[Marie Izzo]: Livestream should be up and running.
[Zac Bears]: And just confirming that we are now live on the gov channel Comcast 22, Verizon 43. Thank you, Kevin. All right, special joint session of the Medford City Council and Community Development Board March 3rd, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll of the City Council.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan.
[Matt Leming]: Present.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Present.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Mullane. Present. Councilor Scarpelli. Present. Councilor Tseng. Present. Vice President Lazzaro. Present. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Present, seven present, none absent. Meeting is called to order. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, City Council President Bears. This is, as Councilor Bears said, a joint meeting of the City Council and the Medford Community Development Board. I'll call the meeting to order with a roll call, please. John Anderson? John? OK, Sean Began? Present. I know Page Buldini is absent. Dina Calgaro? Present. Ari Goffman-Fishman. Present. And myself, Chair, Doug Carr, present. I'll turn it back to you, City Councilor Bears, City Council President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you, Doug. All right. Today we are going to be holding our rescheduled meeting. Thanks to everyone for bearing with us on the technical issues last week. I do think we have them ironed out, but just to be careful, we decided to hold this meeting via Zoom. basically tonight you know first we'll hear from chair Carr if there's anything that he would like to add. We will approve the city council's minutes and the special joint meeting minutes from our meeting in January and then we will discuss kind of the schedule of meetings for the next three or so months regarding the zoning updates project and then we will get into the public continued public hearing on Medford Square Um, during that, we will hear from a brief recap from planning development and sustainability director Alicia. Presentation by community board community development board chair car. some discussion and options for historical district presented by Teresa DuPont from our planning development sustainability office, and then we will open public comments. After that, we will here have a conversation between the council and the community development board on issuing guidance to our zoning consultant in this land group. to issue, to basically make some revisions to the current proposal for Medford Square before us. My sincerest hope, especially by scheduling our discussion after the public hearing and public comment period, is that we'll be able to get to that public comment hopefully by 7 p.m. and hear from folks at that point and then have our discussion after that. So with that, I will turn it over to Chair Carr if there's anything else you'd like to add before we get started.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Council President Bears. I don't have much to add. I just want to reinforce that we want to get to the public comments as quickly as possible. We think this has been a really engaging conversation so far. We are going to come out of this meeting, I hope, with consensus. And I think we'll be on the way to refining the plan and getting it done in relatively short order. So with that, I will turn it back to you. Council President.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Chair Carr. Records, the records of the special joint meeting of January 21st, 2026 were passed to Councilor Leming. Councilor Leming, how did you find those records?
[Matt Leming]: I find the records in order and move to approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Councilor Leming, seconded by?
[Danielle Evans]: Seconded.
[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malayne?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Chair Carr, I'm not sure if there's any action you need to take on that or if you approved your minutes already.
[Doug Carr]: No, I think we're good for now. Let's continue with the agenda.
[Zac Bears]: Great. We will move to our next item, which is the meeting scheduled 26052 offered by Councilor Leming, proposed zoning meeting schedule through May 2026. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you. I'm just going to share my screen really quickly. Specifically, a little keynote presentation. So I just wanted to, for the public's sake, to talk about the schedules that were both presented in the In the agenda as well as one of the some of the internal timelines that we that we discussed and a lot of this is just to clarify to the public sort of like where what to expect moving forward and at least in an ideal world how we would like the. zoning process to go until at least May. This is a slightly edited version than what was included in the agenda because we didn't have a rescheduled meeting and so this reflects that the 3rd of March meeting that was happening right now is no longer the planning and permitting committee that was originally supposed to be on this schedule. But essentially, to clarify what's happening here, so in his land group, the The consultants who are working with us on this are only contracted to go to a set number of meetings, and they requested that it be laid out beforehand what meetings they go to. We're also having biweekly working group meetings, which are not reflected on this. The idea for this schedule is to have a joint public hearing here, hear from the public about Medford Square. We will then have a public information session about about Medford Square at McGlynn on the 11th, which we're currently sending postcards out to abutters about this next week. On the 17th of March, we're also simultaneously going through building and PDS sort of cleanup changes. This was also mentioned in the joint press release. This is just areas of the zoning where Building and planning development and sustainability realize that kind of things didn't make sense over time and they just wanted some area to be able to clean up with to clean up that you know just the language in certain spaces so just like routine work. Which is then going to be continued sort of throughout this process but the idea behind this is that hopefully we'll be able to come to come to some consensus by the 25th on where Medford Square is at a little bit more about that on the next slide. And then right after that start on Tufts and Boston Avenue first and city council planning and permitting committee meetings. then in a regular meeting of the Medford City Council and then have these similar joint CCCDB sessions as well as public information sessions about that. about that just the same. Now, this is the schedule that I would like to happen. Again, it is dependent on certain items being voted out at certain times, which of course cannot be guaranteed. But just for the sake of the consultants and clarity to the public, this is the schedule that I would like folks to tentatively agree is where we'll go from there. In terms of the internal timeline for Medford Square, this is one that we talked about and talked about quite extensively at the last working group meeting, which the full city council and CDB got to see the meeting notes on that as well so that they know about what those presentations were, or sorry, what those conversations were like. The idea behind this is we've had a number of discussions thus far. We've had a number of, we've had a lot of public feedback on the Medford Square changes thus far, so I think by now we sort of at least have a feel for where the concerns of the CDB are, the concerns of the public, and where city council is coming from. And the goal here is to create a schedule by which those concerns can sort of be calcified into specific recommendations that the consultants can then kind of present at the joint hearing on March 25th. We're obviously having the public, the joint meeting right now, there'll be a public meeting at the McGlynn where we'll be hearing some more feedback from folks. Internally, we're going to go over, we're going to hear an internal, we're going to hear a draft of some of these edits at the working group, and then we will then have comments both from the CC and CDB on those draft documents due to And is, and as well, then incorporate those by March 19th, and that should allow enough time for that to get out on the agenda by March 25th. And the, the idea behind this is, I think, after this, you know, we had a lot of discussions about this internally, I think the consensus was that if you know we. We heard all of those concerns and everything was there by the time the joint meeting came about. Um, then we would be able to, you know, vote it out by that time, but there's also a possibility that, uh, you know, the CDB would want more time to, uh, to deliberate on these. There's a possibility we might not find consensus. And so, um, if that, if that occurs, you know, we, uh, you know, we might not stick to the schedule, but this is sort of the work in my mind, this is the working plan. This is the working plan for now, I'll just say I feel I do feel very strongly about the idea that last year we sort of kept having public hearings and there was sort of this back and forth process as we kept updating drafts, based on whatever. the conversation at the last meeting was, I do feel strongly that we should kind of have set ourselves to a pretty clear deadline, at least as far as public feedback is concerned, just so that members of the public don't have to keep coming back to meetings and meetings again and again as this process drags out. that's what I have to say about the proposed timelines. Thank you, Council. I
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Councilor Lunding, do we need to actually vote on that schedule or are you just outlining it for the public?
[Matt Leming]: I was thinking we could vote on, we could vote, oh, I see John Anderson just entered as well. I was thinking we could vote to endorse the schedule just so that we knew that, you know, we would have like a little bit more authority to actually book rooms for a lot of the future meetings. And just so that we're like 100% sure that both members of the city council and the CDB agree on this meeting schedule. And if there is any, if there is any changes that folks might've had, like, you know, this date doesn't work for whatever reason, we could, we could, we could have that. So if somebody from the city council wants to motion to endorse this meeting schedule, I'd be, I'd be happy to have that.
[Zac Bears]: It's on the agenda, so we have to dispose of it in some way. So we could certainly move to approve if that's your motion, Councilor Leming. I moved. Is there any, before we get there, is there any discussion by the Community Development Board Chair Carr before we move to a vote?
[Doug Carr]: Um, I think they're going to be. I don't know if we're going to vote on this. We can talk about it amongst ourselves when we switch gears here in a few minutes, but why don't you go ahead and take the vote on City Council President Bears now and we'll discuss it.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Yeah. Okay. Just per the rules, I think on any item that's on the agenda, we need to take a vote and you need to take a vote. Okay. Yeah, so and I think we do the discussion before we do the voting of either body. So I just want to respect that.
[Doug Carr]: All right, thank you for clarifying, City Council. So I'll open it up to any of the Community Development Board members present, if they have any comments or questions, or if they're okay to proceed to a vote. Yeah, thank you for putting that up.
[Zac Bears]: And it's just a vote on this meeting schedule here, by the way.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, go ahead, Dina Colagaro.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, so my understanding is the meeting proposal is just a draft at this point, and basically a navigation tool but it could change depending on the outcome of the public comment and the meetings that we have. Is that correct?
[Doug Carr]: That's correct. Yes. Go ahead, Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Well, well, I did want I didn't want to clarify. So where this is set is. And is can't show up for more meetings than this. So the, the, the purpose behind doing this and sort of, like, having here where and as would be in where they weren't is because in their contract that they sign, they show up to a set number of meetings. So. If we did want to do more meetings on this, then they don't have to show up to those to sort of give advice and so on. So that is something to keep in mind when doing this. Now, if the CD board feels the need, does want to continue deliberating on this, then maybe you could take the, then there is a possibility of taking Uh, the recommendations that they'll give to us on the 25th of March and just have more time to, uh, to discuss that. I think that's I think that's fine. I do think that. And this was another kind of point of discussion that we had. I do think that it should be a deliberation session and not another public hearing. Because again, that obligates the public to keep coming back to meetings if they want to have their voices heard on new ideas. But yeah, that is sort of the caveat here. This is just so that we can kind of tell the public sort of what the plan is and that they know what to expect. And there is some level of transparency in the process.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Dina.
[Dina Caloggero]: Just one more question. I'm not going to go on forever for this, but the public comment period, the sessions that are at the senior center, which is on February 18th, and the one that will be March 11th, where will those public comments be kept? And will the city council and the community development board have access to those public comments?
[Matt Leming]: So my understanding is that, and Alicia or Daniel can jump in here, is that the public comments were collected on cards and submitted to PDS who, and there should be a process to scan or type those up and then put them on the internet and then have them. I recognize Director Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, let me just sort of, two things. Things that are said outside of the legal public hearing process are not technically legal public comments, which is sort of the difficulty with having these public information sessions once the public hearing is already open. One way we're handling that is that we did have written cards and said if they wanted them to be considered, because submitting a written comment to these boards is absolutely legal and allowed. I have not actually gotten those from Innis yet, because there were some cards that were filled out at the senior center. So I do want to encourage people that if they were there and they didn't fill out a card, they should send an email in with their comments. You can write a letter to my office, too. We occasionally get handwritten letters. That's fine. But they need to be in writing. And just because somebody says it out loud at the meeting doesn't make it a public comment, because this is the public hearing. That is not the public hearing. But I will remind Emily that we need those written comments that people were told they were submitting them. And Dina, you're muted.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: I just want to also state that our office manages a comment form And there's a QR code on all of our agendas. And I believe you can also, it's linked from the website as well. And that's the easiest way to, you log in and then you select what item you want to comment on and it's all captured there in one spot. And then we can aggregate it all and disseminate it. We also can accept comments through our OCD email box. We try to check that regularly now that we have a new head clerk. Hopefully, that'll be less of a heavy lift making slogging through that. But we do encourage use of the form because that's the most organized.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Danielle. Moving on to anyone else, Sean Bagan, any comments from you? I'll go to John Anderson next. No, I don't have any comments on the schedule. OK. John Anderson, please unmute yourself. and make a comment.
