Community Development Board 03/04/26

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3.8-flash from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The Community Development Board approved a site plan review for 400 Riverside Avenue with eight conditions. It also reviewed revised designs for 360 Salem Street before continuing the hearing to March 18, and held an informal discussion regarding proposed Medford Square zoning changes.

1:07 Site plan review: 400 Riverside Ave — Approved the site plan review application by Able Companies with eight conditions addressing sidewalk restoration, roof drainage, fire department access, and parking prohibitions.
15:28 Site plan review: 360 Salem Street — Closed public comment and continued the public hearing to March 18, 2026, to allow staff and the building commissioner to review parking requirements, zoning waivers, and draft conditions.
1:00:33 Medford Square zoning amendments discussion — Held an informal discussion following a joint City Council meeting regarding lot coverage definitions, dimensional standards, zoning overlays, historic preservation incentives, and senior center parking.
1:43:30 Approval of minutes and administrative updates — Approved the meeting minutes from December 3, 2025, and reviewed administrative follow-ups regarding Mullen rule affidavits.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Good evening. My name is Doug Carr. It's March 4th, 2026. Welcome to the Medford Community Development Board meeting. I will call the roll call. John Anderson. John?

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you. And Ari Goffman-Fishman. Present. And myself, Chair Doug Carr, present. Uh, Danielle, can you please introduce any staff at the meeting or on the call?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, myself, Danielle Evans, Senior Planner with the Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. Also, we have Alicia Hunt, the Director of PDS. We have Kayla Miros, who is our Economic Development Planner. along with Christian Zepeda-Lepofsky, who is our graduate student intern.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, Danielle. So there's two significant items on this month's agenda. The first one is the continued public hearing, site plan review for 400 Riverside Ave. We'll get to that in a few moments. And then we'll move on to another continued public hearing, the site plan review for 360 Salem Street. We'll take those one at a time. I suspect each will take a little bit more than an hour. We'll see how it goes. But what we'll do is we'll start with 400 Riverside. This is our third public hearing on this project that was opened on February 4th, 2026. And the applicant, Able Companies, will present any new information they have in response to the city staff comments from the last meeting. And I'll ask Alicia or Danielle to give any introductory remarks before we move on to the presentation from the applicant.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: So Kayla was working with them, but we were able to connect them with engineering and fire to hammer out the last details. They submitted revised plans, which we believe satisfies all those requirements with a few additional conditions for the sort of things that you can't show on the plans that fire department was, um, requiring. So we have some draft conditions, um, that could be, you know, with your consideration tonight and, um, hopefully bring this to a vote.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, Danielle. Uh, is there somebody here from Abel companies who would like to, uh, present, talk about the latest version of the plans?

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Can you guys, whoever it is, can you raise your hand so I know who to make? Okay. Jared Walsh. Jared, you are now have permissions.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Great. I'm not sure if Bill Carivori is on for Able Companies, but I'm here representing Bowler Engineering, the site civil engineering on the projects.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Jared, would you like to put on the latest, maybe the latest side plan to walk us through it?

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: OK. Yeah, so as Danielle summarized, we have worked with planning staff and engineering to enhance this plan a little bit further since last time it was presented to you. As you can see here, We still have the proposed accessible parking along the buildings frontage here to meet accessibility requirements. And since the previous version of this plan, we have added some level landing areas to connect. these spaces to the rear portion of the landscaped area here, which will be treated with a sidewalk connection to provide a protected access aisle up to the primary ADA entrance and exit at the building space. That is one of the additions that has been added to the plan. We have also expanded the frontage work along Riverside Avenue here to add a full concrete sidewalk frontage along Riverside Avenue, which will receive typical granite curb stones at the driveway aprons, which will be Um, at at the request of engineering sort of better defining these curb cuts along Riverside Avenue, where previously this was a larger kind of opening along the street with just asphalt right up to the to the right away line there. So we will be defining that with. curbstones and some new sections of vertical granite curb in several locations where there are also some loading dock areas and access to what previously was kind of like a sea of asphalt here where vehicles actually from across the street, there's a business, auto body business across the street where vehicles were parking in this area and sort of allowed to back up into the right-of-way, which is an unsafe condition that we thought this new parking scheme with a protected couple of landscape islands here and rotated parking would allow for access still to be maintained here. But those vehicles would now be safely not backing into the right-of-way where pedestrians could be crossing. We have worked with planning staff on rotating these spaces and providing that adequate aisle width here to meet city standards for drive aisle access. We've added some shrubs in those landscaped islands to provide a little bit of landscaping along Riverside Avenue for some screening.

A final comment that we had received earlier this week from engineering, there are a couple of roof drain leaders that the previous occupant had established a couple of PVC pipes that just discharged out to the Sycamore Avenue sidewalk. As you can see here, we've mimicked the condition at each of these four roof leaders. We'll be cutting those back from a landscaped retaining wall here and introducing a little bit of crushed stone so that there's some opportunity to infiltrate before that runoff discharge would hit the sidewalk and potentially create a unsafe condition for pedestrians if there was a freezing opportunity where ice could generate along the sidewalk stretch on Sycamore Avenue.

But that's the summary of what's happened since this plan was last presented. So open to any questions or further concerns, but I think we've had a decent amount of back and forth with planning staff and engineering to solve everything that the city wanted to see along Riverside and within the internal parking areas on the site.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, Mr. Walsh. Uh, Danielle, do you have any open items from the city departments? Do you agree with that assessment? Are we good to go from the, all the various departments from your perspective?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yes. With the, um, the extra fire conditions and I, do you want me to put the conditions on the screen?

[Chair Doug Carr]: I want to get some of the comments from the other board members first, I think, um, So if that's the case, does anyone have any specific comments or questions they'd like to ask the applicant from the board? Don't seem to be hearing much. Yeah, Daniel, why don't you put those conditions on screen so we can see what you're thinking about?

[Chair Doug Carr]: Yeah, could you zoom in a little bit so it's larger? It's a little tough on the full screen. Yeah. And we'll open it up for public comments in a few minutes as well. You can just zoom in. There we go. There we go. That's good.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: So these top ones, the first three are just our boilerplate conditions, the rail, Meet them are so the sidewalk restoration condition. It's shown on the plans, but this kind of underlines it to make it abundantly clear. The bowler should have seen this before. This is from Owens original comments and this is what they designed and then the roof drain. that condition that they shall not discharge directly into the sidewalk. Keeping that in there, I want to make sure that Owen is okay with the solution that they devised to avoid any drainage that could happen. I don't know if he may want them to cut back or to relocate them. I wanted to have this condition there.

just in case. And then these two conditions were from the fire department. So the hardware and entry requirements, the existing NOx box at the front entrance is currently mounted too high, must be lowered to a standard height, approximately five feet to ensure rapid access for all personnel. And then secondary access, the right side secondary entry exit at 14 Sycamore Ave must remain unobstructed and available for fire department use. A second Knox box shall be mounted at this location to provide a dedicated second entry point. A fire alarm enunciated panel shall be located inside this entrance with better access for larger apparatus. I don't know what any of that means, but we're just putting what the deputy chief said.

And then the traffic and transportation conditions reiterating that no head and parking shall be allowed. Um, in front of the 10th Sycamore portion of the building, fronting Riverside Ave. Any of those existing spaces, whether informal or formal, striped or not, would be removed and some no parking signs put there. I noticed people are still parking there. I would hope the building owner would have those businesses from across the street discontinued doing that and also it was brought to my attention that the owner's not clearing the sidewalk and that's against the rules.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Okay, yeah, just just for the record, the enunciator panel is what you see when you walk into any lobby of most big buildings that the fire department can look at it, and they can see where the sprinkler systems are, where the problems are in the building. It's a common life safety item for any building of any significant size, so that they know what's going on before they run into a building that could have a significant emergency. It's a standard piece of equipment usually right inside the lobby or if it's a much bigger building in a fire command center, but all right. Thank you. If there's no other questions from the board, I'm going to open it up to for any potential public comments.

