9th date is, you know, thinking about what we're asking of Emily and Paola, keeping in mind that the July 4th holiday is coming up, is that giving enough time to potentially update? First, we would have to identify the specific properties that we want to pull out. Yeah, and I know you guys can't be here, Emily.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, that is correct. And neither Paula nor I can be here on the 9th, although one of our colleagues will be listening to the residential discussion and taking notes on our behalf. I think also, I love the idea of Tim McGovern being able to answer some of the questions as Director Hunt mentioned. I think we also did not want to introduce any new information on any topic for July 9th, because we know how important that public session is. I believe your next meeting is August 6th, as Director Hunt said. August 1st might be a nice deadline for us as well to respond to anything in advance of the August 6 deadline, our August 6 meeting, so I think we could have something available for that. And what might be helpful is if the board does choose to have this put towards the July 9th meeting, that perhaps that would give you all an opportunity to provide us with any additional direction that we could then make sure that we've answered by August 1st. And I think that would be very helpful for us.
[Emily Hedeman]: That sounds reasonable to me. What other board members think? So that would be us clarifying some direction on the specific parcels that we've talked about. Ben?
[Ben Lavallee]: That timeline sounds reasonable to me. I think we should give ourselves a deadline for anybody that has input on specific parcels. to sort of send those to, we should also identify exactly how we should submit that feedback so that people aren't getting it from multiple channels, which can be hard to keep up with. We should give ourselves a deadline that then gives Innos associates plenty of time to process that feedback, create a nice, rich final proposal that can then get distributed, you know, a week, like I appreciate the August 1st deadline. I would say we should give ourselves an earlier deadline than that, right? Like our feedback's due to NS, you know, whatever, call it three weeks from now. They have 10 days to process it. Yeah, I'm just sort of spitballing dates here. And then there's like a PR push and an aggressive distribution of that material. in nice crisp format so that people have a lot of time to process it. And then, you know, we move forward in August, hopefully.
[Alicia Hunt]: Just to be clear, the intention was not to have new material from Innis on August 6th. It was for the board to give direction to Innis on August 6th. For the residential. Yes.
[Ben Lavallee]: No, I was referring to the squares here. Maybe it's just I'm getting confused. I was referring specifically to feedback about the squares.
[Alicia Hunt]: we're going to have a public hearing. And the other thing that we just want to put into the mix is that the. Corridors are going to get referred out by the City Council, most likely July 15th and we have to open that public hearing within 21 days. Of them referring it so the expectation was that it would open.
[Emily Hedeman]: questions. Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: Madam chair. Thank you. I think this really, um, underlines that the pace of the amendments being referred to this board is just too fast. It's too fast. It's too fast. We can't keep up. The consultants can't keep up. No, the public can't keep up. We're it would just be. Any site plan review projects before us. It would just be. I know it's just thinking the other day. It's too. It's too much. I understand. So what can we do about it?
[Emily Hedeman]: And I should write a letter to City Council.
[Danielle Evans]: I would kindly request that they do not refer another as staff, I just can't even conceive of doing this all if the meetings are too long.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah, it's I mean, I'm thinking about like the dependencies between the different amendments. And I think the way we've kind of sectioned out these squares as with like a commercial and mixed use focus from the neighborhood residential makes sense. I'm trying to think is there like, is that severing of the connection between the corridors? And because it'd be severed, not severed, but like, if we if we say do not refer anything else until we get through, because right now we have ADU, residential, squares, What else is in my head? Is that it? Well, the quarters hasn't been referred yet, though.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. As soon as they refer, you have 21 days to open the public hearing or you forfeit your, I think, ability to even review it.
[Emily Hedeman]: And I feel like at that point, we're kind of forfeiting the public's ability to review it, because this is where we get such rich, deep, specific information. And I don't want to lose that opportunity. We can't review it in depth enough. It's too much. Yeah, okay, that's a good follow-up item. Tell city council to chill. In more formal terms. But if that's moving forward, how do we deal with the matter in front of us today, which is the squares?