[John Anderson]: Thank you. I also can't turn on my video either.
[Doug Carr]: Oh, now I can.
[John Anderson]: OK, you fixed me. OK, it's all fixed. I just apologize for getting in late. I had some trouble connecting.
[Doug Carr]: That's it. Do you have any comment about the schedule that's on the screen?
[John Anderson]: No, no, no, thank you.
[Doug Carr]: OK, very good. Ariathan Fishman, any comments on the schedule?
[Ari Fishman]: Looks good to me.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. I have no either other than to just echo what you said earlier, Councilor Leming. This obviously is an outline. It's an aggressive outline. It assumes that the plan put before us at our next meeting in basically only a couple of weeks will be, you know, a consensus plan with no changes, which is a tall order, but I'm hopeful that will be the case. So with that, let's proceed to the motion.
[Zac Bears]: Right on the motion from Councilor living to approve seconded by second second by Councilor Callahan. Mr. please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Lemon. Yes. Councilor Moline.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scapelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Vice President Lazzaro.
[Laura Jasinski]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: President Bears. Yes. So the affirmative, the negative, the motion passes. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Yes. So the same motion for the outline schedule that we just reviewed. I'll do the roll call now. John Anderson. Yes. Sean Began. Yes. Dina Calagaro. I think you're muted. Yes. Very good. Thank you. Ari Gothman-Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, yes, the motion passes five to zero. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Great, we'll move to the next item, which is hearings 26023 offered by Councilor Leming, public hearing proposed amendments to the Medford zoning ordinance chapter 94 Medford Square. So as we discussed, we are going to be talking today about Medford Square. Our goal is to get to public comment by seven o'clock if we can. We do have three items kind of to talk about before we get to our public comments. First is a brief presentation from Planning Director Hunt and Senior Planner Evans, recapping the Community Development Board meeting and lightly the proposal for the Medford Square zoning. Then we'll go to Chair Carr and Manager DuPont. So we'll start with you, Director Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great, thank you. Um, so when in this was at the CD board meeting as they what they did was they recapped a lot of the information that people knew from last summer. Um, and went into just a little bit more depth on things. The city council had seen, but they also interwoven that a number of changes. Um, and these were mostly changes that had been requested by the previous board by the staff. or things that we've been hearing already. And so I think it would be helpful for me to flip through them. And if anybody wants me to like stop at anything, you should say so, but I only wanna take like five minutes to do this. So I don't wanna like go into each thing that was recommended, if that makes sense.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Alicia. Yeah. And just a reminder to everybody that we'll be having our discussion after public. If this presentation brings up some questions, jot them down and we can, uh, we can talk about them when we get to our discussion.
[Alicia Hunt]: That would also be a good way to do it. I just sort of wanted to not go into too much depth. Um, so, and then if this is new for people who are on the zoom, but it's not going to be new for anybody. Truly on city council. This is the existing zoning. We talked about what's allowed. both by type and by height in the existing zoning. This is the proposed zoning. And I'm gonna let you know that we have this. One of the things that we talked about a lot in previous meetings was shadow studies and understanding heights. So these are actually existing scale to scale that shows where shade would fall off of buildings of different heights or high streets. for a different section of High Street with the river and Mystic Valley Parkway. So I have all of these. I'm not going at a rate that anybody can see them, but if you wanted me to bring them back up later, I want you to know that these are available. So that was something that we talked about and went through with the board. One of the things that have been coming out of that is that there is a request that we include a standard around a daylight minimum. Um, that is still looking. That still needs a definition, and Ennis has been asked to create a definition for that. And I'm going to go with the assumption that anything I present here is a change that we want to see in the new version. If you don't want to see it, Dina, you're unmuted. If you don't want to see it, you might want to write that down and say that to us, because otherwise we're assuming we want to see it. So this is the zoning, and one of the things is, There had been, and this was just confusion, this part, had some of the other residential sections in here. We're carving those out. We're recommending that those stay whatever they're currently zoned until as which time zoning is brought up. There has been some discussion that there may be still some parcels in here, and I'm pointing to some stuff around Governor's Ave. that might be more of a house scale and stuff back here. If there are other parcels that you don't think should be zoned to the MX2A in this area, you should provide us that list. We should talk about that. We should understand that a previous board member had recommended that some of these parcels actually have houses on them. Why should they be grouped in with the commercial parcels? If you really look at this with a fine tooth comb. I'm just mentioning that. Um, some of the other changes that actually need to happen is the changes of the zones. We had called it MX one originally, um, in order to differentiate it from Mystic Ave. We actually want to call it MX one B so that anytime MX one is used in the city, it means exactly the same thing. And here it'll be MX one B. And then again, mixtures three. We're renaming three a, um, the technical, but it's important technical stuff. Um. Then we talked about the proposed use table. There are some changes, and actually, I think this is one I'm going to make a note that people want to talk about. Um, there was a request in allow a three unit detached by right and MX one B. Other people have said, Why would we ever want that in that zone? Um, so I'm flagging that for you guys. I think the three unit detached right now is allowed in the two and three zones, and so we want to look at that. Um, adding in multiple the 4 to 6 unit by right in these. Adding in townhouses by right. And then, so we want to be looking at those and then municipal parking garage, municipal parking area, garages of principal use. Um, it has been not allowed in any of this area. And what I heard from the board is that you want to be adding it in to at least the 2A, 2B and 3A. And so that's something that I want to flag to make sure that that is something you want to see them reflecting back. There's some renumbering that's going to need to happen. And then adding a new footnote to say that accessory dwelling units, which states, quote, subject to change with the revision of the new ADU ordinance, just so that any separate ADU ordinance would appropriately apply. And then So this is the table of uses. This is another area where there's been talk about this is the parking areas. Right now, parking area or garage not accessory to a principal use is a no in all of these zones. I heard you saying you wanted this to be a yes. Do you want it in all the zones? Does that include the mixed use 1B zone? And then we can go into some of these details as well. Yes. that changes their dimensional standards. We talked about what currently exists. There's a lot on this slide. This is also often available as a board for people to look at. We need to add the definition of building coverage so that there was a proposed definition. And then looking at some of the dimensionals, are all the dimensionals correct? We've had the lot area, the minimum square foot had been 10,000 square feet for everything, which makes a lot of things unbuildable. Do we want to make it 3,000 and 4,000 square feet so that we can build on the smaller lots by right? The amount of active ground floor, what percentage of the ground floor should be in active use? And then the setbacks as well. Building coverage. pervious surface, open space, landscape, minimums. Some of these are recommended to be different from what was in the version that was submitted to the city council. Let's see. So we want the, there was some language around front setbacks. Oh, actually, so this was something that came up. I'm actually just gonna quick segue. In our conversations with Transom, one of the things that was very informative is that we realized that this section 94, it's right now 963, dimensional requirements and waivers, is confusing. So Danielle and I talked with Emily about splitting it. There should be a 94-963 dimensional requirements and a separate section 94-964, which is waivers. So it's very clear what are waivers and what are requirements because some people thought that everything in that section was waivable because of the heading of the section. So that's something we actually feel strongly about to make the zoning more usable. A maximum setback of 20 feet is something we are recommending get added into the language of front setbacks. Height setback, step back requirements. And that's to talk to not shade the residential areas too much. And then there's some changes to what should be allowed on ground floor active frontage. Happy to talk about that in more detail. And that was the last slide I had for you. So hopefully that was pretty quick.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you, Alicia. I know that was a lot. but we'll be able to circle back during discussion if folks had specific questions or comments on what Alicia brought up, write those down, we'll come back to them in discussion. Chair Carr, floor is yours.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Council President Bears. Alicia, I think one of the other items that was discussed was the refined definition of, I think it's, I don't know the exact term, high-frequency transit. That's something that came up a couple of times in several of our meetings, and we wanna make sure that definition as part of this zoning fix is fixed, because we feel that that one has been very vague, and we wanna clarify that. We can just add that to the INIS list of changes that we're gonna make. when we give her our shopping list of items by the end of this meeting. All right.
[Zac Bears]: Just really quickly Doug, I see planner Evans and I also wanted to note it may be worth that being part of the kind of the cleanup portion of the three, you know, we're doing Medford Square, Tufts, Boston Ave, and then the cleanup, because we want to make sure that applies to the entire zoning code. So that might need to be part of a different amendment, just legally, I'm not 100% sure, but I'll go to Planner Evans.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, thank you, President Bears. I was going to say, Commissioner van der Waal and I are meeting tomorrow morning on our extensive lists of cleanup and high-frequency transit is definitely on that list. There could be different waves of cleanup. If this one wants to get expedited, that could be something that you all could discuss if that seemed to be urgent or not.
[Zac Bears]: Is the to the amendment the amendment allows us to amend the definition section because right. The specifically what we noticed. Includes the definition section, right?
[Danielle Evans]: Right, and so there's there's a lot of defined terms or terms that aren't defined that will need to be defined in order to interpret and use this section. Like, particularly like the open space definitions, there's different categories of it. And there's a lot of information that's really buried in the definitions. And if you don't read those, then it's unclear how you apply the zoning. It's really interesting how much is actually buried in that section.
[Alicia Hunt]: And Mr. Chair, what I, Mr. President, what I would recommend in order to handle sort of this, this section versus the whole zoning is that if the board and the council can come to an agreement on language for the high frequency you could do it, you could adopt it for this section, and we can then put it into the cleanup to apply the exact same language to the whole zoning. And that way, we just make sure that it's in the whole thing. Because we wanna make sure that we're amending the stuff that we noticed we were gonna amend. But yes, the definition table was in there because some of what we are adding are definitions.
