CDB: Medford Square Zoning Amendments - 2026-02-25

AI-generated transcript — the recording is the record.

Agenda

[Marie Izzo]: Well, the biggest thing is going to be parking, too, because yeah, it's going to be hardly anywhere to park behind the city ballroom. Yeah.

[Unidentified]: All right. I'm.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Let's see how it's... Who's unmuted?

[Marie Izzo]: Who's unmuted here?

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: It's somebody's computer.

[Unidentified]: Is it this one or that one?

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unidentified]: See you later. Can you hear me? test.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you very much.

[Unidentified]: Chambers.

[Marie Izzo]: Test. Test. Test.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Seems fine.

[Unidentified]: I don't speak as if he might. See how it's picking it up. I don't know.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Test.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Let me see what your zoom. Okay, this is you. And where's the volume on? Volume on zero. Okay, I just set it to zero. Check Emily's computer. Okay, undo it. Working now.

[Marie Izzo]: Is your mic on? Put that off. Are you sure? This is off.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: All right, test. Can people on Zoom hear me?

[Unidentified]: I don't think people on Zoom can hear that. Yes, we can hear you.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: It's very quiet.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: All right. OK, we're good?

[Councilor Zac Bears]: It's very quiet. You might want to check the Zoom level on the panel.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Are we ready guys? Okay. Matt sit down. Please. Sorry. Okay. If that's the worst not my moment then it's good. Hi. Sorry. This is a special joint session of the Medford City Council and Community Development Board February 25th 2026. Sorry about the delay. We had technical issues in the chamber. What. Yeah. Jim. We're really quiet now on the Zoom. And there's no video. In the chamber. I don't know. Sorry for my attitude.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Can someone on Zoom tell us how the volume is?

[Councilor Zac Bears]: We don't even see Council Chambers at this point.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Matt, you're coming in clear now. It was coming in really, really faint earlier, but you're coming in clear now.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: Yeah, it doesn't look like Council Chambers. Yeah, we don't see them.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Wait, so when y'all just talked, there's no other audio for people on Zoom right now. This is from my personal laptop. Oh, okay.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: Yeah, we can't hear. We can hear you from that, but Council Chambers isn't even in the Zoom.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: He's still trying to get into Zoom right now.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Yeah. Okay, he's logging into, Council Chambers is logging into Zoom at the moment.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Okay, thank you.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Admit Council Chambers to the waiting room.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: If you guys are speaking through the mics, we can't hear you. We stopped.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Can you hear me now? It's 630 now. It's 630 now. We are half an hour late for this meeting to start.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: It sounds like there's a very faint noise coming through, but I'm not sure.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yeah, I can't. I hear it just faint, very faint speaking.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: I'm sorry I can't be there, but my guess is that either on the panel, the Zoom audio going into the panel in the booth is low. or the Zoom audio. There's something with the Zoom audio that's causing feedback on the microphone controls. So it's either the board or the mic controls.

[Marie Izzo]: Zach, can you hear me?

[Councilor Zac Bears]: We see you now, but it's still very faint. It sounded like you said something, but it was not. It's not audible on Zoom.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: How's this?

[Councilor Zac Bears]: Somewhat better, if you could turn it up a little more.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: I'm going to try to turn my personal mic up and see what that. I'm turning you up now.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: How's this? A little better. It's too loud in the chambers.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: I can't really hear Emily, but I could hear Matt. Yeah, I'm with you, Zach. I can hear Matt, but not Emily.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: My mic is really loud in the chamber, but what you're saying is over Zoom, it's okay?

[Councilor Zac Bears]: Barely, it's still very quiet over Zoom.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: When it sounds reasonable in the chamber, it's bad. It's too quiet over Zoom.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: I could try to put it on both.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: Zoom on in. I don't think that's going to work. It's going to create massive feedback. If someone wants to FaceTime me, I can try to take a look at the panel in the booth, the board in the booth.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: What are you doing right now? On the bottom left. Bottom left, here.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Test. Can you hear this over Zoom? Over Zoom, can you hear it? Wait, you said now you're getting it? He said it's still very quiet over Zoom.

[Adam Hurtubise]: No, this is...