Hearing none, I will now open the public comment period. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raised hand feature, which may be under reactions in your Zoom. If you're dialed in on the phone, you can use star nine to raise your hand. You can also message Alicia in the chat. If you're having technical difficulties before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. Reminder to all meeting participants to please refrain from using the chat function to message any comments to city staff or board members. as it is not part of the public record. However, if a participant is having audio or technical difficulties, you may message staff for assistance. Each participant will have two minutes to speak.

Is there anyone here who would like to speak in favor or against or just general comments for this project? Please raise your hand if so. Seeing none, Danielle, Alicia, I'm going to then close the public comments. Not entirely surprised. This is a project that I don't think has a lot of, I guess, controversy, or frankly, abutters, who are not in favor of it. So I will close the public hearing portion. Are there any other comments or questions before the board if we would adapt the conditions that Danielle just walked us through? Are there any final comments or questions going forward?

Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the project with the conditions noted by Danielle earlier, which I believe is also in your package in the agenda, right, Danielle?

[Dina Caloggero]: I make a motion to accept the proposal along with the eight conditions.

[Chair Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. Thank you, Mr. Walsh. Good luck. We're looking forward to this project. It's a good project for Medford, and hopefully it's a good one for you guys as well.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you. All right, moving on, that took a lot less time than I thought, which is great. Moving on, continue public hearing for, this is the one we had recently, the 360 Salem Street project. This is our fourth public hearing for this project that was opened initially in December 3rd, 2025, and the applicant which is 360 Salem LLC, who I see is here, will present new information they have in response to the city staff and the board member comments from a last meeting.

Again, I'll ask Alicia or Danielle if you want to give any introductory comments. Otherwise, we'll just go straight to the applicant.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Since the last meeting where this was heard, the board had given them some feedback of just kind of relooking at it, shifting the building. The developer took that to heart and I connected him with the Abutting Condo Association so that they could meet and talk about some of the issues and make sure they were going on the right track. It's always a good, collaborative process when you can work with the abutters to try to find a solution.

It seems that they are on the right track and the developer submitted some draft plans that he will present tonight for feedback from the board and pending your comments, will further advance that design to work towards getting this over the finish line. One thing that I do need to do is confer with the building commissioner to find out what kind of zoning relief might be needed. Because I know that we were asking them to do things that might not be the letter of the ordinance for this section, but it was to approve the project. So I want to see if this board can grant waivers for those changes or if this needs something more. We can cross that bridge when we get to it. But that's all I have for now.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Danielle, do you think that would be something we could try to clear up in the next couple of days or early next week?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yeah, I think so. I just don't know what the numbers are. I don't think I saw what the setback would be, so I wasn't able to make those comparisons.

[Chair Doug Carr]: OK. I see that Mr. Manganiello is here, the applicant. Can you make him a co-host, or if he's not already? And Guy, if you want anyone else to be made co-host as well, please let us know.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you all. Marina, do you want me to share it for you, and then we can walk through the changes?

[CAS00002540_SPEAKER_10]: that we've reviewed this several times now, but we have our aerial shot 360, 362 Salem Street here. Again, quickly existing commercial space right now. This is what it looks like currently. And we have views down the street looking west. This is our building here where my cursor is. And looking east down the street here as well, building right here. This is the existing footprint of the building in red. For comparison here, we do have some of the previous proposal drawings to show the changes that we've made. This is what's currently being proposed now, our latest change, and we'll walk through those shortly. But again, it's about an 8,000 square foot lot, four stories, 14 units, ground floor commercial space, and parking in the ground floor garage, which we can get into that breakdown here.

A little bit closer to show the existing building in proximity to neighbors, which we know was talked about in previous meetings here. This is, again, footprint of the existing building here with existing surface parking in the rear. This is our previous proposal that we showed at the last meeting. And we've got about a 14-foot, 6-inch setback to the neighbor here at 5 Alamont Street on the left. And this is what the footprint of the previous proposal looked like with the 4-foot setback on the right-hand side. Today, this is what we are currently proposing. So I know that we had talked in the previous meeting about extending the building back perhaps to then accommodate a larger setback on the left-hand side to 5 Almont Street in particular. We're looking now at about a 20-foot setback to that building, about 23 feet, four and a half inches or so with a drive aisle. And we can look more closely at that with the layouts in a moment.

This is the existing street elevation, which we've shown previously with the neighbors on either side of us. And for comparison here, we have our previous proposal up at the top, a wider building proposal, and our current design, which as shown in the previous book print, we've shrunk over. So it's set back much farther through 5 Almont Street on that one side. The height has not changed, but we are looking at a slightly more symmetrical design than our previous and a couple of exterior aesthetic changes, which we'll show with the elevations later on as well.

We took a look at several different angles for solar studies here. I can briefly walk through these and happy to answer any questions with them later on. The top row here for you basically looks at June 21st, the summer solstice. We're looking at 8 a.m. We're looking at how the sun then changes by noon and then 4 p.m. Same thing for the spring equinox here along this middle column. and then December 21st, the winter solstice. Our findings ultimately, now that we've moved the proximity of the building, are that 5 Alamont Street in particular is not going to be in too much shadow around noon. And then once we get to 4 p.m., it's the same shadow that it would be with the existing building there. It's going to be in shadow a little bit in the morning between 8 a.m. and noon throughout the entirety of the year, but that clears up again in the afternoon and it's the same condition as it would be otherwise with the existing building. This is it from the front looking at Salem Street. Then we took a look at it from the rear as well. Again, I can zoom in on these if there are further questions looking at the solar study. We took a look at those three different times and three different situations throughout the year.

At the new footprint of our building here, we have an updated zoning table for review. I'm happy to walk through that now. What we found is that we are compliant in all categories. We did have that parking one space per unit, which I know we had talked about in our previous meeting. So we offer now 14 spaces, one space per unit, and the breakdown of compact versus full is something that we can take a look at here with the floor plans and layouts. The other item here that we want to call out is this green score. In increasing the footprint of the building and shifting it over for this driveway, our green score is just at 22.5.

Aside from that, our side setbacks, our rear setbacks, our front setback, and the coverage and height, all within the zoning quadrants. We also here have our existing curb cut to remain, which is something that had changed from the previous proposal, now that we have this driveway running along the left side of the building. Looking here at the ground floor plan, again, we're looking at 14 spaces now. So you drive down here along the left-hand side, we have the garage door, 14 spaces with a 24-foot backup. We've got seven compact spaces here along the left-hand side, and these are 7 feet 6 inches wide by 17 feet deep, as specified in the Medford Code. And then we have seven full-size spaces over here on the right side, which are 9 feet by 19. We've noted spaces 13 and 14 here for EV charging. And then similar to our previous proposal, but with a slightly different layout, we have the commercial space facing the front of the building at 530 square feet space for a trash room with a six yard dumpster, bike parking or bike storage, I should say, and then the residential lobby off the front of the building as well.

Just a closer look at the bike parking, which we've shown previously. It's a different configuration now in a different location from our other design, but we're looking at bike racks on the wall and a post and ring situation. As far as the floor plans go, they're pretty typical between levels two and three. Level four is where we get a little bit different. We have one unit located in the back here, two units here on the sides, one unit in the front, Another unit here on the side, so we have 5 units per floor here. 4 of these units on each floor are 2 bed, 2 bath units and 1 unit on each floor is 1 bed, 1 and a half bath. So similar structure layout, I should say to the previous proposal that we have.

On the upper floors, we were able to accommodate the provision that we are abutting a residential district in the rear. So we have this zone stepped back as was shown in a previous design version. It'll be more clear on the elevation showing that 45-degree angle. But we have the rest of the units up here, units 11, 12, 13, and 14, with small decks out the rear for those two rear units. Right now, we have a general zone as shown for solar ready and then access hatch to get to the roof.

Taking a look at our new elevation design, a similar aesthetic expression as to the previous iterations that we've done. We chose now with this new design and new layouts to bring these columns all the way continuous to the ground. Somewhat more of a symmetrical expression here with Juliet balconies on the front. The windows mirrored on either side. Signage indicated for the residential entry here over here on the left and bottom, and then we have commercial signage and storefront glazing in the bottom right corner. Height of the building has not changed. The floor-to-floor heights have not changed. It's all the same, as well as our material pallet here.

