Historical Commission 06/09/26

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

The Historical Commission rejected a demolition application for 8 Suffolk Street for lack of jurisdiction and reviewed proposed zoning changes along Boston Avenue. The commission also received updates on municipal art cataloging, ongoing cemetery and park preservation projects, and Section 106 reviews.

0:40 8 Suffolk Street Demolition Application — Rejected the demolition application on the grounds of non-jurisdiction due to insufficient demolition work.
3:52 Boston Avenue Zoning Discussion — Doug Carr presented proposed zoning maps for Boston Avenue North and South, detailing recommendations to reduce proposed building heights and scale back commercial boundaries encroaching into residential side streets.
29:22 Salem Street Burying Ground — Agreed to defer a request from descendants to clean the Sarah Bradley Fulton memorial to the cemetery trustees.
31:22 Citywide Art Inventory — Discussed drafting a scope of work to locate past municipal art records, assess valuations, and explore display opportunities for city-owned artwork.
35:47 Budget Update and Hegner Center — Received confirmation that the commission requested a level budget for the upcoming year and noted preliminary discussions regarding the Hegner Center.
42:09 Preservation Projects and Section 106 Updates — Discussed the pending Section 106 review for Medford High School, completed tree work at Thomas Brooks Park, ground-penetrating radar bidding for the Cross Street burial grounds, and contract extension funding for Hastings Heights survey forms.
53:36 Section 106 Review: 59–75 Valley Street — Agreed to pass on review with no comment regarding telecommunications equipment replacement at 59–75 Valley Street.
55:29 Brooks Estate Parking Lot — Discussed permeable pavement requirements and bid preparations for the Brooks Estate parking lot.
1:02:00 Approval of Minutes — Approved the meeting minutes from May 2026.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Medford Historical Commission, today is Monday, June 8th. It is 7.06 p.m. I will call the meeting to order. Peter, are you good with minutes? Okay, thanks. We are missing Luke tonight and Kit will be joining us late, but she'll be here any minute. But in the meantime, we do have enough people to get started. So we're going to start off with our agenda tonight. We actually had a late entry on our agenda, a demolition case that came in. So we'd like to, we're gonna hear that first before we get onto the rest of our business. So the property address is 8 Suffolk Street.

Commissioners, I did email around a link to our Google Drive and all the materials are in there. And hi, Nina, yes, I see you in the chat and online. We don't need you to do anything, so you can just sit and listen. And if you have a question, you can raise your hand. But commissioners, I did send around the materials. Truth be told, if they had just submitted for their building permit and with these plans, I probably just would have approved it, but we did get an application. So, you know, we can either take the application or we can choose to pass on review, but I'll, you know, if anyone would like to either make a motion or open up the floor for discussion, we can jump off with this one.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: I'll make a motion to reject the application on the grounds of non-jurisdiction. There's not enough demolition to review.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: No, it's not a pass on review. It's a non-jurisdiction. Pass on review says that we have jurisdiction and we want to just pass on it. We don't really have enough demo here to warrant review.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Oh, yeah. But I just didn't know, Sarah or Doug, if you had any comments or questions on this. Otherwise, we'll just take a vote.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay, yeah, I agree. I mean, it's pretty benign, so. Okay, we have a motion on the table to, sorry, Ryan, what did you call it?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Right, okay, we have a motion on the table to reject the application for grounds of jurisdiction where there's not enough demo that has been seconded. I will go around for a roll call vote as I see people on my screen. Peter.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay, so the motion passes 4-0. So Nina, you're off the hook. You don't need to, yes, you're good to go. If you just have your contractor apply for the building permit and we'll send you a letter just for your records, but you guys are good to go. Good luck with your project.

[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_19]: Great, thank you so much. Thanks for starting with this. I appreciate it. No problem. Have a good night. Thanks. Okay.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay. One and done for that. Okay, moving on. We had on the top of our agenda for tonight some zoning discussion. And Doug, I know you wanted to go over where things are at with community development and how it pertains to us. And we can jump on with that. And Kit is joining us right now. So. Hi, Kit.

[Jennifer Keenan]: No worries. Just to give you a quick update. We just rejected the application for 8 Suffolk Street because it's not enough demo. So we're letting them go on their way with their project, which was a late addition to the agenda. So now we're just moving on to our regular agenda that I circulated. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Doug's going to start us off with some zoning chat.

[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I don't know how much time you want to spend on this, Jen. I can briefly show what the two maps are. We're not looking at Tufts University. We're looking at Boston Ave, north of Tufts, basically. right along the edge of campus, along Boston Ave, and then south of the campus, kind of more like in the St. Clemens, down to Ball Square, the two different maps I'll show you. And I can kind of describe really what they're doing and where we are in the process. Let me share my screen.

[Jennifer Keenan]: I mean, we have some time. I don't think the rest of our agenda will be ridiculous. So if we want to take 10 or 15 minutes, I'm OK with that.

[Doug Carr]: Yeah. All right. Let me just share the, I'll call it the Boston Ave North Boston have North map the zoning map. Okay, can you see this? Okay.

