[Marie Izzo]: Okay, we're good to go on the live stream. All right, we have quorum on the city council side. We do as well.
[Zac Bears]: All right, we'll call the meeting to order. Special meeting, special joint meeting, the Medford City Council and Community Development Board. We didn't let the public in.
[Marie Izzo]: March 31st.
[Zac Bears]: I got it. 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll for the city council.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Callahan is not here. Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Malayne. Councilor Malayne is not here. Councilor Scarpelli. Present. Councilor Tseng. He says he can't unmute. Yeah, I gotta, I don't think he's set up yet. Hold on. Let's see, Justin, where is he?
[Justin Tseng]: Present.
[Marie Izzo]: You should be good to go. Great, thanks. Got it. Vice President Lazzaro.
[Zac Bears]: Let's see, Emily, and President Bears. Present, four present, three absent. The meeting is called to order. Council Member Lane notified me that she is running a little late, and Anna and Emily are at the middle school lottery info session. They have kids going into middle school. Turn it over to you, Doug, for the roll call for the Community Development Board.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, roll call for the Community Development Board. John Anderson. Present. Sean Began. Present. Page Buldini.
[Dina Caloggero]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Colagaro.
[Dina Caloggero]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman.
[Dina Caloggero]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, present. Back to you City Council President Bears. You're muted.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll start with records. The records of the special joint meeting, March 25th, 2026 were passed to Councilor Leming. So the vote for the City Council on the records from last week's meeting. Is there a motion? Motion to approve. On the motion to approve by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. Mayor, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan's absent, Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malayne is absent at the moment. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes, sir. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Nazaro's absent at the moment. President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, for, in the affirmative, three absent, the motion passes. So for today's meeting we have three items. We are going to start with the public hearings. We have two public hearings today. One is on the continued public hearing for Medford Square. At our last meeting we agreed to hear additional public comment on the proposed Medford Square ordinance and I believe Once that is concluded, the City Council, as we indicated in the plan last week, the City Council will vote to close the public hearing for the City Council. The Community Development Board will continue to its April 15th meeting, where they will incorporate the changes we discussed last week from Innes Associates. And then we will hold the final vote by the City Council at the end of March. So that's the first thing. The second thing is a public hearing on the proposed amendments to the Medford zoning ordinance for the Medford Square City Hall overlay district, which is related to the transom project that has been done in partnership with the city. And then finally, we do have an updated meeting schedule for April, May and June to discuss. Those are the three items here. And with that, I will take up paper 26023, which is the public hearing on the Medford Square zoning. And I'll turn it over to Chair Carr, I think, if there's anything you need to add for the public hearing element for the Community Development Board, and then we can hear from the members of the public about the Medford Square zoning.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you City Councilor, President Bears. I just echo what Councilor Bears just said. We're going to continue the public hearing tonight as discussed for the Medford Square zoning. Then we'll do the overlay and then again our next meeting on the 15th. We anticipate being the meeting that would close the public hearing as previously discussed last week. So I don't think there's much new ground to cover on that procedurally. So I'd like to, if we could, turn it back to you and we'll move on to the first agenda item.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Awesome. Thank you, Chair Carr. So we'll start with Paper 26023, which is the public hearing for the proposed amendments to the Medford Zoning Ordinance, Chapter 94, Medford Square. Give me one second. We are going to hear from members of the public. If there are any councillors who want to speak before that, I will recognize them. Matt, I saw you had a hand up. No, no. Great. So I will open the public hearing, and we're all on Zoom, so no need to alternate between in-person and on Zoom for this one. But I will recognize members of the public who should be able to start their video now. And then once I recognize you, I will unmute you, and I will start a three-minute time. And you will have three minutes to share your public comment. So I'll start with Sheila Ahrens. You can provide your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes. I'll start your time once you've unmuted Sheila. I requested that you unmute.
[Sheila Ehrens]: Okay, 19 Sagamore Park. So I wanted to just add to the discussion because I should have spoken up last week and I didn't. And I wanted to just echo what Doug had said. I think a design review is a very, very important component of any of the zoning ordinances. I think visually how our squares are going to look is, important as far as whether people are going to want to hang out there and be there. And once any sort of renovation is done, that's the end of it. You can't really go back. So I think we really have to be very mindful and very methodical about how we move forward and really hold the bar high, like many of the more wealthier communities do. because they want their areas to look beautiful, and they're not going to settle for second best. So I think that's important, as well as maybe to talk, I know with Transom, they're donating $250,000 for art, and they're going to do murals and sculptures. and I'm wondering if that's something that we could propose to any developer that's going to come in and do some renovations that they donate money again for art and sculptures and general beautification like I think You know planters and planting flowers you go to Arlington and during the summer they have beautiful planters in all of the squares and then during the winter they have greens and beautiful you know. bulbs and greens and I think those are the things that really make a place really special and it draws people in. So I think it's just as important as the rezoning process is to create a place that people really want to hang out and be. I was in Malden about a month ago on Commercial Street, and they've done a beautiful job with the renovation. And it really felt like I was honestly in downtown Boston. It was so busy. There were so many people walking around and actually no place to park. So that's where I was thinking about parking. I know we don't want to encourage cars to be in our spaces, but I'll tell you, everybody was parking. We had to drive around for 10 minutes or else we would have had to have taken an Uber, which is expensive. They've created something in Malden and we're similar communities. It was exciting to be there and I really would like to see our squares. offering that same sort of vibrancy that Malden does. And I think that that's a good comparison. So thank you. And thank you for all that you guys have done.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Sheila. And apologies, I forgot to change the sound on the timer. So thank you for the comment. I appreciate it. If there's anyone else who'd like to speak in the public hearing for the Medford Square zoning, please raise your hand. We do have one hand up, so we'll go to Jeremy Martin. Jeremy, if you could give us your name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[Jeremy Martin]: Good evening, everyone. Jeremy Martin, 65 Burgett Avenue. I know I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record on this, but I hope that some counts. I think there are a couple of Councilors who were at the urban forestry presentation last night, and I hope more of you will find a way to learn about that project. It painted a pretty dire picture, I think, for our urban canopy, urban tree canopy. both related to natural decline of trees, but especially acute losses from development projects of all types. And I just want to come back to the importance of considering the public realm and holding a high standard for the public realm in our zoning. We heard from the presenter last night that one of the best tools to ensure new projects, whether they're commercial or residential, that new projects are including sufficient tree planting and well-designed public spaces in their projects. I think if you look at Somerville and Cambridge and many of the other communities around us that have been thinking about this and working on it much longer than we have, they have strong site plan review requirements and strong controls on what developers can and can't do with existing trees or what they have to do with new trees. And I think even our own staff in Medford have acknowledged that our site plan review is not at the place that it should be. And so while I understand that everyone's ready to get this piece of business on and out into the world, and I very much support that, I just want to advocate again for a prompt and thorough follow up with plans for really making a more robust site plan review and design review, as others have suggested, because it won't take long for people to start acting on this zoning. And I would hate to see us really see ourselves set back in the quality of the spaces around buildings because we rushed to get this out without considering those implications. And I know you all have worked on it a lot, and I don't mean to suggest that it is being rushed, but I do think that there is some more that we could be doing and should be doing to make sure that not just the building scale and size, but that the urban realm and the implications for that are thoroughly considered and included in our zoning. Thank you very much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Jeremy. And I certainly don't want to speak for Doug on design guidelines and that stuff. I know that you talked about last week the work that you want to do there with the Community Development Board. In terms of trees, you know, we and the council and it we've had three ordinances under proposal, a public tree ordinance, a tree committee ordinance, and then something that was kind of incorporated into the zoning project before it came to a halt, it was brought to a halt last year, was a private tree ordinance. And there's a lot of opinions about that, but it was to update the tree provisions in our zoning ordinance to address that question of what happens to our tree canopy when development happens. And so that is, part of the zoning discussions. It wasn't included in the first round, kind of this part of the project, but I believe, you know, and I'm certainly would continue to advocate for it to be included in the RFP that's going out so that we can get that draft ordinance incorporated into our zoning. I think having zoning based protections for trees that are on private property is an important part of of our addressing our tree canopy issue and urban forest management. So that's something that the council has been working on for a long time, kind of came to a halt last year, and I'm hoping we can incorporate it as we get back on track here. And Doug, I don't know if you want to talk on the design piece of that.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I'll just mention, I really appreciate the comments from both Jeremy and Sheila, because they're spot on. Design review and beefing up the site plan review process is one of the reasons I joined the Community Development Board, because I I knew it had areas to grow and to improve. So we're going to tackle that as soon as we can come up for air on the zoning and hopefully get it done literally almost the week or the month that we pass the Medford Square zoning, because I agree with Jeremy that there will be pressure. and the better tools that we have to guide design, to guide site plan, to guide landscaping. And those should not take a long time to pull together, because they're really kind of common sense and basic, I think, in terms of their qualities.
[Zac Bears]: All right. We have one more comment. Lisa, I will recognize you. You could unmute, and you'll have three minutes. So you put your hand down. Lisa, do you want to still speak? Well, I'll ask you to unmute and you can tell us yes or no.
[Lisa Serio]: Yes, I do want to speak.
[Zac Bears]: OK, great.
[Lisa Serio]: I just put it down prematurely. I'm sorry.
[Zac Bears]: That's OK. All right, if you could just give us your name and address.
[Lisa Serio]: Yes, my name is Lisa Sario-Vinot and I live at 19 Paul Road in Medford. And I just wanted, I was thinking last Sunday when I went to this rally in a community nearby, that it's nice to have a place where you can gather as a group like in the in the city or the town square you know just kind of like a have a place to bring a lot of people together to show support for something like 250 years is celebrate is going to be celebrated this summer and I don't know what we have planned in Medford, but I wouldn't even know where you could do anything in the square in Medford. We used to always meet at Gaffey's with Paul Revere Day and stuff, but I don't even know where you can do anything. So I hope that when you're modernizing the square, that you think about places where we can meet as a group to either rally or celebrate. because I don't even know where you can do that, the hatchet, you know, like down by the water in back of St. Joe's. I mean, where can you meet as a group? I don't know. I don't even know where a green space is. So anyway, that's all. That's what I was thinking about when I was out on Sunday and I said, where are we doing things in Medford? Like where do we do rallies and stuff? I don't know. So that's all I wanted to say, just to keep that in mind, that when you meet as a group, you usually have a church nearby, a library nearby, and a greenfield nearby, and you meet up. I thought for sure, like Riverside Square, where that parking lot is, oh, maybe you could meet up there. But that's all going to be developed. So you can't meet up there. So where are you going to meet up? I don't know. Anyway, that's it.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right, is there anyone else who'd like to speak in the public comment portion on the Medford Square zoning before we move ahead? Please raise your hand on Zoom. All right, I see Tom Lincoln. Tom, name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes. We can hear you and we can see you.
[Tom Lincoln]: Okay, okay, I can't even see myself, forgive me. Just one comment having to do with the, echoing here, with the zoning generally. There was a meeting last night about the tree canopy in Medford, and I won't go into the details, but you can see that it's an issue, certainly something a lot of us are trying to improve. I don't know, what's in there right now in terms of the Medford Square plan, but something that would encourage people to plant trees, something that would be both maybe a carrot and a little bit of a stick on that issue I think would be good for Medford Square and frankly good for the rest of the city. So that's all I have to say.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Tom. And I think, you know, in addition to the kind of the private tree ordinance zoning elements that I mentioned, there's also a green score that has already passed as part of the zoning that does include, among other things, you know, planting more trees and not removing trees and providing green benefits in general. does help you reach that maximum green score. And I believe we're doing it at the very least the carrot as well. There's the stick, which is there's a minimum, and then there's the carrot. But if you are exceeding our minimum green score and meeting an ideal green score, I believe there's incentive based zoning benefit for that as well. All right. Is there anyone else who'd like to comment on the Medford Square zoning as part of the public hearing? Seeing none, I'm going to end the public comment. And I think we have two different motions here. We'll start with the, oh, all right. You got it under the wire. Mr. Castagnetti, I will ask you to unmute if you could provide your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes. All right, floor is yours.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: I'm sorry, can you hear me?