The building did get a little bit longer since we made it shorter on that left or skinnier, I should say, on that left-hand side. A similar expression to the previous design iterations.

[CAS00002540_SPEAKER_10]: We have the other side. Again, this indicates that angle from which we're stepping back that fourth story as part of that residential budding provision code. We have an updated civil set as well. But at this point, we'll pause. Happy to take any questions that you have now on this latest design version.

[Page Buldini]: Thank you so much. Thank you for this presentation and for really taking a lot of the boards, my personal questions into consideration. And I really appreciate, Guy, you meeting with the neighbors. That is really important. And I really appreciate that. I have a question with the green score. I know it went down a little bit, which thank you for making the building go back a little farther or making that design. Is there a possibility now that the garage is moved to the left, which I think for curb appeal is really exciting? I think not having it in the front and or just having it in the way that it is, is great, especially for that commercial space. Can we add trees to the sidewalk? Is that possible? I don't know if that's part of this plan. I don't know if that would help out with the green score. It might not. But just the thought where we've done that over on Main Street, I don't know if that's a possibility.

[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, I echo Paige. I thank you for working with the neighbors. Always makes for a successful project. I had a question about the trash, the retail space of its food. How often will the trash be picked up? And is there a separate trash for the retail space versus the residence? When will the residence trash be picked up? And when will the retail or food service be picked up?

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: Sure, in our experience, the cadence of trash pickups, you can have a similar sized building and people can produce trash at different rates. So, we typically set it up standardized for the unit types on either a weekly or biweekly pickup and then as. As the trash receptacles are filling, sometimes the associations will adjust the frequency to meet the need. Within the trash room, there will be a bifurcated space for the commercial use.

[Dina Caloggero]: And will there be food service? Is that part of the use you're thinking for the retail space?

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: We don't know with absolute certainty. We don't know yet.

[John Anderson]: I just have a question about the parking. Are specific parking spots assigned to each unit or is it just sort of general first come first serve?

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: It's a great question. Again, we typically would like to see them assigned by unit. We haven't delved too far into the construction of the HOA yet, not knowing what exactly we were going to be building. So we'll be taking that a step further once we have an approval and understanding what we have here, and then we'll devise it accordingly. But typically we do assign the parking spots.

[John Anderson]: I just wonder, I mean, I've never lived in a building like this. I just wonder how it works. You know, somebody has a compact, somebody has a regular size car, somebody has an electrical car. You know, if

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: No, it's a great question. So the ability to add additional electric spaces down the line will be up to the condo users, right? Should they need it. But moreover, as long as we don't need to restrict the spaces to a specific unit and just assign them, the condo association will be able to allocate them accordingly when they meet.

[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah. I'm thinking about snow removal. How will snow removal, will a contractor be able to get in there and remove snow and move it out to ensure exiting and entering the?

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah. It's over a six foot space there. And a plow is six feet wide, typically, at the largest. So they would have no issue just plowing straight back. And then should it need to get carded away a bobcat would easily fit in there. Yeah. Yeah. Not a problem.

[Ari Fishman]: I am excited to see this, and I appreciate that we found or that you guys found a frankly, much more realistic solution than the car stackers. And I'm just happy to see this and excited to see it move forward.

[Sean Beagan]: Thank you. All right. Sean Bacon. Yeah, thanks. In regards to this new parking layout, has this been run by the building commissioner yet? Because I know he had some specific comments in regards to the prior layout. Specifically, I think there was an issue as to whether there needed to be one handicap accessible parking space included. And I don't see one in this proposal. uh, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just wondering if you have 14 spaces here or if you're going to end up having.

13, and I'm not saying that's a deal breaker to me one way or the other. I'm just trying to get an idea as to what we're ultimately going to end up with. Because we could approve this, and then the building commissioner could say something else I would expect if there's code issues. But I also would like to hear from the public in regards to if there's any members of the public here in regards to these new setbacks.

if they're happy with that and the change, because it looks like a pretty substantial increase in the setback on that one side, which I think should make the neighbors a little bit happier.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, John. Yeah, we're going to open it to public comments in a few minutes. I just have a few comments before I do that. Could you go to the elevations and exterior elevations to start with? First of all, I agree with the other comments from the commission, the board members here. This has really cleaned this up a lot. I think it's really nice that the parking entrance is now basically an alley versus something that was being shoehorned into an elevation. I think this is really good.

I wonder if there's any possibility of adding any additional glass on either side of the entrance doors to the commercial space just because I think the more glass for retail, the better. I see that it looks like some block. Just something to look at. I don't think I want to make it a condition, but I just think, you know, maximizing that for whatever retail, commercial business goes in there, I think, could only be a good thing. That's one thing. If you could go to the left side elevation as well, let's take a look at that one. That's this 1, you can see that the about the right 30 feet off of Salem street has no windows here. I was looking at your floor plan and it looked like I know there's a closet there. I know there's an elevator there, but I think there's an ability to put a window probably.

Probably either there, or just to the left of of the, just the inner pile last or someplace that makes sense with the floor plan. I just again, I think this is a very visible elevation. I just don't want to see that blank while it's well articulated with the way you're booking it up. But that's a long space without a window. And I think. you can make it work with your floor plan without having a window right over somebody's bed. I'll ask you to just take a look at that because you've done it on the other side. It's one unit across the entire front of the building now, and I think it's a much improved design. I really appreciate the hard work here and the out-of-box thinking because I know you've had to rejiggle the whole thing just in a very short period of time, so I really appreciate that.

But those are really my two exterior comments. But I think it's looking really well and I'm going to, if there's no other additional comments from the city board, I'm going to pause now and open up the hearing for public comments as well. So let me make a brief statement about that. Those who wish to provide comments, please use the raise hand feature. under your reactions in the Zoom. And if you're dialed in on your phone, please use star 9 to raise your hand. You can also message Elisa in the chat. If you're having technical difficulties before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. A reminder to all meeting participants to please refrain from using the chat function to message any comments to City of staff as they are not part of the public record. However, if a participant is having audio or technical difficulties, please message the staff for assistance. Each participant will have two minutes to speak. And I will start with Zachary Sheraton. Zachary, you're at a butter, is that correct?

[Zachary Chertok]: Yes, I just wanted to say, 1st of all, thank you to guy and Danielle for setting up the ability for us to work together to find a solution that would not only balance the shadow setback issue, but address the parking and keep the 14 units for the 2 affordable. There had to be a way to get to satisfy all camps. And I think we found it. And I think it sounds like we answered some of the design challenges too for the CD board in terms of the front uniformity to keep the streetscape and set a real good precedent for the streetscape. This is a real big improvement and just thank you all around. And Guy and your team, thank you for taking the design considerations and the suggestions under advisement and working with us to find this compromise. I'm actually excited about this project.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thanks, Zach. That's really great news to hear. Is there anyone else from the public who would like to make a comment? Go ahead. Caitlin, what is your name and address for the record?

[Kaitlin Robinson]: Hi, Caitlin Robinson, 31 Everett Street. I appreciate all the work that's been done on this. The only comment that I really have now is that it saddens me that our policies and this board would prefer that we sacrifice green space and mandate parking. I really think there needs to be more. flexibility where developers should get to make decisions around parking and that green space should be prioritized over forcing everyone to have parking. Thank you.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, Caitlin. Appreciate that. Any other public comments? Well, I must admit, I'm kind of surprised we had a real long list of people talking. You must have done a good job, the design team, because people seem to be satisfied with it. So that's encouraging news. With that, I will close the public comment period. And I'll open it up to the board if you wanted to have any further discussions or comments or questions. Go ahead, Paige.

[Page Buldini]: Doug, thank you for making that comment about the commercial space. I actually didn't think of that. And that's a really wonderful call because it could open up those doors, whether it's food or whether it's like skin care or something like that. So I really appreciate that. And I think that's a wonderful consideration. So thank you.

[Chair Doug Carr]: You're welcome. Yeah, I think there's a solution there. I'd love to see as much glass as possible and the lighting could go elsewhere. You know, there's opportunities. So on to Hari Fishman.