[Doug Carr]: Okay, so basically, if you look at where we are, we're talking about, there's really two zones here in Boston Ave North. Here's Boston Ave, kind of cutting across at a 45 degree. This is the Whole Foods site. This is the Walkling Court, the railroad tracks, Cummings property, and the Elizabeth Grady section. That's all being put into with the calling BA3. And this is a very tall district that many of us are uncomfortable with because it was zoned for six stories by right with a two additional stories for incentive zoning. So it could be up to eight stories in 98 feet, which is really, really tall. So some of us objected to that.

[Jennifer Keenan]: What is it now? What are those buildings now? They're like three stories?

[Doug Carr]: The Cummings Building is like five stories, and so is the Elizabeth Grady Building in the back. So it's five stories. They're not small, but they're set back.

[Doug Carr]: so they don't have quite the street presence. This is the entire site. The anticipation is that these would be pretty big buildings. A couple of years ago, Cummings at 200 Boston Ave, that lab building opposed another lab building closer to Boston Ave and bridged it, but it didn't go through, and this zoning would probably allow that to happen by right use. So, we just continue the other section, which is the outline of green with the blue. This is the B, a 1 section and that's 3 stories by right with 1 incentive zoning. So that could be up to 4 and 50 feet. But as you see, if I zoom in here. It goes not just from like Nick's Pizza and all along, you know, along the side where it's all retail and Dunkin' Donuts, et cetera. And I guess there's a couple of different other restaurants and the car repair shop. But then it goes all the way, you know, a couple, like about a thousand feet, I think, maybe a little bit less.

past the Baptist Church, past the retail to encompass really a whole bunch of two-family and three-decker, triple-decker houses that are well beyond the existing commercial boundary of Boston Ave North right now. And it includes, it captures that little Lisa's Pizzeria with its five businesses there and some buildings around it as well. And so that's a pretty big change. How many stories done? This would allow a total of four stories and 50 feet. So it would be, you know, it doesn't say that they would all be knocked down, but they could be. If somebody bought them all, you know, they could theoretically develop those and expand the commercial so that there's, it's a mixed use zoning, not just apartment one, which is what it is now.

[Jennifer Keenan]: When you say four stories and 50 feet, what does that mean? What does the 50 feet piece mean? Is that like a setback?

[Doug Carr]: Thank you for clarifying. If you think of the building that was just built in West Medford, the old funeral home right at the edge of West Medford on Route 60, that is four stories and probably a couple of feet less than 50 feet. That's the scale of building we're talking about. OK. And that's what this could become. It's not guaranteed. Nothing is guaranteed in zoning, but it's allowed by right. That's the difference. So, there's that.

[Doug Carr]: It does. Hillside Hardware and that whole block around here. Tufts owns Hillside Hardware. They bought it, by the way. I don't know if you're aware of that. Yeah. And there's half a dozen businesses along here. But these are all two-family houses, and I have some photos of each one of these houses. You can see that later on. Let me stop sharing that and go to you, Boston F. What's the yellow? Just is the existing general residential that is not being zoning. And so that's not part of what we're talking about here.

[Doug Carr]: So, let me share now with the boss and have South. Which is a different PDF just take a 2nd. See. Okay, so just to give some context here, now this is Boston Avenue right here, Ball Square Broadway down below, so it's right to the Medford line at the end. Tufts is north off the plan. You know, you have St. Clement's Church, St. Clement's High School. You have across the street, you've got that car wash. You have the three-story wood frame buildings backing up to the Rett. And you have the Sphere building, which was built a couple of years ago. That's a four-story of stick frame residential over one-story of parking and retail down below. And there's a site across the tracks as well. Now, this one is a BA2. This one is taller. and I've had some strong pushback against this one. This is four stories by right, but with the incentive zoning, meaning if you do certain things like the green score and other things like give additional affordable, you could get up to three stories additional, seven stories, 86 feet. That is very, very tall.

I've objected to that. at St. Clements because I think these two-family houses across the street would be, this would be towering over their house. I don't think that's a fair change to their neighborhood quality to have that. I'm proposing that it gets dropped to a maximum of six stories and 70 feet, which is basically a little bit more than what the sphere building is. And the other thing that has not been included here is that the St. Clemens Rectory here and the St. Clemens Elementary School has been omitted. And I suggested that they add that because those buildings are part of the campus for St. Clemens. And I think those buildings are development candidates. They're different than all these single family homes, not single family, sorry, two families and some three families that line both sides.

of both Bristol Road and Boston Avenue. So this is what the zoning was presented to us and we're in the midst of kind of pushing back saying, you know, not a fan of the height, it's a little too tall, not a fan of the boundaries because I think sometimes they're too far sometimes in the case of St. Clements Elementary, they're not far enough. I think we want to capture that building and save it. We want to, you know, you could add a floor to that building and make it a nice apartment building, affordable housing, market rate, whatever it is.

The original CPC, the first year, we almost got the St. Cummins High School to be affordable. It was put, there was a grant given to us, but the Archdiocese pulled out of that. That one could have been housing by now, and we do want that to be housing. It's a great, it's literally between two green line stops. It cannot be better for TOD, transit on development housing, than that location. Any questions before I move on to my comments, which is a different document just to orient Doug.

[Kit Collins]: So, beside the car wash, isn't that isn't that next section in green? Isn't that already condos?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yes, so those are the, it's 622, there's a bunch of addresses there, but they're like townhouse-y kind of built in the 80s.