[Zac Bears]: We can hear you, yes.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: I took the headphones off, you can hear me, yes?
[Zac Bears]: Yes.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Okay, thank you, Councilor Villes, thank you. I was thinking out loud, and I was wondering, has the city entertained the idea of taking that building in the middle parcel? to to make a clean sweep of of the lot by eminence oh man i think it's called one city hall mall it's a dentist building i'm wondering if the city had thought about that by clearing it also all be a universal look thank you thank you i think we can get a little more into that when we talk about the overlay district my understanding is that the
[Zac Bears]: They did not want to sell the building, but I think that's our next item. And maybe the folks from planning development sustainability can talk a bit more about that. All right. Is there a motion? I think we're doing two things. I think the city council, we're voting to close our public hearing and then the community development board, you're voting to continue to April 15th. So we'll start with the city council. Is there a motion to close the public hearing? Council President.
[Matt Leming]: Councilor, let me. I would, would it be an option to close the public hearing on our public hearing on the 28th? I don't know.
[Zac Bears]: I don't think so.
[Alicia Hunt]: And then vote the same night. I asked, sorry, pardon me, Mr. President, I consulted with the lawyer about that if I might. And what she said is that the city council has a rule that I forget the real number I can look it up that says that public hearing, you take written comment for six days. after you close a public hearing. That's very unusual, she said, but you can waive that rule. And then you can, in fact, close a public hearing and vote on the matter the same night, as long as you waive the rule that you continue to take public comment.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I just don't personally. You know, there's another opportunity, the Community Development Board, do you want to go into it further there? Councilor Luebbing?
[Matt Leming]: No, well it's so I guess the logic is that when we close the public hearing that kind of, that starts like a 90 day clock for the city council. And if for some reason we don't get zoning back by the end of that 90 day clock, then we would have to like restart the process all over again. So if everything, you know, if we do end up getting recommendations back by, the meeting on the 28th, which is the plan, then, you know, it wouldn't really matter. But I'm just not seeing, besides the city council rule, which we can't waive, I'm not really seeing the logic, like why we would need to close the public hearing until we needed to in case something did happen.
[Zac Bears]: I think providing clarity to the public about their opportunities to have input is important, and Um, you know, we, we came up with a plan last week and I'd like to stick to it if we can. Um, you know, that's, that's my main. Main thinking 90 days from now, that's a long time. We will be good. All right. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Motion to close the public hearing. On the motion to close the public hearing by council, let me seconded by Councilor Tseng, and I do want to note. That Councilor and Councilor Callahan have joined us if we can just make sure to make them co hosts. Also, looks like we already have great. On that motion, Mr. please call the role.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Malayne.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro absent.
[Zac Bears]: And President Bears. Yes, 16 affirmative, one absent. The motion passes, and I'll turn it over to you, Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, City Council President Bears. I'm gonna ask for a motion to continue the public hearing to our next Community Development Board hearing, which I believe is April 15th. So moved. Second.
[Page Buldini]: Second.
[Doug Carr]: All right, I'll do the roll call. John Anderson. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself. Yes. The motion passes six to zero back to you. City council president bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you chair car. All right. Um, our next item is paper 26058 submitted by Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn, public hearing proposed amendments to the Medford Zoning Ordinance, chapter 94, Medford Square City Hall overlay district. So we did talk about this a little bit at our previous meeting last week, and this is the proposed overlay district for the parking lots behind City Hall for the project that the city has been working on with the Transom Real Estate folks. So I will turn it over to Director Hunt from Planning, Development and Sustainability to kind of just provide any context, and then I believe we'll receive a presentation. Then we can move to questions from the City Council and Community Development Board, and then we will open it up for public comment. So I will go to Director Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great, thank you, Mr. President. While I know everybody on these boards have heard this before, just for the public, I'll state it again. There have been decades of studies of Medford Square, looking at the best uses, looking at these parking lots that the city owns on the City Hall end of Medford Square. We did a public outreach project a couple of years ago to hear from the community about community benefits they would like to see in this location if one were to redevelop these. We then got mass development to provide us with some consulting support to put these out to RFP. We put them out to RFP. We had a selection committee. Which I am afraid if I name names I'll forget everybody but did include President Bears our DPW Commissioner Tim McGivern, a representative of the chamber and the Chevalier Andrew Mather, along with President Bears in the mayor were non voting members, but myself. We're on this committee to review the proposals. There were two proposals. We chose the proposal from Transom to work with them to develop the squares. This is different from working with a regular developer because the city has checkpoints along the way because as the property owners, and to be clear, we are not selling the land, we're doing a 99-year lease. Um, but we have a say in that, and there's we're controlling the purchase price, so to speak, in this case, the lease price in order to allow for additional community benefits as part of the project. Um, and I will let, uh, the principal Peter Spellios is here of transom to speak to that in more detail and, um, Valerie Moore is with him to present as well and. We have been working through the land disposition agreements, the various agreements that go into a process like this. The mayor and I have been meeting with their team weekly for months in order to work out a lot of the details. We're getting into a good place. They are ready to begin working on their design documents that would go in front of site plan review to the CD board. And I will say that the city, the mayor has another sign off before they actually submit to site plan review. But before they start working on those site plan review documents, they need zoning to design to. And so they have come with this zoning overlay for these three parcels. And I will turn it over to Valerie and Peter to present this evening.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Director Hunt. I will recognize Peter and Valerie. I believe they both have cohost and should be able to both speak and present.
[Peter Spellios]: Good evening, Chair Bears and Chair Carr and all the members. Peter Spellius with Transom Real Estate. Thanks for making time for us to be here tonight to talk with you about this rezoning and the project generally. If it's okay with you, Chair Bears, I'll share my screen. A really brief overview to the City Councilors. This is going to be somewhat familiar to a presentation that we had several months back now, but it's an abbreviated version and I promise I'm going to keep it quick.
[SPEAKER_20]: Bear with me as I just pull up the right screen. Hold me. around my end here to make it easier. All right, so hopefully you all can see my screen at this point. Yes. Great.
[Peter Spellios]: So, I want to start again by thanking you all here and so transom real estate is a Boston based firm. The 3 principles all live and reside in the area. Medford was actually my, I've mentioned this before, was my and my wife's very first home when we got married, and next week we're celebrating our 25th anniversary, and dinner in Medford is on tap for us. So it has a warm spot in our hearts. We put together a really great team to work on this project, and it's really a reflection of the import of the properties, but I just want to point out two in particular here, and I'll talk about one in more detail later. is PCA Architecture. They were brought on specifically because of their success creating dynamic mixed-use environments, and they worked on a lot of projects. Chestnut Hill, Linfield Market, Legacy Place, a lot of dynamic places where they really made it active. It really became a destination, and we thought that that was an important tool to make sure that we're activating and bringing life to an area that hasn't had, except for vehicular purposes, much life. The second group is Beyond Walls, and you'll see in one of the graphics here, but we'll talk a little later, in terms of public art. We've asked them to join the team to really bring a lot of art and culture into the project. As Alicia said, just like the RFP was based upon reviewing and examining all the different plans that the city has worked on, our proposal that we submitted to the city and our efforts since have really been guided by those same concepts and same plans. I'm going to jump into really quickly and just focus everyone on on these 3 parking lots behind City Hall. They're known as lot A, B and C for the purposes of this project. The CD board, you'll get used to those as well, because that will be consistent how we do it. And our initial proposal for these parcels includes a total of 300 residential units spread across lot A and lot B. Lot A is also planned to have 12,500 plus or minus square feet of ground floor retail with the hope of an urban grocer being the anchor of that retail. And then on lot C is a parking garage and surface parking as well. In terms of speaking a little bit about zoning here in terms of heights, lot A, our proposal is currently at six stories. Lot B is at seven stories and lot C will be four stories in height. And I'm happy to talk more about that as we go through. This is now just taking that aerial overlay and putting it into a rendered format, just to kind of give you a sense. And I'm going to speak in a second about parking and some other things here. What really was important to us and what we continue to work on preliminarily is, how do we weave this all together? And how do we weave this together with the rest of Medford Square? And there are opportunities and there's challenges. The river is an incredible opportunity. The senior center is an incredible opportunity in creating the connectivity and complementing the vitality that exists there is a real opportunity. But there's also challenges. There's several other buildings, some of which, frankly, we anticipate are going to be there long term, that are not as dynamic. There's a parking garage on the left hand side, plan left here for the medical office building. That parking garage, we're being realistic. We're also recognizing it's probably going to be there for a period of time. And so what we're trying to do is see the challenges, see the opportunities and really view and try and create a flow for pedestrians and for vehicles to make sure that really what this project is, is a project in the round. Every side is the front door. And try and make it dynamic and try and make it interesting. I mentioned a minute ago about Beyond Walls. I'm really super excited. This is the first time they've joined a private RFP. They do a lot of work with municipalities. City of Lynn, in particular, would love during this occasion when the weather gets warm to join any of you for one of the Beyond Walls Saturday tours in Lynn mural tours. They have successfully integrated themselves in so many communities where they collaborate with neighbors and communities and stakeholders and artists and they work on really a whole theme of public art that in our view is going to extend throughout this entire project. A resident on earlier matter mentioned the fact that we made a commitment to make sure that the project includes a significant expenditure of money on this. We really view it as an essential part of any project in an area like this. We see this as frankly, part of the public architecture and creating something beautiful and interesting. So we're excited that they're going to be part of this project and really excited once this zoning is in place, we're really going to be kicking off a public dialogue and public participation process throughout the coming months. I wanted to touch briefly on parking because I know a lot of people really care about parking and there's ask 100 people about parking and you'll find 150 opinions. So I thought it was really important just to really kind of zero in a bit on parking to share what the preliminary plans call for. The result here, there'll be a little over 500 parking spaces here. This slide shows you between lot C, B and A, going top to bottom, roughly where those lots are, the parking spaces are located. and we thought it was important to disperse it throughout the project. In the parking garage itself, Lot C, I wanted to spend an extra minute here. That will include dedicated parking for City Hall staff and visitors. And there's also in the project dedicated space being made available for parking for the senior center. So it's something that the mayor from Day one has stressed the importance of supporting the senior center and making sure coming to and experiencing City Hall for all your needs is also easy to do. And then last but not least, just to give you a schedule sense of things, we are scheduled, as Alicia said, to sign the site control agreements. We're in the last day of March, so I guess I should have changed this to April, but it's going to be the first couple of days of April that those will be signed. The rezoning process, here we are tonight, and as soon as that rezoning process is done, as Alicia said, we're going to be releasing our team to really and start having some more robust conversations. We've already been reaching out and having some conversations in the neighborhood with the senior center, with other property owners, but really to do a lot more of that and to now start getting a bit more in detail and prepare a permitting package that would come before the Community Development Board. Assuming things stay on schedule by second half of 2027, we would start construction and anticipate 24 to 30-month completion schedule on that construction. I'm going to stop here. Valerie Moore from Nutter is our council, and I think, Valerie, if I'm correct, you have more detail on the overlay.