[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. My question is, this looks like a huge amount of progress was made. We're really close to done. Is this something that is close enough to done that we are interested in allowing it to move forward with staff approval of the conditions if we kind of set up that they fulfill kind of whatever criteria or do we want another hearing? Because if it is close to ready, I would move or I would encourage moving quickly.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you for that. I agree, actually. Go ahead. Dina, why don't you go ahead?

[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, I agree with Ari. As long as there are no changes that would impact the butters, I would move this along based on any comments from staff and the engineering group.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, Dina. Danielle, why don't you chime in on this one?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: I mean, if the board wants to do that, but we don't have any draft conditions. I got the elevations today. We didn't have anything prepared to vote on. We need the building commissioner to look at that handicap space. We need to clarify the waivers. The board will be granting waivers for the parking. So I think that this board did do a good job of balancing the need for units in green space as you are reducing the parking, since they didn't qualify for the reduced parking for high-frequency transit. So you have to waive the strict new compliance with the one and a half spaces. And then we'll have to grant a waiver for the green score. I need to check all those numbers to make sure they're correct.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Daniel, is it possible we could close the public hearing? Cause I don't see any more comments. Yeah, we don't, we don't need to keep the public hearing open, but I can do that and give the, give the applicant a sense that this board is ready to proceed. Even if there are some procedural nuances that we need to work out because it just came all together in one day, you know, and yeah, it was this afternoon, which was great. I don't think. Yeah, it's a lot to kind of rush that through, but I want to make it quite clear that this board is broadly in support of this revised project. I've heard nothing but glowing reviews from the board and from everyone else. Sean Megan.

[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I would say that I do agree with everyone. I think we're very close. I would not be in favor of voting for approval at this point. I would still like to hear from the building commissioner, because I think this is the first development on Salem Street that we've seen under this new set of regulations. What we are doing here is setting some precedent, particularly with parking. And I don't want to approve something that I'm not 100% aware of what we're approving. In other words, I don't want to, if this, if what we think we're approving is one for one, basically one spot per unit, And then we find out down the road that actually it was 12 spots because they needed two handicapped spots or something like that. And those aren't necessarily, unless there's a handicapped person, those spots aren't necessarily available.

So I would like just to see before I vote, who would feel comfortable voting approval, have the building commissioner weigh in on the parking since he's already been brought in on this application already, I think he should take another look at what he has in front of him now, because he had some good insight for us. But otherwise, I appreciate everything the applicant's done so far, and I think he is really in good faith working with us and working with the neighbors, which is great.

[Chair Doug Carr]: All right, I think that's a reasonable position, Sean, and I don't disagree at all. But it's clear that we're kind of at the two yard line right now. We need to finish and make sure we have everything proper. But I don't see any redesign unless something comes up. Danielle, you and your staff will work on the conditions and getting these final questions answered. And I think we can circulate that well in advance of the meeting two weeks from tonight, right? That would be my hope, if we can do that.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yeah, and then we'll have it ready to, you know, everything buttoned up, and then we can prioritize getting that decision filed, like, very quickly, to move it to the front of the line. We can, you know, do that to help with the timeline.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you. Do you recommend we take any vote of any kind for the closing the hearing or anything or just what do you recommend for if we need to do anything tonight?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: I mean, I think you can close the public hearing and then continue it to the next meeting to approve the draft conditions. And Confirm that the correct waivers are being granted. Because, like, as member begin was saying, if you're going to grant a waiver. For, you know, you have to know how many spaces you're granting away before so. Even if you don't make any changes, you just need to know what it is so that you are not in a situation where you didn't actually grant the relief that they needed.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Right. To Sean Began's point, if one of those spaces or more had to become an accessible space, I believe we would lose a space because you need a five foot strip next to an eight foot wide parking zone to make an accessible spot. And I don't see that additional space unless Ms. McIntosh-Morgan, if you have any ideas on that front.

[CAS00002540_SPEAKER_10]: Well, based on 521 CMR, the Architectural Access Board, the total parking spaces in the lot, if it's between 15 and 25, then you have a required one accessible space. And since we're at 14, we don't meet that threshold. So happy to talk through that further with the building commissioner offline. I don't think we are required to have an accessible space based on our parking counts and MAAB.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you for that information. That's certainly something you can take up with those guys.

[Sean Beagan]: The commissioner had brought up possibly needing a space because there were more than 12 dwelling units. So that might be something to discuss with the commissioner.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Sure. OK. So then, that being said, I guess I'll entertain a motion that we close the public hearing, but continue this.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, Mr. Chair. I actually realized that I have one question of the applicant that plays into one of the questions you all had. One of, sorry, I forget if it was Dean or Paige asked if they could put in potentially a street tree. Can we just confirm if the applicant is planning that that street tree that exists is staying? And if not, then they need to know what the process is in the city to request. They can't just take down a street tree. There's one in front of the building right now.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: I do know what you're referring to. Would you intend on planting a second tree in front of the building with one being already there?

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I think that we should consider that because Daniel's going to prep conditions. If the tree stays, then we can consult with the tree warden, I think, or the city engineer in the next week and find out whether they would recommend or not recommend a street tree on that block, another one.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: Sure. Our intention, our intention is to protect and maintain the tree that's there now. Okay, great.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I just sort of wanted to flag that for the board that, you know, there may not be space for a second one. Um, we can look into that.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Alicia, is there any given what we did? I know it's different on Main Street for the project of a couple of meetings ago. We ended up at they were taking down trees so that we added a bunch and they were not just in front of the building. They were along at the discretion of the city. Do we have anything like that here or is that not?

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So what? So in that situation they were taking down trees, so they were required to pay a certain amount of money in to replace those trees and the tree warden preferred that they not purchase and plant trees, but rather put money into her bucket for planting trees in that area. So it's, that is always an option to ask that if a tree, you know, is not suitable on that block or in front of that building for an additional tree is not a suitable addition in front of that block building to put a, the money into the thing and Christian just messaged me, you don't have, no, didn't say, we can just check what the dollar amount was. I know that that dollar amount was something less than $900 for a tree and I can't remember if it was 300 or 600.

So I'm just saying, really important to the tree warden, maybe short money to this project.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: We can certainly discuss that. Alicia, we're open to it and something that we've done on other projects that seem to go over well was planters in front of the building that had a low profile that kind of beautified the sidewalk a bit and had perennials. So there was a. That's always something to consider as well if we're talking about kind of ameliorating the landscape and streetscape. We're open to that as well. All that said, I did want to take a moment because I didn't have a chance and opportunity to speak and I'm speaking now. So just to thank Zach and the butters.

for being so open to discussion and Danielle for putting us together. That was a pleasant experience and between the last meeting and this meeting, I can say that it's been very constructive. So thank you all for the feedback and the help.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I will reach out to our tree warden and come. So I'll take it on me rather than asking Danielle to reach out to the tree warden and make sure that the conditions that come back uh, to the board in two weeks have something, whatever she prefers with regards to street trees, with the understanding that they're protecting the existing one, which is always the city's preference.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: And, um, the. Sorry, I'm losing my train of thought. Um, yeah, so the, the condition for potentially contributing to the tree fund or adding additional tree. would be to mitigate the waiver request. So like the impacts of not being able to meet that green score that this would, you know, this is a good condition, there's a rational nexus of why you would be requiring that.

[Chair Doug Carr]: I think since we're talking about trees and landscaping. I'm not surprised we're just focusing on the building because the building has been everything so far. But I think as part of the submission in two weeks, an actual landscape plan showing the existing tree to remain, showing I think some buffer landscape in that six foot area as well between the existing butters. And the building, now that there's more than a sidewalk width there, there's actually the ability to plant something to soften that edge of the building and to help those abutters, I think. I'm not saying trees necessarily, but I think there's an opportunity to, now that the building we're saying is essentially, we're saying it's fixed to the degree possible based on what we see. You know, there's a limited green space in the back. I don't know if it's really usable for anyone. But I think it's a missing element that is understandable, given that you just completed the building probably within the last 48 hours, if I had to guess. But now I'll take a fresh look at the landscape and just see if there's a way to touch up things, because I think that's really a requirement that we have. We need a landscaping drawing with every new building. The Main Street one we just did a few weeks ago had a really detailed plan with that kind of stuff. Is there one there? Guy? Yes, there is.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: Zooming in for everyone. Our intention is exactly what you said, Mr. Chair, was to plant some shrubs along the way that would screen in and give some buffer. To your point, it isn't a large usable space, but we would love to make the best of it and make it somewhat usable and look forward to getting creative on ways to do that.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Sure. Can I just ask one question? I noticed the door in the upper right-hand corner is essentially blocked by a car. I think that door needs to shift to the center aisle, and then I presume there needs to be a paved three-foot walkway or some dimension that gets those folks down from the back of the building to the front of the building to the right of way, or maybe to the right, because maybe that's what you're doing.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: Uh, I, I would, I'm actually going to defer on this 1, uh, to Eric, who's. Bar civil engineer, I'm not sure if I can get to on muting him. Uh, Eric, you there.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so we'll have to take a look at, we've got the, you're talking about the back door at the right, correct? The one all the way at the rear of the building?

