[Zac Bears]: I mean, apparently I wasted... Special joint meeting of the Medford City Council and Community Development Board, June 11th, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Kirk, please call the roll for the city council.
[Rich Eliseo]: Someone's got their speaker on. Councilor Callahan. Present. Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Mullane. Councilor Scapelli. Present. Councilor Tseng. I don't think Justin is here. Councilor Tseng is absent at the moment. Vice President Lazzaro. Present. And President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Present. Six present, one absent. The meeting is called to order for the City Council. Chair Carr?
[Doug Carr]: Yes, I'll call the City Board to order. John Anderson? Present. Sean Began? Present. Page Buldini? Tina Calogero? Present. Ari Goffman-Fishman?
[Ari Fishman]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, Chair, present. Five, we'll see where we can get the meeting. Present. Oh, Paige, is that you?
[Zac Bears]: No, that's all right.
[Doug Carr]: Oh, very good. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: All right. With that, we have the meeting call to order. We have a quorum of both bodies. This is the second public hearing, paper 26093 offered by Councilor Leming and President Bears's public hearings and proposed amendments to the Medford zoning ordinance for the Boston Avenue Neighborhood Corridor District. In a second, we're going to go through a, this is a continued public hearing, continued from May 27th and June 3rd. It will likely be continued to June 24th. Tonight, we will be hearing more from members of the public in the public hearing. We're going to start briefly with an overview for anyone who may be joining us for the first time of the process thus far. This is, we've had many meetings on this as part of a over two and a half year project to update the city zoning. We did have a pretty extensive presentation and discussion at our last meeting and did hear from a number of members of the public. At the continued public hearing, essentially how it's going to go is Emily Innes from Innes Land Strategies Group and our senior planner, Danielle Evans, and Planning Development and Sustainability Director, Alicia Hunt. and Jimmy from Innis will give a short presentation on the process. Then we will go directly into public comment. We'll take that right at the top of the meeting to hear from any members of the public either in person or on Zoom about their thoughts on the project and the proposal in front of us. And then we will go back to PDS and the Innis group. to go over a number of topics that we raised at our last meeting on June 3rd. They have reviewed those, analyzed those, and they will present those topics. We will kind of take them topic by topic. We'll hear a presentation. Then we will hear from members of the council and the community development board on each one. And most likely on each of those, I'm guessing we will take some form of vote to offer direction to the planning staff and our zoning consultant. so that they can incorporate our direction into amendments to this proposed zoning ordinance, which we will then consider at a continued public hearing on June 24th. And at that point, if we are in agreement, Those would be the recommendations of the Community Development Board which would then go to the city council for the council to vote on including in the, as the final zoning ordinance for the Boston Avenue Neighborhood Corridor District. I think that's a good enough overview. If there's anything you'd like to say, Chair Carr? All right. I will turn it over to Emily Innes for a brief presentation and then we will go directly into public comment.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you very much. For the record, Emily Keyes Ennis of Ennis Land Strategies Group. I am going to share my screen, and as Council President Bears said, just walk us through where we are in the process. So I just have to get rid of all of these little boxes that keep popping up when you share your screen on a single computer. So we are going to just go over the scope and schedule, and then as Council President Bears said, we will provide our impact analysis of the different questions that were still out there. Where we are is... Emily, could you move a little closer to the microphone? Yeah, of course. Sorry. Better? I can also hear myself. We are in the second phase of a two-phase zoning process. Phase A was Medford Square. Phase B is Boston Avenue with some initial discussion of Tufts Institutional zoning. And then here's where we are in this phase B process. We have had a combination of meetings with the planning permitting committees and the public meetings. We are now in the joint hearing process here on the 11th and we anticipate being here on the 24th for those final zoning. Wasn't yet confirmed at the time we did these slides. So with this, I am going to stop sharing because the next slide starts us on our analysis and turn it back over to yourselves.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Emily. So we're going to move into the public comment portion of this meeting. If there is anyone who would like to provide public comment on the proposed Boston Avenue Neighborhood Corridor District, you may do so either here in person in the chamber and we do have a few folks here or on Zoom. If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're in the chamber, please come to the podium. Emily, if you would be so kind as to give them that one microphone that we have and we'll put that on the, we could probably use one of these, huh? You know, in general, the rules are everyone will have three minutes. I will be as, there will be some wiggle room on the end of that, but I'm going to try to keep it to at most three and a half. So, sorry, Lori. Thank you. We have no hands on Zoom yet, so I will go to the podium. If you could provide your name for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[Laurie Krieger]: Hi, I'm Laurie Krieger. I live 124 Brookings Street, Medford. I'm Council President Bears, City Council members, Chair Carr, CDB members, staff, and collaborators. Thank you all for your continued diligence and the opportunity to engage with you. I wish there were more forums wherein we could dialogue with each other, including the ability to ask you questions to understand why you're advocating one way or another. As I've mentioned previously, I'm very concerned about maintaining a healthy community of predominantly owner-occupied homes, as that is how we've come to be a vibrant, working, and middle-class neighborhood that engages with and supports each other. Having done the research, I find that from the 40s and 60s and even the early 2000s, the United States federal government launched programs that encouraged home ownership. This is essentially what birthed the middle class. The primary goals behind these policies were to build household or multi-generational wealth, to stabilize the economy, and to foster civic engagement. It worked. I'm here, like so many others in this room, because these policies worked. My biggest concern regarding our neighborhoods currently is that investors, not homeowners, have been purchasing much of the inventory as it becomes available. For example, in the last few years, at least six of the formerly owner-occupied homes within a two-and-a-half block radius of my home have been purchased by investors not living here. They've created guest homes, Airbnbs, rentals for students. At least three of them remain empty most of the year. This undermines our ability to coalesce as a community and gain the financial and relational stability owner-occupied housing provides. This is an example of the current K economy, which is gutting the middle class. While there are laws regarding the Airbnbs, at least, we're not seeing them enforced. What can we do as a community to ensure an engaged strengthening of all our community members? In the mixed-use developments, can we create support for the middle and working classes along with affordable housing, rent-to-own, co-op options? What can happen that supports the diversity of the many and builds our community? We know from experience that developers make their money in the development, not in whether or not the buildings are inhabited. Take the 33% vacancy rate in the luxury apartments in the Seaport District and the uninhabited biotech buildings in Boston and Cambridge built in the last decade. If we build it, they may not come. That might be okay for developers, but it must not be okay for our city. We must only build for what there is a demonstrated need and demand for using available actionable data with lots and lots of cooling green space. So many of the comments from the last meeting are quite valuable and struck me as worthy of a deeper dive as you make your decisions. Let's define and lean into positive outcomes for a broader swath of constituents using a clear strategy that can be proven in advance. that will serve us best. These comments remained with me. Setting a timeline for reviewing and updating zoning every so many years with specific community building goals in mind so we don't have to rush through something this important. What are the pros and cons of doing this? How do we ensure that incentives are maintained for decades past the development process? The green score and affordability, for example, pros and cons. One person commenting suggested we have data-driven outcome projections like nearby towns have done. Certainly, we can do it too. What would happen if the incentives became requirements for any development? We heard about carrots and sticks, and while I trust your expertise, it'd be nice to see the data for success rates and our communal goals. My preference would be a required green score and affordability options for all development. Chair Carr presented height options that allow for new development that would increase density that are different from what has been presented so far. It seemed like a positive middle ground. Would it be effective? Those are my questions and concerns. And as an aside for a CDB member that is requesting more gas stations, there are four gas stations, at least three of which include repair services, one body shop, one auto repair shop, all within three quarters of a mile from the intersection of Winthrop and Boston Ave. a two minute drive. We have enough already. And finally, we need to have a city attorney that supports the city council and the mayor. We are one team, Team Medford, and we need to combine resources on that level so we can function as such. Thank you so much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And just one note on the green score and the affordability. Every project in this would be subject to the city's inclusionary zoning, which is on the books already, which over 10 units, there's I think 10% affordable, over 49 units, it's 12%. over 50 units, it's 15 percent. And the green score is mandatory for any project over a certain size and under that there's a mandatory minimum open space requirement. So there's a lot of other things in there but I just think that's, I noticed that being the one of the preferences of having those required and that is something that we're trying to prioritize because right now there are, I think some of the districts at least in this that would be changing under this, there's no requirement for any open space and we've seen some paved over lots. Yeah, I hear you. Do we have other comments either in the chambers or on Zoom? I'm going to go to Zoom, and then I'll come back. I'm going to go to Derek DuPont on Zoom. Derek, if you could provide your name for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_11]: Hi there. This is Derek DuPont. I live at 87 Otis Street. I'm actually a new resident of Medford. I've been living in Somerville before this. And it just recently went through the process of looking for housing. And it's a nightmare out there, folks. It's tough. So I've been trying to learn about this project a little bit. I actually used to live not too far from this corridor, just up North Street. So I'm pretty familiar with the area. I just want to give my support towards some more dense housing here. I mean, we need housing of any and all types. Um, and, um, and that's that's really it. Just just keep pushing for that. Let's let's try not to, um, focus on parking, but, um, think about how people living here will be able to use, um, the green line and the bus along, uh, Boston Ave. Um, so let's just keep that in mind. Thank you. I appreciate it.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll go back to the podium and name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Adrienne Landau]: Hi, thank you. I'm Adrienne Landau, also from 124 Brookings Street. And in my own words, I just wanted to add to what Lori Krieger said about home ownership in this neighborhood. My Charnwood neighbors a while back lent me a report from the Historic Society about their house and what its origins were. And that was so fascinating. I think this whole area could or should be a historic district, frankly. The developers in 1925 put homes on Charnwood Road, advertised as commuter bungalows. because the Boston and Main Railway Station was at the corner of Boston and College Avenues. The same man built his house directly across from the end of Charnwood Road in a style like nothing else in the neighborhood, and probably not anywhere else in Medford, to please his British wife. That's the story we heard anyway. And they lived in it. I don't know how long I lived in it, so maybe it's a good time for me to actually go to the Historic Society and get that report myself. I think it would be really interesting, and I think I'm going to do it. And so that's the house that Lori and I could afford in 1997, making a 20% down payment on it because of my very good union job and her own advancing career. and now the mortgages paid off and we were both able to retire. Kind of a miracle. I know this is not 1925 or 1955 or even 1997. What I'm saying is that I want to see development along the corridor to be a boost for the neighborhood rather than push us out and see only the wealthy able to enjoy the fruits of what generations of middle class owners and renters along, above, and below Boston have created. Thank you for the space to speak. And hey, I didn't say a word about Tufts and the oversized pachyderm place, did I? Well, I did. Bye.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right. I'm going to go to Jeremy, Jeremy Martin on Zoom. Jeremy, your name and address. your name for the record. I'm trying to remember that our rules don't require you to say your address in public.
[Jeremy Martin]: Hey everyone, Jeremy Martin. I live on Burgett Avenue. I'm very close to Lori and Adrian who just spoke. I'm sorry if I'm a little out of breath. I thought I might have a little more time to get home on my bike ride before getting to comments. But I wanted to just start by saying I've been really disappointed over the last week with some of the dialogue I've seen around this proposal on social media, people spreading misinformation about 10 story buildings proposed in this zoning, which is a total falsehood. And what I think is actually some misrepresentation of the conversation and the comments I've heard in the several meetings on this topic that I've joined. presented in our local newspaper this morning, which really only focused on the negative comments and not the many people who showed up last week in support of this proposal. So I want to say unequivocally that I am in support of mixed use development. And if we want to create new home ownership for more people, we need to build more homes. It's a simple equation. There is no question that we have a housing shortage. And there's no question, we don't need studies to know that mixed use development is the way to solve it, to both bolster our residential base and our commercial tax base. Cities around the world have taken this approach and it has been successful. So let's get over that and move on to the details, which I'd like to do now. I have spoken a lot about this. I wanna focus on just two things that are near and dear to me. I think there's a lot of great things in this proposal. But the one place or one of two places I think it could be better is that we need to strengthen the provisions for a healthy public realm. Whether you live in a building or spend money in a building or walk by or drive by a building, the public realm is the part of a site and the part of a city that everyone experiences. And so what does that look like? It looks like strengthening language to protect sidewalk widths and street life. It looks like increasing the open space minimums, especially in the highest density developments. I think we need to reconsider in the B1 zone, the zero foot side and rear yard setbacks. That makes sense in some of the density that's proposed, but maybe not in the B1 area. I also care deeply about promoting a multimodal, multi-method transportation network for our community. I really think we should avoid promoting new development of new auto-centric uses in this corridor. It's too dense and too urban for drive-throughs by right. Perhaps under certain circumstances and with a special permit, that may be the case, but I hear a lot about traffic. Traffic's only gonna get worse with drive-throughs. There are plenty of gas stations around, as Lori said. And we can integrate infrastructure with cars, along with bike lanes, along with better sidewalks. And last, I'll just close. I think this Boston Avenue is a great opportunity to pilot a percent for arts requirements in our zoning. We heard a great presentation Tuesday at a city council committee of the whole meeting. about arts in our community and the space that we can grow in the arts. We heard nearly unanimous support from the community for that. And we heard that the city council has little power to influence the budget, which is understandable, but there is an opportunity here to promote arts and to grow arts and culture in our community through a minimum percentage requirement. This is also a tried and tested and proven method for doing such a thing in zoning. And I hope that you all will consider incorporating that into the proposals that you're considering. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Jeremy. All right, we will go back to the chamber. Please come to the podium and you'll be recognized for three minutes.
[SPEAKER_16]: I'm Anita Goldberg, and I live on Capon Street, and I've lived there for 30 years, and I think with growth, my concerns are very practical, and I'd like to have those concerns addressed. They sound a little, you know, anyway. From 3 o'clock to about 6 o'clock, You can come down any street in the neighborhood, Winthrop Street, Boston Ave, Route 16, and it's literally bumper to bumper. The traffic is terrible, and I haven't really heard to my satisfaction, how this issue is going to be solved. And it's really cumbersome. You can go down any street, it's like this bumper to bumper. The other issue is we have a significant, very significant rodent problem. You can go out in my yard and you can see rats any time of day. And with development, and digging up things. A lot of this came from the Route 16 from the Green Line. This problem is going to increase. And I brought this up repeatedly. I don't hear anybody talking about how we're going to do pest control. And it is a really significant problem. So these are practical issues that concern me. And I haven't heard any real comment on how that would be addressed as you start digging and expanding. That's all I see. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. On the pest control question, we have over the past four years passed a rodent control ordinance and a rodent control ordinance update. And all of the projects in the city that are being constructed now require an integrated pest management plan for their developments. That is city law. Traffic is a difficult issue, right? Maybe unpopular to say, but the only way to reduce traffic is to reduce the number of cars that are driving on our streets. Because that's what traffic is, it's the number of cars. And I think, as you noted, right, our region, our greater Boston region, there are too many cars trying to drive on the roads for the size of our roads. And building, you can't, even widening roads doesn't solve that problem, I think. The thing that it's I believe that our city's approach or at least approach that we're trying is to get people to drive more safely on our streets, make our intersections and our roads safer, to try to help people who can use other modes of travel like transit and biking and walking. And part of this, you know, zoning proposal is to try to build more walkable neighborhoods so people have more things near them that they wanna walk to and don't feel like they need to get in their car and drive somewhere far away. So that is something that we're trying, but I just timed out. Well, you know, I was eating the rest of the time that was available. But I understand that those are concerns and some of them are things that most of the things are not actually about zoning. They're about larger problems and they're about other ordinances that we've tried to implement. I'm gonna go back to Zoom, gonna go to Laurel Ruma on Zoom. Laurel, if you could provide your name and you'll have three minutes.
[Laurel Ruma]: Hi, everyone. My name is Laurel Ruma. I live at 149 Burgett Avenue. So initially, the more I thought about it, the more distressed I became about the number of rounds of zoning this community now has to go through. I understand the why of it. I just really want to make a public record of the unfairness of going through a business district zoning completely separate from Tufts, University, you know, boundary zoning completely separate from residential zoning by approaching our neighborhood and three discrete phases. It just discounts the ability in the reality of how every. thing just hooks together. And it also places an enormous amount of burden on the neighbors to stay engaged. And frankly, this complicated and fairly unpleasant, if you're not, I think, you know, a person who loves this type of topic. We're so lucky we do have a lot of engaged people and we can kind of share that burden as we go. But this neighborhood has been really inundated with this sort of development that leaves us all, you know, in a place of kind of When is the city going to get itself together and really help this neighborhood become the great place that we all know and think it should be. So if this is the part of the process, then we're all here to do it. So, you know, multi use buildings, yes. The investment in the public realm is absolutely critical, especially if you have three discrete ways of looking at our neighborhood. There has to be elements that they all puzzle piece connect into each other, and that public realm really is that. The open space becomes that the transitional zoning of the height of the building becomes that the fact that the buildings now you know one of the proposals to back up the height of the buildings to the train track side of the Boston Avenue is complicated because then the shadows come into the neighborhood across the track more. Again, you just have to look at the presentation that's TOPS did with a 10 story building. It doesn't have to be a 10 story building to those kind of shadows across the neighborhood. And the point is, everything affects everything else. So by looking at these three zones discreetly, we're not looking at the whole. The other thing I just, you know, I'm going to say it, time and time again, it's good that we're looking at this business district. I do, you know, pretty much everything that Jeremy Martin said I agree with this doesn't need to be multi use zone, we do have to kind of encourage that the building of again beautiful places, but Again, the Tufts University still owns a number, if not a majority of the parcels along Boston Avenue. And I think the concern that some of the neighborhood is, it doesn't matter what the city says for zoning, because Tufts has its own preferred and protected zoning with the Dover Amendment. So as much as we're trying to regulate what can happen, I just want to keep that in mind. We're dealing with other very complicated issues here. So we can't just look at this business district in a complete vacuum. I appreciate your time. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Laurel. Before I stay on Zoom and go, unless is there anyone else in the, yes, I will go back. I just want to say that I agree with you that I don't think this is an ideal way to run this process. I don't always think that more meetings means things are better. I think this is probably my, personally my 50th or 60th zoning meeting in the last 30 months. If I'm attending every meeting and reading every document and it's hard for me to keep track of everything, I can only imagine how hard it is for people who didn't choose to run for this office to try to do that. And I also think, you know, the fatigue is real. And there are so many people in the city who have maybe have opinions about this but don't attend the meetings. I've probably talked to a thousand of them myself. I do believe at some point that we do elect people to make decisions specifically because having processes like these that go on seemingly eternally doesn't actually result in the best outcomes and often results in only the people who have the time and the the diligence to try to pay attention for three years to voice their opinions, which I think is not fair to most residents in the community. So that's my opinion. It may be somewhat unpopular sometimes, but it is how I feel. We'll go to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes. Just name for the record. You have three minutes.