[Valerie Moore]: That's right. So I get to talk about the less exciting part of this and I don't have any pretty pictures. So I'm sorry for that. So you may be wondering at the outset, before we get into the specifics of the overlay, why are we here with an overlay when you're in the midst of rezoning Medford Square? So I wanna start by talking a little bit about why we did that. Part of the reason was that the Medford Square rezoning has been going on on its own timeline and we don't control when that might end. We needed some certainty around when zoning would be finalized for this project site so that we could advance development plans and meet the timelines that are set forward in the agreements with the city for the disposition of this property. There are also some aspects of the Medford Square zoning in its various iterations that don't really fit this proposal. And so we drafted the overlay to grant some relief from the provisions of the draft zoning that don't work for this particular project. And here we felt that an overlay was really the right path for that, because the city has far more discretionary review power over this project through the land disposition agreements with the city, then it does over a normal development project so. Before we ever get in front of the Community Development Board for site plan review, the city itself gets to review the project as part of the transfer of the parcels, so there's more ability of the city to control what happens here through that process. And so the overlay is intended to make sure that there's the flexibility in the zoning to accommodate whatever final iteration of the project, the city signs off on before we get in front of the Community Development Board. And I'll also note that the overlay ensures that as time moves forward and you make changes to the Medford Square zoning itself over time, our project continues to conform with the overlay because those same changes wouldn't be made to the overlay at the same time. So we provided a draft overlay and we did use the draft Medford Square zoning that was in place at the time as our base for drafting that. So it follows the same formatting and has a lot of the same provisions in it. It is far more slimmed down than the Medford square zoning because there are a lot of provisions in the broader Medford square zoning that we really don't need for this project. For example, there are some provisions around height bonuses, because the height of the project is proposed to conform with what's set forward in the overlay. We don't need those bonuses, so we took those provisions out. There are also some provisions that govern development next to existing residences. There are no existing residences next to these parcels, so those aren't pertinent provisions for this project. And similarly, there are some provisions around adaptive reuse of historic buildings that just are not applicable to the project itself. So we did undertake sort of a streamlining of the overlay to make sure that what's in there is really limited to kind of what we need in putting some design controls around the proposed project. So the first sections of the overlay are the use table. And really this was almost exactly the same as what's been included in the Medford Square zoning with one change from the time that The draft that was in place at that time which is we added a parking garage as a principal use that had not previously been an allowed use in the proposed Medford Square zoning but obviously that is a very important component of this project. Um, with respect, otherwise, all of the uses are the same as what was included in the, um, MS4 sub district in the Medford Square base zoning. With respect to dimensions, we did make some modifications in the dimensional table to conform to the site as we know it, and, um, what the components of this particular project look like. So for example, we clarified that things like facade buildout and active ground floor requirements don't apply to the parking garage. We felt that was particularly important here where it faces I-93. So applying those types of requirements that make more sense for other parts of Medford Square don't really make as much sense for what we are contemplating for the parking garage parcel. We did that through the use of the footnotes. That's a little bit different than what's proposed for Medford Square itself. We did modify the open space requirement to conform to what's been shown on the plans that the city has reviewed so far. So we did modify that slightly. We, because this is an overlay, one of the ways that an overlay can be written is to sort of opt in to other parts of the zoning ordinance. So we did draft a section where we specifically incorporated by reference and made the project subject to other parts of Medford zoning ordinance. So that would be the parking provisions, particularly signage, inclusionary housing, and as well as the administration section of the base zoning ordinance so that the project will continue to be subject to the same community development board site plan review process that it otherwise would have been. So the remaining sections of the zoning overlay talk about dimensional and other more qualitative criteria for the project. We modified some of those things like with respect to active frontage we added landscaping as another means to activate frontage and provide some more flexibility for this project. And we also modified the garage parking design criteria section because it wasn't entirely clear how it applied when the parking structure was a principal use. It was something that seemed to have been drafted more to contemplate how you would design accessory parking. So we did make some modifications to that to clarify that the requirements around siting of a garage don't apply to the parking. We did add in some provisions, making sure that the Community Development Board has flexibility to grant waivers from some of these design criteria. And that's in part to make sure that once we have final design plans that everyone's happy with, the community development board's empowered to approve the project that the city signs off on. So those are the main changes, and that's sort of walking through the structure of the overlay. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you all have, either about the overlay itself or about the project.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you, Peter and Valerie. So we will move to questions from members of the two bodies. I will start with the council and then once we've heard any questions from the council, I'll turn it over to you, Chair Carr. So any members of the council who have questions?
[Matt Leming]: Yes, this could be a question for PBS as much as anybody, but how could you just sort of clarify how this would interact with zoning that's. uh you know passed on the 28th the full Medford square package so would this um would this overlay kind of still be in the zoning or would it overwrite would it effectively overwrite parts of it once it were passed if it were passed earlier?
[Valerie Moore]: I can answer that in part if you'd like. The two will stand independently. So our overlay should exist on its own and would continue to be the zoning that governs the project. Yeah.
[Matt Leming]: Okay, gotcha. Yeah, and I'd like to thank you for how diplomatic you were at the beginning of your introduction when you were pointing out that we've been seriously dragging our feet in this process. But yes, it's very true that this has taken a lot of time, so I can definitely appreciate the need for having this sort of You know, accelerated accelerated part of the zoning going going through. Yeah, I think there was a meeting on this as much as as far back as. Uh, there are meetings on this going back as far as, like, March and May of last year and transom. was awarded the RFP, I believe, in May 2025. So it really has been quite a process. But yeah, thank you very much for the presentation.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. Any other questions or comments from members of the Council? Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: I'm going to be brief because Transom's been very generous, I think, to the city councilors in order in terms of letting us ask tons of questions. I know in the past I've asked a lot of questions about parking, public benefits. labor standards, et cetera. I just wanted to ditto what Councilor Leming said. This is going to be a project that's going to be very positive for the square. It's the type of catalyst that residents have been asking for. And I'm excited to see this come into fruition. And part of that is us doing our part. Um, I'm looking forward to the questions that the will have, um, for transom and for the city staff. Um, but on my end, I'm very supportive.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you. Councilor Tseng Councilor. Let me sorry. 1 additional question. Um. Logistically, how would the timeline for this one go? Is it theoretically even possible to just to pass it tonight, assuming we waive the city council rule? Or what is the fastest that this could be passed theoretically?
[Alicia Hunt]: Mr. President, do you want me to respond?
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, Director Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, so in theory, the CD board would vote a recommendation, and then the city council would hear that recommendation and close their public hearing, and then they would put this on their agenda for their next meeting, and they would vote for it at their next noticed meeting.
[Zac Bears]: So conceivably, if we close the public hearing tonight, and the Community Development Board made a recommendation, we could vote on this next Tuesday is what you're saying.
[Alicia Hunt]: If that's your next, sorry I don't have your agenda.
[Zac Bears]: That's our next regular meeting, yes.
[Alicia Hunt]: That would be allowed, you would have to waive your six day written
[Zac Bears]: Well, if we close the public hearing tonight, I think we'd be fine.
[Alicia Hunt]: So if so, and I will remind you that the that legal counsel had advised that the CD board have a clean copy of the zoning to be recommending. And so we did, there were edits that we requested to bring the version that was on the agenda in line with the version that you all had seen, and included some typographical and clerical typesetting things. And they made those changes and we circulated that to members of the two boards. My apologies if that was today or yesterday, it's a blur. And that in theory, if the board was recommending that version, they would have a clean version in front of them to recommend to you. If they are asking for any sort of significant changes, we would need to get a clean version for them to then review and vote out at their meeting on the 14th. And I noticed that Planner Evans has her hand up.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'll recognize Planner Evans.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Mr. President. I apologize that I was sick yesterday, so I'm trying to catch up a little bit. But Director Hunt, are you saying that we do or do not have a clean copy of the overlay? Because if we do, I believe, why couldn't the city council vote on it tonight then? This is their public hearing as well. So you mean actually adopt it this evening?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, yeah, why not? You know what? Let me go back and look at my notes, because I think it is. Actually, this is their public hearing.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, if it's if it's a if the six day thing is a city council rule that can be waived. So and this is a meeting of the city council. So in my, you know. Headspace, I'm thinking we could in theory, close the public hearing tonight, vote on it. If the, assuming the CD board closes their public hearing and offers the recommendation, which would be the drafts that were circulated to everybody today. If they, if both bodies close their public hearing, it could be adopted with a waiver of the city council rules. Cause that's not, that's not a state law. That's a rule of the city council that we could, that we could waive. Oh, that's all theoretical.
[Alicia Hunt]: I stand corrected. Planner Evans is correct. I went back to my notes because I had asked, like, theoretically on the main Medford Square zoning, if both boards closed and they had a clean version, could they vote it that night to adopt the hearing?
[Zac Bears]: I know we're all on Zoom, and I know we're all co-hosts, but I was going to make a really funny joke, which is that I recognize Councilor Leming, and you guys were having a back and forth, so I didn't even get a chance to make that hilarious joke. But I will recognize Director Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, that our lawyer did say that you could in fact vote the night, because this is a regular city council meeting, and not like a committee of the whole this evening.
[Zac Bears]: So you could vote to adopt it, the options before us essentially, and we still need to get through questions from the council and questions to the Community Development Board and then public comment on the public hearing so. the City Council. Um but it seems like our options would be if both bodies were to close their public hearings tonight. And the city board was to make a recommendation to approve. And then, um, the City Council were to vote to approve and wave the six day written comment period. Then. We could technically referred to our regular meeting next week. If the Community Development Board wanted more time on this, they could continue their public hearing to the 15th. So there's a few different paths, but it sounds like both the closing tonight is possible and a vote tonight is possible if we were to waive the Council rule of the written comment period. So with that, I'm going to go to Councilor Callaghan and then Councilors Hill. Councilor Callaghan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, I did want to thank everyone here for all the work that has been done, but I wanted to call out specifically, because on the city council we've actually had many meetings on this, this project. And at our last meeting I asked a question. got just such a sort of great answer. I just want to highlight the question that I asked last time, which was like, what has been the history of public input on this particular project? And Director Hutt kind of led us through this long thing of like many, many years of public input coming in on this particular project. So, you know, it really helped me as an individual Councilor to feel very comfortable with this particular piece of zoning, knowing that You know, this project has really had a lot of scrutiny and it has gone through, you know, a very rigorous process. And then it is going to be bringing things into our city that our residents have really been asking for for quite a while. you know, between the housing and the grocery store, coffee shop, like many of the things, parking across the street from the senior center, on the ground parking, like all of these things, as well as a whole parking structure. So, and I know that some of the CDB members may This may be, you know, less, you've seen this not as many times as we have seen it. But I also wanted to just let people know that, you know, I have asked and wanted to know just how much public input there has been, how much public support there is for this development specifically. And I feel very confident just from the answers that I have gotten that, you know, this project has really been very well vetted, not only by our staff, but also by the community, and that these are in fact, you know, this does sort of answer many of the specific requests that we have had from the residents of Medford for many years. So I just wanted to put that those two cents in because I know this you know some of the like half of the people here were probably not at that meeting where we discussed this in the city council alone. So I just wanted to bring that up and thank everybody for the many years of work on this project. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you Councilor Callahan. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Council President. And again, I too want to thank everybody. I think that where we were a year ago and where we are today, I think that we've done a great job as a team and especially with Chair Carr and the Community Development Board and all their members and the joint meetings. I think it really shows our community that we're giving everybody an ample time and effort to To share their concerns, share their input again. I think that the stone I'm still getting calls about our senior center in parking. So I think that'll be an ongoing concern. You know, what what happens during the construction when you talk about. 2029 being the date and what happens with our senior center, and how do we accommodate the seniors? But I think we'll have a plan in place. I'm comfortable that when I've talked to seniors, that we'll have something in place to make sure, hopefully, that we can calm everybody's fears of whether the senior center will be a viable location for our seniors during the process. But I just want help. I want everybody to convince me just real quick that where's the 6 days. So if we were right on the 1 yard line, we're doing everything right. We've done everything above board. We've gone through the whole process. We might have those last group of people that just want to put something on the record in writing or whatnot. And. And I would hate to say, here we go, we're right in the 1 yard line. And is that 6 of those 6 days that drastic that moving it up 6 days and getting it. I'm not even saying where I'm through a push through, because I think we've have done a due diligence with this process, but. Would those six days be something that would hinder the process in the timeframe that we've now put forth? Because I think everybody's been super cautious about making sure we leave the public comment open, that we've left it so people can share information, that we can get everybody's input and exhaust every avenue possible. But again, I just wanted to share that because I know I'll get a few emails and phone calls Uh, tomorrow saying, what are you doing? I wanted to send something in writing shame on you. But again, I just, I only share that just to say, you know, maybe my colleagues and my friends on the community development board could say, you know, slow down George. I think we're okay. I think the timeline would really be affected. So moving it forward. At this pace would really help moving this in a positive direction because I don't want to hinder that. I want to slow that down. But I just wanted to share that comment because I think we've done a great job. So, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And, um, yeah, I mean, I tend to. Whether it's today or next Tuesday, I'm, you know. We'll see if we get written comments or not. I personally. That's just a personal feeling. I don't mind either way. I do wonder if director hunt or maybe the transom team could speak if there's a difference in those two outcomes substantively for the project if we if it was if this overlay was approved tonight or. Or next weekend, and again like that also haven't turned it over to chair car yet and we haven't heard from our CD board members yet and they may want more time on it as well but. just if we could, I don't know, Director Hunt or Peter, if you have thoughts on the timing.