[Doug Carr]: Correct. And those wouldn't go away unless somebody decided they want to buy millions of dollars in condos and make it a six-story condo, right? It would be, odds are those things don't change, but the zoning gets changed. Zoning obviously doesn't mean automatic change for anything, but it's more potential. There's parking underneath those buildings, too, I think, Jen.

[Jennifer Keenan]: It's behind. So you go down on the left, and then you can drive in the back. And they have a little garage back there.

[Doug Carr]: Yeah. And there was, at the Titan Gas, just a couple of years ago, a four-story building proposed. Now they could go higher. And I think, again, great location to put housing.

[Jennifer Keenan]: And what's on the other side of the train tracks? Is that a Tufts building there?

[Doug Carr]: I believe so. So that would be up zoned as well. Anyway, let me stop sharing and I'll go to. I'm going to.

[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_19]: And Doug, none of the buildings that St. Clement's owns right now are in use, right? Except the parish, maybe?

[Doug Carr]: The parish is used. There is some very light use of the high school building. It doesn't seem like a lot. The gym is not used, as far as I know, unless maybe as a community space for the church. But I know that the elementary school has been abandoned for 15 years. There's nothing in that building, that smaller building, which is just down the street. So, basically my emphasis here. Sorry, let me, you can see the screen, right? Yep. Okay, let me go to.

I'm looking for a balance between the comprehensive plan we put a couple of years ago and said, okay, you want to basically expand, give people more housing types, expand the commercial base of Medford, but you also want to balance it with the character of the neighborhoods. And I think that's where some of this plan falls short, in my opinion, obviously, because I think it goes too far in many cases with the height and with the distance.

I calculated just by walking the quarter and adding them up on the plan that there are 54 standalone buildings that are residential along this quarter from Winthrop Street to Stoughton Street, which is a summer line, and that 19 of them, 35% would be changed to this mixed use category, which could bring them to 4 stories. I think that changes the character of Boston Ave a lot and not in a positive way. So I'm looking to peel that back by bringing the boundaries back a little bit and not having them go so far. Still allowing for some additional commercial and taller buildings. but not go as far. This one goes quite, quite far.

And if you look closely, you'll see that some of these residential buildings are actually not on Boston Ave. They're on the side streets. They're on Adams and Hillsdale. Those are being captured because they're currently apartment one, but no one has ever built anything there. They're just basically simple buildings that are in a different zone from probably 50 plus years ago. So let me just switch gears. This is a detail of that same area, again, north of Winthrop Street. And then I go, it's a little easier for me to talk about this when I see it as a aerial photo. You can kind of see the commercial district with Danish Bakery House, a couple of two-family houses. You have the church. You have a parking lot. You have a three-story apartment building. And then you have these seven triple deckers that are lined up along Boston Ave. Then you have the retail block, that taxpayer block, it says five businesses in there, and then the houses that surround me. Again, they're looking to make a bigger, potentially a bigger site, and then all the two families along the other side. I zoomed in on just this one piece of it, this little dog-like piece I caught, and you could see I took photos of each of the houses around here. I think these houses are important to read them alone. Like, they're good houses, they're on side streets, on Adams, on Hillsdale. And, you know, they're nice, solid middle-class houses. Most of them are two families, there's a few single families. But there's no real reason to kind of make something different. I call it the tail wagging the dog. If we want to make that block bigger, let's make it bigger. You can leave the other buildings alone and focus on this building. This is a one-story taxpayer block. What do you want to do? I think you want to do what we did in Route 60. You want to basically keep retail, add a few floors, make it four stories.

There'd be more retail at the ground floor. This is what was built at 421 High Street. You've probably driven by it or walked by it. I feel like this scale is reasonable. But I don't think taking all those houses and making a mega block, which is not guaranteed, but it's possible, is the right approach. So rather than this zoning, I'm saying just make it, just zone that one thing you want to zone and leave the rest alone.

That's one big comment I have. And again, I don't know if the City Council agrees. I don't know even if the entirety of the City Board agrees, but that's the position I'm taking. I think there's some support for this, but it's not 100% for sure. They're going to focus on these seven triple-deckers. Same thing. If you zoom in real close, you can kind of see. They're kind of maxed out. They fill out their entire blocks. I think, Jen, you mentioned in an email that you could build an accessory dwelling unit behind it if you want to have more housing back there, which is a great idea. But I view the end of where I want to end the commercial block is where this 308 Boston Ave apartment building is. That's a perfect, to me, endpoint for that commercial zone. Because after that, it becomes a residential street, pretty much, with a few exceptions, like the Lisa's Pizzeria and a couple of others. But it's pretty much Boston Ave is residential and I think that character and scale is important. So if we go to the next one, so again, I take, you know, again, kind of reduce, you know, go from that to that. You take out all those houses around the retail, you take out most of these houses and you expand, you definitely expand the commercial potential of Boston Ave from Danish House North, but it's not, As severe as it is, there's a few houses, obviously the ones right next to Danish pastry house. I mean, I hate to say it, but those, those are doomed houses. There's just, you know, there's no way you can make a bigger commercial block without those ultimately becoming something bigger. So I'm just trying to limit the negative impact on the neighborhood as much as possible.