[Anita Nagem]: Anita Nagum, Medford. There's one point that I would like to bring up. I don't think it has been considered. It's about the railroad tracks, particularly Winthrop and Route 16. There is no access road to those train tracks. The train tracks are set well below street level. If, heaven forbid, there were any kind of accident there, it would be an extremely difficult process to provide emergency services. And large buildings along the track, particularly between North Street and Route 16, should be considered very carefully. I think that you should meet with not only the local fire department, but with some emergency response teams somewhere and get some expert analysis of how emergency response would be handled. There's going to be two six-story buildings at Walkman Court. If, heaven forbid, something happened and there were train wreck and or a fire, it could be catastrophic. More tall buildings along that corridor would make it even worse. Please consider this, look at the safety issues and that should be codified in the zoning, not left for the community development board to deal with later. That needs to be specified in very carefully in the actual zoning, which is finalized.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll go to Judy Weinstock on zoom name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes.
[Judith Weinstock]: Hi everybody. Good to see everybody again. It's been so long. So I actually, you've heard, I live on Burgett, as you know, and You've heard from a lot of my neighbors and a lot of the comments that they've made, I actually do agree with. What I think is super hard, particularly now in the political world that we live in, I think moderation and compromise has become a bit of a dirty word because people think it doesn't mean you're taking action. And I would just caution the boards and the city council to not fall into the trap of believing that somehow if you don't do this now, as Tufts once said, a once in a generation opportunity, which is never true, that you won't have another opportunity to improve things in the future and that incremental change is sometimes the change that gets the most buy-in from the most stakeholders. So I would caution everybody to sort of go at the things that you've been hearing from the community seriously and think about what compromises might be made. I do still support Chairman Carr's comments last week about some better transitional heights in some of these areas along the Boston Avenue corridor that would help soften the blow to the residential areas as building heights might grow. I actually think it's really, really important, and I think you can't just bulldoze through the people who have concerns about The quality of life in their neighborhoods in that particular regard, I think most people agree that mixed use buildings and green spaces are really, really important to make a city more enjoyable period. But you can get there in so many different ways. And I understand that everybody is struggling to find the best path, but I would just say, please carefully consider some forms of compromise. So, for example, I sent in a comment that was rather lengthy to everybody about the private dormitory. planning that might or might not be happening at North Street and Boston Ave. And I thought that I brought up, frankly, some great points about, you know, is it something that's really needed? And if so, why? And why now when Tufts has just built a building that they themselves say will meet the housing needs of their junior and senior students to bring them back to campus? So, again, I think listening to the community, particularly finding compromise around transitional heights in residential neighborhoods is really, really important. And it is not true that you cannot build more housing and have more walkable cities unless you go the distance. Davis Square, looking at a 25-story tower, is so the wrong move. And I think many, many people could see their way to a much smaller improvement in Davis. Last but not least, I want to make one plug. Since I have three or four neighbors who have barking dogs outside by day, Medford has a barking dog ordinance that is really not paid much attention to by anybody. I would like to make a plea that if doggie daycares are going to be approved and land uses in residential neighborhoods, that that dog barking ordinance be very carefully modified. so that residents have some recourse for barking dogs. And on that note, I will stand down. Thank you very much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Is there anyone else in the chamber who'd like to speak? We'll go to the podium. If you could provide your name for the record and you'll have three minutes.
[Maryanne Adduci]: Mariana Ducey, 2 North Street. I know that you want to wrap this zoning thing up by the end of June, but I think a Boston Have traffic study should be done before you take the vote. It should be done after the students come back in the fall to get a proper evaluation of the number of people that are on Boston Have. Also, Boston Ave is not necessarily just for residents. It's a cut-through. People go from Arlington to Somerville, and then up the hill, up Winter Street, they come down Winter Street to go to 93. So there's pass-through traffic here. It's not all residential traffic. Residential heights, I don't think should be any higher than four stories, preferably three, but no higher than four. For the Boston Ave, Elizabeth Grady Lots, I think only a maximum of six stories should be there. And the buildings should, if they're that size, they won't negatively impact the quality of life for the surrounding residential community. The other thing you might want to factor in is 200 Boston Ave currently has many Tufts office buildings in there, offices in there for different departments. And I don't know if you know about Bill Cummings, he's a philanthropist. He actually spent the first five years of his life on Adams Street, which is just off of Boston Ave, so he's familiar with this area. I think, personally, it's possible, since he's given so much away and he's got millions of dollars, eventually he would donate that building to Tufts, since it's already occupied primarily by Tufts. And if that happens, it'll shift from a taxable property to a non-taxable property, because it'll come into Dover. Also, the Elizabeth Grady owner, who wants to put this dormitory up there in his building, I think he's probably thinking ahead, too. Because if Cummings turns his building over to Tufts, eventually, Elizabeth Grady's owner will probably make a pitch to Tufts or to Cummings to buy his property to create more dormitories for Tufts. I think in the future, this probably will happen because that lot right now is focused for Tufts. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll go to J.R. Elliott on Zoom. Name for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[John Elliott]: John Elliott, 34 Emory Street, Enford Hillside. I redundantly emailed and posted this at the CD board public comment form, but I wanted to read this first part live. The ongoing reason of the subject of this matter is 347 through 375 Boston Avenue should be corridor. The ongoing rezoning effort employs partitioning based on the neighborhoods, squares, corridors, institutional districts, perhaps other things. Some of the boundaries between abutting areas seems to have been drawn based largely on the zoning that is obsolete, therefore in need of replacement, yielding by design more obsolescence from the beginning. It's clear to me that one, the boundaries themselves are at least as dated and in need of reexamination. And two, there's some ambiguity about whether a particular piece of real estate is naturally part of a neighborhood, a corridor, or an institutional division. One such geographical construct is the six and a half acres south of the intersection of Boston Avenue and Winthrop Street, which could be argued should be annexed to Tufts, or alternatively recognized as part of the neighborhoods north of the railroad right-of-way and the neighborhood west of Winthrop Street. In either case, the part that is bounded by Boston Avenue from Winthrop Street to University Avenue with either seven or eight addresses on Boston Avenue. And across Boston Avenue from a stretch of commercial real estate uses, those seven addresses or eight addresses should be included in the Boston Avenue corridor. Attached is an email I wrote and sent to the OCD and city council and among others a year ago, arguing that the six and a half acre tract should be neighborhood, not institutional. It contains imagery and data that support that contention. Visual inspection and comparison with other stretches of the Boston Avenue corridor should be sufficient to demonstrate that these Boston Avenue addresses, and perhaps all of University Avenue addresses, belong to be part of the Boston Avenue corridor, preferably zoned for transit-oriented development. If Jeremy's gonna get his way with more housing, and furthermore, that housing is transit oriented, there is no better place to put it than right there. Thanks.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll go to the podium, name and address. Just name for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes. That's gonna be, you'll have to remember that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, my name's Laura Longsworth. I'm at 94 North Street. And I previously stated and submitted comments about the potential inclusion of sororities, fraternities, and purpose-built student housing in zone BA3. In terms of the fraternities and sororities, they are essentially private clubs and Tufts is cracking down on them now, so they are under pressure on campus and there's a lot in the, you can read online about this, so I understand their desire to move off campus and to build housing elsewhere, but I just don't think it's a responsibility we or our neighborhood should take on. If they want to have Greek life, they should have Greek life on campus and figure out how to manage it and not put it onto us as a community. For the purpose-built student housing, this is an interesting And I'm wondering if anyone has done any kind of user research on what the students actually want. Because I've started talking, I'm in the neighborhood a lot, I have a dog, the students like my dog, so I talk with them a lot. And the past week or two I started asking them about their housing and where they live and what their landlords are like and why they chose to live in Hillside. 100% of them want to live close to campus, as close to campus as possible. The student I spoke to who lived furthest from campus lives on North Street. And he said he already walks 20 minutes. He can't imagine adding more time onto that walk. Then they started going down these little avenues about like, well, we'd have to all get bikes. And I don't know. Maybe they'd have to run a shuttle. And I will say that the location of Boston Ave and North Street was not super desirable to the students I spoke with. So I really question the idea that they're going to pick up and move. I think there's kind of a system in place where you've got landlords who own houses, and they're renting apartments, and the students are living there totally happily. I don't know. But I think, essentially, there's the potential you're either going to create a belt, because students won't move out of the neighborhoods. It'll only be the ones who, for some reason, can't find an apartment who are going to move as far away as we're talking about. And then I wonder, well, what if they did? What if they all moved to the corner of North Street and Boston Ave and lived in purpose-built student housing? Like, what is the plan for the neighborhood? Because then you're gonna have a lot of empty apartments owned by people who, depending on when they bought it, may or may not have a substantial mortgage, and they have high rents that they're charging, which they're accustomed to charging and getting that money for. So what do they do? Do we just have massive turnover? I sent you all a study that I found that talks about purpose-built student housing that indicates that it doesn't really increase You know, people owning their houses and living in them. In other words, building purpose built housing, the consequence isn't necessarily, the result isn't necessarily that home ownership and people living in the area increases. So I think it's complicated and I would really like to know what the full plan is because I think there needs to be one.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And I believe we're going to be talking a little bit more about the purpose-built student housing tonight. But one of the factors that has been discussed is exactly to your point, right? If there are a bunch of students living in housing that could otherwise be going to families, would having student-focused housing free up units for families? Now, whether or not you have investors who purchase these houses and need to charge high rents, we do see that there is a rent premium in the hillside compared to any other neighborhood. in the city. I don't think we have the exact data to say what the cause of that is, but a piece of it is you do have a number of students living in family-size units paying by the room, and that increases the rent. I think it's a fair argument to say, well, someone bought this house. They have this high mortgage. They're charging this high rent to get it. And maybe they went in thinking, well, there's student demand, so I'll charge this. If the student can get maybe a more focused housing unit and a student-focused development, maybe the rent premium comes down and a family can move into that unit. A lot of it is into that existing unit in a two or three family. It's going to be different for every property, right? It's like how do you aggregate these microeconomic individual effects into how it affects the neighborhood. But we do see that there's a significant rep premium in the hillside neighborhood and that's because students are paying more for units that in other parts of the city families pay less for. We do have one hand on Zoom. We'll go to Elizabeth Bale on Zoom. Your name for the record please and you'll have three minutes.
[Elizabeth Bayle]: Elizabeth Dale, 34 Emory Street. I submitted a written comment, so I'm not going to take time to go over that now, but I do want to really agree with Laurel about how complicated and painful it is to follow all these different pieces. For example, I was looking on the Google Drive today to see if I could find other people's public comments because I was interested in getting up to speed on other people's thinking and I couldn't find any public comment folder. I couldn't find anything that was more up-to-date than the last meeting on June 3rd. I find it complicated trying to follow all this. I do want to say Jeremy's comment about some arts participation, I would absolutely love that. I really hope you will consider it. I didn't know about a meeting concerning that. Hurrah for that. Judith's comment about moderation. Yes, that is something that I just want to talk about briefly, which I did finally find a page on the current zoning stuff. It wasn't easy to find what's going on with this current Boston Ave, Tufts rezoning thing for some reason, but I did find a page and it had several sections and one of them was goals of this zoning and item four was development standards that The purpose of the Boston Avenue Neighborhood Corridor District, B-A-N-C-D, is to allow a mix of uses, including residential, multifamily, and commercial to meet the following needs. And number four of the needs is development standards to provide landscape and height buffers from new construction within the B-A-N-C-D for the existing abutting neighborhoods. And I just can't emphasize how important that is to people who have invested over many years in their properties and really like the greenery and buffer that trees provide. I'm on Emory Street, and between us and Boston Ave, there are some huge trees that are 50 to 60 feet or more tall and over Crying shade over three Decker across the street or three story across the street, for example, and I would really hate for those trees to get. damaged or even worse, cut down in order to make more development. There just isn't very much room in our section of Boston Ave for decently wide sidewalks, big buildings. I just want to emphasize the need for development standards to provide landscape and height buffers from new construction within the BANCD for the existing abutting neighborhoods. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Is there any further public comment in the chamber around Zoom? You can have a second comment for one minute. That's the rule.
[Anita Nagem]: It'll be quick. There's just one comment I would like to respond to, the comment that the Social media posts about 10 story buildings are false. I'd like to point out that at the May 13th meeting a representative who was hired of City Lights Development who was hired by Elizabeth Grady specifically mentioned a 600 bed dorm public school. purpose built student housing at that Elizabeth Grady site. It's not a specific formal proposal but it was mentioned. So it is not false that that was brought up at a meeting by a property owner. The other thing is if the city and it's not for the city council wants to prevent or promote home ownership and no absentee landlords, the city could provide a tax break for residents who live in their home. You can promote it that way so that if a house is rented out, there is a consequence. There would be a financial incentive for people to live in their own home.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Anita. And that is something that the city council has been advocating for the mayor to provide the funding to our assessing department so that we could explore. And I believe the council would like to implement a residential owner-occupied tax exemption, but that funding has not come from the mayor. We have one more comment in the chamber. If you could provide your name for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[UXjoTYnBHEI_SPEAKER_05]: Good evening, members of the council and the city board. David Rose with City Lights Development. I'd just like to respond to that comment. There was one slide in our presentation that listed what the equivalent of a 600 bed, and it was just an example, round number, 600 bed private student housing development would displace in terms of three and four bedroom units. So it was simple math. If you divide 600 by 4, it could be, if it was four bedroom units, 150 apartments. That had nothing to do with any sort of proposal, and certainly units don't equate to height. So just to clarify, we don't have any sort of proposal, and it was just a use discussion. Thanks.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no further public comment, I'm going to close public comment and we will go to Emily Innes on a different microphone than normal, number seven. If you could run us through how many topics there are, and I do wonder if we could maybe take what you think are the easy ones first.
[Emily Innes]: Maybe those are the ones that I have just a single slide for as opposed to dozens. That sounds great. I think, let me just quickly count one, that's a double.
[Zac Bears]: And if you could move the mic a little closer, thank you.
[Emily Innes]: I'm not sure I wanted the mic closer while I was counting. I think I've got 14, but some of them are grouped together. So, if you want to do the easy ones first, I might just jump around a little bit. So, I'm all in favor of easy first. So, let me go back and I will share my screen again so that everybody can see what I'm looking at and that should make life a lot easier. All right. Hide floating meeting controls, awesome. Okay, so the first thing that I have up, other than the press escape to show floating meeting controls that I just hid, is the, so what we've done is we've identified the source, not because we're calling anybody out, but it just makes easier to track who said what if there are questions. We're giving the proposal or the question or the comment. And then we're giving our sense of the implications of those. So the first one on the list was from Councilor Callaghan. It was remove required parking mandate for home sharing definition and lodgers considering this mandate differently for lodgers than the normal per unit requirement for new construction. So in other words, If it's new construction, there's a certain number of parking spaces that have to be applied per unit. The idea is that somebody who is renting a room, as I understand it, so correct me if I get the understanding wrong, but if somebody is just renting a room in somebody's house, which is allowed under the zoning, do they have to provide a per unit requirement for spaces? In looking both at the public comments that were online, listening to the conversation that we heard here, we don't see large impacts to this. So we really think it's a policy decision and discussion among yourselves. Or we don't see large negative impacts, I should say.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Do we have any discussion from members of the city council? Please raise your hand on Zoom because we have the share screen going. Seeing none, Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Is there anyone on the CD board who would like to discuss this? Go ahead, John.
[Sean Beagan]: Emily, which of our uses on our use table would this ask apply to in your opinion?
[Emily Innes]: I'm just pulling it up now. It would apply to lodging or boarding house, which is number eight and currently No, this is just single, sorry, hang on a sec.
[Sean Beagan]: I don't know that we have a use that fits this.
[Emily Innes]: Sorry, I was reading the wrong one. It's the accessory use, and I'm just pulling up the number now. Okay, no, that was incorrect. It's not eight. It's under K, accessory units, number seven, renting of one or two rooms without separate cooking facilities to lodgers within a dwelling unit to one or two lodgers. And right now, the parking requirement for that is one per guest room. So that's under K, accessory uses for the table of uses. It is allowed in the three BA sub-districts. It is proposed to be allowed as of right, which I believe is consistent.
[Unidentified]: Up on screen.
[Emily Innes]: Just to make life a little bit easier for everyone who's searching for it.
[Doug Carr]: Do you have a comment or question about this?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes, thank you. I'm strongly in favor of making the described change. I think that there is still the option of providing more parking, but there are many people in situations like this who are very actively and intentionally car free and they should and people who want to live in cooperatives, which I spent many years in often fall into that category. And I think that we should not be forcing them to have this large quantity of parking. I'm in big favor of this change.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. I agree with that. I guess Callahan.
[Zac Bears]: I will recognize Councilor Callahan and ask if there's a councilor who would like to make a motion. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I just wanted to clarify that the reason this was brought up was because of the home sharing program. So this would apply to, for example, just it's easier if people hear an example, I think, like an older, like a senior who wants to rent out one room. They have a house with five bedrooms. They're living alone. They want to rent out one room. they wouldn't necessarily have to provide a driveway. A lot of the sort of younger folks that we expect to be participating in the home sharing program are people who don't own cars. And so just to make it easier for people to be able to do that, to not have to have a parking space necessarily also, because it's going to be your own residence and it may be difficult to provide that.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Callaghan, it sounded like to accept the change to reduce the parking code requirement for accessory use number 720 seconded by seconded by Councilor Malayne. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll for the City Council?