[Peter Spellios]: Mr. Chair, I'm happy to give my two cents. I think Councilor Scarpelli is raising a really valid point. Our interest is, our preference would be not to lose the entire month of April. Um, and so I think if you and the CD board were comfortable with a plan that got us to Tuesday. Um, you know, that that's great. Um, we're, we're holding off and I'm sure you can understand releasing the community process and the design process and then we're going to go really, you know. really all in pending this. And so we would like to obviously hit the ground running and keep this schedule. So again, tonight to Tuesday, I think Councilor Scarpelli, it sounds like, you know, even pre us being involved, you guys have done so much and we certainly have no objection to making sure we hear everything. As a matter of fact, after Tuesday, we're going to start meeting in a way that we're going to get comments. Right. And, and we're going to be hearing things. So anything you learn actually helps us and educates us.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you, Peter. I appreciate that. And I think that's actually a really good point for this and for all zoning, right? Zoning is, is a start, not a finish. Um, you know, zoning doesn't build anything. Zoning doesn't, doesn't construct projects. Zoning doesn't. uh transfer properties right zoning is the start of um conversations like that it's a signal it's a foundation um and then and then you know folks like peter and doug and the community development board and alicia and danielle and and certainly sometimes the city council as well then we start talking about site plan review and community meetings and all of the other things that go into making a project happen so i think not only helpful to understand the timeline, but a really important grounding that we we often talk about in our zoning meetings about zoning doesn't doesn't finish anything. It's the beginning of a process in many ways. So thank you, Peter. Councilor Leming, I did see your hand if you want to
[Matt Leming]: Um, well, it was to, uh, to sort of, uh, offer, offer a response to, uh, Councilor Scarpelli's, uh, um, points, which brings up, definitely brings up a lot of, a lot, a lot of good points, um, with regards to, you know, doing our, doing our due diligence and, uh, you know, potentially keeping the public comment period open for six days. I was just, I was just going to say that, uh, In a vacuum, it would make a whole lot of sense to just immediately pass this, but this is also happening in the context of the full Medford Square rezoning, and there still is a completely, there still is a different public comment period that is open for the full Medford Square. I kind of, You know, Medford's developed, probably has developed a reputation over the years as a city that's hard, that could be a little bit difficult for developers to work in. So I would like, you know, I would like to get some reputation for being able to speedily, speedily approve things. But obviously, you know, six days is not like, Approving things here versus the April 7th meeting wouldn't really be too big of a deal, and it seems like Peter is in agreement with that as well.
[Zac Bears]: And there's a great synergy, right? We just closed the City Council's portion of the Medford Square hearing. If we close this today, if you have comments on either of them, send them to us in the next six days. All right, do we have any further questions from members of the council before I turn it over to Chair Carr? Seeing none, I'll turn it over to Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you Council President Bears. Before I call on my fellow board members, I just have a few comments. I'd like to just remind folks that most of this CD board as presently constituted has only been involved in the zoning process for a total of 70 days this so far. And, you know, we weren't here last year, most of us, some of us were, but very few. So I kind of, I think we've done a great job as a group with the partnership with the City Council, but I don't think by any means of the stretch of the imagination we'd be conveyed as or characterized as dragging our feet for something that we thought was initially a very good overall Medford Square proposal, but had many, many missing pieces that have since been filled in, I think, correctly. So I'll just say that. I will say that the transom, folks, it's a great design. I'm looking forward to quickly passing that. And with that, I'll go to John Anderson for comments, and we'll go around the horn on the city board. John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Thank you. I really appreciate all the work that's gone into this and sort of feel embarrassed to ask some of these questions that no doubt, a lot of it comes from ignorance. I'll start with some simple questions. The grocery store and the cafe, you have specific sizes down there. How does that map against people's usual expectations for grocery stores and cafes?
[Peter Spellios]: Chair Carr, through you, if it's okay. Yes, please. Mr. Anderson, really great question. Let me talk about the grocery store because that's one that's more rooted in good information. Cafes can be whatever cafes want to be, relatively speaking. It could be 1,500 square feet, it could be more, it could be any number of things. Urban grocers, we have the design that you see. When I say design, let me be very careful. This is merely a massing plan. I mean, really, really, it's, we only, we showed you tonight, colored pencil, we only in the last 60 days, frankly, had finished a comprehensive survey. and really have gone to hard lines. And when we say hard lines, I mean, computer generated, you know, we're getting into engineering now, right? Not just ideas. But the size that we're showing is consistent with the stable of urban grocers that are potential or opportunities to have them come to Medford. That number may vary and change before we ever get to the CD board. based on the feedback we get from that stable of potential grocers. Some are a little bit larger, some are a little bit smaller. And so what we're trying to do, and this is just our problem, but the opportunity is we want to make sure we're not going to design the building six times through that process, right? So we're trying to have those conversations as much of that conversation now to educate ourselves so that we've built in some flexibility. If it's not 12,500 square feet and it ends up being 13,000, can we accommodate it easily? We're trying to, in our base plan, create the flexibility to make sure that we are attracting the greatest swath of potential urban grocers, understanding that the depth of the market of urban grocers is not very deep. And so that's where we've kind of come up with the square footage that we're currently showing. But I will tell you, do not be surprised to see it change as we advance conversations with prospective users. The cafe is less regimented because, candidly, we're not going to have that leased when we start construction, most likely. That typically is something that happens post-construction, and it's more of a generic space that we make sure is efficient and we do mock layouts of the space to make sure we understand where the front of house versus the back of house and restrooms and everything would go and where we would have the utilities and whatnot. But that is much more generic. The grocery is going to be knock on wood. Ultimately, by the time we're starting construction, we have a partner that's sitting side by side with us and quite literally physically designing the space together.
[John Anderson]: Right. Could you give me a little help? Are you talking about sort of the size of a medium stop and shop?
[Peter Spellios]: Um, let me, I think the best way to do this and cause I found it helpful and I hope it helps you is to kind of give you examples of different sizes of things that you know, a super stop and shop that the traditional stop and shop that people know is about 65,000 square feet. A typical CVS, a freestanding CVS that sits on a corner, way too many corners in my opinion, but freestanding CVS is typically 10 to 12,000 square feet. So if that kind of anchors, kind of gives you a sense. I'll give you one more, a market basket, a Home Depot and a Lowe's are 90,000 plus.
[John Anderson]: And what's your target for this one?
[Peter Spellios]: We think the grocery is going to be somewhere between 12,000 and maybe as high as 20,000, but I think closer to 12,000 to 15,000.
[John Anderson]: Okay, okay. Next question, but thank you very much for that. I noticed on the maps a reference to Lakeview Avenue.
[Peter Spellios]: Yeah, we're not renaming the streets. That's so funny. There's a lot of things on there and everybody has called us on that. And you think I was going to my fifth meeting with you all, I probably would have corrected it by now. We are not changing names.
[John Anderson]: You've mislocated Bedford Square as well.
[Peter Spellios]: I understand. Okay. I'm learning slowly, but I'm learning.
[John Anderson]: Now about the artwork, which I'm very excited about. Who is responsible for maintaining that?
[Peter Spellios]: Well, so the answer is going to be, and I don't know the full answer, but I believe, look it, I see, and again, we're going to have conversations with the community, but, and Beyond Walls and what Beyond Walls has done really remarkably is that the buildings become a canvas. Right, for a lot of this work right so there's going to be sculpture and there'll be opportunity for ground level artwork. But the predominant most visible stuff is really the canvas that that is the buildings and and we're certainly going to be responsible for all that I anticipate, Mr. Anderson that we're. most anything that we're going to do in the public art realm, we're going to be responsible for and will want to be responsible for candidly. Not that the city wouldn't be good stewards, but we know that we would be because it's part of a much bigger investment, if you will, in the area. And we would want to make sure that it was maintained to a high level.
[John Anderson]: So we, in this context, is your company.
[Peter Spellios]: Yes, correct. Transom Real Estate and the ownership of the buildings. Yep.
[John Anderson]: And if you if that were to sell, responsibility for the art would go with the sale, presumably.
[Peter Spellios]: Yes, I think the building owners would own. Yep.
[John Anderson]: Okay, thank you. Um, it was mentioned somewhat, I think the attorney mentioned that one difficult one thing that had to be adjusted was the open space plan. What was the nature of the adjustment that had to be made? Did you want more or less or
[Peter Spellios]: I'm going to let Valerie answer that question, if OK, with the chair. It's actually more a definitional thing. But Valerie, please.
[Valerie Moore]: So that's exactly right. If you look at your zoning ordinance, you have multiple different types of open space. And in the Medford Square zoning itself, the type of open space that was included was open space landscape. The open space that we're contemplating doesn't quite meet the percentage criteria that had been specified for that definition. So we changed it to the open space definition that's in your zoning. but kept the same 10% requirement that was in the Medford Square zoning. It's just a bigger, a more inclusive definition in terms of what can be.
[John Anderson]: Okay, and along similar lines, when I was reading about that, let's see, oh, it says in the proposed changes that the open space will be available to all residents. Now, I'd like a better understanding of what all residents mean. Residents of the specific building where it is, a collection of buildings, or the general public? And does open space imply public access?
[Valerie Moore]: It's an open space as defined in your zoning does not always imply public access. It could include something like a rooftop garden that may just be for the residents of the building or a deck kind of space. So it's still treated as open space under the zoning ordinance, but it's not public. Certainly if we were to construct a public open space, that would also meet the definition of open space.
[John Anderson]: And a question on art. Art, particularly public art, can be very controversial. How do you go about sort of adjudicating differences in taste?
[Peter Spellios]: Oh, Valerie, you want to take that one for me? Please no. Look, it's a great question. And so I think that I'm going to not really punt on the answer, but to say that's why we have Beyond Walls with us. And truthfully, right, we have an organization that has worked successfully in so many cities, and it continues to be invited into so many cities that they've they've curated a process that results in something that they've obviously been very highly successful. have my own taste, you have your own taste, and certainly there'll be a divergent of opinions ultimately on what the final thing is. But I think here, the fact that these are city parcels as Valerie said early on, and in this conversation, the City has more review actually over this than they would a traditional private project, right? And so we're going to be working with City staff to make sure our outreach is robust, make sure that we are working with Beyond Walls to do an outreach that's robust to make sure that we're getting thematically what's there. And, you know, so I'm not, I'm not purposely punting on your answer, but I'm relying on a group that frankly, has had tremendous success executing this.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, because I mean, we wouldn't want to see anything too avant garde, but nothing too conservative either, you know, something in the middle. At least that's my opinion. Um, oh, At one point, I believe Danielle mentioned a specific accommodation regarding sidewalk widths. I didn't see that in the overlay. Was I just mistaken?
[Peter Spellios]: Danielle, can you answer that one? No, I think Valerie, you might. Oh, Valerie, sorry. That's all right.
[Valerie Moore]: Um, sure, I think there are some minimum requirements for 12 foot sidewalks within all of the setbacks in your Medford square proposed zoning. We made that requirement a little bit more flexible. for the Medford Square overlay, because there are some places where due to site constraints, we may not hit exactly the 12 feet. But again, because the city will have its ability to review and approve this, as will the Community Development Board, you'll have the opportunity to make sure that there are sufficiently wide sidewalks.