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, we may have to run the pavers up around the corner there. We'll verify that. We had them going up to the door at the side there to the stairway, but I'll double check that for you guys.

[Chair Doug Carr]: All right. Yeah, I guess it's best not to go to the left, just have it go to that door. Wherever that ends up, go to the right, and it would connect to that walkway.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: Eric, I wonder if we needed it all with there being another exit here.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: We just eliminated it all together. I know we had it in the previous design, so maybe it was a carryover. But it was a different space back there.

[MCM00001497_SPEAKER_08]: And then if we're going to make a waiver to the green score, I wonder if the board would be so inclined to consider maybe lightening up on the shrubs. We were planting them to kind of raise that number and allowing us the ability to maybe make some of that space usable with maybe like a sitting area back there that's obviously permeable, but something usable for the residents. We'd love to try to get creative with that.

[Page Buldini]: Just real quick. Thank you so much. Yeah, I think, obviously, somebody on this call had mentioned the green score. So be mindful of that if you could go as negative as possible to support that. That would be really great with what you plant. But thank you. And thank you for looking at that. And I think any space that people can use would be great. But be mindful of that green score. Thank you.

[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. And I just wanted to say that I'm inclined to be very supportive of being flexible around making that space usable for the residents and perhaps kind of balancing out an equivalent number or size of plantings in the larger area using a similar mechanism to the previous filing.

[Ari Fishman]: And also always in support of natives, which is already in the requirements. So that's a given.

[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I would just ask the applicant if before the next meeting, if, uh, they could file with, uh, Danielle, any waivers that they know they are requesting so that we can see them ahead of time. Um, if whether it's the shrubs or, uh, the number of parking spots, once you confirm what that is, if you could just file any waiver requests, that way we can act on them and maybe even look at them at a time.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Thank you, Sean. All right. I think we're ready for a motion. I think we're saying that we're closing the public hearing, but we're continuing this. It sounds like we're saying two contradictory things here.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: You're closing the public comment and keeping the hearing open.

[Chair Doug Carr]: There you go. Thank you for the clarification. So I'll entertain a motion to close the public comments, but continue the public hearing to March 18th, two weeks from tonight. So moved.

[Chair Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. Passes six to nothing. Thank you, Guy. Thank you to your team. Well done. Really appreciate it. We could pull this one out.

[Chair Doug Carr]: We'll see you in two weeks. Excellent. Have a good night. Thank you. All right. The next item on the agenda is actually talks about Medford Square, the proposed zoning amendment. We obviously just had a meeting last night with the city council. I don't know if anyone has had an epiphany in the last 24 hours, if there's anything they want to talk about, some comments, questions. We had a pretty thorough meeting last night, and I thought we put together a pretty strong list of recommendations to take back to the zoning consultant. I guess I'll open it up for any comments or questions with anyone. And Paige, you weren't there, but you obviously heard about it.

[Dina Caloggero]: OK. So I was looking at the technical presentation that was given by Innis on, I think it was the 18th. And I was looking at the definition sections and then comparing it to the dimensional requirements. And I just had some questions, and Danielle and Alicia are on the call. So this is wonderful to tell me if these are good points. But I'm looking at the change to the building coverage. which is a definition that's going to be added. It looks like the change in the definition now includes the coverage includes more than just the primary residents. It includes other structures as well, like such as like a porch or it could be a garage or a shed.

Is that correct? Is that why the building coverage is being increased here? And my other question about that is, will this building coverage definition apply to all future zoning, or is it just specific for Medford Square and West Medford Square?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: So I met with the building commissioner for over two hours this morning. We could talk and nerd out on zoning for hours. The only reason why I left was because I had another meeting. I was like, let's do this every week. But not there, so we met in so 1 thing that we both agreed is that it should be lot coverage, not building coverage, right? Because. Lock coverage would apply to structures that aren't buildings, right? All buildings, all buildings are structures, but not all structures or buildings. It needs to be lot coverage because that is what we're. We already have a section that goes through all the different, uh, lot definitions. And then there was coverage of lot, which was separate from all the other lot things. It was hard to find. So we think it needs to be lot coverage and that would include primary structure, accessory structures, and, um, porch. Yeah. So porches and then it would have like any, Yeah, ADUs count, that's an accessory structure. And the question was whether uncovered decks would count. So apparently the engineering department counts those as impervious and they trigger compliance with stormwater regs. And I've seen in zoning, you know, in different places I've worked, sometimes decks count towards lot coverage and sometimes they don't. But I think to be consistent with the stormwater regs that we would need to include. Uncovered decks as part of lock coverage. Okay, because I think that we're going to start bumping up against being in conflict with that.

[Dina Caloggero]: No, I like the definition. I think it makes sense. And the other question I had is, are we considering that this particular definition, which is basically lot coverage, will it apply to future zoning as well? Yes, it would be citywide because it's an updated section.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so it's an update to section 12, which is definitions for the entire.

[Dina Caloggero]: So Danielle, this would be one of those definitions that we talked about last night that's extremely important to define, right? Extremely important. As part of Method Square, right? Because we don't want to run into the issue again with law coverage, right?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yes. And then also, Christian is going to work on making sure that every use in the table is defined. And if it isn't, then we need to define it. That's also something that cannot wait. We cannot have uses and a use table in zoning that's not defined, then it's not finished. We can't pass unfinished zoning.

[Dina Caloggero]: I completely agree. And it will just take a little time to find things move on. I'm so with you. I do think the changes to the ground floor active frontage is excellent. It gives lots of different changes that, you know, options as well. The only other question I looked at, we are asking NS to define daylight minimums. And the other thing I was looking at, I was really nerding out here too, so there. I like numbers.

On the possible changes in section 9441, the table of dimensions, the setbacks are 0 to 20. And I'm just wondering how that's possible when you look at, I think it's number 6. that talks about the front setbacks. So the maximum setback's 20, right? But I have to have a 12-foot sidewalk. That's if I'm a new developer. If it's an empty lawn, I'm going to make it 12 feet, right? But if, like, let's say I already have a lot, like, let's say it's CVS down the square. And say the sidewalk is 8 feet, then I have to, put an additional 12 feet on my property to make sure that that sidewalk is up to the 20. So I don't think it should be zero.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: No, no, it's that the side. You froze. So if there is an existing eight foot sidewalk in front of your building, right? And you're putting a building there, you would then move your building back at least four feet so that the public sidewalk would be 12 feet. So in that case, your minimum setback is four feet. Because you have to give us four feet to make our sidewalk 12 feet wide. If you wanted to go back a little further, you could, but it has to be like public realm space, like, because you want to go back 10 or 15 more feet. and put in some tables and chairs, that's acceptable.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: But you couldn't just put, you couldn't push it back and put a parking spot there. That would not be allowed.

[Dina Caloggero]: Right, I have to give the four feet so the sidewalk is 12 feet, okay.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right, but you don't make another 12-foot sidewalk, you just have to make sure So like the CVS on High Street, that sidewalk may very well be 12 feet there.

[Dina Caloggero]: I was like walking down there and I said, how big is this sidewalk? But the ones surrounding City Hall are probably closer to six feet.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right. So they would be four feet on my property. You would have to push in the grass and give more space to the public sidewalk.