And my idea is if you, if you, you know, this is what's proposed, you know, again, the 4 stories, I think if you make it a lot smaller, I think going to that 5th floor would not be that bad along that corner. You know, I think people can disagree about that, but I know that the sphere building, for example, again, the other side of Boston Ave. isn't exactly that. It's the four wood frame over the one story retail and parking. That's a model that works for developers and I think quite a few sites here, if they're combined, you could fit that building type.

So these are the dimensional adjustments that I'm proposing. Rather than four stories and 50, I'm going to 460, but the smaller footprint. And I'm cutting back from 86 feet to 70 and from 98 feet to 85 for the BH2 and the BH3, which I talked about in the earlier version. Um, then again, this isn't just a quick image of the sphere building again. That's, you know, 4 stories. I think it's right on Boston have the green line is literally a stones throw down the street. I think it's a good model for much of the development where you want to develop on Boston. And I think this is a reasonable approach.

Here are the same Clemens school again, it's kind of a 3 story building. I think it could take 2 more floors easily. And so that's what I'm proposing that it goes only up to 5 stories. And not 86 feet, but I guess 60 feet is what I had for the max for that building. And again, it was left off, but the proposed zoning for the St. Clement's Elementary School, I think, is something comparable. Again, a three-story building. You could easily add two floors and you might keep this building, but this also could be torn down and you could expand that elementary school with, again, another taller building that I feel is appropriate for Boston to have. And I just wanted to make one point with this slide that even though a lot of the community, a lot of the housing has slowed down around greater Boston, it really hasn't slowed down for Medford just in the last, would have been more than a year. We've approved in the city board, even before my time, 1,452 units of housing.

including 262 affordable, we are building housing in Medford. You don't have to have every single lot. You're going to make a lot more progress by having these 276 units at a time and 289 and 350. Like, yeah, we still have some on Salem Street and some Main Street, but that's not where the action is. The action is on the big, big sites that are mostly, there'll be one of these at the Elizabeth Grady, not as big as these, but there'll be a pretty big building there. But in Wellington, there's a lot of opportunity and along Mystic Valley Parkway.

Where there's big sites, you can put buildings like this and they're being proposed even in this tough market right now. So, anyway, that's the basic where we stand. I know it's a lot to digest, but if anyone has any questions, I can try to answer. I don't know when this is going to be passed. It could be the end of June. It could be in September, depending on how much back and forth there is between the city board and the council. We're having these joint meetings and the next one is Thursday night.

[Jennifer Keenan]: I mean, I agree with all of your comments, and I also think it's important to remind, like, after the Glenwood debacle of zoning, like, they said they were going to focus on the commercial districts. Well, those nine triple-deckers are not a commercial district. I think reducing the site there. And again, like I said in my email to you, anybody in Medford right now can put an ADU on their property. We're already creating density from that. All those triple-deckers can have an ADU in their backyard. And when I tell you I'm approving permits left and right for ADUs on the permitting system, there's a lot of ADUs being created right now.

[Doug Carr]: I definitely would like to track that, Jen. I don't know if we can, I'm tracking the big buildings that come before us on the CD board, but I'd love to know, like, on calendar year 2026, how many ADUs were added. That's a good number to have. You know, if we can go back and look at that, obviously, we don't need to do it anytime soon, but having that metric is important.

[Jennifer Keenan]: I don't know if I can search by that. I'll try. I'll see if I can. And if not, I'm sure that somebody in the building department could, or maybe Alicia, anybody that has access to the back end of the CitizenServe can probably search by keyword, is my guess. Now, you know, yeah, and then, you know, now granted, like, you'd like to think by the time they apply for their permit, like, their project is a go. And I know sometimes you put the permit in and it doesn't get finished for whatever reason. But there's a lot happening. I mean, maybe it's not, maybe it's 50, but it seems like a lot, right?

[Doug Carr]: But that's still... 50 units is a lot of units. If you get 50 ADUs a year, that's going to make a dent.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah. It's easily two to three a week or every time I check the system. Wow.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah. So we're already creating density from that, is my point, right? And so I think dialing back some of these zones. I mean, the St. Clemens, that whole kind of funky-shaped parcel where we always illegally parked for Semolina, right? That could be, yeah, put a five-story building there. It's a perfect spot for it. It's a perfect spot for it.

[Jennifer Keenan]: No, but I mean, but how many units could you get in five stories?

[Doug Carr]: Oh, easily. Because I think that building alone could probably fit 25 and then you'd add it, you almost double it. You might get 50 or 60 in the whole building.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Right. That's in addition to the 1450 that has already, you know, like, I mean, that's just potential for more. Yep.

[Doug Carr]: All right. Any other questions? I know we want to keep this meeting moving.

[Jennifer Keenan]: No, thank you. I hope they agree with you about those triple-deckers.

[Kit Collins]: We'll see how it goes. I'm hopeful. Can I ask one quick question, which is just the Baptist church is in that commercial area, right, on Boston Ave. Is that on the national registry?

[Doug Carr]: I don't think so. In fact, we had, I'm pretty sure when they came before the CPC, they asked for of replacing what we thought was a stained glass window that had some historic, and it turns out it was from the 70s. It didn't have really, so I don't, of all the churches in Medford, I don't know a lot about that church, but it doesn't seem to have rise to the level that almost every other church building in Medford has, which is, you know, incredible architectural integrity and details, and it's been really roughed up over the decades, so.