[John Anderson]: When I see that in the table of dimensional requirements,
[Valerie Moore]: No, in your draft zoning, I believe it's under the separate narrative dimensional requirements section. And then I believe appears again under the development standards and design guidelines. So there's some language in that section because we took it out. It's harder for me to find it in a clean copy that I was looking at, but- I understand.
[John Anderson]: But I guess my point is that that would nevertheless be affected in the overlay.
[Valerie Moore]: That there would be no minimum of 12 feet in the overlay, that's right.
[John Anderson]: But wouldn't that have to be specified in the overlay somewhere? No. No. Just the absence of it is enough. Correct. Okay. Thank you. The other thing I have is I actually went through the use table and I found, oh, about 15 different uses that are different from Medford Square 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the proposed overlay. Now, I'll just mention two of the ones that sort of jumped out. A residential use, three family and multiplex, are both allowed by right in the overlay, but they're actually forbidden in the rest of the square.
[Peter Spellios]: I'm gonna defer to Valerie again, but I believe the only, not knowing, seeing what you're saying, the only change made to the use table had to do with having parking be a non-accessory, a parking garage being a non-accessory use. The rest of the uses are consistent with what the underlying Medford Square draft was.
[John Anderson]: Well, I guess, I'm not sure that's true. I'm looking, I spent some time over the weekend looking at what got distributed Friday afternoon and found these various anomalies. And in just going through it quickly this afternoon, it didn't look as though many of them had been changed. Another one is public entertainment or recreation facility under commercial use. It's a no in the MSO.
[Zac Bears]: I think there may have been some version control stuff here, John. So I think Peter and Valerie may have based this on the January draft and the draft that we were looking at last week was the March draft from Innis. So that might be why there's different uses. And correct me if I'm wrong, Peter, but generally there's not a ton of uses you're looking at. You're not building three family houses.
[Peter Spellios]: No, I think we're looking at three. I think quite literally we have four uses on this property. Right, multifamily more than six units, I think is how you guys do it, freestanding garage. And I can't remember exactly how your commercial definitions go, but we'll have retail and then commercial retail matches the grocery.
[John Anderson]: Now, I also noticed that marijuana, which is a solid no in the rest of the square, goes to the ZBA in the overlay. Was that intentional?
[Valerie Moore]: That comes from your draft space.
[Zac Bears]: I think that's also version control. I think Ennis removed that. Marijuana uses in the city generally have been ZBA special permit, but in the Ennis draft, it just moved to no for the Medford Square. So I think that's a difference between the January and March Medford Square drafts. I think all of these use table things are, differences between our January and March Medford Square drafts.
[Doug Carr]: Zach, if I could, does that, I think to John's larger point, should we, should we try to correct them so they're aligned with Medford Square? Is there any reason not to?
[Zac Bears]: That is not, I mean, I don't have an issue certainly with it. I think that makes sense. I think it should be the same. I'm just noting why I think they're coming up here.
[Doug Carr]: I agree with your logic for sure. Go ahead, John.
[John Anderson]: Let me mention one more. Doggy daycare. No in Medford Square, but yes by right in the overlay. That sort of surprised me.
[Peter Spellios]: Yeah, again, we have no objection to making sure that this matches what your current version is. None of the uses articulated are of particular relevance here. But understand the questions for sure.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess my question that I would put to everybody, how do we want to handle this? take it as a goodwill gesture and move forward or do we wanna see a actual correct as we can version? And I didn't spend all weekend going over this. I spent, I don't know, two or three hours and that's what I dug up. Danielle, you have your hand raised.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Mr. Chair and Mr. President. I would recommend that if the board was inclined to recommend something tonight, it would be to recommend the zoning as drafted, but to substitute the table with the March table in the regular zoning. Because we want things like the banks to be by special permit. We don't want that cafe to fail and then be like, oh, well, Bank of America is good for the rent. You know, we don't want that, you know.
[Doug Carr]: I agree. Now, do you see any issue with that, given the except, you know, the tweaks you've made or want to make?
[Valerie Moore]: I think they can be postured as recommendations. I'm not sure that it should be framed as substituting the use table, because we could also handle adding additional uses that you want to see later. But for ones like the marijuana establishments, to the extent that you just want to change them to no's and make that recommendation tonight, we can make a clean copy of that. So I don't see why that would hold up. the review and approval of the zoning.
[Zac Bears]: I think we agreed on the Medford Square table. It sounds like there's no issue from you guys with the Medford Square table. Is that accurate?
[Peter Spellios]: Correct. Yeah.
[Valerie Moore]: By the way, I'm looking at you to step on my toe virtually if I... Yeah, I don't think we have any issues with them unless you're telling me you have a secret doggie daycare that you get in here.
[Zac Bears]: We're working on it.
[John Anderson]: John Anderson, are you all set? Well, I just wonder, how other members of the board feel about this. I'm a little uncomfortable to vote to approve something that we know has some problems. They're not serious problems, but to sort of debate them and talk about how we're going to change it in a big meeting like this at 7.30 at night, seems like not really the right way to do it.
[Zac Bears]: I mean, I was suggesting that you could recommend that we just make sure that the use table and the overlay is the same as the use table we have in the latest Medford Square draft. And I think it's really a clerical issue, not a substantive one.
[Doug Carr]: I tend to agree with that because it's uses they're not using. We're just cleaning up the zoning so it's consistent across the square, regardless of the overlay or non-overlay portions of the square. I think that's correct. So John, why don't we do this? Why don't I move on to Sean and then Paige, and then we'll get their opinion. We'll start with Sean, then Paige, and then Dina. Go ahead, Sean.
[Sean Beagan]: Yep. Thank you, Mr. Chair. What I had identified is the same thing Doug had identified. The table of uses don't match, and I would be comfortable with simply A motion that we substitute the table of uses in the overlay for the table of uses that was in the March 25th, I think it was, presentation at the joint meeting last week. That would be fine with me. My concerns are the exact same as Danielle mentioned. I don't want the grocery store not to appear or the cafe to fail, and then we have a bank instead, which is not the intent of our current use table. There's a couple other uses. There are a couple other changes, not added uses, but just changes to whether you can or cannot do a use or whether you need a permit to do a particular use or not. And I think that should just be consistent. in the overlay. My other question was, we keep referencing a grocery store, an urban grocery store. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the desired intended use, correct? Or is that a mandated use in some other document that you have with the city of Medford that we are not privy to? In other words, you don't have to put a grocery store there if no grocer wants to be there.
[Doug Carr]: Chair Carr, through you.
[Peter Spellios]: Great, great question. arrangement is to provide a minimum amount of retail. So you're correct, it doesn't mandate grocery. Our proposal, though, identified grocery as the key driver here. I will tell you for that big space, we're talking to no one that could be referred to other than a grocer. So that is the absolute priority. But certainly, and again, I think people know this, urban grocers are a very limited pool. So we are being very deliberate and very flexible to make sure that we're doing everything possible to roll out and including having this rezoning in place to be able to say to them, hey, the zoning is now in place for you, to de-risk it, if you will, to enhance the likelihood of success. But we're all motivated for sure. The grocery for this amount of square beat is the optimal, both I think for the city, but candidly also for us. We don't really want to break up these spaces into smaller spaces and have a litany of smaller tenants here.
[Sean Beagan]: Thank you for that answer. So that would all the more reason to have the table of uses match then, I think. But thank you. That's a great answer. appreciate it. I'm all set. Thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Sean. Paige, why don't you go next?
[Page Buldini]: Yep. Thank you, everyone, for being here. And I appreciate having this opportunity. I agree with what Sean said, what John Anderson brought up. I'm sure other people on the questions from the public. And I think that. Or agree as well. So thank you for matching that, because when I was looking at them back and forth, I had a couple questions. I'm real quick because I caught it fast. The active frontage. I noticed I was trying to pull it up on the one of the versions I have. I know it's for the parking garage. But is that something that would be
[Peter Spellios]: Mr. Chair, if I can have Valerie respond, that'd be great.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Valerie, please.
[Valerie Moore]: So the footnote that we added to the proposed dimensional table only applies to the parking garage. I think later in the zoning, we did add some flexibility to grant waivers from those requirements, but it's really only the parking garage that the footnote itself sort of removes that requirement from.
[Page Buldini]: Okay, thank you. And then I noticed when I looked through the awesome RFP that was put out there, the map has trees and that could just be because it's a pretty rendering abutting 93 in the parking garage. Is that the intention or is it just for the design? There was a picture with lot C, and there were trees that were running behind 93.
[Peter Spellios]: Yeah, I think so. So that portion of the property is MassDOT property that you're probably looking at. The parking garage will go within three feet of the property line or the right-of-way line with MassDOT. So I'm not looking, obviously, at what you're looking at at the moment here. That side of the garage is, again, going to be a design effort with MassDOT, I'm sure you can imagine. there. So my guess is what was shown there was just an attempt to show vegetation that was there today, and frankly, not necessarily intentional.
[Page Buldini]: Okay, just interested with obviously what we've been speaking about, about, you know, taking care of the environment and trees, just interested if that was part of the intention. Thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. Dina Calguero, please go with your questions, please.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, I raised my hand during the time, and I was going to say that I would definitely align the use tables with the draft of the 325 meeting. I think it makes sense for all the same reasons. I was just thinking about a bank myself. And I do want to thank Transom for the presentation. It was excellent. This is like the first time I've really kind of seen what the project's all about. And I'm excited about it because I remember as a young girl going to a very vibrant Method Square. And there was a grocery store right near where you're thinking of putting one, too. So that really is wonderful. So the alignment. And Valerie, if you did align them, Would the use table also meet the garage needs, the parking garage needs in lot C?
[Valerie Moore]: I believe that was one of the changes that had been made. It should be allowed. I will double check that in whatever we submit. Because we made changes to that use.
[Peter Spellios]: I think if I can, Valerie, I think it's a little bit different, which is our version allowed freestanding non-accessory parking garages. The underlying Medford Square zoning never allowed that. The draft, so I think the suggestion here is that when we say convert to the March table, the March table with the change allowing the freestanding non-accessory parking structure is really technically what has to happen here.
[Dina Caloggero]: That's my point. Thank you very much, Peter. The other thing, my father is 86. He loves the senior center and they talk about the parking in lot A. So currently the seniors, especially when they have mobility issues, will park in lot A. You said that there's, I think you said 70, maybe 70 spots in that area. And just a little bit concerned about where the seniors will be parking, be able to park in lot A and also the availability of the parking in the parking garage in lot C.
[Peter Spellios]: Yeah, great, great question. I'm going to not give you a great definitive only only only because I don't know what I don't know. Right. So we're going to be meeting again with the with the senior center. And I want to put out there the the we are contractually committed to give the parking spaces for your charge, the exact location, all the details we have to work through. I'm not saying this to concern anyone. It's really just I don't want to the earlier comment about zoning. This is the beginning. We're going to have lots of conversations. There are some going back to the question about the grocery store. We need to make sure that also that we're balancing all the different needs to achieve as much success on as many points as we can. And no doubt that's going to be a balance. But I don't have the answers today, so I don't want to be flippant. But what I do want to say, though, is that this has been a number one topic in every single conversation that we've had with staff, with the mayor, with the council when we've talked with them. So it's very much dead center of our radar.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes, and I was very pleased to hear to say that you were working with them. So I am perfectly comfortable with that answer. You also mentioned in Lotsie in the garage, it's going to be the city hall, senior center employees. And wouldn't it be residential as well?
[Peter Spellios]: Yeah, so that's great. You're absolutely correct. So that garage will serve as part of the parking that will meet the parking requirement for the residential, but also have an opportunity and there'll be spaces available for public parking. The Chevalier, we haven't made mention of tonight, but we've already met with them. We'll be meeting with them again and again and again to really help them not only give them a greater sense of parking availability, but really directionally, right? Help them with the technology to make sure when you are buying tickets that you actually can simultaneously find that you can actually get your parking in the garage and have graphics and maps and everything to help them, which I understand Google Maps has not helped. The non-Medford resident who goes to the Chevalier finds themselves meandering through Medford Square after they park their car. So we're going to groups like that, that there's going to be parking available to address all those needs.