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callaghan. Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malay? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: No.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Sings, absent. Vice President? He is. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Villescaz?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The motion passes. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Chairman Boehner.
[Sean Beagan]: Just one more question on this issue. Hypothetically, if the person was renting out five rooms and they had not sufficient parking spots for those five people, would those guests be entitled or be eligible to get an on-street parking permit? Because I know we've run into that issue before where we're sensitive to the fact that if someone is providing lodging that has insufficient parking, those people occupying that residence would not be eligible for on-street parking permits because we don't want to put more of a burden, more cars onto the street.
[Alicia Hunt]: So Mr. Chair, as a member of the Traffic Commission, I field these questions through there regularly. In order to qualify for a parking permit in Medford, you must register your car to the address at which you want the parking permit. So one could argue that if they have registered their car to that location and they're paying excise taxes, then they would be eligible for a permit. And if they do not register it to that location, then they would not be eligible. That's assuming you're in an area that is parking permits. Much of this area does have parking permits in it.
[Anna Callahan]: President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: And I would remind everyone the council has voted on a motion. The rules of the meeting are that the CD board should consider that motion. A question is fine. Councilor Callahan, I will go to you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Very specific answer to that question. If you read number seven of that accessory unit, the accessory use, it specifically says one or two. The maximum is two, so there is no five.
[Doug Carr]: Sean, are you all set?
[Sean Beagan]: I'm all set. Yes, thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Joan Ennis and Rodina, do you have any comments or questions before we put a motion? OK.
[Dina Caloggero]: I just want to make sure I understand that correctly. So if the if there are guest rooms being used and let's say there's five five bedrooms that are rented out and for the people have cars they register their cars in Medford and there's permit parking around the area. Now I know where I live. In South Medford, we have zone parking, so we're G. So would that be under zone parking or would those people be allowed to park on the street in that area? I do not know the traffic in that area, how it's permitted. Is it permitted by street or is it permitted by zone? Because I know in South Medford, I live on Stanley Avenue, And you can park, I can park on Yale Street, I can park anywhere in South Medford, which is kind of nice. But I am very, very sensitive to the fact of having cars park on residential streets. We have a big problem in my neighborhood where we have a lot of tough students that park on the street. They are not permitted to park on the street. Sometimes you can't even get your groceries in because so many cars on the street. So I just want to make sure I completely understand that, that these people that will be in these units will not be able to get permits to park on the residential areas surrounding the house.
[Zac Bears]: Just I want to clarify one thing. The parking rules are not set by the zoning ordinance. There is zoned parking, which is, it's not about zoning, it's just there's zones, like similar to Somerville, yeah. And so I think you're talking about the GLX zone, but the zoning does not control for parking permits, like that's not a zoning subject. Emily seems to have maybe a little bit more.
[Emily Innes]: Yes, thank you. I just want to clarify one thing relative to this use. I think Councilor Callahan mentioned it, but I know sometimes for people in the room, when I put something on screen, it's not easily visible. So I want to read this out. So this is an accessory use. It is renting of one or two rooms without separate cooking facilities to lodgers within a dwelling unit. to one or two total lodgers. So I think there was an example of a five-bedroom house where somebody is living there and renting one room to somebody else. The most in that five-bedroom house that they could rent to is two people, one in each room, or possibly two people in one room. But the point is, they can't have more than two people, and they can't rent out more than two rooms under this accessory use. So I think I heard a couple of different people talk about renting four rooms out of this. I can't do that. It is limited to two people per house or per residential building.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead.
[Alicia Hunt]: I called up the map of the green line zone so that we could clarify that. And to be clear these would be so if a build so this would apply to anything within the zone. So the existing buildings in the zone what this would apply to if a new. 200-unit building was built, then the CD board might choose to put one of those rules on it that says, in this building, you're not allowed to. But if there's a three-bedroom house or a three-family house existing and somebody in there chooses to rent rooms, this would apply to that. So the southern part of Boston Ave is in the Green Line zone. So the Green Line zone is actually from Winthrop Street down to Broadway. So that the part that we discussed as the BA2 is in that area. The areas that we discussed as BA1 and 3 are not in that area because those are not part of the Green Line Zone. So it's not part of that anywhere. And I do want to caution that I think that if this is the kind of change that could be specific to this zone, but would then perhaps go onto our list as something we want to look at citywide, how do we treat lodging, people renting out rooms citywide, because this is something that some people are considering to encourage.
[Doug Carr]: John Anderson, go ahead.
[John Anderson]: Thank you. Just a quick question. Reducing this from one to zero, you said this would have minimal impact. Is this because you don't think there are going to be that many lodgers or because you don't think lodgers are likely to want cars?
[Emily Innes]: So on the minimal impact, a couple of things going on there. First of all, not every building is going to have a lodger necessarily, right? Not everybody wants to rent out. Second is, as I understood from the public comments that supported this, was that the people who are likely to rent this are all, you know, to participate in this program that Councilor Callahan mentioned. are also less likely to have cars. That's not the profile of the people, so that's why, so it's both of those.
[John Anderson]: I don't wanna make a big issue out of this particular point, but I just wonder, is this how we do zoning? We have sort of impressions of certain kinds of people. You know, lodgers aren't likely to own a car, and we say, oh yeah, that seems right, so therefore we do it. I just wonder if there's any actual evidence of this.
[Emily Innes]: So with respect, um, uh, Councilor Callahan had proposed this. She mentioned it was to support a particular program. And my understanding was that she was talking about the participants of this particular program. So that was what I was basing our implications on. Yeah.
[John Anderson]: Thank you.
[Doug Carr]: OK. Seeing no more comments, I'll entertain a motion to accept the change to reduce the parking code requirements for accessory use number 7 to 0 cars.
[Ari Fishman]: I so move.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Ari. Second. Second Sean Biggin. Roll call. John Anderson?
[John Anderson]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Sean Biggin? Yes. Page Buldini is absent. Dina Calagaro?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, yes. The motion passes five to zero. We have consensus on the easy one.
[Zac Bears]: We can get to consensus even faster, I bet, on the next easy one, Emily.
[Emily Innes]: Next easy one. So, what I'm going to do is share my screen again. And in this case, we are going to stick with the table of uses because those are just one slide. And we're going to move to a proposal from a CD board member. So, again, not calling people out but just so we can go back and ask people what their thoughts were. So this is from Dina and she had proposed two ideas. Doggy daycare by the special permit from the community development board in this area and neighborhood medical office by special permit from the community development board. The doggie daycare, I'm just waiting to see if it flips over. Yes, it does. The doggie daycare, which I had nicely set up for you in the midst, is allowed as a right in all the three districts that are proposed here. And I'm just making you all dizzy. I apologize for that by going down to neighborhood medical and that is also currently in the proposal out loud as of right in all three sub-districts. So the proposal is to change both of those to CDB and I turn it over to you all for discussion.
[Zac Bears]: All right, do we have any questions from members of the council? Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I guess these two, I would like an overview of just the reasoning behind this, because this is one of the ones where I guess I wasn't really under understanding it. Like, you know, I like dogs. I think doggie daycares are a nice business. So if I could just get some basic overview of why they have to go through the CD board and just the justification for that, I'd appreciate it. Because right now, I'm a no on this, but it's a pretty tepid no. I'm just unsure about it.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Mlayne, and then I'll go to Emily.
[Liz Mullane]: Yes, I wanted to kind of just follow up on the doggie daycare piece. I, as well, own two dogs and take them to doggie daycare places that are outside of Medford because we don't have one. I know that would be a lucrative place to have, be able to have it closer within Medford. Of course, if it's a sticking point, I'm not going to stop it. I understand with noise, et cetera, with parking. I was really, you know, hoping that we can at least keep it somewhere or at least know somewhere it can be potentially thought of in Medford would be great because I think we've kind of excluded it in other places as well. So that's all I would say. And then I think on the neighborhood medical office, if that's, again, needed a special permit, I didn't have any problems with it. Thanks.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no further comments by members of the council, Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Is there anybody on the city board who has comments or questions? Go ahead, Dana, hold on.
[Dina Caloggero]: I just want to bring up my point on the doggie daycare. I have a dog, love my dog, and I do have a friend and she was a nurse and she worked overnight and she lived very close to a doggie daycare that's in a residential unit and the barking I mean, I think one of the public commenters, I think it was Judy, said that there is a barking ordinance. There were three dogs barking constantly. Imagine 25 barking and you're trying to sleep. I think a doggy daycare would be appropriate in Medford. I would like one. But I don't think it would fit in any of some of the areas that were being zoned on Boston Avenue. But perhaps maybe it could be done in a BA3 area or something like that. But I think we really need to take a look at where it is, if it's close to residential, or you're going to get many, many calls and requests to stop the parking if we just allow it without looking at where the site is, where the business is going to reside.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Tina. John Anderson, go ahead.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, I would remind people that a number of years ago, the city council actually had to give a permit for doggie daycare and there was a very contentious meeting. And the neighbor, the neighborhood was up in arms. It was in a sort of commercial zone. So I don't know why an apartment had been allowed there in the first place. But the owner of the apartment building sort of organized all his tenants to come out and oppose it. So it got very contentious, but I mean, they had some good arguments. People would be dropping their dogs off early in the morning, lots of cars, barking. So I think allowing doggie daycare by right in these zones is, I think that'll bother a lot of people. Of course, it makes more work for whoever's going to review these applications, unfortunately, but that's what we're here for, right?
[Doug Carr]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, take it back for him. I'll go to Council Vice President Lazzaro. Oh, it looks like you have Ari, actually.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, I'll go to you and then I'll turn it back to Zach. Go ahead, Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Thanks. I'm in support of both of these being options and I do think that they are in the category of business types that provide benefit to the community, but also have very fact specific. Downsides and I think that's what the CD board approval required. Gives us the opportunity to deal with the very specific facts of a particular proposal. I think. Going through house by house right now would not be a productive use of our time, nor would it serve the effect that we want it to. I think that because they can, again, be noisy, have traffic backups, they are worth having additional scrutiny and additional detail beyond something that's totally by right. But I do think that there are many locations where both would be appropriate, and I would look forward to seeing those as part of the CD board.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Ari. Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Hi, thank you. I just want to address really quickly that we already know the area that we're talking about. We're talking about Boston Ave in two very specific sections. That does not include any residential parcels. because we've eliminated the residential parcels completely. So, and it's a daycare, which is just daytime. It wouldn't be barking overnight while you're sleeping. It would only be daytime daycare. So I would have to agree with what Ari mentioned, which is that these are individual items that would be taken as a, on a case by case basis, but I think it's not something that you would have to say, well, it's hypothetical. Like we don't even know where they would be. And we know exactly where they would be for this conversation, because we're only talking about the Boston up commercial district and it's pretty limited in scope. So I just want to, make sure everybody is not being like too cautious about how we talk about this district, because we've already eliminated a lot of the potential for where we can allow things. And it being something that allows community members to live a more full and vibrant and exciting life, because we're providing opportunities for people to open businesses and for residents to take advantage of those services in our community, in their own community, I think we should allow for that possibility where we can.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Emily. I don't know if there's anything else, Emily Ennis, if there's anything else you'd like to add. Oh, actually, sorry, Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Council President. I appreciate the comments from everyone. I think that I remember that scenario that we had and with the the apartment buildings with the doggie daycare and leaving it with our CD board, I think, is the better option, in my opinion, I feel, because although we know what we're looking at at the Boston Ave, Boston Ave zoning locations, I think that we will be moving residential, whether it's You know, 6 stories or multifamily units in different areas, different zoned areas. We're going to have the same concerns with the process with the doggy daycare. I think that there I agree. I think that. we should find a location and make sure that we identify those locations where we're providing the service, because I, too, have a dog that I love. And I don't want to limit this, but I think that by right, I think I wouldn't support that. So thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Emily Ennis.
[Emily Innes]: I don't have anything.
[Zac Bears]: You've got nothing.
[Emily Innes]: Great. I've got nothing. All right. This is a policy decision.
[Zac Bears]: Is there a motion to?
[Emily Innes]: This is a policy decision.
[Zac Bears]: And it would be essentially the policy decision is do we want either by right so there's not an additional public process for someone to open a doggie daycare or do we want special permit CDB so that if you want to open a doggie daycare you have to go through a special permit process?
[Emily Innes]: I will add some color to that, which is depending on whether or not it meets the thresholds for site plan review, it may be by right meets the thresholds for site plan review and therefore be by right with site plan review or by special permit from the CDB board. All right.
[Zac Bears]: You know, is there a, I guess, is there a motion from councilors? Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: I move to accept the amendment to make it by CDB.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to require special permit for doggie daycare, special permit of the Community Development Board for doggie daycare in the BA1, BA2, and BA3 sub-districts by Councilor Callahan, seconded by? Seconded. Seconded by Councilor Maloney. I'll take Maloney. You got him at the same time.
[George Scarpelli]: Sorry. No worries.
[Zac Bears]: Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan?
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Leming?
[Matt Leming]: No.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Mullane? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: No.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: No. Four in the affirmative, three in the negative. The motion passes. Chair Carr?
[Doug Carr]: All right, so I'm going to take a motion, the same motion, to require a special permit by city board for BA1, BA2, BA3 districts as previously discussed. Second. Moved by John Anderson, seconded by Sean Biggin. John Anderson. Yes. Sean Biggin. Yes. Page Buldini is absent. Dina Gallagher. Yes. Ari Kaufman-Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: In myself, yes, the motion passes five to zero. Let's move on.
[Zac Bears]: Next topic.
[Emily Innes]: We are continuing with the table of uses. I think we have six more, but one of them also has geographic implications.
[Zac Bears]: Can we do any of them at the same time?
[Emily Innes]: Yes. So a couple of uses to think about simultaneously. One is allowing service station uses. One is the currently they are recommended as a no in all three districts. Not currently marijuana uses are by ZBA special permit and the recommendation is to not do this. And the final use definition that doesn't have a geographic component is updating the high-frequency transit definition. Sorry, not quite the final, updating the high-frequency transit definition. There's one more, which is the purpose-built student housing. I would take that separately as my recommendation. So service stations, marijuana uses, and high-frequency transit.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. Councilor Leming, sorry, what did you say?
[Matt Leming]: We only took the vote on the doggie daycare previously, correct? And not the neighborhood medical offices?
[Zac Bears]: Correct. That was just doggie daycare.
[Matt Leming]: But the neighborhood medical offices was another point on the previous slide, wasn't it?
[Emily Innes]: Yes, A, that is correct. The Neighborhood Medical Offices was also another recommendation for a CD board permit. And I know Director Hunt has some comments on some of the uses that I just called out. All right.
[Zac Bears]: Well, let's do the Neighborhood Medical, Director Hunt. Or do you have it on the other one?
[Emily Innes]: It's on the other one.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. The Neighborhood Medical was CDB, all three subdistricts. Do we have any comments by members of the council on that?
[Alicia Hunt]: They're commenting on neighborhood medical now. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you, I believe very firmly that we should be allowing neighborhood medical offices or even just a normal doctor's office. We've created a definition for a smaller than normal doctor's office under the umbrella of this new category of neighborhood medical. That's like only five, hey, that's only five employees and small square footage. I think this should not require any kind of additional review. That's my stance on that. I think we should allow people to have access to medical care in their neighborhoods and all of Medford. Thanks.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Emily, did you have more context here?
[Emily Innes]: Just if the councilors and the members of the CD board need it, I do have the definition of neighborhood medical office.
[Zac Bears]: If you would want to read that, that'd be great.
[Emily Innes]: Absolutely. So a neighborhood medical office in the current zoning is office of a physician, dentist, or other medical practitioner not located in a clinic or hospital as defined in section 94-12.0 definitions. The office area shall not exceed 1,500 square feet of gross floor area shall have no more than five employees and shall operate only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.
[Doug Carr]: City Board members, anybody would like to chime in on neighborhood medical office use?
[Zac Bears]: And I just believe the decision is either include by right, which means it does not require a special permit process through the CD board or special permit of the CD board. That's the choice point.
[Dina Caloggero]: Okay. The reason why I requested that this be looked at by the Community Development Board is that we, these are new definitions and I want to be very cautious in how they implemented. And remember that the zoning can change. We can go back. It can be an iterative approach right now so we can see how it works with the current definitions. And then if it looks that the establishments that want to, go within the corridor meets the need, we can do it. But it's just like a pilot step to make sure that we don't run into any problems with the definitions that were newly created. We can go back and change things. I mean, this isn't building a building, right? You can go back and make it a yes.
[Doug Carr]: OK. Anyone else on the standing board before I turn it back to Zach for what I think will be a motion? OK.
[Zac Bears]: And yes, Chair Caron agreed we will do all the discussion and questions before we take any motions. So at this point, discussion and questions from both bodies is complete. We'll consider motions at this time. Is there a motion from a member of the City Council for Council Vice President Lazzaro?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Motion to have neighborhood medical be by right.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Lazzaro to have neighbourhood medical by right seconded by.
[Justin Tseng]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly.
[Anna Callahan]: I can't hear you, but it sounds like you called me. Yes.
[Zac Bears]: It's not working. Try to plug the. Just push the push the microphone down. That's right. All right here. Take this.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly. Yeah. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilman Lane. Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: No.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng?
[George Scarpelli]: Yeah.
[Rich Eliseo]: What did he say, no?
[Zac Bears]: He said yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Okay. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, six in the affirmative, none in the negative, the motion passes.
[Doug Carr]: So I'll entertain a motion to... Go ahead, John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Could you just clarify what we're voting on? Because what I'm looking at says neighborhood medical office by right, yes, in all three districts.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[John Anderson]: Well, are we trying to change that? To what?
[Zac Bears]: I think the question is, do we want to change it or not? And the council has said we do not want to change it.