[Doug Carr]: Yeah, Brian, I don't think that was a candidate for us to put our, our flag on there. Was it? I didn't think so. All right.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Thank you Doug. Thanks for that update. That's very helpful. Okay, moving on to our agenda. Salem Street Burial Grounds, Ryan.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: The City of Medford has a Preservation restriction on Salem Street Burying Ground that's sort of loosely managed by the Historical Commission. And Tim sent us a request from the descendants of Sarah Bradley Fulton who want to clean her memorial and I'm okay with it, but I think that because it's a cemetery, I think it should be deferred to the cemetery trustees who are gonna take up the matter tomorrow at their meeting. So I just am sort of bringing it to our attention as a courtesy, but as a policy, we should just simply allow the trustees to manage the cemetery, because they've already managing the Cross Street and Oak Grove, so.

And then of course, support them if they need to do any restoration or whatever, but they're really the right people to approve this request. So.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: And we'll just in the future defer any of the burial, the gravestone cleanings to the trustees. And if there's any maintenance issues, we can work with them on it.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah. I would just tell them like they can wrap us in if they feel it's a bigger issue. Okay. Do you want to tackle the citywide art inventory?

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yes. We got an inquiry from the library. They have a painting that they want to loan out on exhibit. So it just got me thinking that if the city does not already have one, and I think they did at one time, they should have a citywide art inventory and then all the art should be professionally sort of assessed for value and insured. uh, documented. I know, and Dennis, correct me if I'm wrong, but your office may have something. I know a while back they, Tufts University documented like all of the, the paintings that were hanging at City Hall in like the various offices. So some sort of list may already exist.

[Denis MacDougall]: Yeah, it was actually a graduate student at Mass College of Art. who came and did an inventory. And that's how we got the painting that's in our office and a few of the other ones around City Hall. She found them down in the basement, basically just collecting dust and God knows what else down there. But I believe she actually did an inventory of everything in the city. So I went through there as well. So I do not know remotely where that is or what the end result was of that. It was 10 years ago, maybe? 8 to 10 years ago.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, and you know, it was clear that some of the art obviously had been catalogued at the library over the years because they had a valuation of it, likely because of the move and needing to go to storage. So, you know, it might be time to reassess that and some of the paintings that could be, you know, more famous, so to speak, could use a cleaning. So, you know, and if they qualify for CPC, there's no reason why that stuff can't be out on display.

[Jennifer Keenan]: I mean, the email from the library said that they were potentially exploring loaning it out, but it sounded like they were just looking for a spot to put it. And my first thought was, is there a reason we, I mean, I know it's not really the same, but like, could we hang it at the Brooks Estate?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Uh, yeah, I mean, like if they just need a place to put it, not that we have all kinds of space in the Brooks estate, but no, it's sort of like a larger conversation, right?

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Because like we had talked about, uh, like Teresa and I have talked about potentially doing some rotating art on the third floor of the city hall, which has nothing. Uh, there's some stuff that has been on the second floor for a long time that could be traded out, you know, so there really could be. rotating ARC throughout the city so that the stuff gets the light of day, and more importantly, it goes back into storage when it needs to be stored. I think it's just part of a larger conversation about what we do with some of this stuff.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, because I know there are random things that are floating around. Like, for example, I know the city has a painting of Milton Fuller Roberts. It was at the Roberts Junior High School. I believe it made its way over to the new school. It's probably at the elementary school. But is it still there? Those are the type of questions that I have. Or did it go somewhere else? You know, that sort of thing. So Okay, so I guess we'll start with that's a good project. Let's make a scope of work and see what's been done and see if we can update it. And then the city can sort of decide what goes out where.

I'm all for loaning out our artwork, especially if it's a copy of a painting and not an original, but if it's here and we have space, we should display it.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay, I'm just taking notes. Okay, we'll talk about that more. Okay, budget update. We got the same budget.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Well, yeah, they're being voted on. We have put in for the same budget. We did not ask for an increase. We did not ask for a decrease. So fingers crossed our budget gets passed. And if you look at the line items, it is us and the bicycle commission that have zero salary on our boards. So that's always interesting, I think. Okay, so stay tuned for there for like official word on our budget for next year. Ryan, did we spend out this year? Are we good?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay, good. So we're not waiting on any forms or anything? We're caught up?

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: No, we have some stuff that's outstanding that will take a little bit longer to come in, but I've spent every penny.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Right, yes. OK. And we've gotten some emails from the folks at the Hegner Center that they're trying to figure out what they want to do over there. So nothing imminent coming in on a demo application, but we just threw it on here to make people aware that there's conversations of what they want to do with that building. and they are involving us to some degree. And we have invited them to come to meetings. If they have questions, they can come talk to us. Do you have anything else to fill in there, Ryan?

[Peter Miller]: I heard that Brianna threw a number out for like $2 million or something, $2 to $3 million.

[Peter Miller]: Well, that's a number I heard it was I think it was something to do with On some list somewhere. But anyway, yeah.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. I know the preliminary numbers were coming back way way higher That's the little brick building, right? Yeah. Yeah, I

[Jennifer Keenan]: Because weren't they going for CPC or something? We had to make it significant. Yes. It was something we had to discuss for that.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay. Anybody have any other new business? Otherwise, we've kind of gone through everything at most importance tonight.