[Dina Caloggero]: That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very much.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Dina. Ari Goffman-Fishman, you are next. Are you there?
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. I'm just unmuting. I'm always last on these. People get to my questions before I do. The last one that I wanted to just kind of get the English language explanation, especially for the public. I remember being mentioned a few times that one of the changes that needed to be made in this overlay was what counted as an entrance and exit and kind of what was facing 93. Is that something you're able to speak to?
[Peter Spellios]: Mr. Chair, through you, I think I'm going to take a stab at it, but then Valerie can politely correct me. But I think it had to do with there was a technical language within your underlying zoning that dealt with emergency exits. from buildings where they can be located, which is a very unique provision. And when you have a building that's, if you will, a full block building, one of the sides, inevitably, more than one of the sides is going to have emergency exits. So we were just, the language tweak was really to address the reality that for full block projects like this, there have to be emergency exits that will face and run afoul of that provision. So Valerie, did I do an OK job? But please feel free to correct me.
[Valerie Moore]: That's right. The Medford Square draft zoning we reviewed had basically a rule that you couldn't have emergency exits on a public way. But if your building is surrounded on four sides by public ways, you got to have an emergency exit somewhere. So that was something there was no way we could comply with. So we did remove that language.
[Ari Fishman]: Perfect. Thank you. Just wanted to make sure that I understood how that loop was closed. That sounds so super reasonable. The last question I have is a theoretical one. It does not affect, I think, what we're doing today. But one of the uses that I expect to hear a lot of public interest in based on the local parent groups is a kind of cafe with kid playing space, like the Mill Cafe in Arlington. And that's on the excited side. On the less excited side, if Capital One came in with a Capital One cafe, that's a bank slash cafe or a cafe slash kid space. For PDS staff, I think is the question, how do we handle things that are dual uses in that way?
[Peter Spellios]: So I'm going to give you the, I think the non-lawyer answer to it, which is I think your code allows that flexibility to be able to do it. And for what it's worth, I may come to regret it. I agree with everyone's feelings about banks.
[Valerie Moore]: I'll just add, we haven't really considered how that would fit into the uses that are in your zoning code. Obviously, they found a way to fit something similar because the village place based across the street from City Hall is fantastic. We love it. In my family, we're there pretty frequently. you know, uses like that that are unique and don't neatly fit in the zoning, we generally always find a way to work with the city to make sure that something like that can happen. And if not, then we'll be back in front of you with an amendment should we be so fortunate as to find a user who wants to build something like that. Great, thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Ari. I appreciate it. I just have a few follow up comments. Peter, on a separate project just recently, you came before us for the CAPI site and you did something that we all enjoyed. It was a change, but you actually made more units and less parking. And I know that this proposal, you know, Is it possible you come back and you'll want to change the unit mix? You want to possibly change the numbers? I would want that garage, if it was my call, to be two or three stories higher because I know that Medford Square cannot have enough garage parking, not for the long term, because no one builds a garage every five years in Medford Square. They build it every 50 years. That's the problem. Anyway, if you could just talk about kind of the potential for possibly doing more, given that the zoning that allow is actually much more than you're using in some cases.
[Peter Spellios]: Mr. Chair, you confuse me with your tactics on me. Last meeting it was too much, now it's too little. It's all good. I get it. It's complicated. So here, let me say this. We have maximized what we think the project can support, understanding that the project is trying to support some public parking. on top of, and by the way, on top of about 150 spaces for which as part of our arrangement, we're giving to the city, you know, to use, right? So is there the possibility of the garage gets bigger? Maybe. I don't see that at the moment. We think we have, again, we're balancing a whole bunch of different uses here. One use we haven't talked about is the Hyatt, Hotel actually has the right to, it's not included in my account, but they have a right to use 45 spaces on lot C through a 99 year easement that was done years ago. So we're not impacting that, but just to give you an example, there's just so many different, and we know there's a hotel there, and we know the Chevalier, and we know that there's other uses. We are talking to everybody in the neighborhood to really get as much information we can, including the medical office building that has a significant garage that, on its best days, probably only 60% full. Um, to just understand what the opportunities are, right? Um, and and to see where the availability is. So we're, we're motivated the same way. I think your comment indicated. Um, we think we've maximized it, um, based on what this project and this is, it takes me to a, just an interesting, but important point and you reference the, the 10 Revere Beach Parkway project that, that, um, we've had a chance to visit with you and your colleagues on, um, that project and this project are almost the exact same size. And I say that because this project's on three parcels. And I'm sure, Chair Carr, you know from your practice and whatnot, it's exponentially more complicated. We have more foundations, we have more infrastructure, we have more sidewalks, we have much more things. And so I say that, which is we're trying to, and I think that the mayor and Alicia and Danielle have done a really tremendous job structuring a project that allows us to give so much and tangibly back to the city, but also balancing the fact that this isn't relatively speaking a significantly large project.
[Doug Carr]: That's a fair comment. I appreciate that. I just had some thoughts, you know, it's sometimes done where you can design the cores, the elevators for garage for future floors. I mean, they did that at Elwha 30 years ago. have never done it, obviously, but that could be one potential, because it's going to be a precast garage, right? That's what it looks like on the plan. To add floors to that in the future is probably possible, technically, if you don't do it for five or 10 years, if it's designed at the beginning that way. Just a thought for your engineers and your structural folks and your precast vendor, whoever that is, that you're going to sign up. It's just, it might be short dollars that could allow potentially 100 spaces in the future. The market 10 years from now is a much different animal. And I agree with you on that garage, obviously for Atrius, you know, that's empty every night at 5.05, you know, and it's a shame we can't, I know the city has been trying for many, many years to get their attention and trying to get something out of that as an asset that is more than the private use. Anyway, thank you for that. I will note that I do believe the city board did approve the freestanding garage as part of the Medford Square revised. So I feel like you have that. I think that's already baked into what we're looking at the final version in just a little bit of time. So I think I believe that should be a done deal. And if Alicia or Danielle tell me if that's not the case.
[Zac Bears]: I think it's only in the west of Forest Street area. So I think they would still need to have that in here. Danielle, sorry.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Mr. President. I think if we just use the MS4 column of the table, then that doesn't have a footnote associated with it. That's the MS2. But also, we'd have to amend it so that it's a Y, not special permit by CDB. But otherwise, all the other uses in the MS4 should work for these three lots. As far as I can see. I don't see any footnotes in the MS4 column that we have to worry about.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah. I mean, if we're talking about cleaning up some of these pieces to make this clean and not having to go back and revisit it the second we pass it, whenever that is, it feels like this should be one for sure, because obviously that garage needs to be built in, not an afterthought or an exception, because it's clearly foundational to the plan. Okay. Um, let's see. Um, I know, uh, culture president bears that during the RFP process, you were, you were looking ahead at the possibility of a future city hall expansion. I don't think anything in this plan precludes that. Correct.
[Zac Bears]: Um, I'm not sure, uh, Peter, I don't know if you want to, or Dan or Alicia.
[Peter Spellios]: I would need to defer to the city on that. I mean, let me just say this, the back parking lot, the majority of that back parking lot is undisturbed and there for City Hall parking and presumably the city could do what the city wanted to do, but I'm not privy to any of those conversations, so I stop there and defer to staff.
[Doug Carr]: That's fair. Peter, could you just, you listed some of the larger grocers that are not urban grocers that would not be on this site, like Market Basket, et cetera. But could you, do you have like a short list of people so they get a sense of what type of urban grocers could go here? Could a Trader Joe's go here? Is that too big as well?
[Peter Spellios]: You know, I'm going to refrain from giving a list because I don't want to give the impression that the list means that we're having conversations or not having conversations. But I think that that one that you just mentioned is one that sits in many urban environments.
[Doug Carr]: Fair enough. Thank you. It was if anyone member of the city board has any comments or questions. I think we've gone through everyone at this time. I'm satisfied. And I would like to move forward.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you chair car. I just want to I, I hate to come back around and ask one last question but Peter you brought up an interesting point about the project you're working on in the Wellington area and this project and, you know, it would seem to me, and correct me if any of my assumptions are wrong, that there's a little bit more land to work with here, it's a little bit of a different arrangement, and I'm just kind of wondering why we landed with a project of a similar size given the additional kind of available space That, you know, the city is looking to transform. So I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more.
[Peter Spellios]: Yeah, happy to. It's a, it's a fair and good question. So, obviously, every project has different demand drivers and and and needs this project in particular. I think we are trying to. The city put out a list of priorities. I think our project is meeting as many of those priorities as practicable. And I like to think that's in part why we were selected to partner with you all on this. Those priorities, though, come with choices, right? And almost all of them are space choices. The need to these parking lots, while as unremarkable as they are from an urban context and an urban design, they have served a necessity, right? They've served as a place for parking for town city hall employees, city staff, people visiting for the senior center and other uses. And frankly, residents who have just gotten used to being able to park their cars where they wanted to park their cars in these lots. Um, so our proposal, um, and again, as a condition of our arrangement is we're, we're recreating 150 parking spaces. Um, and, and, you know, let's just for the sake of the conversation, assume they're in the garage. Um, that's a significant amount of parking to put into a garage. And as a result, we needed, there was no way to do this project without frankly, a freestanding parking garage. There is, um. No, no parcel big enough for us to be putting it inside of a building. Financially, I think you guys are all aware that financially going below grade is is a non starter and would never have happened. So, so the parking garage took a ball of lot C lot a. I'm just gonna be forthright and just say, it's hard enough to find an urban grocer. It's gonna be even harder to find one that has you parking in a parking garage. And so they care about surface parking and ease because us humans are, if not predictable, we are predictable in one way, which is we only go where it's easy to go. We tend to avoid hard things. And so again, to optimize the likelihood of success here, we've made sure to, show plans and have conversations that are being very forthright about the fact that there's surface parking. So that eats up a fair amount of lot A that otherwise maybe could have been building. And then in lot B, Um, where the largest number of residential units is there is, um, ground floor parking in there about 70 parking spaces in that 1. um, but really on that 1, it's really a question about well, why didn't we go taller? Right? Uh, and 2, 2 reasons 1, a design reason 1 of a financial reality reason. I'll start with the financial reality reason, which is, uh, Massachusetts has 1 of the toughest high rise code thresholds, uh, in, in the nation. Um, are and Doug, I may get this. feet wrong, so you correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in Massachusetts, 70 feet to the ceiling of the highest, the top habitable floor is when going above that, you go into high rise. And then at 85 feet, you go into steel. And so both of those things present some pretty significant cost premiums, which is the reason that throughout, whether it's Wellington or other projects that the CDB certainly seen, but everybody has seen going up in recent years, you are typically seeing seven stories and under for residential projects because of the way the high-rise code kicks in and the extraordinary cost premiums that go with it. So that's the financial reason. But for Lot B in particular, I want to share a design reason, something that when we were working on our proposal with PCA, frankly, we are cognizant of this building being the backdrop to a pretty beautiful and historic city hall. And this building could very easily overwhelm what I think is a very important historical building and important civic building. And so the location of Parcel B, we were very cognizant of that and want to make sure that while the building is going to be interesting and dynamic to to Mr. Anderson's part, we're also going to be that side facing that City Hall as a place that we want to make sure that we're an appropriate backdrop. So we are very cognizant about scale there. So very quickly, take all those things together. It chisels away, if you will, the opportunities for density here. But I do believe we have enough density and enough vitality here to be that catalyst that one of your colleagues talked about, which was important to us. And I think that this project will certainly be a catalyst for other projects in the immediate proximity.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Peter. I appreciate that. I think that's an important thing to kind of pull out of everything, you know, just because I think the headline of, well, You know, you're doing the same project on a much, you know, much greater square footage, you know, there's there's folks will say, well, why are we not doing more? And I think it's important to give that context. I think for me, you know. I have I have my personal thoughts about that, and many of them, I agree with what you said, and I understand why they why they landed where they landed and. and I appreciate the project team for what they've put together. I think my one question, and maybe it's something to consider as part of design, the design work that you move into, I hear what you're saying about the small midsize urban grocer and wanting surface parking and ease of access. And I think, you know, obviously that's not gonna change in this plan, but as some of the adjacent properties to the West, likely come into a reconsideration. I do wonder if integrating those projects into the south side of Lot A, for example, the surface parking, maybe, you know, and again, you're the one who's having these conversations, you have expertise here that I don't, but how big of a difference is you know, open surface parking versus that parking, but with a building on top of it, you know, how, you know, is that a huge difference for the grocer, if the grocer establishes with the surface parking finds a lot of success, and then says, Hey, great, there's a lot of new customers, maybe in walking distance 100 to 500 feet to my West, you know, maybe that changes the thinking around needing that surface parking to keep that amenity. So I think there would be value to figuring out how to make riverfront facing part of that lot that's going to be service parking could be activated in the future. And I'm sure you guys are thinking about that.