[Doug Carr]: OK. So we're affirming direction that we're not changing it, essentially, because that wasn't on the table. Okay, back to unattended motion for neighborhood residential by right in the BA1, BA2, and BA3 districts. So moved. Motion by John Anderson, second? Second. Sean Began, second. Roll call. John Anderson? Yes. Sean Began? Yes. Paige Bodini is absent. Dina Calogero? No. No. Ari Gothman-Fishman?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Culler, yes. The motion passes four to one.
[Zac Bears]: Next, we had, sorry, Alicia?
[Alicia Hunt]: You were going to go on to the others.
[Zac Bears]: Let's take these one by one. Next was service stations. Okay, Alicia.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just wanted to make sure people were very clear about the language that is in our zoning says service stations. However, this is a gas station. And I just want to make sure people understand that because many people use the word service station to mean the place you fix your car. The definition is, I had it up and I pulled up neighborhood medical office. Basically, it's a gas station where selling anything else is secondary to selling gas and that the, where is it? Sorry, what's the exact name of it? Because these are very alphabetical. It's probably under L for light. Sorry about that. Oh, it's not. But yes, I just wanted to make sure people understood what Motor Vehicle Light Service Station, a building or premises used for the dispensing, sales, or offering for sale of motor fuels directly to users of motor vehicles. Other sales activities and any repairs shall be activities minor in scope and clearly subordinate to the sale of motor fuels, oils, and lubricants. No drive-through facilities are permitted without further zoning relief. And I'll just be clear, there is no other definition for gas station in our zoning. I just didn't want people to be confused about what this was.
[Zac Bears]: The current proposal is a not allowed in all three sub-districts for both gas stations and auto repair shops.
[Emily Innes]: That is correct, so under H, motor vehicle related uses, number one, motor vehicle light service station, it's a no in all three sub-districts. Number two, motor vehicle repair establishment, it's a no in all three sub-districts. And we did, in our earlier discussions, take a look to see what else was within easy driving distance of the area.
[Zac Bears]: So I will note the council has already voted in a planning and permitting committee meeting, no. This was a change that was requested by the council to not allow these, not allow the new, basically we don't want people to build new gas stations in these three sub-districts on these 50 or so lots. to John's point earlier, do we need to take votes to not change things? I don't know that we need to take the time and the roll calls to do that. Certainly, if there was a motion by a member of the council to, I'm guessing when you're presenting this, you're saying, are we sure we want to do that?
[Emily Innes]: The question was raised by a member of the city board at the last meeting. It was one of the items that was left for discussion tonight. So I am bringing it up for discussion tonight or to remind you all that it was one of the items that was left for discussion tonight.
[Zac Bears]: Yep. So I will go, if there's any member of the council who'd like to speak on this, um, councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so it just just for awareness on the folks on the CD board this, I believe this was the only like literally the only item in the Boston Avenue zoning that the city council specifically voted to change like had a motion and vote to change on a planning and permitting committee meeting. Had a discussion with some members of the CD board in a recent working group meeting that it's absolutely not necessary for CD board members to know everything or watch every single planning and permitting committee before these, but just so you're aware, we didn't typically vote on specific items, but this was literally the only item that did come up. So I don't think it's appropriate. It would be, well, I don't think it would be necessary to hold another vote on this reaffirming, but obviously welcome a vote from the CD board if folks disagree on it. So thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I will turn it over to Chair Carr if there's any discussion, but just procedurally, then we'll go back for the motions. If there's no motion from the city council, a city board member could make a motion. At that point, that would be voted on by the two bodies.
[Doug Carr]: OK. Is there anyone on the city board who has an opinion about this issue about service station as defined by the previous conversation? Ari, go ahead.
[Ari Fishman]: I was very surprised to hear this come up. I thought it was a shared understanding of the comprehensive plan as well as this particular area that we are not putting in additional car-centric and heavy uses here. I think that there is no space in this corridor where it would be appropriate to add a gas station, and I would be happy to close for further discussion. I was not the person who raised it, but that's where I stand.
[Doug Carr]: OK, then I'd like to entertain a motion to basically keep the zoning as is.
[SPEAKER_29]: If no one wants to make a motion, then it just stays.
[Doug Carr]: Otherwise, if no one will make a motion, then we leave it as is and move on.
[Zac Bears]: OK, so we don't need it. Basically, what I'm saying is, if you want to change it, make a motion. If you don't want to change it, we can just move on.
[Doug Carr]: I feel like consensus is we're moving on.
[Zac Bears]: Any members of the council who'd like to make a motion at this time on this topic? Seeing none, it's staying as it is. Next item.
[Emily Innes]: Next item is currently the proposed zoning has the marijuana uses by special permit from the ZBA. A point was brought up that this may conflict with other portions of the marijuana ordinance. I'm going to turn it over to Director Hunt for comment.
[Zac Bears]: And so the choice is to make them all no. Director Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. So the question is somewhat of a legal question. Can you make them be yes or CDB? This is actually ZBA. When the other ordinance in our ordinances say they're only allowed in I and C2 zones, can you do this because the other ordinance would still make it illegal? It's kind of a chicken and an egg question, but if people wanted to be safer, My advice would be to just leave these as no or go back to putting these as no for now. If the city council wants to then say where are all the places with all these new zones that we ought to allow this and have that as a separate conversation. amend the other ordinance first, and then come back and do the zoning, or do the zoning and that other ordinance kind of at the same time, it would make sense to us. And I will say that there are three licenses that Medford has. One is operating, one is under construction, and the other is still intending to open. Therefore, nobody is going to exercise this until one of those three gives up their license. So it's not something that's imminent.
[Zac Bears]: So this is a moot technical point.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think so.
[Zac Bears]: And the thought from the planning director is let's make them know for now and we can come back and do a review of the ordinance as needed.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. I think it might not be a bad place for them, but let's go with the procedure.
[Zac Bears]: Any discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Sean. You've been thinking about this a lot.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah. The other idea or proposal I had would be to Instead of putting a no, just put a footnote on each of these uses, referring people to the marijuana ordinance, and then you wouldn't have to come back and redo this table.
[Doug Carr]: Oh, I see.
[Sean Beagan]: Because the marijuana ordinance would end up being controlling on these tones.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, I didn't catch all of what he said.
[Zac Bears]: Member Begum was saying, what if we left them as ZBA, but put a footnote saying, look at this ordinance. If it says, if this zone isn't here, then it's still a no.
[Alicia Hunt]: And the reason I missed part of what he was saying is that Senior Planner Evans was reminding me that we actually put them in the Mystic Ave zone as allowed by ZBA, which we felt we had to do because that is one of the primary places they have been allowed, and that it would have been inappropriate to suddenly make them nonconforming and not allowed there. That's where two of them are going. So actually, we should put it on the list for the city council to go back and address that ordinance and write in the Mystic Ave stuff. at your earlier convenience.
[Zac Bears]: Feel free to send us a letter.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, this has not been at the top of our mind because nobody's chomping at the bit for these licenses because they're all out.
[Zac Bears]: All right. I just want to go right to you because this feels real technical. Do we want it to say ZBA with a footnote or do we want it to say no?
[Alicia Hunt]: If people are going to, I would say whichever way people feel more comfortable, I think either is fine. I think it's an appropriate place for them, but the neighbors might not like it.
[Zac Bears]: Let's say no for now. I heard a motion from Councilor Mullane to change these uses to a no in the three subdistricts, seconded by?
[Anna Callahan]: Second.
[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll for the City Council.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Mullain? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. Chair Carr?
[Doug Carr]: All right, motion to use this to a no for the described for BA1, BA2, and BA3. I'll entertain a motion for that. OK, roll call. John Anderson. Yes. Sean Began. Page Buldini is absent. Dina Calguero. Yes. Ari Goffman-Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr. Yes. Motion passes 5 to 0. All right.
[Zac Bears]: Was the next one the purpose-built student housing? Sorry.
[Emily Innes]: One more before purpose built student housing and that is updating the high frequency transit definition. Again this was raised at the last one. It doesn't have an impact on the proposed zoning but it does have an impact city wide. So the question is do you want to take this up now and do you have. Any thoughts on it? Director Hunt, do you have anything else on this?
[Zac Bears]: Chair Carr and I have conferred up here. I think we strongly do not want to make citywide changes in this zoning amendment. I don't know.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I agree completely. That's an important issue. We need to streamline that process, not just Boston Ave, but everywhere across the city. So I think that one is a rabbit hole I don't want to go into tonight.
[Zac Bears]: Any further comments by members of the council? Seeing none, Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Emily, you have a comment?
[Emily Innes]: No, I was ready to move on to the next one.
[Doug Carr]: Sorry, go ahead, John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Could you just clarify what are the criteria by which the parking requirement is reduced? Is it the material in Where is it?
[Emily Innes]: I am zooming in towards it just so everybody knows. I'm not ignoring the question. Yes.
[John Anderson]: Talking about bikes, loading zones, et cetera? Yes. OK. I was just surprised that access to high frequency mass transit wasn't part of this zoning effort. But I'm fine with what you've done.
[Emily Innes]: OK. I'll leave it there and happy to talk you through it later. Yes.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Purpose-built student housing.
[Emily Innes]: Yes, so that is the last use only. The discussion at the last meeting was the idea of adding purpose-built student housing in this area. We do not currently have it in the table of uses. We did have one of the public comments that came in provided a definition I think we have delved up 10 more definitions and also a student residential overlay which is quite interesting but not the subject of tonight. So the question I think from us first of all is do the city council and the city board wish to introduce this as a use in the table of uses at this point and secondly we can present Certainly the definition that came in through the public comment which includes does include standards with that we also could talk about some of the other definitions.
[Zac Bears]: Just to clarify so if we were to take a vote tonight it would be. We would like to see a definition because we would like generally for it to be included, but you would then do the research and draft a definition for us to vote on on the 24th.
[Emily Innes]: Yes, that is correct. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: So this would be, do we want to see a definition and make a choice on the 24th?
[Emily Innes]: Right. At the time of the last meeting, there was not consensus as to whether or not this was to be allowed. Well, actually, whether or not this was A, to be added to the table of uses, and B, whether or not it was to be allowed, and C, what level of permitting it would be allowed under.
[Doug Carr]: I guess I have a slightly different memory of that last meeting. I thought we were asking for kind of a menu of student housing definitions that we could debate it here and not decide that sort of tonight. But I what you're saying is we don't actually have any draft text right now.
[Emily Innes]: I have draft text right now. I could give you multiple definitions, but we also don't know if you are interested in even adding this. I don't think that was clear at the last meeting that there was consensus.
[Zac Bears]: I just want to clarify, because I don't disagree with you, Chair Carr, but when you say you have draft text, if you have 10 draft texts, that to me does not constitute a recommendation of what you think the best option would be for for this and I think we could spend all night looking at 10 versions of something and saying we like this and we don't like that and I don't think that is a good use of our time if I'm being honest.
[Doug Carr]: I think there's a bit of a chicken egg here, because I think some of the members of the city board, if I could speak for what I heard last time in our last meeting, is they wanted to know what the boundaries were, what the guardrails were, what the checks and balances were. They weren't committed to anything, but they were intrigued by it, and I think they wanted to know more about it. I think there's more positive than negative, but I don't, I think it's the devil is in the details. I think we kind of, we're not committing to it, but we definitely are committing to some detailed study on language.
[Zac Bears]: I wonder if I have maybe something that could provide like a clear set of guidance for you to bring a draft back to us. Cause I heard from members of the CD board interest in it, but also specific areas of concern. I also, I think we've discussed this now a few times. Um, I wonder if you could provide us a draft definition, A, based on your analysis of what you think would be suitable for the different sub-districts. Most of the discussion around this has been the BA3 sub-district, the area bounded by the tracks, Boston Avenue, North Street, and the Somerville border, essentially containing the Elizabeth Brady Building and the Cummings Building and the parking lot. To me, the guidelines were, and if anyone thinks I'm missing anything, professional management, that these are private, taxable. constructions, that if they were to revert to some form of non-student, like if someone was to propose a use change for the building, that that use change would be subject to inclusionary and affordable housing requirements, and maybe whatever the parking requirement was at the time for the residential use that they were proposing, and that those would be generally guardrails on the use of this type of new definition that we're talking about. I don't know if there's any of the, is there anything I missed?
[Doug Carr]: I think so. One is a guideline on parking recommendations for that use type, given the geographical occasion. And the other is scale. I think we wanted to make sure it has to be over a minimum number of beds, I think is what we're talking about. We're not looking for a frat house on Boston Ave. That's clearly not what we're looking for. We're looking for, essentially, apartment buildings that would be for students, which is the same size building, potentially, just with a different use.
[Emily Innes]: So just to clarify, if I misunderstood the order of operations, I do apologize. Most of these standards were, I believe, mentioned at the last meeting. And so the way we usually recommend it is that there is a definition that explains what the use is. So this is a residential building that is not a dormitory or student residence hall. I'm quoting from one of them. that is primarily for students, and there's language around that. And then there would be a section, and we talked about this last time, for the youth standards, broadly covering, I think, most of what the two of you have just reiterated. I guess our question was very much of was this still a use, because it wasn't in the original table of uses, was this a use where you had consensus on? I'm hearing that you had wanted the standards first. We had thought we'd want the consensus on the use first. My apologies for getting that wrong. We can certainly have that before the next meeting. So you have time to review it before we have the debate on the 24th.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, and I think I think and I do have a Councilor who wants to speak. It looks like there's at least a couple of members of the Community Development Board who wants to speak. It looks like maybe Director Hunt as well. But I think we would like to see a definition and a set of guidelines and have that presented and we can decide at the next meeting. Yes, we're including this. Yes, it's under these guidelines. You know, we're, what is it, what's the definition? It's categories in the use table and what subdistrict is in. And these are the guidelines that would apply to this use. And we can vote at our next meeting, yes or no, we want this proposal.
[Emily Innes]: Understood, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: And do we want to go to Director Hunt first? Yeah, and then I want, I have to go to the council and then.
[Alicia Hunt]: There's one clarification I want to make, and that's about location. Because I heard that the BA3, so our office has also heard three or four months ago from another property owner in the BA2 area with another developer that is known to us who was interested in purpose-built student housing and whether we would consider such a thing. So I just think that we need to actively consider BA3, BA2, BA1, what's appropriate, and is it different in different areas? Because we have those active questions, and it would not be appropriate for us to go back to the owner saying, we didn't even talk about it for your neighborhood.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I think what we're saying is the definition, the use table proposal, the standards slash guidelines. I'm going to go to Councilor Scarpelli, and I do apologize. It's a Thursday, which is unusual for me. I'm actually going to probably need to step out of this meeting for about an hour for another work obligation. And I will return when I can.
[Alicia Hunt]: And Senior Planner Evans said something as well.
[Zac Bears]: Sure. We'll go to Senior Planner Evans and Councilor Scarpelli. Sorry, George. OK.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you, Daniel Evans, senior planner. I would say that we should define the use no matter what and then put it in the table and if you don't, if the consensus is you don't want it, then just put no's across the board to make it clear.
[Unidentified]: Sure.
[Danielle Evans]: Best practice to, if a use out there exists, to define it and to indicate in the ordinance whether it's allowed or not. That way it can't be kind of you know, massaged into a different use, and then going for, like, use variances and things like that.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Great. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: A few things, Council President. Thank you. I concur with your process and as I know Chair Carr mentioned, I think that I've gotten a lot of feedback from residents that through this process will definitely be clear in the elimination of any sort of fraternity or sorority. I think that's what really is one thing that people have responded to me about. I think that'll be something we'll work down the line, but I wanted to make sure I brought up tonight, people are watching, that that is something we'll be looking at. And I too, in three minutes, have to jump out for a work obligation and try to jump back on when I can. So thank you.
[Doug Carr]: All right, we seem to have a changing of the guard at the main desk here. I'm going to go next to, oh, sorry. Matt Lending, why don't you go next?
[Matt Leming]: Right, so I'm getting some, so this is very unusual for city council. We accommodated the requests to get the MSBA, sorry, for the MSBC's meeting schedule. And obviously there was a very important meeting yesterday, but yeah, I'm getting some notifications, tracking notifications from some other Councilors that they are also going to have to leave this meeting shortly. and there may be risk of a losing quorum on this, especially if Councilor Scarpelli is going to be absent, Council President Bears, and then possibly Council Vice President Lazar as well. I would like to make a recommendation to very quickly go through votes for the other remaining items and then continue this to the 24th if that's appropriate, just given the unique circumstances here.
[Doug Carr]: Councilor Leming, I'm concerned about that just because of timing here. I was wondering if we pause this meeting and everyone come back in an hour or 45 minutes, is that an option just to keep momentum going? Because I think there's some critical things that Ines needs direction on, on heights and boundaries that will take a long time to go through.
[Matt Leming]: No, absolutely not. No, no. Chair Carr, respectfully, I don't think that pausing the meeting for an hour would really be an option. I mean, two Councilors have standing childcare obligations. It is an ungodly hour for me personally. I'm not even going to say what time it is where I'm at. So that's just a complete non-starter. But I do think that we, need to get through the rest of the votes very quickly, just to offer some direction on it. And I understand there's very important discussions that do need to be had, but having a meeting on a Thursday is very unusual. And we did receive a lot of community pushback to have this meeting on a Thursday. And this was honestly the best I could come up with. I will recognize that two of my other colleagues also have their hands raised as well to speak about this, if they would like to chime in.
[Doug Carr]: Before I do that, Danielle?
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you. I would caution against just flying through votes for the heights and stories, because we have Jimmy Rocha here, who is going to give a presentation of massing. Okay, there was going to be some presentation because the height should be informed by some data and what the impacts are going to be. So, but also there be an objection to the city council adjourning their public hearing and that the CDB could continue on. I don't see why that couldn't happen.
[Doug Carr]: Is that allowable? We haven't done that so far? I mean, they could terminate their meeting and we continue ours. I think we still want to provide the feedback.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. It is legal that they could end their meeting, they could continue to the date and time certain that's been pre-agreed, and the CD board could continue to meet and make recommendations that would then be available to them. immediately, I mean in the morning, and members of the council could stay. There's no reason why they'd have to leave.