[Doug Carr]: Good. All right, I will move on. I'm going to share my screen. And I'm going to briefly summarize some of the conversations and points that we've had on the CD board over the past couple of meetings. And we want to talk about some of these issues. But the council is aware of these. Can you see my screen OK, folks? Okay, yes, very good. So we just want to go over some of the major conversations we've had within some of the three major issues we've had so far. Tweaks to the zoning proposal that we think are important. I want to show a few examples of some Medford Square Historic Buildings, some additions that have been done over the last decade, just to give examples of how you can creatively adapt these old buildings while still maintain them. And then after that, Teresa, as Council President Bears has mentioned, Teresa DuPont will talk about the potential for a Medford Square Historical District as well. So one of the items that the city board feels really strongly about is that the parking really needs to be integrated into the zoning and not left kind of outside of it, which was, I think, what was done on Salem Street. So we want to try to get this a little better defined, but still give plenty of flexibility for potential shared parking, potential offsite parking, Also, the new parking garages. We understand there's a significant parking problem in Medford Square. We recognize that. We want to make sure that even though the solution may not be zoning, we want to make sure that the zoning doesn't prevent a parking solution from being had. We also talked obviously just mentioned the rewrite in the high-frequency transit definition. Again, there are going to be some things that I'm going to talk about that are not going to be part of zoning. Zoning isn't the answer to everything. There'll be things whether the design standards, whether if we're going to build a garage and if it's square, it's not going to be dictated by zoning. It's going to come elsewhere. One of the items that came up was that there was a very extensive 2011 Medford Square parking study that was done included a very detailed design for a new parking garage behind Colleen's off Governor's Ave. That's what this rendering shows. It was done 15 years ago and it didn't go anywhere. I think it was a good design and again it's not part of zoning but as something as a phase two as a next step after we complete the zoning of Medford Square reviving some of these parking studies, reviving some of these parking garage designs, we think would be a good faith effort to move this whole process forward. The second issue that the City Board generally had is that some of the boundaries of the zoning didn't make a lot of sense. There were some things that were not done, not part of the zoning boundaries that we thought should be. like the Medford Public Library and the UU Church and the Parsonages are technically in the existing zoning, in the current zoning, in a residential zone. We didn't think that made any sense to leave that kind of wide discrepancy unaddressed in the zoning. So we're hoping we can work with Inez and the City Council to just tweak the boundaries a little bit to capture those buildings to make sure that they make sense for what the buildings are going to be hopefully for many decades. And there was also one building on the Hillside Avenue that was part of the historic district that looked like it was zoned within the CVS site next door, which is a much bigger zoning proposal. So we wanted to kind of fix that. We thought it was a little bit of an omission there. And NS has basically said that they thought that was a good idea as well. And I will be going around to all of the city board members when I'm completed with this to get their reactions, because I'm sure there are going to be some other things that are going to come up as well. But the next few slides are in regards to protecting historic resources while encouraging new development. We think that even though that zoning tools are not the only tools, we want to make sure that we encourage creative uses, new floors, new additions, and allow these buildings to be reimagined so that they're preserved while still upzoning them per the current plan. And so one of the options we're going to ask Emily and his group there is to say, is there an option for a Medford Square historic district? It could be an entire area. It could be a local historic district, which is a single building historic district. And Theresa DuPont will talk about those in a few minutes when we're done. We also want to have any incentives in the zoning that rewards saving some of our historic buildings while repositioning them for new uses. And again, we want to rely on the zoning experts to tell us what's the best tools to have there. We want to encourage new development, but still make sure that some of our buildings that have been there for hundreds of years are not torn down because it's economically beneficial to do so. We want to incentivize preservation and reimagination. The next few slides are going to be examples of some good and not so good existing historic buildings that have been adapted over the years. This one on the screen right now is 6672 High Street. It was built in 1930 as a one-story retail building. There was a fire in 1988 and it was rebuilt and restored and renovated to add two stories above that retail floor. which we thought was a really great reuse of a building. It was an Art Deco original building, and we thought the addition was really quite strong and sympathetic to the buildings. We thought that was a win-win for the square, for the owner, and for basically having more commercial and retail space in the square. Another example is down the street on Salem Street. It's the old Foyer Theater that was there for many, many decades, most of the 20th century. And this building, it didn't succeed ultimately as a theater, and the owner tore down the theater property, kept the building in front, and he only recently decided he was gonna put new housing in 2021. He tore off the top floor, and build two floors and an addition in the back. And the historical commission worked with them on that, on the design and just making sure it was done properly, but respecting the economic needs of it. And we thought it would, again, it was a really good win-win situation. So we're hoping that there are many other situations like this for existing buildings in Medford Square. On the other hand, there are sometimes buildings that are not so great and obviously this is the picture that shows the armory building from 1902 on the right and what I call the fake armory building cartoon on the left, an office building at 84 High Street. It really wasn't a great moment in architecture in Medford Square, and we obviously want to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. I think it does show the need for strengthening design standards and design review in Medford. And that's a combination, I think, of the City Board adopting those new positions and working with the City Council to make sure that we have those checks and balances. And I'm just going to show a few other slides here of existing historic buildings that are proposed to be added anywhere from two to four floors could be added to them. We have the 1622 High Street, the odd fellows block from 1886 on the left. That was once a four-story building, which could be again. 29 High Street, which is right in the heart of the square, built in 1925, the city building. Again, it could be much, much taller, but done in a sympathetic way, I think is possible. And this building here, 1-24 High Street, the Medford building built in 1915. So we think all of these are tremendous opportunities to increase the height and the density, possibly residential above, which would make sense given the current climate and what's proposed elsewhere in the square. But we want to work with the landowners and the property owners to help that forward, and we're hoping that the zoning will achieve those ends by adding new uses, new additions, and just reimagining these buildings. So with that, those are the major concerns, and I'm going to call on, starting with John, John Anderson, just to, if you could, if you could go around to the CD board and just summarize any other concerns that you have beyond what I've summarized here. Mr. Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Okay. Thank you. Oh, just a minute. Let me turn my face on. Oh, good. That's better or worse. I guess what I'm, The thing I'm struggling with is what the real vision is for Medford Square. I've looked at a lot of master plans over the last couple of weeks, and I looked most recently at the 2017 Medford Master Plan, and it really stresses that we need land use and sense of place strategies, and also a proactive way of preserving and interpreting the Medford Square legacy. They say, for example, the value of the historic and architectural assets of Medford Square should not be underestimated. The character and history of the square is much of what distinguishes it from other places and makes it a unique and attractive setting for community and economic activity. The most effective way to promote preservation in the square is through the creation of a local historic district. And amongst the action items they proposed, the really short-term action items they proposed in 2017 were creating a historic district in Medford Square, that was one year, incentivize adaptive reuse, and also recruit restaurants and embrace the creative economy. And I see the zoning as not really squarely addressing some of these issues. But before I get into a proposed solution, I would ask people to do a little mental experiment and to say, what would we like Medford Square to look like? Davis Square, Assembly Row, Harvard Square, Central Square, Brookline Village, Downtown Chelsea, I've been there recently, And it's very high density, very vibrant neighborhood, lots of restaurants, downtown Lowell. And then going to the other side of the economic spectrum, there's Charles Street in Boston. So those are some things to think about. And I don't see how, unless we broaden this effort a bit, I don't see how we can achieve a coherent positive result other than by chance. So I started looking at the use of overlay districts, zoning overlays. Cambridge, for example, has 20 of these. Doug, could you put that map up if you have it handy? We'll do, hold on a second.
[Zac Bears]: Doug, I just wanted to note, I wasn't expecting you to do a ring around the CD board here, and we're coming up on time. And I was hoping we could kind of get to this for the discussion section, because I think we're going to want back and forth on everyone's different comments.
[John Anderson]: That's OK with me.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry, John.
[Doug Carr]: No, no, no. Actually, you're right, Councilmember. This is going to get much deeper if we go down that. So let's circle back on that. And why don't we pause that, John? I'll come back to you later. And we'll go to Teresa DuPont next on the agenda, right? Yes. We'll have her go through the historic district agenda item and then we'll open to the public.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry about that, John. You might have to repeat some stuff, but sorry about that. Oh, I'm good at that. All right, thanks. Teresa, go ahead.
[Theresa Dupont]: Good afternoon, everybody. I am Teresa Dupont. I'm the Community Preservation Manager for the City of Medford. I also, in my role, staff support the Historic District Commission. So I am just going to share a quick overview of what goes into establishing a historic district as we continue these conversations. It would be good for folks to be aware of what the process looks like. Um, so actually, let me back up here. So, just as a quick overview, because I'm now timing myself, because we are at 7, we want to be ready at 7 o'clock. So, just as a quick overview, what is the historic district commission review? What is within their purview? We are tasked with, and it's all Medford residents, all volunteers. We are tasked with reviewing any sort of renovation project. And it only pertains to the exterior. We have no jurisdiction or purview of an interior of a property. It's only things that are visible from the public right of way. If we're standing in front of the property, what can we see? And that usually includes architectural features. This is going to be like your gingerbread moldings, your columns, you know, like those special things that make a property historic. Windows and doors, it doesn't include storm doors or windows. Siding and fencing, retaining walls, and chimneys. So just as a quick overview, this is what the purview of the district is. I also want to plug that we're always looking for new members, so if folks are interested in applying, scan the QR code or head over to the city's website. So, the timeline here as an overview, it is a lengthy timeline. It is not something that can be rushed through. And I will say this a couple of times during this presentation. The important thing is to have buy in. The most successful district implementation is when there is buy in from all stakeholders. So let's talk about from our first step here. It's really the project preparation. This includes some rigorous engagement with the property owners, the folks that would be most affected by this district implementation. So we always start with an opinion survey. It is online as well as in print. We hold at least one, but usually several public information meetings because we want to make sure that we're reaching every single person. These are public meetings. Anybody from the public can join. While we're doing that, we're also beginning what the vehicle that is called by the state the preliminary study report. We bring in a historic consultant to conduct this work. It starts with an introduction. Why are we looking at a district in this particular section of the city? The methodology behind ascertaining this specific portion of the city. What the significance of the historical significance and justifying our boundaries. Why are we selecting certain properties to be within this district? That portion of it, again, rigorous engagement with the affected property owners can be three to six months, typically leans more on the six month side. From there, we're taking that study and we're continuing to work on it. But once we're at a draft point, it gets submitted to the state's historical commission. It's called the Massachusetts Historical Commission. We also do submit it to the Community Development Board for any review and comments from them. We will get comments back from the state that may take more time to push this timeline out. They submit comments for us to review the study, do some further findings that can prolong it. From there, we have a public hearing. At this point, the public hearing, we should have everything ironed out. All stakeholders on board, this is a requirement, a legal requirement to hold a public hearing. From there, if everything's hunky dory, everybody's on board, the state approves, the public approves, the affected property owners approve, we finalize these documents, we bring them for city council for adoption. This can be about a two to three month process depending on scheduling. And then once it's finalized and approved by the city council, we bring it to the registry of deeds to record the map. So at minimum, this process is 12 months. Typically it's closer to an 18, potentially up to 24 month process. I just want to this is my last slide here, because I know we're up against it but I just want to give an example this here that we're looking at is the South Street historic district is our most recently adopted district. I think this is a good example of what can be done where it's not necessarily contiguous or everybody that's on the street between this street and that street you're in a district we can. I hate to use the term gerrymander because it's used heavily, but we can gerrymander districts. What we did here, you can see between Maple and Toro Street, there's this huge block on South Street that's not included. That's because these properties were either deemed to not be historically significant, they're more modern builds, or in some instances, property owners did not elect to be part of the district, so we omitted them. So I think this is just a compelling visual of how a district can be laid out, especially as we're looking at Medford Square, because there's quite a bit of new mixed with old builds here. Um, you know, so I'm here to share the process because this is being discussed as a potential preservation approach as we're looking at Medford Square. Um, I think we're not in any way prepared at this point to share a plan for how we would implement in Medford Square. There are, you know, it's an early discussion at this point, but I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of the process behind implementing a district. And I'm happy to stick around for some questions.