[Doug Carr]: I do at the end want to spend 5 minutes to show what the final version of the Tufts Aquatic Center was. I don't need to do that now, but I thought people might be interested in since this group gave some pretty strong opinions and the design was changed and improved for what it's worth.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Let's do that. Didn't we do that last month? Or did they change again?

[Doug Carr]: No, no. Did I show you the last one? I don't remember that. Yeah, you did show it.

[Peter Miller]: Oh, you did? I missed it. It had those like sawtooth kind of windows.

[Doug Carr]: Yes, yes. It wasn't approved then, but it's been approved since then. Oh, great. Never mind. Yeah, that was good.

[Jennifer Keenan]: So it no longer looks like a prison? Yeah. Or is it still prison-esque?

[Doug Carr]: No, actually, I think people will be pleasantly surprised because they also changed the canopy. Sorry, the vestibule to be glass in the front. It was very solid before, so it's going to feel like a much lighter, more inviting building that will glow at night. Great.

[Doug Carr]: That was the killer one. That was the, you know, the knife in the back.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Right. Okay. Anybody have anything else new before we move on to old business? Not really any updates for our future vacant seats that I know we're trying to replace some folks. Ryan, let's do another pass at some postings. See if we can get anybody. And certainly if you guys have anybody in your networks, spread the word. What, Ryan?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah. But I also think district has a couple of open seats officially too, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if not us, you know, district or, you know, we could potentially shift some folks around maybe. So there's always people to help. I mean, you know, if people are willing to help, we'll find them. And certainly, over at M-Belt, we could use some blood too. So if anybody has extra time and wants to jump in and help us over at the Brooks Estate, we will, again, if you have one hour, one project, one year, we'll find something for you to do.

[Kit Collins]: I wonder if we should actually write that up, what you just said, Jen, that there are all sorts of opportunities within the city and put that out. Yeah. And if you're interested in.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah, I know that, like, I know the communications office, like, has it rotating on their social. And I think, do we have an evergreen post on our blog, Ryan, on our website?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Meaning, like, it doesn't expire. It's just like, we're always looking for bodies.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, our blog is readable, and it's searchable, and it doesn't delete articles. So, like, if, you know, the stuff is on there, we can just simply update the date to be the current.

[Jennifer Keenan]: yeah or like i don't know if it makes sense to like pin it at the top like or something you know like

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, I don't know what we can do there, but that might be above my pay grade. So we'll see.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Well, I think as long as every few months we just update it so it stays kind of towards the top of our news kind of feed type thing, that would be good.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: When you're done, I do have something. I have more new business. I forgot about this one. But go ahead. Keep going. It's not really important.

[Jennifer Keenan]: OK. All right, so yeah, so let the arm twisting commence and find some people. Section 106 for the high school. Do we have anything officially yet to look at?

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: No, consultants are sharing information and based on what they provided, it's minimal. So we're going to have the consultants hire a consultant to do a form and gather more information. get more complete information and try to piece together some more understanding of that building so that we can have it documented. So when they're ready to initiate the section 106 review, that there's actually something of substance to talk about it.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, obviously, Yeah, depending on the final outcome of what they decide, whether it's an ad addition or a total demolition. I mean, if it's a total demolition, it's not really our purview because it's so new.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Did their consultant ever complete an environmental study for that building yet? And I feel like you guys would be looped into that. I was asked about it because you had forwarded it to me originally. I just want to know what became of that and if they actually compiled some sort of report so that the consultants could take a look at that. Because it has the land use in it.

[Denis MacDougall]: I honestly don't know the status of that. I can check when I get in. It hasn't come back. in my direction, but I can ask around.

[Peter Miller]: Yeah. I've heard that Wednesday's the day when they're going to decide on the scheme. Which of the six?

[Peter Miller]: Yeah, not like a specific architectural design, but more of a concept. Yeah, concept of how to deal with the site. which parts to preserve or not, you know, are they going to keep the pool, that kind of stuff.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Maybe they'll surprise me and go with a renovate only option.

[Peter Miller]: They have one option that's a total demo. And then one option that's, you know, upgrade the systems. So I guess that is to keep it, everything. And then there's, four options in between, I guess.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. I just, I keep reminding people that I know it's not preferred, but a renovate all can be phased over multiple years. It's not preferred, but maybe financially prudent.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. But also if we had just been paying our dues this whole time, you know, the previous administrators had just been putting the money into the buildings, then we wouldn't be in this situation. So, lesson learned, keep the buildings up, right? So.

[Denis MacDougall]: Okay, so. Although, I will, can I just jump in? I will say is someone who went to the high school when it was less than 15 years old. It was in horrible shape that. Yeah, I believe that it was in terrible shape. And that at that point, windows were falling out, it was falling apart then. So I mean, I understand like, you know, yeah. But even then, what so this has been a long, long standing. You know, it hasn't been like all of a sudden, in the last like 20 years, all of a sudden, it hasn't been kept kept. It was bad.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, Medford has a bad history of deferred maintenance.

[Denis MacDougall]: It was one of those things. I didn't realize how old it was until somebody told me when it was built. And I was like, no way. I would have bet anything that when I was there, it was 30 years old. Yeah. Early 70s.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, I just hope that what is befalling some of our older schools does not befall what I classify as the new schools, which are not really new in their own right anymore, right?

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. So, you know, I just, I hope that that we stay on top of those because I would hate to be, you know, I would hate to bear witness to us tearing down yet another round of newer buildings, right?