[Matt Leming]: I would personally be okay with that. But I think it does have to come with the caveat that a quorum of the council wouldn't necessarily be here to provide their own feedback on that. At a future meeting when we're voting on these recommendations, it shouldn't come with the expectation that consensus has been met. But yeah, I would like to hear from my colleagues on this idea. Chair Mulane.
[Liz Mullane]: All right. Thank you, Councilor Leming. I see Councilor Zero, did you want to say a few words?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Yeah, I just I really appreciate all the collaboration that's happening here and I did just want to say that this week I've had a I've had work every day and a meeting for different city. groups that I'm a part of every night so far, and I am solely responsible for my children tonight, so I have to leave at 830. I don't think that it's wise for us to try to rush through the rest of this, but in prior iterations of these meetings, the Community Development Board did hear feedback uh did offer their suggestions to the city council and then we were able to take those suggestions and go with them the way that we saw fit and i think that that's fine and appropriate if we would like to do it that way we did already hear the community um the public comment, which I think was great to do it at the beginning. And we can also hear the presentations. I can also review them after the fact later as well. So I think that there is a path forward here for us to do this in a way that works. I just think that it may not be tenable for this week. June is a tricky time for a lot of people that are doing public service. I think there's the panic of the budget and of closing out the fiscal year. So trying to do zoning and trying to pass a lot of stuff in zoning at the same time is a little bit, perhaps we're trying to do too much in one time period. But, you know, life goes on. And I also, you know, last night we passed, uh, we decided on which kind of high school we're going to try to build, you know, like these things are, and the night before that we tabled the budget, like these things all happen. And I started a new job on Monday. So just to let you know, this is what my week looked like. Also, I'm getting divorced. Like all of these things are happening at the same time. So just to give you a glimpse into my life, um, So just to tell you, I'm leaving at 8 30 and I really think that we can do all of this stuff. I really do think that we can, but I am telling you I'm going to leave at 8 30. And again, I think it's all going to work. We can do all of it. But I don't think that we should believe in some imaginary scenario in which we can vote for all these things and be thoughtful about it all at the same time. And I appreciate Councilor Leming and his presence and his ability to be rational and thoughtful about all of these steps all together. So thank you very much.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Emily. Just to be clear, the pressure on on the time has always come from the city council side. The city board is willing to take whatever time we need to think to get it right, to begin thoughtfully. It wasn't the city board that was putting the June 30th deadline on this process.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Well, we did have a limitation due to the funding around the consultants. So we did have an 18 month funding deadline prior to the session. And now we're gonna have to do another So there's, there's many complicating factors there. It's not that the city council wants to rush through zoning. I just want to be really clear about that. City council is not trying to rush through zoning. The city council is trying to make zoning reform happen and we're doing it within the confines that we're given.
[Doug Carr]: Fair enough. Um, go ahead please.
[Liz Mullane]: Um, councilor Leming, did you, you still have your hand up?
[Matt Leming]: No, I think Vice President Lazzaro did make the point about the confines in his contract there. The June 30th deadline is not imaginary. They're no longer under contract to do any zoning for the city after June 30th, so it's not an imaginary. I do want to make that point and I agree. I think there's a path forward here. It is definitely preferable to have both bodies come to a consensus on this. Zoning got a little derailed last time because the city council rejected one of the CD board's recommendations at a separate meeting. Um, and you know, that, that, that is, that is what happened. Uh, but I. think that legally, for the purposes of this meeting, it is absolutely fine if the city board continues and the meeting continues even without a quorum of the city council. And they're able to vote on their own recommendations without input from us. I do want it to be, again, I do want to set expectations for the public, though, that those that the city council may agree or disagree with those recommendations. And that is not preferable. That is not preferable. But again, I earnestly try to schedule all of this. But we receive significant public pressure to schedule this on a day when most city councilors do not have typical availability. And that is the situation. Fully, so I would fully endorse the path forward of continuing the meeting, even without a quorum of the city council and letting the city board do their job during the public hearing and make their recommendations.
[Doug Carr]: So Councilor Leming, how do you see this playing out between now and June 30th, given where we are? We will continue, I agree with you, we will continue to give clear direction to NS about our recommendations for each of the issues.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, to answer the question, I think the way for it to play out is continue this meeting, make the recommendations. continue the public hearing and to a later date, uh, you know, likely likely June 24th and then have like, it would be preferable if it were referred out on June 24th, um, And it is possible that city council would vote on it during one of the summer sessions. At that point, I don't think NS would necessarily be needed at that point past June 30th, just because at that point, it's either accept or reject recommendations. And they wouldn't necessarily need to work on any draft text or anything like that.
[Doug Carr]: I guess my concern is we're breaking from the precedent that we set in Medford Square that we more or less came to consensus on everything and we move forward together on the zoning recommendations for boundaries, for heights, for everything. I don't want to lose that continuity here if we can.
[Matt Leming]: So again, we I mean we could have we could we could schedule, we could schedule another joint hearing. So there could there would be continuity there. It's just that, again, this is very unique we received significant public pressure to put this on a Thursday so I hope that this situation doesn't repeat itself but Now, this is sort of the reality that we find. Again, the June 30th deadline is not an imaginary deadline. It means that the Boston Avenue zoning would essentially be in limbo for that period of time, after that, because we would no longer have support for minnows.
[Unidentified]: Go ahead, Emily.
[Emily Innes]: With respect to the members of the city board and the city councilors, I understand that we have until 830 before council has to leave. Understandably, given her commitments, I can do the presentation of the materials within that time. If I just go straight through and perhaps it'll be time for a little bit of discussion. And then if the city board so chooses, they could continue after that.
[Doug Carr]: I would recommend we proceed.
[Liz Mullane]: If you want to proceed, why don't we proceed with that? Great.
[Emily Innes]: I will share my screen. All right, so we had a couple of recommendations for different dimensional changes and boundary changes. So I'm going to walk through those and the implications of those. The first was to remove certain residential properties from BA1. They are indicated by this red outline here, the properties to be removed. If those properties were to be removed, they would simply remain from this boundary for the BA1, they would remain in the apartment one district. There is a second proposal to change these properties to general residential, and I do want to address that. So right now they are in apartment one, which allows depending on the use, two and a half to four stories. If the parcels were to be moved to general residential, which allows for two and a half to three stories, then 66% of those lots within the web boundary would become nonconforming by use as a general residential only allows single family and two family and quite a few of these lots are three family or more. So to give that information. If the city board recommends and the city council adopts that all of the parcels were to be removed, we would suggest also then removing Lisa's family pizzeria, which would otherwise be isolated by the removal of these properties. when the city does move forward with the next phase, then that corner lot and these other properties could be looked at as part of the residential neighborhoods and possibly Lisa's Pizzeria and similar uses could be treated as a neighborhood hub that was proposed last year. So in other words, removing these properties from the BA1 leaves them in the apartment 1 and the regulations under that, the apartment 1 does not allow for the incentive zoning or the green score or some of the other development standards that we've placed. If they were to be further removed into general residential, they would be effectively down zoned. 66% would become non-conforming. Lisa's family pizzeria would become isolated. So we would recommend in that case taking it out. That's step one. Next recommendation was to change the height of the BA1 to a four plus one incentive, a total of five stories. We are concerned that the average lot in this area is not deep enough to support five stories because the parking requirements for the number of units or square feet, the residential transition standard to adjacent lots, which would actually reduce that upper floor because of that 45 degree plane. that in a district that already allows up to four stories, many of the uses are already at three and a half. There's a significant cost for that marginal gain to achieve that incentive. However, we do think if there's still an interest in adding that additional height, that additional height could be added at specific corners and then allowing it to drop back down to the three point plus one between the corners. So this is just a comparison of the height limitations. You'll see now is the existing zoning. So 4 to 6 or 15 up in the C2, 3 to 4, I'll get to walk in court later, 6 here. Our apartment 2 is now 2.5 to 4. So our original proposal for this area was 3.1 with a proposal to go to 4.1. or four plus one, and that is our concern that these shallow lots would not accommodate a five-story building plus the original. And these are just some pictures to show that. We also did do a site section, so this is the existing condition at the top. This is the hillside hardware that we talked about last time. This is the proposed zoning that would allow the three plus one. This is the new proposal for the four plus one. and you can start to see the residential district setback is reducing that fifth story height there. Then the next one is, this is for BA2. This would be to add St. Clements Elementary School and the rectory properties. We don't see any problems with doing that. Obviously there might be input from the neighborhood, but in terms of logistics or technicalities, no. There was a note on changing the height to a four plus two incentive adjacent to the train tracks. We were a little bit concerned by this just because with the shallowness of the depth of these lots, adjacent to the train tracks also means adjacent to Boston Avenue, so we just wanted to have some clarification on that. Was the intent just to have that, the original proposal was 4.4 plus three. Was it just to have a four plus two in this area and a four plus three there? I see the four plus one west of Boston Avenue, adding the parcels to the corridor. So I think we just need a little clarification of intent. And then again, we did the same thing, existing, current proposed, and then the new proposal, so proposal four plus three, and the four plus two. Finally, the last component of the height and dimensional standards, and then I'll touch briefly on the youth standards. This is removing Walkling Court. We have heard no objections to debate about Walkling Court, so we think that's easy. We're changing the height to the five base plus two incentive in BA3, but there's also recommendation that the buildings next to the tracks having the height next to the tracks rather than the center of the lot. We wanted to briefly show the shadow studies that we did to indicate that we're not sure that that is the best move. So this is the original proposal and you'll see that we had a lower height next to the tracks. You can just see the faint shadow lines there. The proposal that we heard last time was to add the height next to the rail tracks. So what we've done is this is on A, on the left-hand side, is the five stories towards the rail line and North Street. B is having the seven stories towards the rail line and North Street. We're just gonna walk you very quickly through the existing conditions, the five stories, and then the seven stories on two dates and three different times. So this is at 10 a.m. on February 21st. Just note in all of these you do not see any shadows or very few shadows on Boston Avenue itself because of the orientation of Boston Avenue to the Path of the Sun. But you can see a little bit of shadow in the existing conditions here, a little bit longer in the five stories, a little bit-ish longer on the seven stories. At 2 p.m. in the afternoon on February 21st, you see the shadows moving around and starting to cross the rail tracks on the existing conditions. Same thing that are over the rail tracks on the five stories. But once we get to seven stories, that shadow at 2 p.m. in February actually crosses the rail tracks. And then at 3.30 p.m., so note in February, sunset is at 5.24. The shadows obviously get longer in the afternoon, so you can see that there's a sort of diagonal shadow crossing over to North Street under the existing conditions, covers that one building and sort of towards North Street under the five-story test. and then beyond North Street into the neighborhood under the seven-story test. I should of course say that these are conceptual illustrations and not projects, but we're just using them to show shadow studies. We also did June 21st, so roughly this time of year. Same times, 10 a.m., again a little bit of a shadow, nothing on Boston Ave, nothing on North Street because it's the morning. A little bit of a shadow here, a little bit of a shadow here. The sun is obviously higher in the sky and a different angle. 2 p.m., again you start to see the shadows creeping over towards North Street and the rail track, but not over the rail track, not over the rail track. a little bit over the rail track at 2 p.m. At 5.30 p.m., different time because, of course, the sun is up later. Sunset is 8.25. You see the existing shadows crossing North Street towards the neighborhood. The shadow with this particular building configuration over North Street towards the neighborhood, and then the longer shadows from the seven stories closer to the rail line. Obviously this is useful because you can see the existing conditions of the neighborhood. So we wanted to give you that. And then the final thing we wanted to show is there was a suggestion to not allow single family, two family, three family dwelling uses and BA1. This is related to the removal of the parcels. So if BA1, if the parcel boundaries change, This suggestion will create more nonconforming lots by use because of the three-family and above in this area. So within the current boundaries as proposed for BA1, removing single-family, two-family, and three-family as uses would create 18 new nonconforming lots. With the reduced boundaries that we discussed earlier, it would create four new nonconforming lots in the area that remains within the BA1. And that is the presentation that I had for you.
[Doug Carr]: It couldn't be simpler, could it? Well, first of all, that's fantastic information. Thank you for that. And I would say, do you want to say anything else?
[Liz Mullane]: Yeah, so would it make sense, I know normally we usually have the city council go first asking questions, but I know that we've also kind of reviewed this and had gotten back to some of these different pieces. So maybe as we're in a little bit of this interim period, why don't we start first with us turning over the community development board and chair Carr and have the community board start asking those first questions.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go to the rest of the city board members, but I think you made a compelling case right off the bat that my idea to go from four stories to five stories and be one is not an idea that gets us much. So I would like to withdraw that idea because it doesn't, it's clearly not doing what I thought it could do. And I think you made a really good case for that. So I would propose that we go back to your keeping the other heights for BA2 that I suggested, and BA3. But I'm basically withdrawing BA1, because it doesn't seem to make any sense. If it's not going to get us better development and more, and it's going to create more problems, then I say take it off the table. So I think that. But I want to, there's a lot there. And I don't know how we want to break this down. We could start north and go to south. There's six or seven different issues there. And we should just tackle them, I think, one at a time. But so I'll open it up to the city board. Where do you guys want to start for north and south? And I guess, Dina, you're first.
[Dina Caloggero]: Well, I think that's a lot of information to digest and look at. And for me to assess that and give any type of recommendation at that point would be difficult for me to do.
[Doug Carr]: How about asking questions then without making any motions?
[Dina Caloggero]: You know, one of the things, I'm just, you know, I did go through and read the public comments. Just, you know, I went back. And I think when we consider some of the changes, I would keep the interfaith from Tufts University as residential. I agree with that. I have walked down Emory and Capon streets, and they really are beautiful. The beautiful houses down there. I think one of the other comments that we've heard loud and clear was, I'm going back to the use on the sororities and fraternities. It's on section A residential. It should be a no for BA3. I completely agree with that. That's one of the comments. Another comment from the public comments, I'm just going through them, was to look under BA3 for building coverage is to reduce that to 80% instead of 90. I agree on the height for BA1 to go back to the original, your original assessment was 3-1. I was not going to, I was not aligned for the five stories there. I wasn't going to do that. The other thing I, we've heard some pretty strong comments on arts and I think those are good comments. I think that would help the area and perhaps Emily that maybe under the incentives we could put it maybe under incentive three, some type of thing to develop the arts in the area. I think it would really be beneficial. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, let me see, I got my thing here. Oh, for the purpose-built student housing, I think we would also like to consider where this has been developed in other places because the public comments are mixed on it. So I'd like to see where it has been used before and if there really is because I would love to see the college students that live on my street move and that we have Families move into the neighborhood, and I would love to see an ordinance from the city council that there would be some type of incentives for owner-occupied houses. It makes such a difference. There's a two-family house next to me, and I've known the residents for years. They live there, and they maintain the property, and it's beautiful. And guess what? They're moving. It's a two-family, and I know it's going to happen. A developer's going to come in. And it's going to be nine bedrooms, nine college students, trash, and terrible. And Tufts has no authority over that, over absentee landlords. But I would like some type of evidence where we would see the students move into some type of private. I am very interested in any type of housing that would increase tax revenue to the city. I really am and I do think that if it was some type of housing, apartment housing for students where there's control over it and if the right agreements are in place and if it meets the scale and it meets the dimensions, we have control over that. Because that isn't under the Dover Amendment. That's something we can control, you know, as part of the city. But we really do need the ordinances in place and the regulations to support that. This is new, right? And when we consider a deadline or a timeline of June 30th to digest all of that, I see problems. And I think we should be careful. and I want to do the right thing. I don't want to see the Boston Avenue corridor turn into something that we really didn't intend it to be. The issue with transit, buses, I know that the bus routes are declining in that area. There's been discussions about the 94 bus. you know, eliminating some routes. And that isn't something we can do in zoning, but those are things perhaps the city council can address, you know, that we need to look at. Because really what we're doing is just deciding on permissions to build something there. And I do agree with the assessment is that if you allow it, expect it. Someone said that and it makes good sense. And a comment also from the public was on the 12-foot sidewalks. I completely agree with that. I was walking down a 12 foot sidewalk and I was happy as a clam. So those are the things that I saw that from the public comments. I'll look through my notes if there's something else that should be addressed. But that's all I got for now.
[Doug Carr]: I'm going to turn it over to Council Moline. Thank you. Councilor Lazzaro, you have your hand up.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I sure do. I do. Thank you so much. Um, I just want to note that when we talk about the things that we are concerned will happen when, um, We allow for things that people in the community may be hoping for. We don't need to assume that it will always be the thing that we're afraid of. I just wanna put it out there that there's always the possibility that it could be something wonderful and it could be a more vibrant and a more engaged community and it could be the best possible scenario and it doesn't always have to be the thing that people are afraid of.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Mr. Anderson, would you like to make a few comments? Go right ahead.
[John Anderson]: Let me just say, I sort of regret the way this evening has turned out. I mean, I understand that the pressure on the city council members and you know, I have I have this to worry about, and the Medford Historical Society, they've got dozens of things to worry about, plus they're not retired. Nevertheless, if we had known that the city council had to leave around 8.30, we might have organized the beginning of the meeting to be more efficient and get more done instead of harvesting the low-lying fruit of tackling the easy stuff first. And I appreciate the presentation you developed, but it's way too much for me to digest. I feel like I've been sort of force fed. It would be very helpful to me if you could make that presentation available to us. Also with notes, you know, when I used to give PowerPoint presentations, there's a way you could put the notes that you're going to say to people. That would be very helpful because just looking at the, you know, your dialogue adds a lot. That's all I'm saying. I'm just going to make some general comments about where we are and things that I'd like to see added to help move this forward. About existing conditions, one of the things that would be very useful would be to know which properties are owned by Tufts. I mean, we know about the campus, and we know about the hillside hardware, but there are many, many other properties. because that's, or other big property owners too, because when I look at the maps, I see lots of tiny little lots, and I'm just wondering how difficult that's going to be to develop. I was looking at the table of uses, and one of the things that struck me was active ground floor minimum, Which is what, 75%? I can't remember exactly. Doesn't that mean that, for example, the Sphere apartment building and all those townhouses are nonconforming? No?