[Alicia Hunt]: If we don't have the corridors on the sixth and just doing feedback to the consultant on the residential, so that wouldn't be new material to review it would be the board saying we've heard all this comment this is what we changes, it would be just the deliberation. and then and we've already that's what we said in the last meeting right and that's what the plan was and if we didn't have the public the corridors just doing this continued hearing because honestly i feel like medford square is pretty close to ready like there's very little to change there there's a little consideration and there's some details in this and west medford square is getting there and what we're talking about now is about six weeks from now Remind me, did we introduce those as two separate topics? Or one topic? Medford Square and West Medford? Yes. They were sent together as one paper.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, so we have to... Can we approve?
[Alicia Hunt]: We could sever it. Okay.
[Danielle Evans]: I don't know why we would hold up Medford Square, right? Okay. Because we can't make West Medford... Because we still have more work to do.
[Alicia Hunt]: We need more time on that one.
[Danielle Evans]: I mean, looking at it more closely, I see several parcels I'd like to see not included in the MX and I'd like to see some density reduction. Again, the pace of the amendments coming our way. I've not been able to just really study these. And I also, I think that everyone needs to go in and look at all these parcels. Like I walk up and down streets, I've changed my jogging routes so that I can see the actual neighborhoods. They're not just two dimensional plans You have to really understand them. It's. Yeah, no, I agree. Sorry, I'm tired, so I'm starting to lose my filter.
[Emily Hedeman]: I appreciate it, Danielle. You always have good insight, so thank you for that. So I think. Let me see my Zoom. I had my Zoom. Okay, so what I'm hearing is that we're going to continue this topic, Medford Square and West Medford to a date certain. We're still talking about what date. We may sever them, but I think based on what we're hearing today, we can Lastly, are there any board members that think either of the squares is ready to refer back to city council at this point? I don't think there are. I think there's work to do on both.
[Ari Fishman]: No, but I think we can get there in like one more meeting for at least Medford square. And apologies if I'm missing something or kind of confusing things in the late hour. But what I heard from Alicia is that we have the potential of using the July 9th meeting to continue our deliberations. We're not doing a huge amount of new work on Medford Square. We can sever them. That, I think, is also consistent with some of our other goals and discussions of being able to really go into the details and do one thing at a time.
[Emily Hedeman]: Am I ninth was the continuation of the public comment for residential.
[Alicia Hunt]: I actually sorry if I know I'm interrupting both of you know, go for it. So I have a recommendation for a technical reason. So if you continue this hearing to July 9, so that it is on the agenda. And then when you have Commissioner McGivern here and you're sort of putting forth what your questions are, you're not limited to just residential, like you can, you could in fact discuss the squares without actually ever having any intention of closing and finishing on July 9th. Because you'll need, it won't be time for the consultants to be responding on all of these issues.
[Emily Hedeman]: So kind of like we did for ADUs and residential, we can hear public comment on.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I'm only suggesting that so that you're not restricted because if something's not on the agenda, you shouldn't discuss it. Exactly. So it's a technical continuation to July 9th. Okay. I like that. Yeah. And then maybe we can.
[Ari Fishman]: That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. And I would very much like to see the commissioner. I think that's a great suggestion. Kind of in relation to multiple topics.
[Alicia Hunt]: So, and if I might, I'll just say that he told me that he's excited to come talk to you all.
[Emily Hedeman]: We love special guests. Okay, cool. So I think what I'm hearing is we need a motion to continue the public hearing for Medford Square and West Medford Square to July 9th. But before we do that, I wanna make sure that we've kind of like shaken the trees for all the different topics that came out of this meeting. Board members, is there anything floating around in your domes at 1015 on a Wednesday that we wanna add to this? Ben?
[Ben Lavallee]: I'd like to just confirm the feedback mechanism for parcel-specific feedback on the squares, who we should send that to and... We as board members or the public? We as board members. I guess it'd be good for both. I assume for the public that they can just submit the standard public, you know, through the standard public comment channel. Is that the best channel for board members as well?
[Emily Hedeman]: For the board members, I would say it's either that official channel or emailing it directly to Alicia and Danielle. You want to make sure not to include other board members in your messages to avoid any violation of open meeting laws.
[Ben Lavallee]: Thank you for confirming.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yeah. Anything else we want to add to this topic before we make a motion to continue? It sounds like July 9, as a continuation of the public hearing, would work for Innocent Associates as well, because we're not expecting any new material from you all at that date.