[Doug Carr]: Councilor Humfryes, do you want to take it over and run the public comment section after?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, let me just pull up very quickly our letter from the Chamber of Commerce. All right, so where we're going now is we are going to be moving into our public hearing for the evening. So if you are interested in speaking in the public hearing on this matter, please raise your hand on Zoom. And before we do that, I will read the letter from the Chamber of Commerce. So Director Hunt and I had a great session with the Chamber of Commerce the other week regarding Medford Square zoning, and we do have some comments here from them. We have February 25th, 2026, dear Medford City Council and Community Development Board. As previously shared, the Chamber of Commerce is encouraged by the City Council's proposed zoning amendments designed to promote commercial growth and strengthen Medford's business environment. We appreciate your focus on ensuring that Medford remains a competitive and vibrant place to operate your business. Throughout this process, we have urged continued engagement with the business community and have offered detailed feedback. Some of our recommendations address specific revisions to the proposed zoning language, while others outline practical steps the city can take to mitigate impacts and better support businesses as these changes are implemented. For clarity, we have organized our comments accordingly. Medford Square district zoning proposal, change commercial parking garages to be an allowable use. Provide incentivized zoning options for landlords who keep existing businesses as tenants. Actions city should be taking to prepare for zoning changes. Address parking concerns of existing businesses. As we previously advised, existing small businesses are facing additional uncertainty with the zoning changes and will face potential displacement, higher rents, and possibly lease termination or eviction. The city must take proactive steps to support these businesses and keep them in Medford. Three, develop and share your plan for attracting businesses in the first floor commercial space outlined in the Medford Square zoning as well as the other districts. Member recommendations. Change Mixed Use 1 to Mixed Use 2A. Make a firm commitment to rebuild the Governor's Ave parking garage, whether as a separate municipal structure or with private development above. Supporting existing businesses and attracting new businesses are not opposing strategies, but rather necessary components to a vibrant Medford Square District. Respectfully, Laura O'Neill, Executive Director, Medford Chamber of Commerce. So there were some recommendations on the district zoning, some items that were recommendations and thoughts that were not about zoning, and also some individual recommendations from Chamber of Commerce member businesses. So with that, I will declare the public hearing open. to anyone who would like to speak and this public hearing on the Medford Square zoning, and I will try to recognize folks in the order that they appeared, and I will allow folks for right now to start their video. I'll start with Roberta. Roberta, name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, my apologies, I had trouble unmuting. So I, Roberta Cameron, 12 North Street. I really appreciate all of the work that you've done on this and the presentations that we saw earlier today. And as I had mentioned in a letter that I submitted to the city council and the community development board sometime earlier, I'm excited by the idea of being able to preserve our historic architecture through an incentive mechanism added to the zoning proposal. I also feel strongly, in fact, I've advocated in the past that I think that we should be putting a lot of our institutional buildings into local historic districts, especially a number of the institutional buildings across Medford Square. And I think that doing so would really address some of the strongest, the buildings that we have the strongest concerns for preserving them as they are without changes. Whereas the zoning incentive I feel would be more appropriate and more flexible approach allowing new growth with sensitivity to the historic architecture for the buildings that are not institutional buildings. And I also wanted to acknowledge, first of all, I think that it's really important for us to move forward with the zoning, which is not the only tool that we need to address economic development in Medford Square and a vision for Medford Square. And I think that we can be doing other things in parallel with the zoning and as a follow-up to the zoning changes. So I hope that we'll continue to move this forward and to address that need as well.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Roberta. All right, we will go next to Caitlin. Caitlin, name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Kaitlin Robinson]: Hi, Caitlin Robinson, 31 Everett Street. I agree with the comments that Roberta made. I do hope that we will continue to move this forward. And that as we're looking at historical districts, well, I like the idea of like, our Medford institutions making those historical, but I like the idea of incentives instead of creating like what's gonna be more of perhaps a cumbersome process or something that might end up delaying adopting new zoning. I also wanted to touch on the issue of parking because I have heard at previous meetings about a desire for there to be flexibility with parking. And I think that the best way to get flexibility is to not mandate it. but rather to allow the developers or whoever it is that's the property owner moving in like to make decisions because it's in their interest to be able to rent out or sell whatever it is that they're building. And so it is in their interest to make sure that they are meeting the desires or needs of the businesses or people who will be moving in there. And so I think The best way to get flexibility is to allow flexibility as opposed to having mandates. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Caitlin. Next, we'll go to Seth Hurwitz. Seth, name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good evening. Thank you. My name is Seth Hurwitz, and I live at 48 Albion Street. I wanted to just echo some of what Caitlin said. I agree with the notion that we should allow flexibility rather than requiring a certain amount of parking be built. really don't agree with the notion of a parking garage being a positive addition to the square. But altogether, I want to suggest against the creation of a historic district in Medford Square or requiring any kind of parking be included in the zoning. I would also like to suggest that we zone for mixed-use buildings throughout the whole square that Allow up to five stories by right with minimal setbacks and step backs, along with improvements to pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and also for folks who are waiting to try to catch bus and by considering implementing bus stops that. The word is escaping me right now, but there are many bus stops that bump out into the street that I've seen in Cambridge at Somerville that are really effective and make boarding a bus a lot safer and easier and make it a lot less stressful as well for the operators of those buses. But that's besides the point. Right now, Medford Square is dominated by cars. If you walk down any of the streets, it's cars driving both directions, and then cars parked on both sides of the street. Walking down there, most of the space, it feels like, is dedicated strictly to cars. And that doesn't really make it very fun to be around. It doesn't make it a place where I think people want to walk or spend their time or go to businesses and window shop or even enter a business. And this stands in stark contrast to other much more vibrant areas that members of the board have mentioned earlier this evening. Adding parking minimums or building a garage would also move us in the wrong direction. It just means that you're asking for people to come to the square by car, because that's the easiest way to get there. I live about a mile away, and I don't go to Medford Square, because it's not really a destination. Most of what is there is vehicle exhaust fumes and minimal businesses. And it's also not particularly enjoyable to walk down there, bike there, or take the bus. I'm sorry, establishing a historic zone or historic district, but also risk freezing the square, rather than allowing the flexibility to build what we need over time. We certainly should look to preserve things that are beautiful or recall, you know, wonderful architecture that is worthy of preservation, but I don't think that we should ossify the square and cement it in a certain look or appearance. And altogether, I think we can make the square very vibrant. But I think we need to allow for more flexibility. And I see my time is running out. So thank you again. I appreciate your ongoing work.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Seth. Oh, I didn't change the noise on that one. Sorry for the Oscars playoff there. We usually change that one to the beep. All right, we'll next go to Ken Garrow. Ken, name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes. Oh, sorry. There you go, Ken.
[Ken Gareau]: Thank you, President Bears. Ken Garrow, 52 Lambert Street. I'm almost going to sound like a broken record at this point, kind of repeating a few things that the prior commenters said. I do agree with trying to find ways to incentivize retaining our historical buildings. I think Mr. Carr, with a lot of the images of the buildings which are currently in Medford Square that could potentially be revitalized by upward expansion, I think is fairly on point. And I do think we should find ways to incentivize them within the zoning. I also, Director Hunt had made a comment about the potential allowance of private parking garages. As much as I would prefer having fewer cars in the grand scheme of things, I do think allowing parking garages is a wise thing. I was kind of on that same boat over in my neck of the woods in Glenwood, where it's a little denser. It's not a perfect scenario, but I do think it would be helpful. Um, that said, I don't think trying to shoehorn a brand new parking garage built on the backs of the city, uh, coffers at the moment, um, in regards to the governor's as garage, um, is something that we should prioritize and use as a block potentially for moving the zoning forward. Um, I, I think that would be a great spot for a parking garage. I know there was one that collapsed in 2010, um, but I don't think forcing that upon the area at this point in time, especially with how the budget is for the city, is a wise move as an explanation to block moving forward with our zoning. I know a lot of the council I've talked to about zoning at this point, the previous city community development board. I was at a number of those meetings as well. Really, what I've been seeing as we start this back up again has just been great, and I really want to get this moving and make Medford Square super vibrant. So that's all. Thanks.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Ken. We'll go to Jeremy Martin. Jeremy, name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.
[Jeremy Martin]: Hey, good evening, everyone. Jeremy Martin, 65 Burgett Avenue. I just want to speak tonight in advocacy for hearing more discussion in these meetings of the impact of what this zoning will mean for the public realm, for the quality of streets and sidewalks. I think we heard John reference several spaces, squares that have many admirable characteristics. I think something that draws people to those squares more than even just convenient parking is having quality streets and sidewalks to walk through to feel safe to feel like there's places to stop and to enjoy that space and it's not just about buildings and parking and so zoning is a tool and there are some requirements for site plan for review and green score That is a part of this zoning. And I think that's a great start. I commented at a previous meeting that the incentive for replacing and improving sidewalks shouldn't be an incentive in our square. It should be a minimum requirement. And I think we should expand on that. And I hope that the councilors and the board members spend some time looking into what is required in the site plan review. I've heard some discussions about design standards. I think those standards should apply not just to building design, but to streetscape design and public realm design. And really make that another facet of what can be a really good and robust zoning plan for the core of our city. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Jeremy. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak in the public hearing? All right, I see Steven Pompeo. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.
[Steven Pompeo]: Yes, thank you, Steven Pompeo. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. 18 Newton Road, Medford, Mass. Not sure why my video isn't working, but there we go. Anyway. I just, I want to support and I appreciate first chairman Carr's statement that parking must be integrated into the plan. And I appreciate that director Hunt has suggested ways to change that in the zoning. And the reason I feel it's important is because I also support, and I hear a lot of other folks who support not mandating parking, which I think is an appropriate thing in Medford Square to not mandate parking by the developers because most of the lots in Medford Square are pretty small. And if you tear down a building on a small lot, you'll never get the parking on that. So it's very important for the city to consider the parking in advance and Unfortunately for Medford Square, we can't just abandon parking because we don't have a T station. So we can't compare ourselves at all to any square in Somerville. We can't compare ourselves to Assembly Square. We have to recognize that cars are going to be driven by even the people who live in the square when it gets ultimately developed as a mixed use area. And that we're gonna need people to drive in to support the businesses as well. There'll never be enough people living in the square There'll never be enough people walking to the square to support it. So I do appreciate that we've got to recognize how to build parking in advance or prepare for it in advance so that when these changes do take place, we do have a thriving square and not a square without parking and therefore a place where nobody ultimately lives and it becomes a dead square. So it's important to have both the no parking mandate as well as addressing centralized parking in advance. So thanks a lot. I appreciate that.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Steve. All right, we'll go to Laura Jasinski. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.
[Laura Jasinski]: Good evening, everybody. Laura Jasinski, 65, Burgett Ave. Excited to see the work on the historic district in an incentivizing kind of strategy, and just wanted to also speak up for similar strategies to increase the kind of arts and culture and public art space in Medford Square and throughout the zoning. I have the privilege of co-chairing the Medford Arts Council, and so I get to see You know, so many of the great groups the arts collaborative and cachet and so many groups coming together as well as individual artists that are really active in Medford and looking for more ways to do that. I think there's some really great models in neighboring communities around percent for our programs and other ways of really integrating that. to achieve a real win-win for a lot of the goals that have been discussed tonight, getting people to have C Medford Square as a destination, having places to linger, programming spaces, draws from murals and other public art installations, and also very much in line with the economic goals and the walkability goals. So just wanted to kind of suggest that we take a look at what some other communities are doing and how we can integrate those into zoning for Medford Square as a real step forward in increasing that aspect of Medford.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Laura. We'll go to Tom Lincoln. Tom, name and address for the record, please.