[Emily Innes]: Go ahead, Emily. So just to answer the Tufts ownership question first, we have that map. We have actually presented it at a previous meeting. We can certainly bring it back again. The active ground floor uses applies to mixed use buildings.
[John Anderson]: Okay, I didn't see reference to that in the regulations, but I'll take your word for it that it's there.
[Emily Innes]: It's defined, the definition is in an earlier version of the zoning that was passed, so we're just referring to that.
[John Anderson]: Oh, you see, that doesn't help me though. You know, that's like saying it's in the Old Testament.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, Emily, could you put those slides on the screen? I think it would help people visualize it, just for a couple of the ones, because I'm going to be getting to a couple of them. I want to go back to some of the sections and some of the other pieces as well.
[Liz Mullane]: Yeah, it might be helpful to see those a little bit more clearly when people are asking questions.
[Emily Innes]: Do you want me to put them up now or out, or while, because we're still getting questions, or when you're ready to?
[Doug Carr]: I would have them here now, just so we can page between them when we get to definitions. Perfect.
[Emily Innes]: I will be happy to do that.
[John Anderson]: Shall I go on? Also, the dimension requirements, setbacks. Front, you know, 0, 20. Okay, I understand what that means. Minimum, maximum. Side and rear are both all zeros. What does that mean? Does that mean you have to build out to the edge of the lot?
[Emily Innes]: No, it doesn't mean that you have to build out to the edge of the lot. It means you can build out to the edge of the lot. You as a property, well, assuming you own the property or the developer of the property, you have that option.
[John Anderson]: Okay. I was just confused because you had min max for front.
[Emily Innes]: The min max is, uh, the minimum is zero, but the maximum is 20 feet to allow you to put a public plaza or gathering space or whatever between you and the front lot line.
[John Anderson]: So the, Zero for side means you can go to the lot line or you can leave as much open as you want.
[Laurie Krieger]: Correct.
[John Anderson]: Thank you. I echo the comments about student housing. that some case studies would be very useful. And specifically, I would like to know if just before this building opened, just before all the kids moved in, if I walked into this building, how would I know it was different from a regular apartment building? What would be different about it? I understand that the parking requirements may be different, but the building itself, How would I recognize it, or is the idea that you wouldn't know that it was different?
[Emily Innes]: Are you saying, just to clarify, if you walked into the building or if you viewed the building from outside, from say the public street?
[John Anderson]: Or if I toured the apartments in the building.
[Emily Innes]: Ah, now we're getting to the differentiation. I think the differentiation is going to be in how the individual units are laid out. So as I understand it, frequently there's a common area and then there are individual bedrooms and those bedrooms are So each unit would have multiple bedrooms around bathrooms, et cetera, around a common unit. So a little bit different from, say, an apartment where there might be two bedrooms for a single household, kitchen, bathrooms, living room, et cetera. In this case, there are more bedrooms potentially. that are individually let, as opposed to let to a single household.
[Doug Carr]: So it's more like a suite layout.
[John Anderson]: Great.
[Doug Carr]: John, just for a point of information, I can actually show you a typical example of a student housing, whether on campus, off campus, like typical unit mix, which is very different, as Emily said, than a two-bedroom or a one-bedroom or a studio, because it has a lot less common space. It's mostly bedrooms. And it's just a different geometry of things. I can show you what it means. But from the outside, in my opinion, the amenity space, it's virtually identical. It's what? It's identical to a multifamily building. OK. Because I've seen the student housing become multifamily in terms of their amenities, the qualities. of the cost per square foot over the last 10, 15 years. It's almost indistinguishable, other than when you get in the unit itself. That's been my experience. OK.
[John Anderson]: That's interesting, though, because that also indicates it might be difficult to repurpose the building if you decided it wasn't going to be student housing anymore.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, it would be. I haven't actually seen one change back to something that's not student housing yet, but it's a good question. Let's see. What else?
[John Anderson]: Yeah, and I have to concur with the observation that there are a lot of moving pieces in this right now. The boundaries, the height, parking, the list goes on and on. Oh, tax revenue. One of the things that the director mentioned at one of the public hearings was that there was now enough information, or maybe it was one of you who suggested this, that there was now enough information that The tax assessor could give us an idea of tax revenue from a number of the buildings that we've approved already. We had enough details. Is that true? Did I mishear that?
[Alicia Hunt]: So I met with the tax assessor and he, sorry I didn't think to bring my notes on that down. What he told me is that for a building that has been designed, built, permitted, but not taxed, he would not give out what the number would be because that would start a debate with the owner. What he could do was give us some general guidelines on how those numbers get calculated. And I don't know that you want me to go into that calculation right now, but he gave me guidelines on how one could do the math to come up with a reasonable approximation. So I said to him, for example, if somebody came into my office and said, I'm going to build this building with 250 units and it's going to bring you X dollars in tax revenue, how can I tell whether he's completely out of line or whether that's a reasonable ballpark number? And so he gave me some math that we could do to do that. So, but I did not then proceed to do it on buildings that we've currently permitted. And he kind of didn't want us to say, well, that building would be, but more a 250 unit building would do this. And it is per, for his purposes, it's per unit for a residential building. So would that calculate different on student housing is actually an interesting question, because he does a lot with comparables. And there would be no comparables in the city of Medford. And it's what are they leasing at is giving him the pricing and what do they sell out of their condos.
[John Anderson]: Thank you. I was actually coming from a different angle on this.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And once they get rented out, then he knows exactly what to tax them at.
[John Anderson]: Because one of the points you made at one of the public meetings was, One of the reasons for the rezoning was to increase the tax base because if you don't increase the tax base, either you have to have overrides or you have to have cut services and stop giving city employees raises and then they'll all go away. What that means is that as we can, oh, the other factor of course is the effect on infrastructure. which we had a meeting with the city engineer who basically said, don't worry about it. If it's a big deal, we'll make the developer pay for it. Otherwise, it just rolls in. The big thing is school age population. It seems like we might start considering impact on city budget as we do zoning and as we do site plan review. In fact, we're supposed to do that when we do site plan review. And if we have some yardstick for the tax revenue, and then you have to further sort of extrapolate, well, if it's studios and one bedrooms, it's probably no school age children, but you start getting bigger apartments and you can sort of make some calculations. Anyway, I think that might be something we could use moving forward as we rezone and do design reviews. That's it for me.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, John. Dina, Sean, or Ari, do you want to ask any questions about any part of Emily's presentation?
[Dina Caloggero]: Go ahead, Dina. Just looking at the presentation, I did want to state that the rectory at St. Clemens is still functional. There are priests that live there. The church, I think it's a Korean or a Vietnamese church, and the parish.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, it's the elementary school that's not. The elementary school is. The rectory is still a functional building. Yep, the parish hall is still. Did I say otherwise?
[Dina Caloggero]: I don't know. I think I saw that in one of the slides. I just wanted to mention that.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. No, it's an important point. I do go to... It's also a really big building for what it's worth. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful.
[Dina Caloggero]: It's a nice building. I was married at St. Clement's. And the other thing I just wanted to bring up, I agree with Council President Bears said about back to purpose-built student housing, that is if, to meet the affordability goal, the housing affordability, if the property reverted back, then it would have to, to another use other than, you know, purpose-built student housing, that it would have to meet the affordability standards, you know, of what it was for that particular use. So just more interest and controls and what needs to be done to add that as a use.
[Doug Carr]: Dina, did you have any thoughts on the different heights for BA1, 2, and 3?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes, I did want to. I do agree with the BA3 on five stories plus two and a reduction in the total height. And I also agree, I don't know if that was in your chart, but that at four stories there needs to be a setback. I think that was in your slides. I just want to make sure that's there too. to avoid the 10-story behemoth at Boston Avenue.
[Doug Carr]: You're talking about BA3 step backs above, you're saying above the fourth floor. I think I heard other people have suggested five, I think. I think it's open for debate.
[Dina Caloggero]: It's open to debate, but I just want to say just generally, I think that's fine.
[Doug Carr]: OK. And you're fine with my BA II suggestions as well?
[Dina Caloggero]: The BA II, yes, I was fine with that. And I like what you did, your suggestions on the property at St. Clemens at the other end of Bus Nav. I agree with that as well.
[Doug Carr]: OK. Thank you. Sean, do you want to? Oh, sorry.
[Emily Innes]: I just want to make a clarification, because I heard the words 10 story again. Nowhere in this proposed zoning is there 10 stories. I understand that there was a community discussion and some confusion around that. I understand that. But at no point in this process has anybody suggested, recommended, proposed 10 stories. Absolutely, positively not. Just clarifying that.
[Doug Carr]: No, thank you for that because I've heard higher numbers and obviously that's, you know, I see the 10 story building every day. Go ahead, Sean.
[Sean Beagan]: Okay. Thank you. Chairman Carr. I'm generally in support of your, the, your proposed modifications. So if that was put forward as a package, I would most likely just vote in favor of it, especially since You backed off on the change to the BA1, which was probably the only change I wasn't in agreement with. I think I like the idea of moderating the heights, the height of the buildings. I think that was a concern we saw in the public comment. So I think that makes a lot of sense. I think the modification of the boundaries to kind of keep the commercial center of Boston Ave a little bit smaller and not so far extended makes a lot of sense to me. So generally, I'm in favor of the changes that you've made. From my perspective, I actually think we're probably pretty more close to being complete with this than maybe some other members of the CD board may think. I'm pretty comfortable with where I think we're headed, assuming that the city council is on board with some of the recommendations that you've made, Chairman. So I think that's where I am. To Emily's point regarding, I had brought up the issue of eliminating single family, two family, and three family from the BA1 zone. Emily, you had said under the current proposed layout, it created a number of non-conforming houses. I think under Chairman Karzik, it leaves four. Is that what it is?
[Emily Innes]: You'd think I'd know by now that I have to push this button. It would under Chairman Carr's proposal, but that's because you would be taking some of those existing three families and leaving them in the apartment one.
[Sean Beagan]: So that was my next question. Are those four houses all three family houses?
[Emily Innes]: Let me see if I have sufficient. Sorry, I know I'm making everybody online dizzy. I apologize. So these red boundaries are where Chairman Carr had proposed moving these out. So this is the area that would remain within the BA-1. And I can see that there's a four to eight unit apartment there that looks like it is gold. I think it's another possible four to eight unit there. And then that is, oh, I was looking at the wrong one. That's for three family. That would be nonconforming. I believe this one would be nonconforming. And I believe those two would be nonconforming.
[Sean Beagan]: Okay.
[Emily Innes]: So.
[Sean Beagan]: Thank you.
[Emily Innes]: Yep.
[Sean Beagan]: I'm all set. Thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Go ahead, John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Just one more quick question. I think in your notes for this meeting, you mentioned that you were reviewing some of the maps had some potential errors in them, that some houses that were identified as single family one may in fact have been single family two.
[Emily Innes]: I don't recall that. I think there was a question about whether some houses were single family versus two family. But all of our data is pulled from the city assessor's data. So if there's a question, that's where the data comes from.
[John Anderson]: OK. OK. But that's as far as it went. You confirmed that the maps match the city assessor's record. Correct.
[Emily Innes]: That's where they come from, yes.
[Doug Carr]: You're next, go ahead.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. I am okay with the modified heights. I think I am not convinced that we should be including single family houses in the corridor. Obviously, no one's doing anything about the existing ones, but if they're being rebuilt, this is a dense area. don't feel particularly that we should be encouraging the rebuilding or new building of single or even two-family in this particular area. I don't know that I'm going to fight super hard on it. I think if we do setbacks, it should be at five stories, not at four, given the neighborhood and the existing heights and the cost that that incurs. I am very pro including Purpose built student housing with the parameters that city council chair bears outline for us to discuss. I think that it would be great to move as many students as possible. Out of the existing housing stock and into purpose built housing plus it's would provide opportunity for taxes. I don't know that it's directly in this, but I'm very in support of removing Greek life from permitted uses and. I do think we're actually fairly close, but if people feel a strong pressure, my understanding from last year is that a lot of this timing deadline was created by the mayor funding contingencies allowing for Innis and Co. So I do think we can get this done, but if we can't, if people feel they are not ready, I would like to call on the mayor to provide additional funding to extend Innis for a moderate amount of time. and City Councilor Leming has a response as I would expect. Thank you.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Councilor Leming?
[Matt Leming]: Yeah. This has to do with contract issues. Contracts typically can only go for three years. I can say that we are working on an RFP right now. I don't expect, that to, like, once that process is concluded, I don't really expect to be able to rehire a new consultant until sometime later in the fall, given the anticipated timelines for that and the edits that we all need to do to the RFP. So, yeah, but I mean, I do appreciate, you know, the thinking, you know, thinking of other options here.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Councilwoman. Ari, do you have any other comments or questions about any part of Emily's presentation or really the height, the boundaries, anything we discussed?
[Ari Fishman]: I am in agreement. That was my list in my notes, but just thinking through, I believe there had been a comment about moving total area from 90 percent to 80 percent. I think I would be interested in that. That does get pretty aggressive. But I will think and I think overall we're in the right direction.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, I appreciate it. I'd like to circle back now with Emily with some of the slides you showed here. I think, keeping the slide you have on screen, I'm sensing consensus here that the CD board is kind of on board with the changes I proposed. And you seem to have, on the southern part of Bosnia, there don't seem to be any issues like there are in the north. In the north, there's a lot more issues, I would say. Is that a fair statement?
[Emily Innes]: So just to confirm what I'm hearing from you, Chair Carr, I'm going to outline it with my mouse so that everybody can see. This part, what we're doing is sort of plan east of Boston Avenue would be proposed as a 4 plus 2 instead of a 4 plus 3. And then this plan west of Boston Avenue, I'm assuming including the additional parcels here, would be 4 plus 1. Is that correct?
[Doug Carr]: I do think that. Do you see any issues with the, with the, including the new parcels directory and the elementary school into this, into this zone, if you will?
[Emily Innes]: I mean, I, I, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt Chair Carr. I think that, you know, again, the changes to the boundaries become a policy decision. Obviously we had followed the sort of the initial opening protocol of including apartment one and not including general residential. And those are in general residential. They are, of course, a different building type and use than the other buildings around them. But I think that is something where we were looking for clarification from all of you. I just note that they are different from the other parcels that about them.
[Doug Carr]: Both of those parcels that we would be theoretically adding have historic buildings on them, right? The elementary school, the high school. Does the incentive, because we did this in Medford Square, we used historic as an incentive here. Are you anticipating the same approach to these two buildings on Boston Ave. directly on?
[Emily Innes]: Yes, that was correct. Although MACRIS does not show inventory in this area necessarily for historic buildings, we did leave the historic incentive in here. And that, as I'm sure you all recall, requires the Historical Commission to get involved to make a determination as to whether or not it would meet their standards in order to be eligible for that incentive. Certainly something doesn't have to be fully historic, you know, with the paperwork and all to have architectural or cultural merit to it. But the incentives do remain in this area that we propose for Medford Square.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, if my memory serves, the Historical Commission, I thought, has an area form for including all the buildings. It may do, yes. On the St. Clement's campus, which are quite a few, obviously, when you add them all up. So I think we should take a fresh look at that, for sure. I think this height seems reasonable. The question, we do need to tweak that language. I mentioned this, I think, at an earlier meeting. that the language we actually ended up with in Medford Square actually contradicts a little bit about the Historical Commission's procedures are, so we need to clean up that language a little bit, because it seems to take it out of the Historical Commission's, if we don't find it significant, there's still a process in the Historical Commission for review that several of my colleagues historical commission members reviewed that language. They have, they have, they think there's a contradiction on there that we need to clean up.
[Emily Innes]: Okay. That is the first I've heard of that. So I'll check with city staff on that.
[Doug Carr]: I'll try to get you more details of that. It's, it's not a big issue. We just need to, I think, go back and refine the language and make sure we copy it forward appropriately, because it's good language. That would be helpful. Thank you. OK. If we could go, let's go talk about the north part, if we could. That's obviously the more challenging part.
[Emily Innes]: I'm sorry, I don't hear you.
[Doug Carr]: The northern part? OK. The northern part of, let me get, actually, yes. I think the more detailed has of the, let's zoom in on from Winthrop's, yeah, this is it right here. Well, since you have this on screen, this is the BA3. And it's interesting, you're suggesting that the height's in the middle. And I think what I heard Dina and others say in the past, that what they were looking for is a certain number of stories directly on Boston Avenue that then step back, which is not what these show, at least the one on the left doesn't, the sixth story, for example.
[Emily Innes]: So this was intended to show the difference between a multi-building concept that had the height in the center versus a concept that was proposed at the last meeting where the height goes to the rail track. There are quite an infinite number of ways you could build on the site, but there's quite a few. But this was deliberately to show, you can see over on the left-hand side, where we have the five stories next to the rail line versus the idea that was discussed at the last meeting of having the higher height towards the rail line. The problem with that and what this exercise was designed to show is that in fact putting the higher height next to the rail line introduces impact to the neighborhoods kind of behind it in plan and to the right of it in plan. And that's what we wanted to show with this exercise. So having the higher height in the center would reduce the impact on those neighborhoods. Now of course, Nothing really, I think one of the concerns that we had heard was that there might be shadow coming onto Boston Avenue. This also demonstrates in either scenario that really doesn't happen because of the way the sun faces and moves around Boston Avenue. The shadow is never on Boston Ave from these buildings.
[Doug Carr]: No, you're not wrong about that. As somebody who lived on Boston Avenue for 30 years, I can attest to that.
[Emily Innes]: Absolutely, but not everybody can, because not everybody has that experience.
[Doug Carr]: I think, and I've mentioned this before, that it's more than shadow and sunlight. It's mass and scale.
[Emily Innes]: Of course.