[Peter Spellios]: Noted. And I'm going to end this by just saying, President Bears, since I've been calling you Chair Bears all night and the only thing anyone's texted me tonight is I keep calling you the wrong title.
[Zac Bears]: Hey, you know, I'm cool with that. You can call me Zach if you want. But, uh, yeah, I think that's just my one thing is like, I think there's a ton that's great here. And then the one question to me, that's really outstanding is what's next and how do we, are we, you know, what are we looking at for riverfront activation and changes on clipper ship drive and the, those parcels between the main intersection and this project in the future, which I think seemed to be. really the next thing up on our transformation.
[Peter Spellios]: We stand ready to help. Even if it's not us doing those things, it's important. We're now vested.
[Zac Bears]: Awesome. Thanks. I just wanted to get that out there. So thanks, Doug.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, President Bears, it's worth noting that it's only been relatively recently that we've assumed a 0.8 car parking ratio for all of Medford Square, which I don't think, it certainly wasn't true a year ago, Peter. You had to make assumptions. It wasn't in the RFP as your guidance. But what I'm saying is that perhaps your parking can go further now. you know, because of that number, which is essentially lower. And maybe it is more units. Maybe it is more units within the same real estate, just like you did in Wellington. Just something to look at. You don't need to answer it now at all. I do want to move this along. And Council President Bears, maybe do we need to now, since we've gone through both boards, Council and our board, do we want to open it up for public comment?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. And everyone, Doug said that, not me. We should move to public comment, but I do see John.
[Doug Carr]: All right, so I'll go to John one last time. John, Mr. Anderson. You're muted.
[John Anderson]: John. I'm sorry, I raised my hand by mistake, believe it or not.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. All right, let's move on.
[Zac Bears]: All right, so thank you to the members of the Council and the Community Development Board, Chair Carr, Peter, Valerie, Alicia, Danielle. We are gonna open this public hearing up for the public comment on the transom property. If you'd like to speak on, well, the City Hall parking lots transom project overlay district. If you'd like to speak in public comment here, please raise your hand on Zoom and you'll have three minutes. I do see one hand on Zoom and now I see two. So we'll start with Mr. Castagnetti, if you could give your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Thank you, Councilor Bill and Andrew Castagnetti, Cushion Street, I appreciate your time. Thank you. I have two quick questions and I have two brief comments. I'm coming through, can you hear me?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, we can hear you.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Okay, thank you. The proposed 500 parking spots when it's completed, is that correct approximately?
[Zac Bears]: If you ask your questions, we will answer them all at once.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: So that's okay. My question is how many spots do we have today?
[Zac Bears]: All right, we'll get back to that. Do you have any other questions or comments?
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Okay, yeah, let me finish off the other question. Thank you. Does this development cost the taxpayer any money at all? I want to thank you all for your time. And also I must thank John Anderson for asking intelligent and pertinent questions. Thank you very, very much for your presence on board. You are a good patriot and good night.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Andy. So I think the questions were how much of the New you know what if we're going to have what's the final parking compared to the current parking and does this cost the city taxpayer any money.
[Peter Spellios]: Peter, if you happy to respond if you'd like.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Yes, Peter.
[Peter Spellios]: Fine. So the 1st, the 1st question, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I think we're very close to replacing all the parking spaces that are being removed. I don't think we're actually there, but I think we're close to it. Keeping in mind, of course, that we're adding obviously a whole bunch of different program here. Right? So we're also adding a whole bunch of different demand drivers. What the city made sure to preserve, and this is, I think, the really important thing, and I probably can't say it enough, is for the duration of the next 100 years, the city has at no cost to the city, the right to park functionally 150 cars. Um, divided between city hall and and and the senior center, um, provide to them. So, um, I'm happy to follow up with a specific parking count. I just don't have that in front of me tonight. Um, in terms of what this cost the city, um, um. I think the best way for me to answer that the mayor and staff have done a really good job negotiating a deal for the city, including the fact that we are paying, we are reimbursing the city for its legal fees and consulting fees. Certainly, the city's done a good job protecting the taxpayer in that regard. Obviously, when this project is built, there'll be more residents and there obviously are going to be incidental costs that any municipality as kind of part of its mission is going to have. But in terms of its project, the city is not subsidizing this project directly or indirectly.
[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you, Peter. I appreciate that. We'll go to the next commenter. Sorry, Tom, if you could give us your name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[Doug Carr]: Tom, you're muted.
[Tom Lincoln]: Yeah, Tom, there you go. Are we okay? Go ahead, Tom. Okay, sorry, technology. I get a terrible echo here. I've been an observer of Medford Square and a resident for a long time here in Medford. And I have to say, I find it kind of ironic that parking seems to be the tail wagging the dog once again here after years of discussion about Medford Square and that this proposal development from transom actually adds 184 parking spaces, at least according to the press release that I'm looking at on my other screen here. I'm kind of worried that, you know, you're trying to create a pedestrian friendly environment here, a pedestrian oriented development. You've got hundreds of apartments, which I suppose is a real plus in terms of housing. But the idea of 567 parking places here, I think is a little overwhelming. And I think it frankly is the kind of thing that you would never see built in a place like Concord or Lexington or Winchester in the heart of their downtown, putting a big hunking parking garage there. That's my first comment. The second comment, I'm a little skeptical about the grocery store. I don't know much about the grocery business. My grandfather was in it, but I do know that grocery stores is a high volume, a low margin business and having a grocery store at a mere 13,000 square feet. I think there was a comment earlier that the typical urban store is 20,000 feet and above, and suburban grocery stores like the one in Chelsea or up in Woburn are considerably larger. I'd worry a little bit about the longevity of that business model, but it's not my money going into it. So I just, I wanted to add that I think Medford Square is at a nice scale. I absolutely supportive of increasing housing and it's been its real deficit in terms of having a 24 hour population in the square. But I kind of wonder about the scale of this project and particularly concerned about the parking garage, especially also because I believe that there's been discussion about allowing other parking garages in Medford Square in the rezoning picture. So I just wonder if this is a thin edge of a very large wedge.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Tom. Thanks, Tom. Is there anyone else who would like to speak in the public hearing for the Medford Square City Hall parking lots overlay district? All right, Sheila, name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[Sheila Ehrens]: Can you hear me now?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, we can hear you.
[Sheila Ehrens]: All right, 19 Sagamore Park. Just a quick question, sort of overlapping with the other gentleman said. about the parking lot and also my other comments for the last meeting about Medford Square, about design. I've been into several communities where they have parking lots that are beautiful in the outside, for example, Newburyport, where they're very, interested in having beautiful design being such a historic community. They've done a wonderful job of what the outside, the veneer of the parking lot looks like as well as in Sarasota, Florida. I was wondering, I don't know if this is the proper time to discuss that because I know there's going to be design review, but I think that would be very important for us to think about when we do design the garage that it blends in more to the surrounding buildings and doesn't stand out like a sore thumb and be just an ugly concrete building. That's all I really had to say. I think this is going to be an exciting project, and I'm very excited about all of the artwork and the sculptures. To add on to what the other gentleman at the last meeting said about trees, I think, again, he's absolutely right. When you have lots of trees and green, it creates a much more beautiful space. I hope that there'll be lots of trees and green here to make it more inviting. Thank you. and thank you for all your hard work, everybody.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Sheila. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak in the public hearing on this project, on this zoning amendment? All right, seeing none, I'm going to close public comment and we can talk about how we wanna move forward here. I think Chair Carr, I will turn it over to you. If you want to speak to if you and your members want to talk about what kind of recommendations you want to make it sounded to me like the recommendation was to make sure that the use table matches the Ms for in our latest draft, but I'll turn it over to you.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, thank you, appreciate that. I do think from what I'm hearing tonight, there is consensus that we should have the use table match what we just approved for this overlay. So I don't know if Danielle, do you think we can work up some language on that? Is it just as simple as that or is it more, do you want to make a specific reference to that, I guess the March 25th date, that use table, It's still in process, right? But I think we want to make sure it's applied here.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I have a question for Director Hunt. Is it March 23rd or is it March 25th? Because I'm looking at March 23rd. Was there a March 25th?
[Zac Bears]: I think it was March 23rd to discuss March 25th.
[Alicia Hunt]: The file name is 23rd. It was presented at the 25th meeting.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Danielle Evans]: But I would say it was dated on the 23rd. Correct. Because that's what it, that's what the memo says.
[Doug Carr]: I believe that's correct, so we would be. We would be adopting or aligning the table of uses. Dated March 23rd presented at the March 25th date and now basically applying it to the overlay district in Medford Square for the trends and properties, I believe.
[Danielle Evans]: I think it would be too. Yeah, adopt. what are we calling this, the Medford Square City Hall overlay amendment as amended to substitute the existing use table with the MS4 subdistrict uses as amended to change use I, what is it? I1. from the CDB to a Y, because right now, under miscellaneous commercial uses, parking area garage, not accessory to permitted principal use is a special permit, and we should just make that a Y, which would be subject to site plan review.
[Doug Carr]: That sounds correct to me.
[Danielle Evans]: Because the other standalone garage is use I-6, and that's specifically for municipal parking garages.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. Sean, does that sound right to you? You're often our voice of reason when it comes to legal language.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I think you're, I think you're close enough, uh, someone to make a motion, uh, unless attorney Moore has wants any additional language.
[Valerie Moore]: No, I think that's, that's right. Um, as Ms. Evans said, as long as we are amending the principal garage used to make that allowed as a right. then we're fine with the amendment as proposed.
[Doug Carr]: Alicia, you have a comment?
[Alicia Hunt]: I just, Danielle missed the word, the clean version, the version circulated today. So there was the version that was first advertised and then the version circulated today had all those italics and some of those little details that Christian caught in it. So I just want to make sure we're referring to that version.
[Doug Carr]: Maybe we need to repeat it. Before you do that, though, let me go to John Anderson. And John, you have a comment or question?
[John Anderson]: Yes, thank you. I guess I'm very reluctant to vote yes on something that references two documents, one of which we're sort of arguing about which version it is. But if Attorney Sean Bagan says it's okay, I'll go along with it. But my personal preference would be to vote no, but I don't want to be the skunk at the garden party.
[Doug Carr]: All right. Thank you, John.
[Sean Beagan]: We can have a five to one vote, John. It won't matter.
[Doug Carr]: Maybe Alicia, could you take one more run at that? Just the motion language that we could put it to a vote. There's a lot there to chew on, I apologize for putting you on the spot.
[Alicia Hunt]: We're gonna drop it in the chat.
[Doug Carr]: Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: Christian wrote it up, what Danielle was saying, right? Danielle, that's what he has there, that's the version. I'll read it out and I'll put it in. The motion is to recommend city council adopt the Medford Square Hall City Hall overlay amendment as amended on March 30th. So that's referring to the version that was circulated today. Substituting the existing MSO with MS4 sub-district, the one in the draft MSD zoning. Hold on, I'm putting this in the chat.