[Jennifer Keenan]: OK, so stay tuned on the high school. Yeah. OK, not really. We don't really have any updates on properties under demo delay. No movement right on Mystic 41.

[Jennifer Keenan]: OK. All right. So stay tuned on that. Any update on the archaeological survey?

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yes, I'm finally under contract after many, many months. So that should be moving. And we scheduled at least a startup. Now I got to schedule the walkthrough. So I will be, we'll be tromping through the woods at some point. So it'll be a good test of my, it'll be a good test of permethrin.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay, and then Thomas Brooks Park. I saw the emails that we were paying the tree contractor the works all done Yes, they did a great job.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah hundred and all told hundred and forty six thousand dollars Worth of work to express that parking convert probably years of forestry work down into about two months so Yeah, so next step will be to come up with a replanting list and replant some trees and shrubs that are period appropriate.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Also, I noticed today, Ryan, when I was driving home that there's a few places now where the wall, some stones have fallen out of the wall.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Like all along. And even up at our wall, Doug, from at Brooks Estate, from the gate to Winchester, there's a bunch of sections that have crumbled. We're just gonna need to have a line item in our budgets every year for wall maintenance.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. Some of it can be volunteers if they're small, but the bigger stuff, yeah. And it could be a partnership, right? It could be a day that both teams are working out and they load up the big stones and then just say, we'll pile on the rest of the small stuff, so keep going, you know?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah. I mean, a couple of them on Thomas Brooks' wall definitely look like somebody was trying to climb the wall and their foot pushed the stone out, you know? The Brooks Estate wall, there's a few sections where it's like, bloop, bloop. Yeah. So either a car hit it or, you know, whatever. Yeah, I mean, people steal the stones for their yard. So it's like, oh, I'll just take this one. And then all of a sudden, it's like, bleh.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: It could be deer. Are there deer over there? Yeah. I mean, it could be deer jumping the wall.

[Doug Carr]: I don't think it's deer. There's a ton of deer, but I don't there's a ton of deer, but I don't think we built half of that wall was in the backyards of the side of Grove Street over the last 50 years.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah, I mean, they're real nice stones. So, um, yeah, right. Yeah. All right, that's great. That'll be nice to keep plugging away at that master plan at Thomas Brooks Park to get the next section done. I was with a client who, I was at their rental property, but they live across on Oak Ridge. And they were like, oh, it would be great if you had some like panels there about like what, and I'm like, yeah, we're working on it. Like some signage would be fabulous. Like we're working on it. It's in the plan.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yep. Okay, got two things. They tried to get some pricing for ground penetrating radar at the relocated Cross Street to do some investigations there. That came in at like $26,000. We're looking to see where we can come up with the funding for that. Although, given the amount of money and how much it is, I probably will have to go have procurement chime in on that. So that's sort of up in the air. The other cross street site went out to bid and the excavation portion of it, someone came in at like I don't remember, like $35,000, which seemed way under the value of the other contractor that wasn't qualified, but put in a bid anyway. So it raises a little bit of suspicion about the valuation of that work. The archeological portion of it ranged from a low bid of 200,000 to a high bid of 850,000. So we're gonna, go back, I believe, and we're gonna try to ground penetrating radar that entire site to get a better sense of the number of burials there, which is what's driving the discrepancy. So we have to know before we go in the ground. So we're gonna try to GPR the site. So I'm trying to get estimates for that, just so that there's not so, much discrepancy that that number of discrepancy leads potential for the city of getting burned, which I don't want to do. So we can sort of rectify that by doing GPR, getting some more information, getting a little bit of stuff ahead of opening the ground and then going back out to bid with that additional information. So the project sort of dragging on. I don't know if there'll be in the ground. We're just ticking away here in the middle of summer. So I don't know if we'll be in the ground for next year to be perfectly honest. So, uh, but, uh, we'll just keep moving.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, we got a contract extension. The state, I basically said, oh, I have X dollars from the city budget. Can you match it? They're giving us an additional 6,000 to our 4,000 match for an additional $10,000 worth of survey forms. So they're in the process of finalizing the contract extension. And then Claire and John will just roll right into production of forms.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Great. So, okay, this is a reminder. Ryan, you had something else you want to talk about?

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah, we got a section 106 review for 59 to 75 Valley street. It's a, it's the. Like, multi story apartment building on top of that has some. telecommunications equipment and they're just swapping it out. So there's no real change other than they're just swapping out the equipment for new equipment. It's an ugly building. We've reviewed it before. Our comments have always been no comment. So I just raised the question of, do we even want to comment or do we just want to pass on review?

I'm inclined to say that we should pass on review and just tell them we have no comment.

[Jennifer Keenan]: I'm fine if that's, if it's, you know, if we've made many decisions before, I'm fine to just, and if they're just switching equipment.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Some point that ugly brick building will be probably come up for age related historic significance, but, but not yet. Not today, but not today. They live another day.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: It's the end of, it's where the Fellsway, it's where the Fellsway turns hard, but just below Roosevelt Circle.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. Originally the Fellsway between Forest Street and Salem Street was all called Valley Street. They just, it just got absorbed by the Fellsway when it went in.