[Doug Carr]: That's what I think is equally important. When somebody walks out of those two and three unit family houses across the street, I want them to be able to see sky without having to lie on their porch, because it's so high, the plane of that building. Because the Cummings buildings are set back hundreds of feet. They're dealing with a parking garage that's essentially 10 feet tall right now in front of the Cummings building. And I know there was a lab building proposed just a couple of years ago that didn't go through. It probably could come back, I think, with the zoning. It's permanent, so it can come back anytime. Okay, I thought there was a zoning issue. Okay.
[Emily Innes]: So I absolutely hear what you're saying. I think what's interesting about these two ideas is on the right hand side, again, these buildings could be done in many different ways, but you've got the five stories all the way along, and just a little bit of five stories on North Street, then you've got a break, then you've got the six stories with the step back. at the sixth story, and then you've got a little bit of a break in the site and a step back at six and seven for that seventh story. On the left-hand side, again, now you've got the five stories all the way along North Street. So in fact, with that seven stories in the back, you actually have less of an impact than the one that has the sixth and the seventh with that slight step back. It's probably about 10 feet is my guess. I'd have to check with my colleague. Then on Boston Avenue, we do have a little bit of a difference. The corner is captured on the left-hand side by that five-story building, and then it steps up to six stories along, whereas on the right-hand side, you just have the five-story building all the way along. This isn't a natural way that we experience buildings, right? We don't, to your point, we don't fly above the buildings and see them. I think were this a different type of study, were this not a shadow study, we would be looking at the experience of being on the street and looking at those buildings, in which case it's really just the first couple of stories that you experience as you're walking along the street. If you've ever tried to take, which we do a lot, a picture of a building where you're trying to get the whole building and it's more than about four stories because we do these for design guidelines. You have to cross the street and go down a bit to try and get that story because we don't experience all six stories or all five stories at once. So I think that again, we can start to think about, we do have the, I'm not quite sure why we didn't do the step back on Boston Avenue for that left-hand side. I think we're thinking about it, but we do have that step back that you see on North Avenue on the right-hand side that could be applied and should have probably been applied to this on Boston Avenue. for that, in which case you're still going to get that five-story feel because the six-story is going to be stepped back. I think what we really want to demonstrate is when you have a larger, deeper parcel like this, you probably want the height to the middle of the parcel rather than on either of the street edges.
[Doug Carr]: But it's interesting because obviously, and this is no critique of the graphic, you're showing the walking court that exists now that is about to be torn down.
[Emily Innes]: Well, yes.
[Doug Carr]: Right? So behind that seven story is going to be a six story building on the other side of the track that is almost its mirror. It's one story less, but it's not like, you know, there's a, those are two tall, masses that are framing the railway track. And it's interesting. You think the mass in the middle is better. Reasonable people can disagree. I actually think it's better against the railway. But I think there's room for judgment there. And ultimately, the developer is going to choose a path.
[Emily Innes]: Well, exactly. And that is the key to how we try and write zoning, right? Is we're giving the developer choices within a framework, right? Because you're not going to design this. I'm not going to design this. Somebody else is going to design this coming down the way. I think, again, the whole purpose of these studies was to show the difference between that five stories on the rail line and the seven stories on the rail line to the neighborhoods to plan east and plan north. And that was quite dramatic, actually.
[Doug Carr]: It is. I agree with you. And I would love for it to be three buildings, but I suspect it's going to be one big one at the end of the day, just because of the nature of this site. It is conducive to that, in my opinion. Let's go back a few slides and look at the boundaries now. And I want to talk a little bit about
[Emily Innes]: Do you want me to go back to where we had called out? Yeah, here we go. Let me pull it here.
[Doug Carr]: If you don't mind, I'm going to put a couple slides on and just show you some stuff. If you don't mind, stop sharing. Sure, let me stop sharing.
[Emily Innes]: I just have to get my controls back. There we go. All yours. OK, thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Right, okay. That is not it. Hold on a second.
[Zac Bears]: If I may interject in this moment, apologies that I had to step out for a work call. What have we been talking about for the last hour? And did I miss any votes?
[Emily Innes]: You missed no votes and we've been talking about the changes to boundaries and heights and looking at shadows studies for some of those options.
[Zac Bears]: And is that what's left for the evening, the boundaries and heights? Correct. Great. Thank you.
[Dina Caloggero]: Thank you. Yes, and President Councilor Bears, we also made a few more recommendations based on the public comments as well, right? I just wanted to make sure. I did have a couple of more recommendations based on the public comment. Yes. Yes. You have given us one. I mean, we should go over them with him.
[Doug Carr]: I think there's consensus here that the additional story that I propose for the BA1 is not a good idea both in the presentation and from the consensus of the CD board because... The presentation and by the... By Innis and by the consensus of the board, the CD board so far. They wanna stick with the 3 plus 1 rather than the 4 plus 1. Okay. Because it wasn't gaining us a lot economic value. Some of those lots are too small. And I basically withdrew it. That's where that is headed. Is there anything else? Not, I mean, I think we're kind of chewing our way through the heights, consensus that the other heights that I proposed are in general agreement for BA2 and BA3.
[Zac Bears]: So we're doing heights, boundaries and masses.
[Doug Carr]: We haven't done boundaries yet.
[Zac Bears]: We haven't talked about boundary, the massing we're talking about now. heights you've already discussed and we'll have a motion on all of that once this discussion is concluded. I think so.
[Doug Carr]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: And yes, I'll recognize Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: So I did want to, I did want to let the CD board finish the finish their discussion. I did have something, a question related to the BA. 1 original 4 plus 1 recommendation, so we did receive a letter from some representatives at Tufts University that essentially said that. The current zoning wouldn't really be. Helpful for like, it wouldn't be economically feasible to redevelop anything. Under the current zoning, including hillside hardware, which has been kind of a. resident complaint rightfully so for many, many years now. So my question is, one, would the four plus one option have been sufficient to address those concerns? If there are any representatives from Tufts who would know at the meeting who would be able to comment on that. And two, if any city staff or NS would know about this, what would be sufficient to make that economically feasible? Because that letter did concern me.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, go ahead, Emily.
[Emily Innes]: Just to note to Councilor Leming's point that I had suggested that one alternative might be to capture the corners of the BA1 with the higher height, the four plus one or whatever is decided, but leaving the centerpieces, the portions that are not on the corridor, at that 3 plus 1, just because that's where those shallow depths are that is concerning us, that you could allow the 4 plus 1 on those shallow depths, but you're not likely to get anything, but the corners could be an opportunity, again, should the board so, the city council and the city board so agree.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Since Matt directed a question specifically at Tufts and the letter that they sent, Rocco DiRigo did raise his hand on Zoom. Rocco, I am going to recognize you to respond to the question, but I would ask you to keep it somewhat brief if possible. And then I do have one more thing I want to say before we get back to the presentation. Rocco, go ahead.
[Rocco DiRico]: Thank you, President Bears. Yes, just to answer or confirm Councilor Leming's statement, you know, based on our Discussions with architects, some of which had testified at the public info session. It's incredibly challenging to redevelop the Hillside Hardware site. So any additional height that is allowed in BA1 makes it more economically feasible. So we were in support of Chairman Carr's amendment
[Zac Bears]: Okay, just so we get the process in order here, I think, and it seemed like you had more on, before we get to boundaries, you had more on massing and heights, Doug?
[Doug Carr]: We do, but I do want to play this one out.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I want to play it out. I do think after we go through this, it might be useful for us to take BA1, BA2, and BA3 height in that order and have maybe one vote on all three of those, but like have just specific, specific discussions and proposals just to make sure that we can, we have it recorded. I did see. You know, it's I don't see anyone.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, go ahead.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. One of the dangers of so much information at once, I had not fully registered the proposal of having the increased. Heights at the corners and I think in light of that being resurfaced and this discussion, I would be in favor of having the option of those higher heights in the compromise that is proposed. I really want to see that spot redeveloped.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Ari. Emily, I think we're probably going to need to see a diagram that shows where it's four and where it's five at obviously the next meeting to make it under clear exactly which sites we're talking about and how that would play out. OK. Go back.
[Zac Bears]: And you finish here and then we can go through BA1, BA2, BA3.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, sorry. So this is something that I distributed. I'll try to be real brief here since we've already talking a lot of a lot of these things, but I did want to revisit the character of Boston Ave, the scale, the massing, and the character of that street as an important feature that the comprehensive plan recognizes. It's trying to balance these two competing needs for more housing, more commercial space, more zoning, more masking and scale, but still preserve the character. Those are two things that we're constantly in tension. And I think balancing those out is really important to the success of this Boston Ave zoning. So last weekend I walked the whole corridor again and I just counted up that there are 54 standalone buildings, residential buildings in Boston Avenue between Winthrop and the Somerville line. And most of them are two families. There's a mix in there. Some are threes, especially as you get closer to the Winthrop Street area. But the zoning that's proposed, which you see on screen, which is mostly the blue, the BA1, takes basically a little bit more than a third of those buildings, most of which have been there for 100 years, and says, OK, we're going to now make them four stories mixed use. And that also goes. six additional properties that are in the apartment one zone right now. And that, in my opinion, that dramatically changes the character of Boston Avenue. What everyone said before is completely right. There's a lot of non-conformance. There's a lot of things that just aren't gonna fit in there, but I think we have to try to figure out what we want and then what's the path to get there as much as we can. So this is a closeup of the proposed zoning. And I find it easier sometimes to just look at the aerial photos rather than just the zone, because you can actually see each building a little clearer. You can see, you know, the retail block here with five businesses, including Lisa's Family Pizzeria, plus the four houses that are rounded on both Adams Street and Hillsdale Street. Those have been zoned for a long time for something that is not what they are right now. They're a little bit lower than that. And then you have, again, the seven triple-deckers on the, I guess it's the east side of Boston Avenue, which again, I think are important character-defining pieces. So I'm zooming in on Lisa's family pizzeria specifically, and just look at the houses around it. You have a single family on 17 Hillsdale. You have a two-family, a bunch of two families, and then one on Boston Ave. Those buildings, they're not guaranteed to go away. Nothing is guaranteed, but could a much larger building go here, four stories tall? It could, you know, and I guess I don't think that's an improvement over what's there now, because I think when I think of Adams Street, when I think of Hillsdale Street, you know, I don't think something much bigger on either one of those streets is a net benefit, given what it would get you for a little bit more retail, maybe a restaurant and a few more units of housing. I think the trade-offs, my opinion, obviously, is that it's not worth it. And so I call it the tail wagging the dog here, you know, if we want to, We want to rezone that one commercial block at 279, 283 Boston Avenue, which I think everyone does. These one-story taxpayer blocks are kind of silly, you know, that they have buildings behind them that are residential, that are taller, and we could easily see that going to four stories. And the precedent I came up with that we just built in Medford was this one on 421 High Street. It's not a perfect fit, obviously. It's got smaller retail. It's a much deeper lot. It's got parking behind. But that scale feels right to me in terms of not disrupting the street too much. So if there's a way that we could find a zoning solution that would get us in this direction, that's what I'd like to see happen on that particular site. Going down the street a little bit more towards the triple deckers, again, a little bit more detail here, looking at the seven triple deckers and some of the two and three family buildings across the street. I feel like the boundary that I chose was this brick building. Again, it's been there probably for a hundred years at 308 Boston. That felt to me like the transition building, you know, that's where, the residences begin and the commercial ends. I think it's a natural boundary that comes out of this site. So that's why I'm proposing that this boundary become this boundary. And again, I'm completely open to solutions that make this maybe less of an island or less non-conforming, but I feel like a much, and again, that's why I proposed a taller story you know, because I felt it could handle it. Certainly on this side of Boston Ave, I don't feel as strongly along Emory Street, because I think those houses along Emory Street would be very negatively impacted. So that's why at the beginning, when Emily presented, I basically ceded that the four stories was a better solution on this to, again, to have less impact on the neighborhoods. So again, this is what it is now, the four, I was proposing the five, but now I'm, you know, on this diagram, which I was thinking about this afternoon, you know, maybe it's five on one side and four on the other. I don't know. I think we were thinking in that way on Boston Ave down in the south. Maybe we should think about that on the north too, because they're bigger sites along the track side of Boston Ave than they are on the hillside hardware side, for example. So anyway, that's kind of where I stood on this side of it. I am open. I really would call on you, Emily. Is there a creative way we can get as much new development here, but still pull back and not disrupt the neighborhood character? That's what I'm most focused on. And I feel like there's a compromise, a middle way here. I'm not sure what it is. I think you've raised some, you've poked some good holes in some of the things I propose. I appreciate that. I like being challenged. I don't have all the right ideas. You're the zoning expert. I'm just saying that I disagree with the end game for the height and mass of what we're proposing. I think it's a bridge too far in my opinion. If we can pull it back and still achieve what we're talking about, I think it'd be important. You know, more of the spheres, scale buildings are good. And I just want to point out a couple of things with this last slide. You know, I was tallying up, I think Paige actually gave me a list of everything that she's been involved with since the beginning of how many units of housing and where they're coming from in Medford. And most of them are not coming from small sites on Main Street and Salem Street, which are important because they are improving things. They're really coming from these 200 plus unit apartment buildings on Revere Beach Parkway, on Rivers Edge Drive, on the Fellsway, and other big sites, because that's where we can fit these big buildings. I think one of these buildings will fit on the property we're talking about for Elizabeth Grady. It's a little smaller than these, but not a lot. And most of these are five over twos. They're five stories of wood frame, over one or two stories of retail or parking. That's the building type we're getting now. I think accessory dwelling units behind all these buildings could get us more units than some of the things we're talking about. I'm hearing from the building department, from Jen at the Medford Historic Commission, they're getting a couple of these every single week now. to bring in more ADUs that are gonna get hopefully more units. So Medford is doing a better job than most cities and towns of getting more housing quickly and 262 affordable units is an impressive achievement. With our zoning we have, and some of this is recent zoning. So I'm just saying what we're doing is working. We don't need to max out every single site on the entire quarter and sacrifice the scale, the walkability, the natural light, and the character of Boston Ave and the adjacent neighborhoods. There's a middle ground that I think is here for us, and I welcome any way to get there.
[Zac Bears]: If I may.
[Doug Carr]: Please.
[Zac Bears]: I have two things I want to say. The first is more of a kind of a policy statement. The second one is maybe a way to organize the rest of this meeting so that we can try to consider topics like in the. context that I think we're going to need to consider them. Maybe I'll do the first part and then I'll do the second part. I think we should do both heights and boundaries for each district proposal individually so that for and I think first in each district I think we should discuss that potential boundary changes and then discuss height changes because I think boundary changes may impact our opinions about the height changes. So and I think we should probably go back to BA1 since we were just talking about BA1, maybe do BA1, BA2, BA3. So that's I think and I think we can, frame the discussion for the rest of the meeting and then we'll come back on the 24th.
[Dina Caloggero]: I have to get up really early tomorrow.
[Zac Bears]: Yes.
[Dina Caloggero]: I do not want to be here past 10 o'clock. I cannot be here past 10 o'clock.
[Zac Bears]: I hear you.
[Dina Caloggero]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: So that's why I'm trying to put the framing in context. I think we need to go through those three things. The only other thing I'll say and with respect to you and I know my council colleagues are also very I hear you. Oh, we all have, we all do.
[Doug Carr]: I think we can do it.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I think we can and we'll get there. The only other thing I wanna say as briefly as I possibly can is I think something that you said is important, right? And with the slide that you brought up, one of the things you said is these have been zoned for this for a long time and they're not that. Right? We have a bunch of residential houses in the proposed BA1 zone that have been zoned for apartment 1 zoning for years and they're not built out to their highest maximum potential under the zoning that they have now. And I just think that's a really important thing for us to always remember. We can zone this for something but they may and in many cases will not be built out to the maximum that is proposed in the zoning. And some of the things on these districts is there are certain parcels, certain lots, certain structures. that we know need to be redeveloped. Maybe the lot is largely abandoned or the building is condemned, and we have two examples of that. And those may go up to the highest allowable zoning in that area quickly. I think there's three family houses that people have owned for a long time that someone could have come along, bought three of them and built an apartment building and they never did. And that's because change, even with zoning changes, the change takes a lot of time. And the last piece that I'll say with respect to Dina and everyone else who wants to get home is, you know, I do believe that there is value to thinking about what we want neighborhoods to look like. And I also think, you know, 125 years ago, everything where we were talking about was a farm, right? And yes, there are things that we want to keep and preserve. And yes, there are also things that should be changed. And I don't necessarily think that the decision about the boundaries in the BA1 area, you know, if these eight, 12 homes on either side of the street were to change, like I think all of the streets around it with the character of a two family and a three family, like those will still be there. And that's just to me, I think how I've been thinking about these corridors. I don't think we want to put six story apartment buildings two blocks back off of Boston Ave in the middle of two family and three family neighborhoods. And I don't think any zoning proposal that's been discussed in the last three years would ever do that. But I do think the corridors, especially, you know, I think the corridors in Boston, being one of them, are the places where we can think about going from something that looks like a three or a three and a half story, two or three family, to something more substantial, and that that is a next iteration of what the neighborhood character should be, right? And that's just, I think, you know, maybe an honest disagreement between the two of us on that, but I don't think we're changing the neighborhood character if two blocks become four or five-story mixed use, if we said it's six-story mixed use from the Somerville border to the Mystic River, then we're talking about a whole neighborhood that doesn't look the way it looks now. But I think the main commercial corridor of this community being a little bit taller and a little bit bigger doesn't mean that most places in the neighborhood have completely changed over. And that's just more, I think, the vision that I'm trying to bring and maybe a little bit of a counterpoint to your perspective on. on the boundary changes for BA1. And with that, there are, there's a hand from a city board member, a hand from a city councilor. Many people who don't want to speak, don't want us to continue moving with this, necessarily at this pace. And Danielle also has something to say. I'm wondering if we should maybe go to Danielle first. All right.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you. I just wanted to also caution against voting on the heights without having seen any massing models for some of these edge cases. I have some real concerns about the BA2 parcel on the other side of the tracks that's on, I guess it's on Winchester Street. If that's seven stories, it's going to shade those homes from basically one o'clock onward. most days, we have to step down to that neighborhood.