[Unidentified]: No, I didn't mean to.

[Marie Izzo]: She's asking me like I'm doing it in the shadows.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: I'm not. No one responds to me. That's fine. That is fine. I don't get mad about it.

[Adam Hurtubise]: So I put in there, like, coping with things, and getting in and out.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a big thing. Yeah. All right.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Can everybody hear me? Can folks hear me? Okay.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Hi. Okay. This is just a test. Hi, I'm just testing to see if the audio will work. Please don't mute me.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: Unmuting a laptop in the chamber is going to create feedback.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Jim, can we turn the chamber audio off?

[Unidentified]: Yeah. That's something I'm gonna announce.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Testing.

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

[Adam Hurtubise]: All right.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Hi, everybody. Very, very sorry about the technical issues. We are here. Can you, Jim, can you mute the sound in the chambers because he can't? Oh, God. Okay. This meeting is called to order. This is a special joint session of the Medford City Council and Community Development Board, February 25th, 2026. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll for the city council?

[Marie Izzo]: This is a, this is a joint meeting with the Community Development Board, I will turn it over to Doug car the chair of the CBP.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Good evening, everyone. Welcome to tonight's meeting. Are you unmuted? Sorry. No. Doug's unmuted.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Are you able to unmute? Yes.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Okay.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, you should be able to.

[Chair Doug Carr]: All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to tonight's meeting of the Medford Community Development Board. I'll call the meeting to order. Let's begin with some obligatory procedural matters. This joint hearing of the Medford Community Development and Medford City Council is being conducted in a hybrid format in the City of Medford City Council chambers on the second floor of Medford City Hall, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford Mass, and via Zoom, remote video conferencing, kind of. Anyone who would like to listen 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. Would you just say a few words about that?

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Yes. The link was not correct on the agenda, but if you go to the city events calendar now it is correct. Another edit to that as we've had severe technical difficulties in the chamber so we have made this zoom only right now, though there are some folks that are in the chamber. Thank you for sticking with us. So, obviously, you can still be here but. all of the city councilors that are in the chamber and community development board members are also on zoom right now.

[Unidentified]: Okay.

[Chair Doug Carr]: A reminder that given the hybrid nature of this meeting tonight, all votes from the board will be made by roll call. Please know that the project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed on the city's website, medfordmass.org, at forward slash boards dash commissions, forward slash community development board, and by clicking on current city board filings. For those on Zoom, you can also find the link in the chat. So roll call attendance, uh, John Anderson, Sean Megan, Page Buldini.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Present.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Dina Calagara. Ari Goffman-Fishman. Myself chair Doug Carr, present. Uh, Danielle, can you mute yourself and please introduce any staff on today's meeting?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Mr. Chair, myself, Danielle Evans, Senior Planner. Also with me is Alicia Hunt, the Director of Planning, Development and Sustainability. I believe that is everybody from PDS tonight.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you very much. All right, so this is a continued public hearing, Medford Square zoning amendments. This was opened on January 21st, 2026. I'm going to basically share my screen and give an outline of what we're going to talk about tonight. So just give me one moment if you could.

[Unidentified]: Is that?

[Chair Doug Carr]: Okay. So the outline for tonight, Councilor Leming will give an outline of the schedule where we are presently. Then in this group, we'll do a brief recap of the recent public meetings. I'll give a summary of the zoning issues that we came together on from our last city board meeting, which was a week ago tonight. We'll also give some examples and changes that were made to Medford Square historic buildings over the years. Teresa DuPont will also talk briefly about potential Medford historic districts. And then we'll have public comments, including a letter from the chamber and some general public as well. And then we'll get into a detailed discussions. We wanted to move the public comments up this this time, so we weren't waiting for hours to make comments, whether you're here in person or online. Finally, we'll talk about next steps at the end of this meeting. So.