[Tom Lincoln]: You have three minutes. 27 Leeson Street in Medford. Just a couple of brief comments.
[Zac Bears]: Tom, it's a little tough to hear you. Could you get a little closer to your microphone?
[Tom Lincoln]: Jump right on it.
[Zac Bears]: I'll start your timer once we can hear you a little better.
[Unidentified]: OK.
[Zac Bears]: Still a little quiet. You might have to go right into the microphone.
[Tom Lincoln]: Oh, boy. Just don't show my ugly mug here. Just a couple of things. I think we have to be very careful that parking doesn't become the tail that wags the dog or whatever the expression is here. Medford Square is also a state highway. Route 60 goes right through there. There's a tremendous amount of through traffic. The idea of bringing even more cars there doesn't sit well, I don't think, in terms of long-term success. The second thing is I really like the idea of the incentivizing people rather than hammering on their thumbs in terms of zoning, particularly on things like the historic facades, et cetera. I wanna make one other comment. I'm a great fan of Davis Square, although I always feel really old when I go there, but what's interesting is in the last year along Holland Street, which is on one end of Davis Square, they've actually taken out, they've rejiggered the street parking, taken a lot out of it at the curb, et cetera. And I don't go there every day, but it certainly hasn't hurt the vibrancy of Davis Square. Now, yes, it does have a T stop, but I think that maybe the T could tell you, but I think the percentage of people that are actually going to Davis Square by T of maybe a smaller percentage than you think, because there's a very large and vibrant residential neighborhood. And I think the last thing I will say is that I haven't heard enough about this. I don't think that you need more people living in Medford Square. And that should be really the very top of the list in terms of the incentivizing on the zoning. I think people in the business realm would agree that having more foot traffic, having more after five o'clock presence of people there is critical to increase the vibrancy here. So I'm looking forward to the results of this very long process and hoping it comes out well. Thanks very much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Tom. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak in the public hearing at this time? Seeing none, I'm going to declare the public comment portion closed, and when we finish here, we will continue the public hearing to our joint meeting on March 25th. So with that, we move now, let me pull up my agenda here, to our conversation among the Council and Community Development Board. And something that I worked with Chair Carr on Well, I drafted it and Doug said it looked all right. So I put in a little bit of an edit, is a draft motion that might be able to frame some of our discussion around what we're asking in us to do. So I'm going to put that into the chat right now, and I'm also going to read it out loud. And I think, Doug, I think I'll just put a quick amendment in to include including like looking at a zoning overlay district, as you mentioned, around historical?
[Doug Carr]: Yes, I think you should probably go through the city councilors to take the first pass, and then we'll go back to Mr. Anderson after you guys are done.
[Zac Bears]: Great. So I'm just going to put this in the chat really quickly. This is a draft motion. We're just under the 1,000 character limit here for a Zoom comment. So that's good. I'll just read it out loud it's a motion to request that in this land group, provide information and proposed language on the following issues to present a revised version of the proposed Medford Square zoning ordinance in advance of our March 25 joint meeting. And there were kind of four major items some of this chair card did discuss in his presentation. It was dimensional requirements. So proposals that will make it more likely for new buildings or renovations to be possible by right, you know, we've recognized a lot of dimensional requirements questions over our meetings. Parking proposals that will provide options for parking for new construction or renovations by right, and could help address parking supply and demand, including consideration of required parking mandates. Three, historic preservation proposals to help protect historic structures and encourage creative and historically appropriate reuse and renovation of historic structures as part of new development, including an overlay. And boundaries, number four, proposals to adjust the boundaries of the proposed districts and sub-districts based on comments by Councilors and community development board members. I think we're actually mostly there on the boundaries question compared to a month ago, but just wanted to include that as an item. So that's just a general framing, I think, of what I've heard. Uh, what chair car has heard what our planning development sustainability staff have heard. Um, over the past few meetings on this. Um, as guidance for associates and. to hear from first members of the council, and then I'll turn it over to Chair Carr to talk to members of the Community Development Board about anything else we might like to include in this motion. And how that would work is, you know, folks could propose amendments, and if those amendments are not objected to by anyone, then we'll just include them. If there's folks who have concerns about amendments, then we would take votes on amendments to the motion. So I will start with members of the Council. Do we have members of the Council who'd like to speak on this proposed motion language or otherwise on the presentations and public comment that we've heard thus far? Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yes, I would like on number two for the parking just to make it clear that this is an a proposed edit of the original agreement between the the city council and the mayor which I believe I've discussed previously so adding in language that we're that we're taking that we previously said parking would come at the very end of this proposal but now we're suggesting that it be considered slightly earlier and I would want the mayor's written consent on that which I know that you know she's already indicated that she is willing to so I don't think that'll be an issue but I do want there to be that to be clear. With the potential for an historic overlay, first, I don't see, that seems like a local historic district, which would be its own process, and I Don't see and I could see in is coming back with comments on it, but I don't exactly see how an historic overlay district would be would interact with like a potential LHD for for Medford Square in the future, which is which is a process in itself. I mean, I agree we we should have, um. The historic district commission, uh, do work on that, but it. I just don't know how an historic overlay would be different from that. And I think that an historic building incentive to incentivize the reuse of historic buildings is something that we've kind of echoed to the consultants a few times by now. And they've said that that is something that they could definitely look into and provide as a concrete recommendation. I think what we are hearing from folks in the public is that they do want to see the process move forward. There are, as is often the case, mixed views on parking. And they want a Medford Square that is vibrant, livable, affordable, and with more people living there. And I think that's a summary of what I've heard so far.
[Zac Bears]: Great, so Councilor Leming, I have from you, and I'll try to get everybody's, and then we can go back through them at the end, and if folks have concerns or objections, we can consider that as amendments to the motion. But requesting that the mayor send a written communication that she's okay with considering changes to parking requirements as part of this, since that's a departure from the agreement from December. And then I also have a question about how would a zoning overlay district that's related to historic preservation differ with or interact with a local historic district process?
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think those would be about approximate summaries of what I said I could go into.
[Zac Bears]: I also have a last one is just historic building incentive for reuse. You'd like to see an incentive around that.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Got it. OK. Next, I will go to Councilor Leming. I mean, Councilor Scarpelli, sorry.
[George Scarpelli]: That's the last I'm waiting. And join the Navy too, huh? No, thank you. God bless you, Matt. But again, I appreciate all the hard work. I thank Mr. Carr. uh, working with the board and bringing up the historical protection and making sure that, uh, you know, we, we heard that piece very loud and clear. I think it's important that, uh, we are moving forward with, with a vibrant Medford square. Um, I like, uh, the comments that we're hearing and, and understanding that it's, it's nice to, to, to, to make reference to neighbor communities that do have opportunities and show, um, how their neighborhoods have increased by new zoning and new development. But I think it was important that we hear that Medford is Medford. So it's good that we're getting the pieces and see what fits what's best for Medford. I think what we hear from parking, especially with our business community, I think that's something I've heard and I appreciate that we're taking the business community and their parking concerns to the forefront. And again, I'm going to reiterate, I think that The biggest piece that I hear, the negative piece that I hear is still our senior citizens and making sure that there is parking for the senior center and path forward, whether it be working with the developers when it comes to the new garage that's being built and some process that supports our seniors. I think that's so important. But again, hearing from our arts community is also very important because I think that Um, and those neighboring communities, what drives. Drives that that that sense of community is the, the different recreation and arts and historical pieces that will make Medford. What it should be, and I think that we have a piece that we haven't heard about too much, but Chevalier being such the anchor of Medford Square, I think it's important that we hear from our friends from Chevalier and making sure that You know, we fulfill all of our needs, so I appreciate all the work that everybody's doing it. This is something that God, I think we've had 47 plans in the last 47 years and we spent a lot of money, but we appreciate we're finally getting something through and and again. What I really appreciate. here tonight especially is the collaboration. And I think we're hearing a lot from different voices and we're hearing from different parts of our community. And from what I hear, I've always been the negative voice and the lack of communication transparency, but I will tell you it's been the opposite. So I appreciate everybody's hard work. And I know that CD board has been a huge part of this partnership. So I know that Councilor Bears and City Council has worked very hard on this. So again, that's just what I'm hearing, Council President, and I just wanted to share those comments. So thank you for your time.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. I mean, I think we'll have some opportunities to engage more on the senior center parking with the developer, with folks on that as well, with Transom directly. Do we have any more comments from members of the council at this time? Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: Hi there. Sorry, I'm fighting off hold, so I'm not the most articulate tonight. But I wanted to thank everyone for presenting. for this kind of spirit of collaboration, as Councilor Scarpelli noted. I think it's, you know, we've all, many members here have noted that fixing Medford Square has been on the agenda for this city for decades, and we're so close to getting it done. It's important not to let, you know, not to let there are. Small things that can be that that can be addressed. About the whole project, but it is important still to take note of the concerns and to have. Action plan ready deal with them, and I think that's what this motion does. We've heard from residents and from the public over the last few meetings and through some of the stuff that is on this list, especially historic preservation and parking, are important things that need to be handled side by side with zoning. And what I've been hearing tonight is, I think, a really positive direction towards addressing those issues. And I think an acknowledgment that we can do all of this with this Medford Square project, that even if pieces come are in development right now, we don't have to say this is either this or that. We can say we're going to address this and that. And so I'm just really optimistic about the direction of this project, about the work that we can get done. I think we also need to be cognizant of our contract with NS Associates and to make sure that we are doing this in a timely manner. I think we also, as the meeting notes from one of the working groups suggested, we also need to give a sense of security for the projects that we do want to come into the square, like Transom, to give them that sense of security that the growth of Medford Square is a real priority and that it will move quickly.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Any further comments from members of the Council? All right, I will just quickly put in my note, which is, and I was really talking about this and really encouraged by our meeting with the Chamber of Commerce folks talking about this as well as many meetings and conversations with so many folks about Medford Square over the years and in recent months. There are so many things that we need to do and transforming the center of our community is not an easy task and just zoning is just one part of that. And, you know, for me, zoning really serves, it's a foundation, and that's why it's important to get it right, but it's also a signal. And that's why it's important to be, I think, ambitious with zoning to say, this is what we want our square to look like, this is the kind of engagement that we're inviting by folks who may want to do a big project here. And, you know, a lot of points have been raised tonight about Um. Can our what can our city finances do for a parking garage? And what do we want the sidewalks and streets to look like? And I appreciated Tom Lincoln saying that it's not all bad on Holland Street, you know, over by Davis Square either. Um and yes, we don't have. Uh rapid transit. We don't have a T station, but it does look like we're going to be having, um, pretty expanded bus service relatively you know, all of those considerations are really important, I think, in my mind, to signaling the kind of change we want to see in Medford Square, the kind of transformative projects that we want to invite in to start having conversations with our neighbors and with our community about what we want Medford Square to look like. Because while we don't have, you know, unlimited resources as a city, municipality as municipal government to fix every sidewalk and and do every bump out and make the infrastructure exactly what we want it to be. Working in partnership with the property owners with the businesses, with potential developers who may wanna come in and do a project here, that's how we get this big change. And I think getting the zoning done and putting that foundation and signal out is the way that we can have those conversations. Conversations about how could some parking be part of a project using the Governor's Av Lot in concert with other properties. How can we make sure that that project improves our streetscape and supports public art. You know, those are the kinds of things that you know you're not going to fix that with zoning but zoning lays that foundation and sends that signal so that we can have that conversation. For me, you know, I'm really excited and I was hopeful and I know it was tough to try to get Hamilton companies and atrius health. and everyone in with our proposal over on the Medford Square lots because we could talk, even if the project was really that big in scope, not only would we be talking about transforming a third of the square, but we could talk about things like changing the street layout and thinking about how to move differently through the square. And that affects questions like walkability and streetscape. We didn't manage to get there because there's some folks who are tough to get on the phone, or aren't ready to have that conversation. But that's the kind of thing and conversation that I think zoning starts so we're not going to answer every single one of those questions and have the perfect solution to those problems through zoning, but good zoning ambitious zoning sends that signal to have that conversation and bring in solutions. So that's really how I see the process and I'm really hopeful and thankful to my colleagues on the council and colleagues on the community development board, Innes Associates and of course our planning staff and everyone who's commenting residents from the public because I think we're close to something really good and I'm excited to see the adjustments that come over the next few weeks before our next meeting. So thank you very much and appreciate the time everyone just took listening to me. And I'll turn it over to Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Thanks to Council President Bears. I want to echo many of the things you said. I feel like, you know, that we want to get it right, but we want to move at a quick pace. This city board, the sense I get from this board is they want to complete this as quickly as possible and send a clear message that Medford Square is open for business and open for change. And I am 100% behind that. And I believe all my colleagues are too. We just want to get it right. So I'm going to go back to Mr. Anderson and go, as you did, go board member by board member and get some comments so we get the full picture. And then I think we'll wrap it up. Actually many hours before I thought this would wrap up if you want to be honest here. So John Anderson, why don't you unmute yourself and we can continue the conversation we started earlier.