[Doug Carr]: I'm reading it in the chat and I feel like I need an interpreter. I'm just trying to chew on it. Thank you, go ahead.
[Alicia Hunt]: All right, so we'll read it through. The motion is to adopt the Medford Square City Hall overlay amendment as amended on March 30th, 26. That's the version that Valerie sent me yesterday that I circulated to all of you this morning. Substituting the existing MSO, and he doesn't say this, but use column, with the MS-4 subdistrict use column in the draft Medford Square District zoning text document dated March 23, 26. Additionally, replacing the allowance for use I-1 from CDB to Y.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I think it should further say the uses within the use column, just to make clear that we're not changing the title of the use column.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right.
[Doug Carr]: Are there any other comments about this motion, this draft motion from either the, well, from obviously the city board, Hearing none, I'll ask for that motion and second it.
[Sean Beagan]: I'd move to approve the motion as read by Director Hunt.
[Doug Carr]: Second.
[Page Buldini]: I second it.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. I'll read the roll. John Anderson. Yes. Sean Began? Yes. Page Buldini?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Dina Galliero?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman Fishman?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, yes. Motion passes six to zero.
[Zac Bears]: Great. So I think for us, we should just move. And I think you guys may have to move as well to close the public hearing. So is there a motion for a member of the council to close the public hearing? I moved. On the motion of Councilor Lemmie. Second. Public hearing, seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Lemmie. Yes. Councilor Malayne.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes.
[Zac Bears]: Vice President Zarro's absence.
[Marie Izzo]: President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing following what the City Council President Bears just noted.
[John Anderson]: So moved.
[Doug Carr]: And can I hear a second, please?
[John Anderson]: Second.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. We'll call John Anderson.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Sean Began. Yes. PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[Dina Caloggero]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[Doug Carr]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[Zac Bears]: Motions and orders and resolutions, paper 26052, offered by Councilor Leming, updated proposed zoning meeting schedule through June of 2026. So this was an update to the document that we discussed, I believe in February, outlining our upcoming meetings. Let me just share my screen here. All right, so these first two meetings, so that's the one we held last week and the one we are in right now, it's right here. And then we have proposals for April, May, and June. So in April, we would be finishing up the Medford Square zoning and starting some prep work on the Boston Avenue and Tufts zoning. So April 8th on Boston Ave, the council planning and permitting committee would be taking a look at the zoning proposed zoning from last spring to confirm the boundaries to remove the resident any residential districts that were in there. And that's going to be just like kind of a preliminary meeting to make sure we have the right boundaries. On April 15, the Community Development Board would be discussing the Medford Square zoning as we discussed tonight and your public hearing was continued to that. On April 22nd, the council planning and permitting committee will be further discussing and looking at the Tufts and Boston Avenue proposals. On the 28th, the council will be having the final vote on Medford Square if recommendations are referred from the community development board on April 15th. On April 29th, we'll have our second meeting in the council planning and permitting committee to discuss the kind of building and planning development sustainability cleanup portion of this project. And then on April 30th, there's a public information session on Tufts and Boston Avenue to receive feedback from the public. And then essentially May and June, we would be moving through the process of reviewing draft zoning in early May for Tufts and Boston Avenue. And then further having that referred out to a joint city council and community development board meetings for consideration in May and in early June. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Osanic. Would you be able to reshare the schedule? Yeah, just, I guess just offer some additional context on on why this is on why this is here because we approved another schedule. Last month at the earlier this month, the March 3rd meeting. It was found that first, some of the proposed meetings overlapped with community development board meetings and staff did, and PDS staff do want to be able to attend both, well, pretty much all scheduled meetings on zoning without any overlap. One of the meetings was found to be scheduled on Passover, so we did want to change that. The schedule also contains all of the regular city council meetings and the regular community development board meetings, just to offer some clarity on when those are, even if they're not directly related to anything that is being considered at the moment. basically the idea behind this is that we'll have sufficient time is that there is the Medford Square portions which were discussed at the March 25th meeting and this should and this hopefully provides a sufficient timeline to get through the Tufts and Boston Avenue pieces. On the April 8th meeting, we're just going to start within city council planning and permitting to discuss Boston Avenue. We did receive a request from some representatives from Tufts University to attend to meet with the zoning working group meeting before we released anything publicly about Tufts institutional zoning. So we would have that meeting on April 9th just to hear their concerns before anything is made public. Um, and obviously, as usual, the notes from those meetings will be shared with both bodies. Uh, and then the 1st time that that would be made public would be April, uh, April 22nd. Uh, when we start to go over that, um, and then this, and then the, the idea, the idea of the rest of this is just to give us a little bit of time in city council to sort of draft some of our own, uh, to, to work on some of our own, um, uh. to work on some of these papers before passing it off to the CDB, with the first meeting being on May 13th. And then basically the workflow after that would be we have one of those joint meetings every two weeks, and then for three times in a row, and then sort of also have a schedule for June 17 for the June 17 CDB meeting, just in case, you know, any additional items need to be discussed and reviewed then. But the way this happens in my head is the uh, first joint hearing would essentially be an introduction, a discussion, hearing feedback from the CDB. Hopefully we'd be able to have something, you know, sort of calcified and, and, and seen as individual recommendations by, um, the second joint hearing. And then the third joint hearing, um, would be presumably when we, um, uh, would be one that's referred out with sort of an additional CDB meeting scheduled there just in case. And this is sort of like scheduled right up to the wire because the cutoff in his contract is June 30th. Beyond then we really wouldn't be able to rely on their services. The agreement between the Mayor and City Council from December also contains to sort of not review any zoning proposals over the summer. So the intent behind this is to sort of lay out a schedule whereby we'll be able to get through at least the Medford Square and then the Tufts and Boston Avenue pieces before that cutoff is done. And I think this does allow quite a few meetings to be able to do that. So that's just some additional context in addition to what Council President Bears said. like to hear any comments, questions, or concerns about this schedule from members of the City Council and Community Development Board, but I would also like to have just a motion to approve whatever we come up with after the discussion is done.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, chairman. I mean, yes, many chairman. Everybody's a chair tonight. But yeah, this was discussed I think in, you know, just so folks know like the zoning working group discuss this. last week with our planning development sustainability staff with Innes Associates to make sure especially that the Innis team has time to work on Medford Square over the next couple of weeks and then there would not be a draft of any proposed updated draft of any proposed Boston or Tufts zoning until the May 5th Meeting so that gives time for further discussions, looking at the boundaries and as well as the public info session on April 30th. So, really, the. The April meetings are that's a timeline that everyone feels like is good to get us up to May 5th. And, um, you know, as has been presenting and all of their presentations, we have. this time period until June 30th, working with them on these two phases of the project. So everything in May and June is designed to make sure that we have ample meeting time for our discussions and to make sure that we complete this project before the contract expires. So I will ask if there's any other questions from members of the council at this time. Seeing none, I'll turn it over to Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Council President Bez. Page Buldini, go ahead and ask your question.
[Page Buldini]: Thank you so much. A couple of quick questions. Are we going to update the zoning maps that have already been put through? So that's up on the zoning website?
[Zac Bears]: Sorry, the zoning maps for?
[Page Buldini]: Salem Street, when we have Medford Square, when we have the overlay. Will those be available to the public to see on the website?
[Zac Bears]: They should certainly sound street and mystic have and. And that should already be available. I'll turn that over to director hunt.
[Page Buldini]: Perfect, because I was having issues finding it and then we get is interactive map up to where you can put your address in.
[Zac Bears]: I will have to go to director on that.
[Page Buldini]: I was up on the page earlier.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sarah Silver, PB – she-her-hers, PB – she-her-hers, PB – she-her-hers, had sent some updates, but you are correct. I'm not seeing clearly a Salem Street, the sub map there on the webpage. I do see the Medford Square materials on the, because I sent the Medford Square stuff to the communications team last week. And so I do see that there. But I had not noticed it. I don't know where the Salem Street one went. So I will see it. It's if you scroll down to approve adopted zoning proposals, the Salem Street district is there and the mystic district neighborhood corridor district map amendment section and then there's at a glance and I don't see a map public meeting.
[Zac Bears]: So I think that's the
[Page Buldini]: that's the the change from mx2 to mx1 at park and salem that if you scroll down to all the way to the bottom yeah is there any way that we can make that a little user friendly i don't know that's i know a website upgrade and i'm not here to judge it just gets a little
[Zac Bears]: We'll have to coordinate with Steve Smerdy and the mayor's team, because they are the ones who are doing the website. So we'll have to check in with them.
[Page Buldini]: Great. And then is there communication for the Boston Avenue residents or business owners for these meetings? Do we know about the schedule?
[Zac Bears]: I think the plan is to do similar as to what we did to Medford Square. I'm not sure. Again, I think we'd have to check with Steve and the mayor's office on the timing on that.
[Page Buldini]: Great, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Lending.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, sorry, I did just want to, just want to jump in, jump in on one point there, although I think Council President Bears, would you be the one to recognize me in this case, or is it? Yeah, you know, we're just, we're getting, we're almost done. Yeah. being very technical here. Sorry. A lot of this is communications related stuff. On the schedule, we do have the meeting at the Medford Public Library on the 30th, as well as one that's to be determined where the location of that is on June 1st. And I would like for that public info session to go to a butters and to have sort of a, you know, a concerted effort to put to put out postcards to do outreach to businesses within that. within that area. But yeah, some issues with the website, which is kind of something that we keep running into, is that we don't actually have direct control over that. Mostly to update any form of the Medford zoning page, we need to sort of ping and send reminders to the communications team to update it. I personally like to have the power to just update these things personally, but I can't do that. And that means that things are oftentimes like a little bit not the most ideal in terms of organization. We do have an RFP that we also discussed and you might have seen those in the notes for the for the working group meeting for communications consultant to sort of help us out on this and act, you know, full time. So that is so the options for that will come back to city council and hopefully we'll be hiring somebody on that to sort of like. get a lot of these items more in order as the zoning process continues. But yeah, those are points that we do need to sort of fix that part of the process, but we have limited control and resources to get everything perfectly right. So I did just want to point that part out.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, something we're hoping for phase two of this project, whether it's the RFP that was released or as part of a combined RFP for the whole next part of the zoning is to have something like we had for the comprehensive plan where it's not hosted on the city website, which, as you note, has has limitations and the comprehensive plan website. You know, was a really robust resource specifically for the comp plan project.
[Doug Carr]: I think when we left to Councilor Bears, I was going to ask if there were any other Community Development Board members who had a question. Paige was the only one who raised her hand, but I'll give you one last chance. Otherwise, I think we'll be moving towards adopting this schedule. If I don't. Hearing, seeing none, shall we, Councilor Bears, do you want to go ahead and make a motion?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, is there a motion to approve the calendar schedule by a member of the city council?
[Matt Leming]: I moved.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of council. Second. Moved by Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan?
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Levin? Yes. Councilor Malayne?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes.
[Zac Bears]: Vice President Zara was absent. President Bears. Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: I'll entertain the same motion to adopt the schedule as previously noted.
[John Anderson]: So moved. Seconded.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, John. Seconded. Roll call, John Anderson. Yes. Sean Began. Yes. Page Buldini.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Cagliaro.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carrage here. Yes. Motion passes six to nothing. Back to you, President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: All right. I think that's everything for our agenda. So is there a motion to adjourn by member of the council? So moved. On the motion of Councilor Leming, seconded by?
[Anna Callahan]: Second.
[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan?
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malayne?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Vice President Zahra is absent.
[Zac Bears]: President Bears? Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Chair Kerr?
[Doug Carr]: Yes. The echo is continue. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. So moved. So moved. And second.
[John Anderson]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Good. Thank you, Paige. John Anderson? Yes. Sean Began? Yes. Page Buldini?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Calogero?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr. Yes. Thank you all. Very productive evening. That was excellent.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, everyone. Meeting adjourned.
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