[Dina Caloggero]: Right, but that would still be the property owner would own the four feet of the sidewalk, right? Got it.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: And I'm told that's something we could work out, because people go, oh, they're going to freak. But I'm told it can be worked out.

[Dina Caloggero]: So 0 to 20, because it could already be 12, so it's 0. Or if I want to make it larger, it could be 20, if I wanted to make a plaza. But if my sidewalk's only eight feet, four feet of my property goes to the sidewalk. I got it. And that's about all the nerding out I did.

[Chair Doug Carr]: That's plenty. Other comments or questions from last night, follow ups, anything we need to do? Anyone else?

[Dina Caloggero]: Well, the other thing I just wanted to say, too, I was at the senior center presentation. And I did know that there was people writing comments. And I don't know who collected them. I forget, because it was like lots of discussion with a lively group.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I got them today. You have them. Excellent. OK. No, I didn't. Innis had taken them. And so what they actually did was they transcribed them. And so after our request last night, and I shot them an email, I got a memo from them today that I only opened up enough to skim just to make sure, like, So they actually took the cards, scanned them in, and then typed the words under it. So they took the time to decipher what was written on them.

But I wanted to actually look at the whole thing, because I feel like, appropriately, like, am I giving you all the whole memo? But I haven't read the memo. So I need to read it.

[Dina Caloggero]: No, I'm just glad that you got them. You got them. Yeah, at that meeting. Yeah, because they were quite a very engaging group.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: And was it clear to everybody, I think this is sort of a little bit off topic, but we have been asked, we being the people who are negotiating the transom deal, which frankly, at this point is the mayor and myself with a bunch of consultants and lawyers, that Pam has been keeping record of how many people drive to the senior center, and that it's averaging 50 people a day, it's higher for special events. So what we're asking transom is 50 spots, for seniors and the current plan is that the area across from the senior center closest to the river will actually be an open parking lot for senior parking and the grocery store. And that building there will be up against Riverside Ave, but that there will be a parking lot right there because there's this refrain happening that seniors are gonna be forced to walk two blocks to a parking lot.

If there's an event and there are 100 people have driven to the senior center, then yes, some people will have to walk a little further. It's only one block because you only cross one street. So that's one block, not two.

[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah. I mean, you know, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle there, you know, I think. And, you know, I don't know if the senior centers open the weekends. I don't know if there's a time. OK. They're open nine to four. Yeah. I was thinking that I was thinking of that, too. I was I was thinking about the time.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, I just didn't want I really felt the need to call that rumor because it's making me crazy.

[Chair Doug Carr]: All right, John, before I go to you, I want to sort of, I should have said this at the beginning, but this is just if anyone's listening in, this is not a continuation of the hearing that we had last night. So we'll not be taking any public comments if you have any. If anyone has any comments, they can submit the comment through the city board's public comment form, which can be found on the agenda in a text in the net. Attend the next joint public hearing, which is gonna be on March 25th, 2026. This is just an internal conversation, but we're not, the hearing is not part of this commentary. To that, go ahead, John Anderson.

[John Anderson]: Thank you. In order to keep the whole Medford Square thing moving, I want to make sure that we're able to have a really productive discussion next time about the use of overlays as a way of strengthening what we can do with Medford Square and beyond. And I spoke to Emily Enis at the end of the meeting that was a complete bust where the technology failed us. And I said, you know, how about overlays? And she said, well, we can have a conversation about that.

But mostly it's used to expand the usages, not so much about the buildings themselves. And I think we can use it more broadly than that. And I would encourage our staff to encourage them to give us as broad an objective view as is possible.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Could we actually discuss this for just one minute? Because I think there's a little bit of confusion about what an overlay is and why you would use it. In my experience, an overlay occurs when you have zoning, many districts, and you want to do something different that might go across a lot of districts or just a subset of the district that You might like, I think they mentioned an affordable housing overlay is one that tends to be pretty common as a usage type, but it's like zoning that already exists when you're actively changing and it's because you don't want to change the base zoning. Right now, we are changing the base zoning. So why wouldn't, whatever it is that we think would go into the overlay, why wouldn't we just put it in the zoning? Like, what is it? So it's not that the overlay is magic.

The overlay might be, so one thing is that we're talking about an overlay for these three parcels, and part of that is because we can adopt it quickly. We want to change the base zoning that exists, and we want to put it into place and fix it so it doesn't change anymore so that they can start moving on those pieces. I'm trying to understand, what would you say? Because I liked one of the ideas came up. Well, you could get an extra story if you keep the existing historic facade of a historic building. So you don't need an overlay for that. You just make that one of the incentives anywhere in Medford Square, anywhere in MX1, 2B, whatever those letters and numbers are. that they could use this incentive to keep that. If we weren't doing anything to Medford Square zoning, you might say, let's put on an overlay that anywhere in this area, you can get an incentive if you redevelop, blah, blah, blah. But we are changing it. Just put it right in the base zoning.

You can't And maybe Daniel can check me out, because I feel like I'm going to say something broad. You can't put something in zoning that says, this building's not allowed to be torn down. You can't put a bill like, so what you can do is say, here's your maximums. And in these conditions, you can do more. In these conditions, you can do less. So I'm trying to understand what you would put in zoning that would be the historic protection, other than the incentive one that we just discussed. I'm trying to.

[Chair Doug Carr]: It's a great question, Alisa. And part of the reason we're struggling with it is that we've been raising this meeting after meeting after meeting.

[Chair Doug Carr]: No, not you, but the zoning expert. has been hearing this for five meetings and I still have yet to hear a single idea other than you know like we'll talk about it.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So the one that she did give is the reason for that zone 1b is that that's only four stories and that's a very historic area along the river and that disincentivizes redevelopment, because it's really not much more than is already there.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Yeah, but they just asked, the city chamber just asked that that go up a zone in their letter last night.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: They are not arguing for historic preservation. I know they're not.

[Dina Caloggero]: Well, one of the buildings in that area is a beyond recognition that was developed as part of the MX-1B. Yeah, I mean, it's just the corner.

[Chair Doug Carr]: I'm concerned, Alicia, that the incentive zoning that we have doesn't appear to be tied in any way to historic at all.

[Chair Doug Carr]: I like adding the one about- Yeah, but they already have it in the zoning. Every zoning district has an extra floor or two in some cases as an incentive. That historic preservation or keeping the existing building is not currently part of that incentive.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I think we're asking them to do that. I think you make the recommendation that it should be added to the incentive.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: And the incentive just can't be an extra story because that's not the what they need. Sometimes it might be the parking. It might be waving parking. It might be green score law coverage. All the incentives are for height and that doesn't make any sense to me.

[John Anderson]: Well, my understanding is that use of an overlay is a good way to establish design review for an area of special concern, whether it be historic or there are cultural aspects of the particular overlay that you want to protect. And that design review can be more directed towards specific goals. Then just adding some incentives to zoning.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yes, I can see. I can see having an overlay that would span multiple sub districts and say, like, the high street quarter of the square.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Yeah, I actually, I can distribute it after this meeting, but I drew what I thought an overlay that would cover most of the historic buildings, but leave most of the square alone, which I can distribute to you, Danielle, later on. It's just a first pass idea.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: Yeah, I don't know how that works then. Usually it has to be, unless you're doing like what's a floating, yeah.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Yeah, absolutely. And please, by all means, tell me what you think of it. Go ahead, Dina, and then we'll do Paige after.

[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, Doug, that's exactly what you're saying is what I thought we discussed last night on that list that Zach Beers proposed to go to Ennis with the use of the overlay to preserve a lot of these historical districts. And I think that's what Miss DuPont also presented, right?

[Dina Caloggero]: I think the local historic district takes quite some time. So the use of the overlay would assist in preserving the buildings. That was my understanding.