[Zac Bears]: While he's unmuting, I'll say, Doug, that's the trick. If you think it's going to go long, it's short. If you think it's going to be short, it's long. That's every time.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, the voice of experience. Go ahead, John.
[John Anderson]: I want to thank you, President Bears, for stopping me from rattling on, because listening to everyone else's comments has enabled me to focus my comments, my own comments, a bit more carefully. I particularly appreciated the comments from Seth Hurwitz, Laura Jasinski, and Steve Pompeo. I mean, they were all great, but I scribbled something down about each of those. What Seth Hurwitz brought up really raises the question of what is our vision for what the square is going to look like. And it's probably different for different parts of the square. Transom is its own thing. Salem Street and Riverside Avenue is perhaps something between Transom and the square west of Forest Street. And then west of Forest Street is really sort of the historic heart and cultural center of Medford Square, except of course for City Hall, which is a cultural asset. So we really need to, I won't rattle through the different squares again, but I think we need to think about that. You know, Brookline Village, Charles Street, it's not those, but maybe a little more like Davis. I want to thank Laura Jasinski for bringing up the whole question of arts, because that's one of the things that we really haven't addressed. We've talked about historic preservation, but an area that promotes the arts is very important. Steve for bringing up parking, why it has to be integrated. And I really think that I mean, I'm an amateur. I've only researched this for maybe six or eight hours in the last week. But I really think this thing about zoning overlays could be a big boon. Could you put up Cambridge, German car? Sure. Yeah, go ahead. Now, Cambridge is perhaps a bit much to try to emulate. But these are their zoning overlay districts. And I don't know, I don't know if I can count that, count how many there are, various types. Some of them are institutional, the blue ones, but they have very specific ones. You know, Central Square, Harvard Square, lots of areas dedicated to housing. And, I look briefly at Prospect Street just because I'm somewhat familiar with that. And they lay out specific goals for development in that area that aren't too complicated. But the point here is that each of these districts has its own agenda. So as President Bears said, we want to get to this is what we want our square to look like. The use of overlays gives us much more focused influence over what gets developed there, rather than zoning rules, which are sort of one size fits all within that zone. And we see the proliferation of zones. For example, you know, we've had to split two into 2A and 2B. And maybe when we get to West Medford Square, we'll want 2C, who knows? The overlays being that you can do that much more conveniently. I also looked at Somerville. Somerville basically has about, well, they have three types of overlays. One specifically designed to promote small businesses, including art, and that overlay focuses more on use than what the buildings look like. So for example, it specifically allows shared artist space, because that's the sort of unusual arrangement that regular zoning might not have a spot for, so it specifically allows that. Somerville has floodplain overlays. which are really designed to make sure that it minimizes the risk of flooding. And then they have eight master plan development districts, each of which has a goal. And there's design review for each of those districts. And I like design review a lot better. I mean, I love historic districts, but they, They do sort of focus on, I hate to use the word ossified, but they're most appropriate for an area where you have specific properties and you really want to minimize whatever changes there are from the street. As we saw in Chairman Doug's presentation, you can change things without destroying things. You can augment them. So if you have beefed up not just site plan review, but really design review, and we could talk about how design review is a little different from site plan review, because site plan review has a very technical side. Design review is meant to sort of lead the developer in the right direction proactively. I think we could do a much better job doing it that way. Uh, so I believe in the, in the, um, what the president, uh, bears proposed the, the, um, resolution where it talks about overlays. I would like to see it include not, not be specifically focused on historic overlays, but rather on, uh, overlays in general, because I think the idea of an area that promotes small businesses or art, as well as plan master development would go a long ways to getting us to what we really want our square to look like. Oh, and I also have, maybe this is just me, and maybe this is just my problem. But I have a really hard time looking at the zoning map for the square and looking at all the dimensional requirements, particularly since they're still in flux and figuring out, you know, what that area is really going to look like. It's sort of not being able to see the woods for the trees or something because sifting through all the dimensional requirements and specific things, very hard to, at least for me, if you're a professional architect, I'm sure it's much different, but it's hard for me to visualize what the significance is of changing something from, you know, 2A to 2B or something like that. So a working session, maybe I'm the only one, but if other board members feel the need for a better understanding of what's being proposed, I think that would be a great idea. Thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, John Anderson. I'd go to Sean big and yes, next if you could. Sean.
[SPEAKER_08]: Councilor bears can hear me.
[Zac Bears]: I can hear you. It looks like Sean may have dropped off or is not a.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, okay, let's move on my my zoom is frozen. I may have to leave and come back in. I, I, I try to stop sharing. Can you still see the zoning overlay or can you see it?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, we can still see it. Yeah, I'm trying to get rid of that.
[Doug Carr]: It's frozen.
[Zac Bears]: I can stop your sharing. I think Doug.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah. So let me once you go to Dina next Dina Calgaro and I will drop out and come back in.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, thank you. So I think the joint meetings are extremely helpful in moving this along. And I'm really excited about the upcoming changes to Method Square. I remember going to the square when I was a child, and it was a vibrant square back then, and I look forward to that in the future. A couple of things I'd like to point out is I think it's really important that we pull out any of the definitions that I heard Danielle mention and Alicia, such things as defining what the high frequency transit is, daylight minimum seems extremely important here, and other definitions that need to be defined. And I think it's important we do that because If we defining them ahead of time will certainly assist with the implementation of a successful zoning plan, not only for Method Square, but for future zoning changes for the other areas as well. What we have found when I was on as being on the Community Development Board is that we have uncovered change problems with not defining these particular definitions for the Salem Street District as well as Mystic Avenue, and we don't want to run into that. So let's learn as we go along in our zoning. The other thing I request And the other thing about definitions, I'm looking at the incentive sections in the document and I noticed that on the incentives, there are a number of issues here that where it says incentive needs to be confirmed. So I think we need to clean up the document. make those definitions, ask Laura Ennis to give us a hand with that, so we have everything in front of us for a successful implementation. I'm also asking that we have some versioning on the documents, as many different versions of the amendments, and I am getting confused on which is the latest version. Some type of notation numbering system would be helpful. I am Again, very concerned about the senior parking. As I've stated previously is that my my father as well as members of my family are seniors and they use that center in a very, very vested and very, very vocal at the senior meeting I attended about parking, but I am comforted to hear that. Council President Bears is looking for addressing the parking issue for the senior citizens as part of the transom deal. I do feel that parking is extremely important for the businesses in Method Square. I am certainly for allowing a walkable Method Square, but I think it's also very important that we support the ability to visit. and enjoy Medford Square, such as going to the Chevalier Theater and some of the other thriving restaurants in the area, and that we support businesses as well to do that. One of the problems I know in Medford Square is I can't find anywhere to park. I would want to do a number of things and I can't park. So I'm very happy to hear about that. I would also like to know if the Chamber of Commerce letter will become part of the public comments, along with any written comments that come up during not only the senior meeting, which I was at, and there were written comments submitted, but also the March 11th. And again, I would also like to see, perhaps, Ennis to investigate why not eliminating the MX use 1B and just making everything MX 2A. So there's some other considerations there in making a more uniform method square. And I do think the historic Establishing and maintaining our historic character of Method Square is extremely essential. Thank you for hearing me out.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Dina. I'm going to go next to Ari Goffman-Fishman. Do you have any comments or questions, Ari?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes, thank you. I'll start by echoing a lot of what we've heard, which is thank you to everyone for their hard work, the CDB City Council, Innocent Associates. I also echo that I find these joint meetings very helpful in being able to move forward in a kind of Sensible timeline and I'm excited to be endorsing that schedule that gives the public a kind of clear path of when to participate and how to expect that input to be taken. Similarly to others, I'm very excited to see a walkable, active, revitalized Medford Square. And I think that we are making good progress on that. In terms of specific feedback to share with Innocent Associates for the next meeting, I had a few questions about definitions that were in the uh, they were the table of uses. And the one that stuck out to me is that public entertainment is currently a no. And I was curious about how that's distinct from the Chevalier. And for example, if the Chevalier wanted a accessory theater, a kind of, um, I'm imagining what the definition is, but that's certainly something that I have no objections to. And from what I hear, others don't as well. I was also curious about what essential services on page nine are. I just wasn't sure. And last one is a point of information in there. Dorms are currently a no. Does Tufts own any property in the square in the area that we're currently discussing? That's just a point of information that would be helpful to know. If anyone happens to know it, I see Council President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: I believe the answer to your last question is no, Alicia. is confirming that with a no.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's what I was going to say. Great.
[Ari Fishman]: Saves one set of issues. And I am excited to see us move forward with incentive zoning. I think that zoning isn't actually a site plan review. It is not creating any projects. We're just setting the guidelines. And incentives provide a really nice way for us to incentivize and have that carrot. And one is just, and I think the only thing I would love to see from Innocent Associates, I just don't see the benefit to the community of fountains, and fountains keep getting put in the incentives, and other people may disagree with me, but I have the opportunity to say, I don't see the benefit to the community, and can we please do something else? And I will take the opportunity to say it.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, can you just, you said entertainment was a no. Can you point me to that, that you're saying in the use table? Do you know what letter?
[Ari Fishman]: I believe it was on page nine, and that was me going off of my notes.
[Alicia Hunt]: So let me go bring up the- You could also just message that to me if you find it, just because that sounds odd to me. It was odd to me too.