[Jennifer Keenan]: That's all we have. Does anybody have anything else? I know we have to do the minutes. But any other business we need to talk about before we approve the minutes and call it a night?

[Jennifer Keenan]: We're hopefully going out to bid in the next couple of weeks. I'm hoping before our next meeting, I put it in the newsletter.

[Doug Carr]: It's a bit of a wrestling match the, you know, the, we really had crushed stone for the, what was the temporary parking lot of the 20 spaces roughly and the city said, no, they want payment because they need, they said, we're going to maintain it. We're going to, um. They didn't want to plow crushed stone, so they changed the design. But then the preservation restriction requires that it be permeable pavement. So that's something that we cannot negotiate.

That's what's being detailed right now. Those drawings are coming in in a couple of days. I will distribute them to the city and to everyone who needs to see it, and then we'll put it out to bid as soon as I can get it in front of the purchasing department, and we'll be on our way. But we had a little bit of wrestling match between the city and a lot of stakeholders, obviously, on this parking lot. It's almost done.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: What did you end up using for a product? Just curious.

[Doug Carr]: I don't know, actually, because I don't have the final specs and drawings to do in a few days, but I assume that there aren't 100 different varieties of it. But we have to vacuum it, like this maintenance that needs to be done that the city won't do. So even though they're getting what they want with pavement, they don't have any ability to do it. So EMBELT's going to have to hire someone twice a year to basically go through as a vendor and vacuum the parking lot.

so that it remains permeable as part of the environmental requirements for the conservation restriction on the entire property.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Interesting. So is it laid down over like a base so that you can vacuum it? Is it like a pan, basically, sort of like what you would have with a dog park?

[Doug Carr]: No, I mean, there's ultimately crushed stone and a couple of layers underneath it, but it just, it just allows water to filter through and you just have, you cannot not maintain it or those holes become filled with dirt and dust and things. And so at least twice a year, you need to do some preventive maintenance to make it remain permeable.

[Doug Carr]: There are I've been looking for that. If you just Google it, you can find them and I just don't have a price yet.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. And then how much additional I'm just curious. This is all curiosity. Like, what the difference in cost between that versus regular conventional payment would be.

[Doug Carr]: It's a good question. The revised drawings are going to come with a revised cost estimate. Remember, we're bidding this. So the ultimate test is the bidding. So I know we've made it more expensive. And we did not get the $200,000 grant from the state. Mass cultural. Yeah, mass cultural.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Is the product colored? Or is it black? Or is it? I know you can color it.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: You definitely should find out because you could also match some of the colors of the building or your color schemes, et cetera. You could play off the brick.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Well, no, I was just thinking, you know, if it's a permanent product, you know, it'd be really neat if you could stamp it. Not to add more expense, but, you know, if it's going to be a one and done, then it might as well really be a one and done.

[Doug Carr]: Well, no, this, this actually gets extended not only to the part phase 2 of the parking lot, but the entire road becomes this too, for what it's worth, you know, setting the precedent. So you're not wrong about that. I just don't know. I'll get a color chart if there is 1 for the product. Yeah, it's probably like colored because it wants to also reflect light, not absorbent. I would think.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I, we looked at this for like a park, they were a slew of colors at the time. I don't, you know, Alex probably been some of it's been a little bit more time tested. It was new back then. So, you know, 2006, 2008 ish probably was what they started rolling it out.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Okay. And then on that same line, Jen, do you want us to appoint Ben?

[Jennifer Keenan]: Oh, I need to circle back with Carly on that. Okay. Yeah, let me... Yeah, we're still figuring that out, but probably at some point, we'll figure that out.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Just so everybody knows, the commission has a permanent seat on the M-BELT board as manager because commission and M-BELT and a slew of other organizations were instrumental in saving that building. So we have a permanent seat on that board.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Right, which is me right now, but there's been just some discussion of we have a few new volunteers at mbelt and we'd like to give them like official seats and then I don't need to have an official seat. And we had somebody, we had two new people and we were going to kind of put one on our seat and then The other 1 was going to be something else and then, but the other person lives in Winchester and so I think we need to keep the Medford person on our board and they'll be the liaison and then I'll just be like, a straight up volunteer. So, but I need to confirm all that with Carly. So. Yeah, let's make a note for the next meeting. We might have to make that vote.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Ben is also a former commissioner, but you know what I'm going to say, right? I'm going to say, well, Ben, if Ben has time to do the M-Belt, he has time to come back to the commission.

[Jennifer Keenan]: No, he doesn't want to. We got too political. He just wants to, like, volunteer.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Yeah, he also has two kids. So, like, you know, all you guys with kids, like, you know how it is. But he's helping us with some archiving work right now, which is awesome.

[Vice Chair Ryan Hayward]: Sorry, my child is orange and fluffy and he's around here somewhere. Right, exactly.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Okay, Peter sent around the meeting minutes, if somebody would like to make a motion.

[Peter Miller]: I can't second my own meeting. He can second it. He can vote for his own minutes.

[Jennifer Keenan]: Kit? Do you want to? Abstained. OK. And Ryan? Yeah. And Ryan? Yes. Okay, so that's four yes and one abstention. Yep. All right. I will adjourn the meeting. It is 8.09 p.m. Our next meeting is July 13th. Thank you, everybody. Have a great rest of the month, and we'll see you next month.

Kit Collins total time: 0.64 minutes total words: 99