[John Anderson]: And I do believe that the critique of the historic district, the critique that it can tend to ossify, has some validity. Whereas if you have a design view process, you can be more flexible and say, yes, you can make changes to the facade of the building. but it has to complement the rest of the neighborhood, not clash with it.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Yeah, just take a look at what I have on screen. I've shaded in contiguous areas. There's four different areas here that I thought would cover most of the historic buildings in the square. And I left out a couple, like the armory, because I thought that would be its own single building district. But I tried to carry all of St. Joe's to Grace Church, plus across the street as one zone. where you could cover a huge amount there. I like John's idea of design review because that puts it in a different category. You're not just giving away something, whether it's parking, but you're trying to control the design to a higher degree than you can in a lot that's, say, in the eastern part of the square. So these are just some ideas of what the zones, the Old Benford High School, the post office, you know, the building on the corner and a couple of those apartment buildings, and a big little block and stuff going back to the cinema. And then this block down here we're talking about, which is currently four stories that the chamber wants five.

You know, I guess I want to have flexibility, you know, but I also want to have pretty strong ability, especially now that we're hearing that St. Joe's is actually going to close for the latest news, right, Paige? That could be on the market pretty soon. It's a vast area.

[Page Buldini]: I was just going to ask the board, is that confirmed? I've been hearing that. I don't know if we can confirm that or not. So that was a question I had. When it comes to the chamber, I'm not going to speak for the chamber, but I think it had to do the height was also about equity. So I'm not going to speak to that. But yes. And my question is also that I had, so sorry that I couldn't have been there. But they were posed for Emily to hopefully find that information for us too, because it had to do with incentivized zoning. So is that something that we perhaps, like we were just recommended, are we going to Do we write those up if we want those to be made into motions? How does that work?

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Did you see the final motion that came out of last night? I can forward it to you if you haven't. Thank you. Because I just want to make sure about that. It was sent to Emily and Paola and Grant immediately last night. I think actually, I'm checking my email. I think it was Zach that actually sent it last night. Yeah.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Yeah, Paige, it's my understanding that within as little as 10 days, that a draft of what they're proposing to take all these comments into consideration should be circulated. Now, if everyone's thrilled with that, then in theory, we could pass that on the next meeting on March 25th. I suspect that won't be possible, but I'm hopeful. But there are a lot of ideas there. Some of them are, you know, are zoning and some of them are not, but she's going to take everything she can. And we asked for ideas, you know, like maybe there's more than one plan that she's going to present that tries to achieve some of these ends. We don't know until she puts something in front of us and then we can debate it and we'll see, are we ready or not? And I suspect given the complexity of the parking request and the historic and the ability to have a combination of historic district, local historic district, and overlay zoning, that alone could be two or three different maps potentially. I agree. Then I would not want to vote on that myself without the public at least having a chance to chime in on it and the chamber as well. Does this achieve? No one ever gets everything they want, I don't want to put a plan on the table and say you have 10 minutes to give your comments. That doesn't seem fair for something this big. So there's definitely a lot of, the next step is Emily's, but it's on ours, I think, to decide if we think it's enough and it's the direction we want to go in.

[Page Buldini]: Great. Thank you. And I just think I got confirmation from a parent of a St. Joe's student that, yes, the school is closing.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: They had a meeting Tuesday night with parents. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt to say that. They had a meeting Tuesday night with parents to tell the parents.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: That is my understanding, but I didn't get it in that many words. Just that there was a parent meeting Tuesday night to tell the parents about the school closing.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: A little late for them to make alternative plans. The same thing to their students, they didn't want people jumping ship or applying to other schools or people not to apply and attend such a lousy way to.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So, anyhow, that so I think it's worthwhile thinking, like, when you look at that. There's the church, which is actually joint with St. Francis now, the two parishes, they're maintaining that. There's the rectory. How important is that, the look and feel of that school? Is that what you wanna maintain there? Like, I feel like we need the coming, we need people. And is that, should those be new storefronts? What if somebody wanted to put a Bodeborg in there, right? Like, what is the look and feel? I feel like we've talked about like, There's the recreation. We've tried to work to get the recreation center gym cafeteria at St. Francis for the Mystic Valley Y and Medford Rec. We worked on it for several years and we could not get the diocese to agree to the terms to lease it because it involved a bunch of renovations including asbestos removal and new heating upgrades. And we couldn't get them to agree to terms.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: And no one's going to no YMCA or Boys and Girls Club is going to sign a short lease after. dumping a million bucks into a building.

[Chair Doug Carr]: I see that site as a tremendous housing opportunity. It's so big, it can be accessed from the riverside. I'm not sure of the street retail potential there. I think the retail is gone by then, but I would entertain the idea. But I think a couple of hundred units easily could go on that site with parking on that site.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: When you think about the protections and the historic protections, How important, because it changes the finances for that project.

[Page Buldini]: Just real quick. Did we get confirmation about, I think, the Irish Diocese with affordable housing? I think that was discussed the last meeting I was on.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So that is a bill that the governor proposed to the state legislature to allow It's not archdiocese, but to allow churches and non-profits to build affordable housing on their properties. Yeah, it's called Yes and God's Backyard, I think.

[Page Buldini]: That's a funny name, but I'd be interested with St. Joe's to see, especially because what just Doug said, it's like perfect space and affordable housing could be there. I think that'd be great. That is a wild name for it though.

[Sean Beagan]: There's enough empty rectories alone without doing any building to house thousands of people, I bet.

[Chair Doug Carr]: I bet. The 1929 building is worth preserving and could easily be converted to apartments, but the gym and all the stuff behind is like, I think that's open season for what creative change could go on there that I think would be a tremendous asset to Medford.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: And I'm not sure I'm off the top of my head, the one that the big brick one that that says St. Joseph social center. Yeah, that's what they're most likely to want to keep.

[Dina Caloggero]: Well, they have like bazaars, and they have church things, yeah. I mean, parish centers are kept even at St. Raphael's, and there's still one established at St. Clement.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Well, they may change their mind when someone offers them $2 million for that site.

[Chair Doug Carr]: They have a basement church, St. Joseph's church I went to as a kid.

[Sean Beagan]: If you've never been in St. Joseph's, they have a basement that's the size of the upper church.

[Ari Fishman]: The church itself. Oh, I don't want to see a repeat of the discussion we had with changing the old nuns quarters into a woman's shelter that was really ugly and dispiriting. And I hope that this will be a lot more enthusiastic from the neighborhood.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I haven't opened it. But there was so there's an email list of mass planners were professional plant where Massachusetts planners, staff, consultants, exchange ideas. And there was recently a, like literally in the last 24 hours, discussion about Dover uses and Dover uses for shelters. And somebody from the attorney general's office chimed in and said that they had a guide for municipalities on that and they literally sent it today. So I haven't opened it yet, but why don't I, Danielle and I can circulate it to you all because it's like literally I actually said, hey, I actually said specifically we had a situation and it would be helpful to have it.

And the woman from the attorney's general's office also said that she would be happy to talk directly with our staff about these kinds of issues. Because basically I was saying it came up, it's closed, but I'd love to have the guidance for the next time it comes up.

[Chair Doug Carr]: All right. Are there any other topics or comments people want to make about last night, zoning in general, next steps, et cetera? Go ahead, Joan.

[John Anderson]: Uh, I mean, I think we're all tired, but I would like to throw another issue on the table that we have to address at some point. And that is how far can we go with retail in Medford square? Um, you know, when we talk about, Oh, that would be a great spot for retail. And someone else says, well, I think, you know, I think I want a bank. What's that?

[John Anderson]: There's some limit. Down at Assembly Row, I was talking to some of the staff who worked in one of the restaurants, and I said, where do all these people come from? And it's not just the people who live upstairs. There are actually people who get on the train and come out to the suburbs to eat. But as we know, Bedford Square's public transportation is not as robust. So there is some limit, unless you wanna just build more and more parking garages so that people can drive here. At some point, there has to be, I think, a master economic development plan that feeds into what we're doing. But enough to know.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: We've been doing some economic development We've had some consultants, so two things on that. One, we do have a report from one of our consultants that we actually wanted to read and went on to have the mayor read before we release it publicly. So it just went into her hands. We do like to give her the opportunity to read documents before the public gets them. She's not surprised by anything. And then we have the next meeting, We have the Wellington Transformation Group Consulting Group Agency to come back and talk to all. And part of their work is economic development. It's not Medford Square specifically, it's specifically around Wellington, but it does talk some to the city in general. And I think they have some, a lot of, I saw a draft of their presentation. And they have a lot of really good information that I think will be very educational to this board. Looking at cost benefit analysis of, you know, a house versus townhouses versus condos versus multifamily, you know, how many, about bringing in taxes versus the revenue that comes in versus the drain on city services, city services and stuff. So they've actually done that analysis specifically for Medford. And then again, also for commercial retail and industrial. So they're getting that cleaned up and to present to you all in two weeks. And so I think that'll be super helpful along the lines of what you're looking for.