[Danielle Evans]: May have been page 10. I have it in my notes too. I have a whole marked up draft of things. And yeah, so there's. Oh, sorry, it's page 10. And there's also uses on page four of the table, public entertainment or recreation facility. That's the one. Oh, there. OK, right. So that is no. But then, interesting, in the definition section of the ordinance, which is section 12, that's not defined. It's just recreational use. So there really needs to be a comprehensive audit of all of the defined uses, and they should match what's in our definitions. Because if someone wants to come in, yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: Can we ask the CD board to make a recommendation or a request that the uses that we check, that it is check for all as part of this, so that comes back on March 25th, definitions for the uses, and then I think that's one of the ones that we'll want, right? We need these to literally be a recommendation.
[Danielle Evans]: And it might be new definitions, amended definitions, renaming things on one side or the other. But that's one of my big gripes with the ordinances, our lack of defined terms, which leaves a lot for interpretation. Why wouldn't we want a Bodeborg in Medford Square? We can't have that? That sounds great.
[Zac Bears]: I just want to put out there, definition section's a long section. And we, I just want to put out that that the two shots to two bites of the apple. If in a field that they can't review every use and definition before the 25th around the Medford square zoning, we can look at that in April and May around the cleanup amendment as well.
[Ari Fishman]: Can I ask for specifically a definition on at least that one and a change to a yes. In addition to that, or at least a discussion, because if they're not able to do all the definitions, which I think is very possible. But we have been hearing a undercurrent of arts are a strength of Medford and something that we want to continue encouraging, so.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I have that done as the public entertainment and recreation moving from no to yes.
[Alicia Hunt]: And the arts that you're asking for are already in the table. And there are yes, that somebody was asking for the artistic creative production work only artist studio, co working space in a retail shop or shop for sale of custom work or articles made on the premises. And those all have definitions because those are all newly added to our zoning.
[Doug Carr]: I see Dina has raised her hand.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes, I just perhaps with the definitions rather than do all of them. Could we have the planning department from the city at least pull out those definitions that would be important in implementing the method square zoning? The two things that I've heard come up are daylight minimum and the other one is high frequency transit. And then I think we should update the incentive table that's in the Method Square zoning section on those areas that say incentive to be confirmed.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Dina.
[Zac Bears]: By the way, I'm keeping track of everything, and I'll go over it when we're done.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's everybody.
[Zac Bears]: I got what you got, Dina. It's down here.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you, Zach. Excellent. Councilor Leming, why don't you, why don't you jump in?
[Matt Leming]: I just wanted, I just wanted to make sure that, just be sure that Grant Perry was taking notes of this to pass back to Inez as well.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, Grant's here and then, and then Emily and Paula said they'd review the recording. So things that are kind of questions, those might be answered ad hoc and then there's like the actual like direction, directional elements and so I'm trying to I'll run through this as a proposed amendment to the motion when we're done hearing from everybody.
[Doug Carr]: Yep. Sounds good. Moving on, I do have some written comments or questions from Page Buldini, who can't be here tonight. So I'm going to try to paraphrase those. Many of these are questions. I don't think they'll fit into the motion, but I want to just go through them. So again, this is Paige. She says, and this is somewhat directed at Innis, obviously, they're asking, have they seen models in other municipalities where retention of existing ground floor businesses is built into incentive zoning framework? For example, offering a density or height bonus if a landlord maintains current tenants to longer term or below market lease agreements, is that something that has been structured successfully in other communities? That's one of Paige's questions. Paige, obviously, she's a member of the chamber. She's a big proponent of supporting the businesses in the square in Medford for years. So she's trying to help, you know, incentivize retention of tenants while the Medford Square moves forward with growth and change. She says, number two, as we are discussing allowing commercial parking garages and creating incentives to support existing businesses, have you seen models where a shared or district garage is funded in part through a pilot structure or contribution model. For example, could properties that do not have on-site parking, such as the river adjacent buildings on the square in the western portion of the square, contribute through a pilot or formal agreement towards a shared garage and satisfy parking requirements off-site? I think that is consistent with some of the flexibility comments that we talked about earlier about, you know, just in general having, and that came up in a lot of public comments too, giving flexibility for the CD board and other agencies so that it's not one size fits all, even within Medford Square, because so many different parts of Medford Square are so different from one another, they're going to have different needs and different capacities. Anyway, Paige's comment about the pilot, she said, could help lower parking minimums in part of the square while still supporting current residents and businesses. It also aligns with supporting the table change to allow commercial parking garages and thinking seriously about rebuilding the Governor's Parking Garage, whether you miss it municipally or part of the mixed use project or privately. Frankly, privately was also something that has been discussed. I think that was mentioned by more than one city board. I think that's the other comments page was about transom is specifically geared towards the staff, so I think that's it for for pages comments. My question to either Danielle or Alicia is that did is there any update you want to give on the transom? We didn't really talk about that and it's a big piece of this that's actually being accelerated. Do we do we want to like table that or do you want to update that for anyone?
[Zac Bears]: I will let Alicia respond, but I just wanted to say that I think if that response is going to be extensive and we're going to have discussion on it, we should consider this motion and then do that. So I'll let Alicia go. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: All right. I agree.
[Alicia Hunt]: I've talked to Transom three times in the past week about the zoning and overlay. And so I am going to recommend that we move forward with a zoning overlay for them. And I had suggested to President Bears that Maybe we should just bring that up at the end of this evening or before we close things out this evening.
[Doug Carr]: We'll do. All right. Are there any other city board members who would like to have a comment or question? If so, please raise your hand. Okay, seeing none. I just have a few final comments, Zach, and then I think we'll move towards the Danielle comment.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I may, I just wanted to suggest that in the bullet number two about parking, that if we could add to new construction or renovations, but explicitly the expansions or additions, because that's what's going to be near impossible right now, is adding those additions on top of buildings won't be able to work with the framework of the existing zoning. So how can that?
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Danielle. Just a few final comments. To echo what Dina said earlier, I feel like we are on a really good path here, but I feel like in some ways we're creating the template for the rest of the city now. Because we're trying to be a little bit more exclusive of some of the things that were not done before for the historic properties, mostly incentivizing them. I want to use more carrots, not sticks. I want to encourage development, encourage, you know, save a facade or save pottery building that's relevant, that's historic. Not every historic building needs to be saved, but there are some buildings that I think can be incentivized to be saved and done so creatively. And I think it's a kind of a false choice to say either tear it down or you preserve it as a museum piece. It's really not the case. The examples I showed in the slideshow earlier were excellent examples of adaptive reuse of buildings that were in some cases 100 years old. There's easily a half dozen of those in the square, if not more. To Councilor Leming's question about overlay district versus historic district, I also have the mind that it's not either or. I don't know. That's where we need the zoning expertise from Emily and in his group to tell us, is it mix and match? Is it a district here, a single building here, an overlay here that would do the job? Because not every building that I think we want to protect would be in a historic district. Most of them are contributing, but not all of them are. But if you have 4 buildings and 1 of them is not in, but in the middle of it, I mean, it probably makes sense to do the overlay for the whole thing. But again, I'm looking for Emily to be creative here and give us the solutions that will really incentivize. saving buildings that are worth saving while still allowing them to be reborn for another 100 years, which is really what we should be doing for a lot of these buildings. By my count, there's easily at least 500 apartments that could be added with this zoning, if not more, as is right now. And that's a lot of people, and we really want to encourage that everywhere. I think the more people that live in the square, the better. We want to do it with as many incentives as possible. To echo what something John said also, design review, design standards, that's not going to be part of zoning, but I want to get that to be the next step to try to, again, guide development and make sure that we we get the quality buildings that we're looking for. And zoning is not going to do that. Zoning doesn't have anything to do about quality. It's about mass and scale and use, right? It's not really about the character of the building, so the quality of the buildings. So it's a second step, but that's not going to hold us up from proceeding at all. This should proceed as quickly as possible. So those are my comments. And I think we should move towards the motion that Zach and others have been tracking for the recommendations back to Ennis so we can move this process forward as quickly as possible. Council President Vares.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Thanks, Doug. Chair Carr. Um, so I have here for parking. Um, so I'll just throw these up one by one.
[SPEAKER_08]: Um, can you put it on the screen as well?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, it's in an email and I don't really, let me see what I can do here. I want everyone to see all my notes I took on there. Yeah. I just put it into a Google doc and I'll, that should work. All right, so this was the original motion. I put amendments that were relevant to the original motion in bold here. Maybe I can zoom this in a little more. Um, so that includes renovations, additions and expansions, Danielle and parking. Um, historic preservation, I just adjusted this last clause to including how a potential overlay district would interact with a local historic district process. Um, on boundaries, the only thing I heard and I heard it from Dina and I heard it from the, um. Chamber's letter was specifically the MX one to MX two.
[Dina Caloggero]: So that was in the chamber letter.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so I put that in there. And then these are the new ones, arts looking at incentives zoning for arts and culture and changing the use table for public entertainment and recreation from no to yes. overlay districts discussing overlays of the zoning tool, including potential regarding historic preservation, arts and culture. I threw in my two cents, which is I know communities have an affordable housing overlay. So I put that in there. And I also heard small businesses. And we do have a planned development district in the current zoning, we have a couple that are our overlays right now. So I put that in there, I think Ennis can maybe speak to that or certainly Alicia and myself and other Councilors since we've gone through that. at least twice so far here. And then definitions, daylight minimum, updating high frequency transit, and checking that all uses have definitions. And if that's an extensive, that could be part of the cleanup amendment. And then incentive zoning, confirming any proposed slash TBD incentives in the table, exploring removing fountains from the incentive zoning. Sorry. And Ken asking, I think Paige had asked if incentives could exist with retaining existing businesses during construction. So I put that in there. And then further that we requested the Mayor send a written confirmation that it's acceptable for the Council and CDB to consider changes to the parking requirements. as part of Medford Square zoning since the departure from the December 2025 agreement, Matt. And then finally, just that we requesting that we use version control for the next draft with the numbering system for the proposed map and zoning amendment text.
[Dina Caloggero]: Thank you, Zach.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Tina. Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you for indulging me, Mr. President. I just wanted to say in the incentive zoning, could we add historic preservation in there. So basically have another category. So if you preserve the facade of your building, maybe parking is waived for you. But if you're going to tear it down, then you need to find a way where to park the cars. So making it, I feel like there's going to be creative ways. Incentives won't necessarily be extra stories. It could be waiving parking. I feel like right now what it's built is mostly around density, when that might not be. the incentive that a developer needs.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I concur with that. I think that's, again, as many incentives as possible, as many carrots, and that's a good one.
[Zac Bears]: John?
[John Anderson]: Can we put something in about, I'm struggling for words here, to explore the limit, well, The ability of design review to influence, I guess what I'm getting at, instead of trying to word it, what I'd like to understand is how strong can design review be? I mean, is it basically just advisory to projects or does design review actually have teeth? Got it. I don't know. I'm not demanding that that be included. I'd be interested in hearing from other members with what they think about this.
[Doug Carr]: Doug, for example. Well, I'm a big fan of design review, obviously. But I feel like even what we presently have on this front of the CD board is wildly inadequate in terms of design review. If you can say to a project, you don't have adequate trash, you don't have adequate parking, you don't have adequate safety, you can also say your design is inadequate. It's inappropriate for this site, for this neighborhood, for this context. To me, it's just one more of those things. It's a power we have but have not used. That's my personal opinion. As someone who tried to put together a design review over 20 years ago and failed, I realized long ago that the structure is here to do it if we just put in the right structure and use the tools we have. We're just not using those tools. Dina, you had a question.