I'm just going to give a brief summary of some of the major issues that the city board talked about at our last meeting. There were really three major categories of concerns. We think this is a great plan. We think it's on the right path, but we thought there were some pretty big gaps that we needed to fill in. The first one was this integrated parking into the zoning with defined parking ratios, with flexibility on parking, Whether it's shared or offsite, the ability to allow new garages is something that I think we felt was important. We also wanted to rewrite the high frequency transit definition and zoning and make that clear. Right now, it hasn't been clear. We've experienced that in our meetings over the last couple of weeks, couple of months. We also want to revisit the 2011 Medford Square parking study that was done, which proposed a new garage behind Colleen's off Governors Avenue. This is a rendering of what that garage would look like. I just want to emphasize that this garage has really nothing to do with zoning. The design of it, that's not what this meeting is about. We had to fix zoning first. The garage will follow. We need all the stakeholders in the city to get behind this. But right now, there's no schedule for this garage. It's a 15-year-old study. I think it's a good design. It added 200 cars, proposed 200 cars. But as a recommendation from both the chamber and the city board that we revive this plan going forward to address the parking integrated with zoning.

[Unidentified]: We can't hear that person who's speaking. Are you saying that it can you hear? Yes, thank you.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Um, no, sorry.

[Marie Izzo]: Okay.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: I really have to say the the technical difficulties in in the chamber tonight are really, really a lot. It's almost seven o'clock. And I don't think that this is manageable. Personally. It's been almost an hour and we can't seem to overcome it. We can't hear in the chambers because it's double speak. So my recommendation would be to continue this hearing to a date certain when we can have better audio set up. I don't think we can do this all on Zoom right now.

I believe we need to be at New City City Council that does that. Go ahead.

[Adam Hurtubise]: You have to pick a date. You have to pick a date.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah, do it on Zoom.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Okay, yeah, apologize for this folks. Motion to continue. Is March 4th available?

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Doug, do you know, Doug mentioned March 11th, maybe, because do you have a meeting on the 4th?

[Chair Doug Carr]: We have a meeting a week from today. Which is, I believe, the 4th. The 4th. March 4th.

[Unidentified]: There's March 11th, which is the zoning public information session. Instead of doing a zoning public information session, we continue this meeting for that.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: March 11th is available from a council side.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Zach, could you speak up? I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: March 11th is available from the council side.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: I can't hear him.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: March 11th is filled for city council.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: March 11th is filled for city council?

[Councilor Zac Bears]: No, it's available. It's available. Oh, it's available. Sorry, Zach.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: No, we can't. Literally, this meeting is not working.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Hold on. Hold on. What about Tuesday, March 3rd?

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Do you all have Tuesday, March 3rd available?

[Marie Izzo]: March 3rd.

[Unidentified]: We have those booked?

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Do we have stuff for them?

[Marie Izzo]: We could move it. Yeah. And honestly, I might have the vacant buildings.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Well, the 11th is a week later. I believe there's the sense of urgency of trying to address things before and then also that the 11th has something scheduled on it.

[Marie Izzo]: to the RSPC. You have to, yeah.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: You can do March 3rd or March 11th as a council. What's the Community Development Board, PDS and MS availability. So, Emily and Paolo are not available, but they weren't really present tonight.

[Unidentified]: I just want you to know. I mean, finally, I think, actually, your chair was wonderful. First of all, I was going to say this, but it was a lot of things I wanted you to solve. So I think that we wanted to listen to you all talk. I think you all can do that without us. And afterwards, I thought it would be a blessing. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I would probably listen to it.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Okay, well, why don't we, can you repeat your motion?

[Unidentified]: Tuesday.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: On the motion of Councilor Leming to continue this meeting to March 3rd at 6 p.m. seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, can you call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[Unidentified]: Yes. Yes. Motion to adjourn to March 3rd. 6 PM. Second.

[Chair Doug Carr]: All right, I'll call the roll. John Anderson?

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Sean Began? Page Buldini?

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. Dina Colagaro? Ari Gothman-Fishman? And Doug Carr, myself? Yes. Thank you. The motion passes.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Do we have a motion to adjourn? Do we need it or does theirs carry?

[Marie Izzo]: Do we need one?

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah. On the motion of Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan, can you please call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan?

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Mullane?

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scarpelli?

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes.

[Councilor Zac Bears]: Yes.

[Councilor Emily Lazzaro]: Seven in favor, zero opposed. Motion passes. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Sorry.