[Page Buldini]: Alicia, I'm excited because when your PD office and Danielle, when you hosted that event, I got to speak directly. Kate was with me, and they had the monopoly board. I know that Laura O'Neill, the chamber executive director, spoke directly, and I'm blanking on who in the specific report. But it actually shared the information of the number of Medford residents that are actually Medford business owners, which was shocking, because it's way lower as a resident and business owner. So I think being mindful of that, too, is important, right? Because, John, to speak to what you're saying, retail can only go so far, and mixed use is so important. But we also want to make sure we're supporting the current businesses, and we're being mindful that we do need We need to fill the commercial spaces. I'm forgetting the name of the report. I can probably try to find it because I know that Laura had it, but it was super helpful. So that group was great. So I'm very excited. One thing that I learned, too, was the raised walkways. I know Wellington is a little different, but that idea and the thoughtfulness of a safer walkable space was pretty cool, too.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So and they will have some transportation information as well. We're also talking so we just started talking this week, they want to do another public facing event. And so that is the inspiration for Kayla to actually organize another open house to pull in all the different like studies and projects and things that we have going on. So she was just working to schedule that. specifically so that people will come and see the stuff that agency is doing, but we were just working through the dates between staff and the agency consultants on something. Look, very late March or early April is where I think we're aiming, sometime before the spring vacation week.

[Chair Doug Carr]: There was, I don't know if anyone had an opinion about the specific request from the chamber about changing that zoning from the four to five stories. That's a specific request that they made that I presume Inez will now take under advisement in the larger context of historic buildings, et cetera. I don't know if this group has had a chance to think about it, If you agree with it, again, it may be tied to other incentives, other things that we may want to control, whether it's design review, overlay zoning, historic building. I don't know. So there's a lot of what ifs there, but I thought I'd just put that out there because it's something that I think will come up at that meeting. Go ahead.

[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, when I was looking at the zoning map, even before seeing the chamber, I actually asked Emily in the status. I said, why is that zoned differently? And then I looked at the historical assessment that she did, which was quite good. And that Medford Old Fellows block has been altered beyond recognition, number one, right? So then you're just left with the city building on the corner. So just create a very uniform level or zoning in all those, the area, it's just that one piece. It doesn't make sense to me to keep it at the MX1. And then, you know, again, you're just increasing the amount of residential units again. I guess that's the name of the game here, right?

[John Anderson]: Go ahead, John Anderson. Yeah. One thing to keep in mind also, though, is the riverscape. If you walk across the Craddock Bridge there and look down the river, it's really quite an amazing view. And I would hate to see it developed in such a way that it, you know, has a sort of, well, this to exaggerate a sort of Miami Beach look, you know, where there's all this stuff built up right against the water. And it's actually a nice view in both directions. It's really something remarkable. And if you're out there on a kayak, you'd think you were somewhere else.

[Dina Caloggero]: Oh, no, I did. I went on the Kratik Bridge, and I looked at it. And I also noticed a lot of the walls are crumbling. There's a lot of deterioration around that area of the foundation. So any enhanced development of the Method Square area in particular around that MX1B spot would be welcomed.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I'm just going to give you something to think about. If they're in their zoning, is base zoning and heights and then allowed heights, incentive heights, if you take the incentives. If you make the height too high, the base, no one will go after the incentives that you want. And so you need to think about that strategically. What are the right bases and then incentive heights to allow? Like maybe you want to keep the base height in that area lower, but allow more with incentives and add in the historic. And I do actually agree that you should think about, like just over the next week or so, the incentives really that have been put forward are heights and it's heights really what developers want. We're like, we literally, there was a point where the city council said to transom, how high do you want to go? If we made this 12 stories and whatever, I think their highest building they're proposing is eight. And they're like, we don't want to go higher than that.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: They're not going to use any incentives. They don't need them. So we have to be careful, don't give away the store.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: And so there are some incentives around, you know, parking off site, parking, less parking for the historic is one of the things. less parking for more affordable, we actually already give that. Because if you do affordable housing, each unit is only half a spot under the current Medford wide zoning, as opposed to the 1.5 or 0.8, whichever is applying in the district. So think about are there other things and actually Doug, I would look to you or Sean, people who work with these developers or these building owners, are there things that we, you know, would be okay with giving them to get some of the benefits, the more affordability, the historic preservation, what are the benefits that we want? And by the way, I agree with you, let's take the fountains out of there. It's- Yeah, let's take the fountains. We have a river. We have a river. Thank you. Let's all walk to the river.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I'm just going to tell you that Emily and Paola have asked to meet with me and Danielle on Monday. So I just sent them times that Danielle and I are both free on our calendar. So we are planning to be really actively moving this forward. You are welcome. You're not welcome to deliberate in public outside of these meetings. You are welcome to send us individually email. If you have, if you wake up with a brilliant thought or a question, you please reach out to us.

[Page Buldini]: Sorry, real fast. Sorry to keep everybody. I'm planning on going to that planning seminar. So thank you. I think Dina is too.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: No, just don't talk about things that are open in front of you. Don't talk about Medford Square zoning. Okay, now add it to each other.

[Dina Caloggero]: Or if you're both we will pay attention to our cutter off in the lunch line. Don't worry about it.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: I saw there was a form a form based zoning session that you were signed up for Dina. That's really interesting.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right page, send me your registration and we'll pay for it. Don't don't use your credit card. Send it to me. We'll cut them a check. If they ever reply to us, we need to get their W four.

[John Anderson]: Go ahead, John. Yeah, I have a question for Alicia. I understand we shouldn't sort of be deliberating with emails going back and forth, but how about sending information? For example, suppose I found an interesting article on some particular subject relevant to zoning and sent it around to the board. Would that be?

[Director Alicia Hunt]: The safest thing is to send it to us. And then we'll, we can put out like educational materials to the board or we can put it in the online packet. Like we can put it in your packet and we can make it available to the public that it's right. Okay.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Very good. All right, I think I'll move on to the minutes. Has anyone had a chance to look at the minutes? I guess the words put in front of us is the back from December 3rd, some time ago. I'd be impressed if everyone could remember what that meeting was at this point. But if you're OK, I'll ask for a motion to accept the minutes. So moved. Second. Second. Very good, roll call, John Anderson. Yes. John Megan. Yes. Page Buldini.

[Chair Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. Motion passes six to nothing. Danielle or Alicia, are there any other admin updates or anything we need to talk about?

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: I just want to say that I am going to send a Mullen form and link to yesterday's public hearing for Paige to listen to and submit. And Ari, that reminds me that you also need to listen to the first meeting of 360 Salem and sign a Mullen form because Christian brought to my attention that you weren't at that one. So we'll send that to you. Awesome.

[Senior Planner Danielle Evans]: The link to the video. Yeah. So Christian found the link to the video and he also when exactly when it starts. So you don't have to look for it. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. And thank you to everybody who replied so quickly with your cell phone numbers so that we would have them in the event. If anybody didn't see that email, Um, take a look for basically Danielle and I like to have them. So if you're, if you're late and we need quorum, we can text and say like, are you coming or are we canceling this meeting? Um, and if somebody has a technical problems and I included my cell phone number in that. Um, so if anybody, if you're ever running late for, put it in your cell phone. And if you're like, I was coming and I can't and I'm not, or something happens, you can always text one of us and let us know what's going on.

We find it very helpful. And I realized that I did not have that for all of this board. I think I've heard from everyone.

[Chair Doug Carr]: All right. I think we're good for this evening. I'll ask for a motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn.

[Chair Doug Carr]: Jump all over it, folks. All right, John Anderson. Yes. Sean Began. Yes. Page Buldini.

[Chair Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. Thank you all. Two meetings and two nights, well done. Everyone get some rest, and we'll see you in two weeks.

Page Buldini total time: 4.16 minutes total words: 788