[Dina Caloggero]: I'm going to go back to my thing on design guidelines and applicability, and that's under section 94.9.6.5. And perhaps the design guidelines that goes over the community development board's authority on that should be redefined. So again, I'm going back to definitions to make sure that we have the ability to look at the design guidelines and make suggestions along the way. That was one of the things perhaps we want to firm up. That's section 94-9.6.5
[Doug Carr]: I agree, Dina. We talked about that briefly at the end of last year as a goal for this year, but obviously zoning has become front and center and somewhat all-consuming, but we need to revisit that. But I don't think it actually holds up any of this. John Anderson, go ahead.
[John Anderson]: Yeah. Can I also add that we don't want design review to be just another hoop that the developer has to jump through. One of the things that concerns me with site plan review is they're presenting us with a whole project completely designed. And at that point, if we go back and tell them, well, you should take those balconies off or the balcony should be bigger. I would like this design review to be able to encourage developers to make the right choice early on in the process. Good. So that's why I don't see it necessarily as part of site plan review. It's kind of a pre-site plan review.
[Doug Carr]: OK, I think that's part of a larger conversation. Go ahead, Councilman.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, well, I just wanted to kind of pitch basically what you just said in your last sentence, Doug, which is I do think it's part of a larger conversation. And I think it's a question of whether the CD board wants to promulgate design guidelines that meet John's point, right, that it's like, well, If you're coming in, here's the document that we've, when you come back for site plan review, you've already reviewed this document that we've set out as generally our design guidelines as a board and hopefully that avoids or helps them to move it in the direction before even starting the process and then I think For me, in the context of this motion on Medford Square zoning, you know, how we look at design as part of procedures and processes for zoning and permitting is like a, is it's a citywide conversation that would be changing how your processes work across the board, not just for Medford Square. So I just want to put that out there.
[Dina Caloggero]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Tina.
[Dina Caloggero]: I agree with what Zach just stated. I think it's important that you do have such design guidelines because when the developer comes, they already have taken a look at that rather than going through us and saying, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do this? It would drive me crazy, a developer. I want all the requirements in front of me so I can come up with a very good proposal and get it through quickly.
[Doug Carr]: know it's been my experience that design is not generally design critiques are not really great in committee format in a public format just because it's it's too cumbersome the you know the historical commission has done subcommittees for for designs very successfully for seven or eight years and the the I can show you the results have been incredibly positive because They're done in an iterative process. They're done, and then it's voted on by the whole committee, but they don't have 100 cooks trying to cook the meal in one meeting. It just never works that way. Design is too finicky. So I think we need to address it, as Zach said, separately, but robustly.
[Zac Bears]: So how do folks feel about this motion that we just looked at? Anything else that we want to amend there? for any objections to the notes and amendments that I drafted up?
[Alicia Hunt]: I just wanted to flag two things that Transom flagged for us to be looking at in the overall, whether it's their concerns but we should be considering it and all of it that I hadn't mentioned. One is that one of our requirements was around fire exits on public ways and that for any of the parcels that front on two, three, four public ways as theirs does, that could become an issue and so I have actually mentioned that to Emily to look a little more closely at. We also want to look at what our definition is around parking structure, because we both call it as integrated into the building and as a standalone and have sort of the same requirements. And they actually need to be treated differently if the parking is part of a building. You have different thoughts about it than if this is a standalone parking garage. So I just want to put those also officially on the list for Emily to be reviewing or for Ennis to be reviewing.
[Zac Bears]: do, um, sorry, Alicia, because I wasn't taking notes. Um, it's fire, fire exits.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think it's five, something five, say fire exits on public ways. And just to be looking at that, because that was really an issue for them. Um, and then some of the stuff around the parking garages, uh, they also flagged that active ground floor and facade build out requirements for a parking garage doesn't really work. Um, and so we might want to be thinking about their, their, their recommendation in their overlay is that it's exempt for them, but we, if we're considering future parking garages, we should think about it critically. Just want those on the list for.
[Doug Carr]: Council members, if I could be more specific about item three on the potential overlay district with local historic district. I think realistically, the only way to actually approach that would be for it is to have at least two options of two different approaches using those tools. It could be a mix and match. I don't know how many are viable. But I don't think they should come back with one option because that's just too complicated an issue to say, you know, there's only one solution. But I think two options minimum would be appreciated so we can understand the pluses and minuses and the tradeoffs that you have to make and what the better tool may be in one part versus another. I'll leave it at that because I don't have an answer for that one.
[Alicia Hunt]: So with the historic, so one of my thoughts with this, the idea of a historic overlay is normally one doesn't overlay because zoning exists and you want something different. What are the historic things and can they just apply to the entire Medford Square area that we're talking about now? And then you don't need an overlay. Like what are the things that would be in the overlay? I really liked that idea of incentive, for historic preservation, but let's ask them, what are the historic things and can we just incorporate them straight into the whole district if it's a historic building?
[Doug Carr]: It's a great idea, Alicia. I don't disagree. We just want to understand what it does. What can it do for us?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. I think one of the reasons you see overlays in a lot of places is that they haven't updated their zoning in a long time. or there's some sort of overriding citywide or neighborhood thing that they want to, like the Cambridge affordable housing overlay says, you can do more than what the base district allows if you're providing affordable housing, right? So those are kind of the, one of our hopes two and a half years ago was to, if we were updating the base zoning everywhere across the city, that it would be really, it wouldn't mean we would need as many overlay type districts. It doesn't mean that they don't have value for certain purposes, but also in some communities there, it's easier to pass an overlay than to update the base district for a specific project or a specific purpose. And we've seen that here with our plan development districts as well, right? It made more sense to have the Winchester Street project, which hopefully will still happen, come through that process. All right. If there's no more comments on the motion, is there a motion to submit this to Innis and to the mayor's office to approve and submit this motion from the council?
[Matt Leming]: So moved.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Malayne.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scapelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Zac Bears]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Vice President Lazzaro.
[Zac Bears]: Vice President Lazzaro is absent at this time. Okay. President Bears. Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, on the same motion for the city board, I will do the roll call. Do we just need a second as well?
[Zac Bears]: If you want to have a mover and a seconder, that's really more for you.
[Doug Carr]: Motion to move. OK. Second. Second. Thank you, Ari. Roll call, John Anderson. Yes. John Began. John, is he dropped?
[Dina Caloggero]: I think he dropped.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Colliero.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: All right. Goffman Fishman.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself Doug Carr. Yes. Page Buldini is absent. Motion passes.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Maybe we can go Alicia to a quick update on transoms discussions before we move to continue the public hearing to March 25th.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you, Mr. President, so this is more of an update. So in talking with transom, a couple of things that become are clear, and some of it is that that so. I think everybody here knows they're providing a lot of public benefits in this, right? They're getting the land and the lease, but they're paying up for the land. Working with the grocery store requires a lot of time certainty and rapid movement so that you don't lose the grocery store that is interested in this. They also have a lot of their own requirements. For those who haven't heard, we are planning to keep 90 parking spots on the open lot across the street from the senior center for a combination of the senior center and the grocery store. as well as a lot of public art is incorporated into this 20% affordable housing, et cetera. Time is money to them and certainty is money to them. So they're giving us a lot of things that we'd really like to see by provide passing an overlay that clearly both meets what they need and allows for a bunch of waivers that we wouldn't allow to just anybody in Medford Square. So it basically says that a bunch of things could be waived by the CD board if they ask for the waivers and the CD board agrees. It sort of gives them some certainty that they can move forward with this more quickly. um, and move the project through. That's a lot of what they were looking for in this. There are very few, the big changes are honestly the big things that I have mentioned throughout this zoning as well. One of the things, the other things that I didn't mention that they would look for in the way in this is that we have, are requiring that new development provide 12-foot wide sidewalks everywhere. And they want them almost everywhere, but there are a couple of places where they have to trade 12-foot wide sidewalks for more parking spots for the grocery store and senior center. But they don't want to be held to that. They also don't think we should waive it in the rest of the district, because it is a good thing to be generally holding people to. So this is a lot of why they've drafted a very clean, concise, zoning overlay that would clearly say it's for these three parcels and to do that. And what I am recommending is that we submit it, that actually it can be submitted by the mayor as the property owner, because she owns those parcels, as the city, to the city council next Tuesday night. City council refers it to the CD board. And then we have the public hearing on March 25th as part of the already planned joint public hearing. We would hold two public hearings, one on the overlay and one on this continued hearing, which I am anticipating you're gonna continue to them. That would allow the parcels to move forward with another, it would give them between now and March 25th, a much higher level of certainty that things are gonna move forward quickly. Um, because we have general expectations. Um, but we don't know what's going to happen when you get all these things back from, uh, and it's on the 25th, if that's going to get voted out and adopted in a couple of weeks. But you would be able to then, if you chose to vote out the overlay, um, and approve it if everybody was in agreement with that. So that's what we're putting forward and why we recommend, uh, doing the overlay. for those parcels. And I will say, they're also subject to site plan review and a higher level of scrutiny because they're subject to lease agreements and additional contracts and oversight by the city administration.
[Doug Carr]: John, you had a question.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, I'm wondering, I can understand the time is of the essence here. Would it be possible to get the materials well in advance so that we can give it some consideration?
[Alicia Hunt]: So what would happen is, yes, I would send this overlay to the city council for their agenda for next Tuesday. At that point, that's the document that would be referred to this board on March 24th. I can literally send these documents out tomorrow to everybody.
[Doug Carr]: Wonderful. Thank you. Go ahead, Dina.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, just for procedural, do we need to make a motion to accept the overlay for the transom project at this point? And as part of the thing, what do we do procedurally to separate it out?
[Alicia Hunt]: Not at this time. This is sort of more of an FYI informative. It's my recommendation. If you all turned around and said, Alicia, this is a really bad idea, and we're going to vote it down on March 25. So the vote on Tuesday, the 10th would be a formality vote. But if you all were like, this is a horrible idea, we're not doing this on the 25th, then it would be a waste of everybody's time.
[Dina Caloggero]: Understood. Thank you, Alicia.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Do we have any questions or comments, further questions or comments on that item at this time? All right, and Alicia, you'll be bringing us that for our agenda and we'll be talking about that first time at the council meeting next Tuesday and we'll decide if we wanna refer that along in the process to the Community Development Board. All right, is there a motion to continue the public hearing to March 25th and adjourn for a member of the council?
[Ari Fishman]: So moved.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Maloney.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro is absent.
[Zac Bears]: And President Bears? Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Chair Carr?
[Doug Carr]: Yes. Sumo motion to continue the public hearing to the combined hearing on March 25th. I'll entertain that motion.
[John Anderson]: So moved.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Second?
[John Anderson]: Second.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Ari. John Anderson? Yes. Sean Bacon is absent. Dina Calguero.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Fishman. Yes. And Doug Carr, yes.
[Zac Bears]: Great. On the votes of both boards, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
[Ari Fishman]: Thanks, everyone.
[SPEAKER_08]: Cheers.
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