[Emily Innes]: Yes, as I said, we'll have a colleague listening in, taking notes, but we will not be presenting anything to you.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay, and the timeline moving forward for that sounds like it still has some variables in it, but we'll make sure to kind of confirm your capacity and ability along the way.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you. We do want to make sure that everybody gets the information in a timely manner, so we appreciate that.
[Emily Hedeman]: Yes. Yes, heard loud and clear from board members and the public. So we'll improve on that moving forward as a team. So with that, what I'm looking for is a motion to continue the public hearing for Medford Square and West Medford to July 9th.
[SPEAKER_28]: So moved.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, John. Can I get a second? Second. Thank you, Ari. I'm going to do a roll call vote. Call him as I see him. John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you. Ben LaValle.
[John Anderson]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Adam Behrens.
[Adam Behrens]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Ari Goffman-Fishman. Aye. Sabrina Alpino. Aye. Aye. Myself, Emily Hedeman is also an aye. So Medford Square, West Medford Square has been continued to July 9th. Thank you so much, everybody that was here that provided comments. While I still have 41 people in the Zoom, I'm also going to make a plug for applying for city boards and commissions. You know, we need as much meaningful participation in these meetings, but you know, if you, If you so desire, you can also apply to be on a board or commission and have potentially even more impact. So I'm going to drop that link in the chat and wish everybody who was here for that topic a good evening. We do have a couple more items in front of the board though. So the next item we have in front of the board is minutes. These are minutes from June 4th, 2025. Is there any discussion?
[Ari Fishman]: I move to accept the minutes. Can I get a second?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I second.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thanks, Sabrina. We're going to do roll call vote. Ben LaValle?
[Ben Lavallee]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Adam Behrens?
[Adam Behrens]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Ari Goffman-Fishman? Aye. Sabrina Alpino. Aye. John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: And I, myself, Emily Hedeman, am also an aye. Okay, the next agenda item we have is zoning updates. I'm sorry. It's 1015 and we've been talking about zoning all night, but I do want to provide an opportunity if staff has any updates or if we want to review the timeline for the upcoming topics. I know July 9th is the continued public hearing for residential as well as Medford Square, West Medford Square. There was a comment deadline Yes, July 23rd is the comment deadline. Our August 6th meeting will be board deliberations, which we then pass on to Innocent Associates for revisions.
[Alicia Hunt]: The board has a date of August 20th, because this board meets the first and third Wednesdays, but there is no topic identified for that night.
[Emily Hedeman]: Okay. And all these the dates that we've been discussing throughout these meetings are those available on the zoning website? Not yet.
[Alicia Hunt]: Not yet. Sorry, we've had some delays in getting updated between vacations of people.
[Emily Hedeman]: No, you're good. You're good. And I know that there's some some conflicts between our meetings and the and permitting commission that we're trying to iron out, too.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think we're going to ask Christian and Zach if they could help us with the website over the next several days to catch things up.
[Emily Hedeman]: I've been super impressed by both Christian and Jack. So if you put them on the task, they're going to knock it out of the park. And then the next item that we have is adjournment. If there's no other business reasonably anticipated before the board, then I'm looking for a motion to adjourn.
[SPEAKER_28]: So moved.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you, John. I'm looking for a second. I know you guys love me, but we gotta end this meeting. Thank you, Ben. I'm gonna do a roll call vote. John Anderson?
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[John Anderson]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Thank you. Ben LaValle.
[John Anderson]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Adam Behrens.
[Steven Pompeo]: Aye.
[Emily Hedeman]: Ari Goffman-Fishman. Aye. Sabrina Alpino. Aye. And I, myself, Emily Hedeman, am an aye. So with that, our meeting is adjourned. As always, thank you so much to Alicia, Danielle, Christian, Jack, we could not do this without you, as well as Medford Community Media, who has been a huge help for getting these meetings, these hybrid meetings going. So big thanks to that crew as well. Thanks to the public for your very thoughtful comments. We serve you as a board, so very thankful for your enthusiastic and consistent participation. Have a nice evening, everyone.