[Doug Carr]: Daniel, couldn't that be the same approach that we took to St. Conrad School? Like we dropped out a whole floor because it was on one side of Boston Avenue. Couldn't we do the same thing on the other, on the other side of the tracks?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, I just don't know if we can get through that all tonight.
[Doug Carr]: It's very, very nuanced. I think you raise a good point, because I haven't thought enough about that street's impact, and I think it is dramatic, because that is a screening. It's very dramatic. That is taking away the light.
[Danielle Evans]: I would cry if I saw that.
[Zac Bears]: And others wouldn't, I think is important to say, too.
[Danielle Evans]: Seven stories right in the neighborhood. And I also have an issue with the 80% facade build-out that's forcing monolithic buildings, because some of these parcels are really big. And so I don't think the 80% facade build-out makes sense for large parcels.
[Zac Bears]: It sounds like I think there's a lot that we need to talk about. I want to, I'm going to go to Emily and then I want to propose how we can take the rest of the meeting and try to be done at 10 p.m. And then once I've said that, after Emily talks, I'm going to ask all the Councilors and board members who have their hands up if they still want them up.
[Emily Innes]: I hope you don't mind, President Bears, but I think we might short circuit your plan for the night. Wonderful. And just say, you know, I heard a desire for massing studies here. I think there are proposals for a couple of different things. I think there's an interest in maybe looking at those corners as separate things and BA1 instead of the whole length. We already have to come back to you on the 24th with zoning language definition for that. Should we just come back with those studies and just make that? I think we know the parameters of the different heights. I think we could probably organize this in a way that is an A or a B. This is what A looks like, kind of like the way, unfortunately, some of the city councilors missed tonight, where we had this is an A, this is a B, I think that might make for a more efficient conversation on the 24th. Would that be acceptable to the city council and the CD board? I'm just hearing people getting a little concerned about the lateness of the hour.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, certainly hearing that too. I think it would be useful for us to at least maybe spend 10 to 15 minutes, maybe five minutes on each zone, deciding generally what we think the A and the B that we want to see on the 24th should be. Personally, I do believe, and we may not be able to do it tonight given basically where everybody's at, I think it would be nice for people coming on the 24th to understand essentially like what we're trying to do, I may be of a different opinion than others about that. But I do think at least like having clearly defined, it'd be nice to have essentially a binary choice that we all agree on and understand for each district and understanding and giving some time for what Danielle said, right, which is let's be able to visualize some of these. I don't actually necessarily disagree with you that maybe that parcel, the four plus three doesn't work on that parcel. And I kind of liked what Doug said. I didn't mean for what I said to come off that way. But to be frank, I also think there's a lot of people who have generally spoken up over the last six months and two years around density in housing who are largely unrepresented in the public comment of these meetings. And, you know, and that's an important consideration that I want to take because even if I may think that's not right, there's people who are like, put 10 stories everywhere. That's not my position. But they have sent that in. No, well, you know, there are individuals in the community who say that, right? We're not proposing that and we, I don't think we ever will, but it's a perspective as well. So, if we could, on the BA1 district, could we decide what are the two things that we want to see come back on the 24th? Essentially, what are the two proposals that we want you guys to work on? Right now, we have a 3 plus 1. with no boundary change. That's like the existing condition. Is that option A? And is option B the Doug's boundary change with some heights on the corners? I don't know. But I think that would be my preference for framing the discussion. I don't know what people think. I do see two Councilors still with their hands raised after what I've said which means I probably was not compelling. So I will go to them, Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I would for will consider considering that there was sort of a sudden change in the four one options after after it was withdrawn, the four, I would I would say that I would advocate personally for option for option a being. The 1st, 2 options that you discuss, but also add in a 3rd option for the 4, 1 that that's my, that's my personal preference for that. I think that. That's not derailing things too much because B, a 2 and B, a 3 were a little bit more probably have a little bit more of a binary option going on there. Um, but be a 1, I do feel that, uh, you know, I, I am concerned with, uh, you know, hillside hardware, potentially just. Continuing to say stagnant after we pass new zoning for it. The other, the other thing I'd like to point out really quickly, I fully support all of council president. There's points and to add sort of another dimension of the conversation. The so the reason that the 26 story building is being built and Davis square right now is because Somerville didn't sufficiently build enough affordable housing over the years. They did like mandated affordable housing and Medford and many other cities in the greater Boston area are. You know, in a, in a similar position, and I think that, you know, oftentimes what our standards for reasonable growth is can be a lot less than what the stand like for and reasonable addition to the affordable housing stock is less than what the state might think. So. You know we we've had 40 B developments before we've tried to sue them the city's tried to sue them We've lost and so I just I just wanted folks to be aware that especially around you know public transit spaces if we don't you know add in Additional like sufficient affordable housing to our new zoning and to our new housing stock in reality we are putting ourselves in a position where developers can just potentially ignore zoning entirely and very key parts of the city and I don't want to repeat that. I don't want to break into a completely new conversation there to derail anything. I just wanted to echo that thought. So I would agree with proceeding with the votes.
[Justin Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. Thank you. President Bears, I thought you were compelling enough. I actually do really agree with what you said. we sometimes it brings us to take a step back and look at the problems that we're facing. I commend the CDV, City Council, the administration for all their work on delivering affordable units to the community. And it certainly made a difference in people's lives. But I do think we should keep stock of the fact that we do have thousands of people on the Section 8 vouchers waiting lists. We have, as a region, and this isn't meant for alone, it shouldn't be meant for alone, but as a greater Boston region, we do need to build at least 121,000 to 180,000 new units over the next decade. I think that neighborhood character is important, right? That lived experience of walking down a street is important, but what is also pivotal to forming what neighborhood character means is the people who live there. The people who live in that neighborhood, who make it, who run the businesses, who drop their kids off at different centers in the neighborhood, or meet up with their friends there. That is also what neighborhood character is. I think it's something to keep in mind. I'm not saying 10 stories, that's not where I am. I don't think it's where anywhere, it's the position of anyone on the city council, but I do think a little bit more is acceptable. It's difficult to look, I've helped constituents with section eight voucher applications and it's heartbreaking to look them in the eye and tell them that they'll probably, they should prepare to move out of their country. and that if they want to wait for a unit in Medford, it'll be years. The estimate is up to seven years, maybe a bit more. And those are people who are living in this neighborhood, who are living in Hillside, who are living in the Mystic Outboard, or who are living on Salem Street, near Salem Street as well. And so that guides my thinking. With regards to the Hillside hardware store, I am interested in the idea of looking at higher heights just for the corners, but it sounded like from, and I don't wanna just misunderstand anything, Rocco, it sounds like it might behoove us to take a little time and sit with and let us think about whether that makes the project financially feasible as well. And I think that's some outreach that maybe we could do in understanding that situation a bit better. When it comes to the options, I agree that with the BA2, BA3, it seems like there are no binary options with BA1. I'm okay either being presented with binary or with three options. Thank you, Councilor Malayne.
[Liz Mullane]: Yeah, just quickly on the recap piece of it too. Emily, will you be able to share those slides to all of us as well that you went through so we're able to see that? Because I think that would be helpful. I know when we were all looking at it, it was a lot of information to kind of take in. And there were some immediate ones that you said I think we all were in agreeance with from some of the past recommendations. And I know Dina had a couple of suggestions and things too. Is that possible to do that full kind of recap so that everyone's kind of on the same page of where those different pieces came together?
[Emily Innes]: I can certainly share the slides with Director Hunt and have her distribute those after this meeting. I think I'll have to clean up some notes I made on them. And then, I'm sorry, did you want me to recap the things that you wrote?
[Liz Mullane]: Not right now. Not right now.
[Emily Innes]: I just meant to have notes.
[Liz Mullane]: Yeah, if there's an email recap, just to make sure that we're all on the same page from the different conversations.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah, we can work on that tomorrow.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
[Zac Bears]: For BA1, if I may be so bold, Doug leaned over to me and said, BA1 is the hardest one, we might need two and a half or three options. It sounds like what we're talking about is can we see what the three, the existing proposal of 3-1 with no boundary change, can we see what that looks like? Can we see what 3-1 with 4-1 on the corners with no boundary change looks like? And then could we see what 4-1 with the boundary change looks like? Does anyone object to that or have concerns about that on the city council? Chair Carr.
[Dina Caloggero]: Over the total height in feet. Is it 50 or is it 60?
[Doug Carr]: It'd be 50 for anything that is the 3 plus 1 and it'd be 60 for anything that's 4 plus 1, whether it's full or on the corners.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah. So, 60 feet with no setback.
[Zac Bears]: And so, we would be seeing, we will see those three options for BA1. Emily, Alicia, Danielle, Jimmy? Fine? Okay. BA2. Someone said that there seem to be more binary options here. I don't know, Doug.
[Doug Carr]: I think, I guess I thought there was consensus for the lower heights and the binary part was what Danielle mentioned, that it was, it was St. Clemens. The Winchester Boston Ave. The Winchester Boston Ave on either side of the edges, if this would have the lower height and taller right on Boston Ave, that is less impactful.
[Zac Bears]: So we're talking about like four plus three in the middle, four plus one on the sides. Is that right?
[Doug Carr]: No, I think it's 4-1, 4-2.
[Zac Bears]: 4-2 in the middle, 4-1 on the sides.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, 4-1 on the sides, left and right, 4-1 in between. All right.
[Zac Bears]: Maybe we could just see one for BA-2, if we could see what 4 plus 2 between Boston Ave and the tracks looks like, and 4 plus 1 between the St. Clement's properties and the properties at Winchester and Boston Avenue. First, I want to go Council, City Board, and then we'll come. Are there Councilors who want to see more than one option for BA2? Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: sorry i'm like super tired right now so i'm trying to trying to follow things as well as i can but i would like to see the original option and the uh the reduce the reduced option i would also like to see the uh the option to keep everything consistent, because that was part of the conversation was that BA2 should just be consistent all across East and West of Boston Avenue as well. So I think like those three options would be what I would like to see. Or that could be two separate codes.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilman. Could we see BA2 with the original boundaries and the original heights and then BA2 with the amended boundaries and the kind of sandwich heights? Okay, that's where we are right now. I don't see any more hands from members of the council that they would like to see options other than that. Chair Carr.
[Doug Carr]: Anyone on the city board have issues with the proposal for BA2 as just described by President Bears? I don't see any, so let's proceed.
[Zac Bears]: All right, I did see maybe Danielle and Emily having some questions there, so I do wanna go to you guys before we move to BA3.
[Danielle Evans]: Thank you. So I'm trying to understand with the sandwich, what does the zoning look like? Is it saying that this far into the lot, you're only allowed this many stories or height?
[Zac Bears]: I think it's more saying if you're between Boston Ave and the tracks. It's higher than if you are on the neighborhood side of that strip. So if you're at the lot on Boston Ave and Winchester intersection, that would be only 5, maximum 5 by right. Basically, that would be a 4 plus 1. And then the St. Clement's properties would be a 4 plus 1. But if you were Titan Gas or the Erickson Fuel or Sphere, which they're not going to rebuild, that would be 4 plus 2.
[Danielle Evans]: So different dimensional standards within the same sub-district feels messy and clunky and really hard from a staff perspective.
[Doug Carr]: How is it any harder than the BA1 having higher height?
[Danielle Evans]: Just make it a different sub-district.
[Zac Bears]: I think we are not married to form. If there's a way to structure it that feels more easily implementable, That meets the intent that we're talking about, you know, if we need to have sub-sub-districts or if we need to, yeah, I'm not married to the form if there's a way to implement it.
[Doug Carr]: And I've been saying forever that having only three buckets for a mile of Boston Ave is not the only way to skin the cat.
[Zac Bears]: The original plan was to have like six buckets but use them everywhere. You know, I don't know. Emily, if you want to go.
[Emily Innes]: Yes, I just want to note to all concerns that what you're going to see is not a full build out, because some of these parcels are not going to change. So we will make a judgment call on how we show you these heights, but we will show you these heights.
[Zac Bears]: I would like to not see things that we know aren't going to change.
[Emily Innes]: I thought you might. I thought that might be appropriate for everyone.
[Zac Bears]: And not to be self-referential, I do think this is one of the great optical illusions of zoning. Zoning does not create change. Doug mentioned it earlier, right? There's zoning right now on parcels we're talking about removing from the zone that have been zoned for four to six stories for 65 years that have not been built to that.
[Emily Innes]: Can we just confirm BA3 at this point? Because I think that's our last one. I'm solid on BA1. I'm solid on BA2. We just need to know BA3.
[Zac Bears]: And Danielle, I know you disagree with me, so if you want to say it, that's okay.
[Danielle Evans]: I just want to say that it's not the heights or the allowed uses why those apartment one buildings or sites don't get built out. It's the setbacks. It's the lot sizes. They're nonconforming. If it's a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet, of course it's not going to get built. Making it eight stories and changing it to BA2 isn't what you have to do. easily change the setbacks and the lot sizes and things could be built all of a sudden. That's what's broken in our zoning is all the nonconformities. You can't meet them. When it's height plus length divided by six with a minimum of 15 on all sides, of course nothing is getting built. That's what's broken.
[Zac Bears]: If I may before we go to Sean, do you think we are fixing some of those things?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, but I don't, I think that there's this knee-jerk reaction that there's not enough height allowed in these parcels and that's why nothing gets built. And that's not at all why things don't get built. I mean, maybe partly, but it's the setbacks and the lot sizes and the random usable open space, but it can't be next to a window. Weirdness, minimum, like we have lot width requirements that hardly any, conform with, there's just so many nonconformities, you can't actually build these things.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, John Began.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, no, I just, Danielle just hit the nail on the head. She's absolutely right as to why things haven't been done, and I think it is not essentially correct to say that what we're doing now isn't going to create new building. I think what we're doing now is exactly designed to create new buildings. So, I for one would like to hear this message of just because we're doing zoning doesn't mean things are going to change. I think we have to be more frank with people. We're doing zoning, things are going to change because of this new zoning because we're making it such that you can now do things you couldn't do. So, because you were in an apartment one zone, Yes, but your lot doesn't come close to conforming to the setbacks. That's why nothing got done, not because no one had the idea that, geez, I'd love to put something higher here or I'd love to put six stories in Medford Square. Everyone would like to put more six stories in Medford Square that owns a commercial lot in Medford Square. They can't. They can't because of how the current zoning was. So I think, I guess that message just bothers me because I hear it repeatedly that, you know, it's not going to change. I think we just have to be honest. Yes, things are going to change. We don't have to be afraid of change, but things are going to change, and that's what we're intentionally doing. And I don't, I would hate for the public to come back and say, I didn't think things were going to change that much. Well, yeah, they are, because we drastically changed the zoning. We're making lot sizes half of what they used to be. We're getting rid of setbacks on the rear and on the sides. That didn't exist before. You know, so it is going to change, and I think I just wanted to support what Danielle said because she's right.
[Zac Bears]: Right. Well, and I'm not saying that things are not going to change. I'm saying you're not going to see immediately the maximum build-out scenario of the zoning be what the condition is in two years or five years.
[Sean Beagan]: I don't think everyone is going to pull a building permit at the same time. I agree with you.
[Zac Bears]: Right. Well, I mean, we passed Mystic Avenue. Right. We passed Salem Street. We passed Mystic Avenue now 18 months ago. Right. there's not a permit under the zoning, as far as I'm aware, at least two, but for like a, there's Lechmere Rugs building a single-story building, even though they could build up to, I think, four plus one on the lot that they're in. So that's the point I'm making, right? We re-zoned Mystic Ave to address the problems Danielle's talking about, and someone said, I wanna build a single-story rug store. So zoning does not mean automatically that that the maximum build-out condition is what people should expect in a short term. We might not even see the maximum build-out condition in the long term. And I get it. There's a lot that's going in here. And I think we need to fix all the things you're talking about. And I don't think we should be the messages that things aren't going to change. Because things are going to change. The reason we're doing this is because we want things to change. Because we think that things have been that the zoning has been broken and is not allowed change we wanna see. So I completely agree with that. But I just think there's also a message out there that zoning equals what will be, like if we zone it, it will happen. And I don't want people to think that either because it does scare people to think in two years, you know, we're gonna present, basically what we're asking for in 10 days or however long it is, 14 days, is images of the what it could look like if everything it met was minimum dimensionals, maximum heights, you know, and it all looked like that at the same time. I appreciated, and really where I said it is I appreciated Emily saying, they're not gonna knock down Sphere to build another story on it. Or they're not gonna knock down the duplex apartments next to it to put another story on it. So maybe we shouldn't show people that that's what it'll look like. And that's more the point that I was making is like, I do think there's a reasonable middle ground. It's going to change. We're doing this because we want it to change. But change doesn't mean that maybe even in people's lifetimes, it will look like everything to the exact dimensional side at the maximum height. That was the message. So I appreciate that that could be misconstrued. I understand that. I'm clarifying is what I'm saying. But it's just like, if I'm spending time on Facebook saying we're not putting a 10 story box two blocks back on Adams Street, that's out there. And someone's using an AI generator to basically put the Pentagon in the back of the hillside. That's not what's happening. That's more of what I'm going about. I actually think we're all generally in agreement. And we probably spent too much time on it. But I appreciate this discussion. BA3? Are we good on BA2? Great. Emily?
[Emily Innes]: So for BA3 the original proposal is 6 plus 2 chair Carr had proposed 5 plus 2. I don't know if you have a preference tonight for discussing the higher buildings towards the track but we could certainly model the 6 plus 2 and the 5 plus 2.
[Zac Bears]: I think that sounds great. I do want to maybe pitch. and I don't think it actually affects the modeling necessarily. I would be interested in a six plus one. I do think that would be, and that, I don't think it actually needs to be a third picture, although maybe with the way that the dimensionals and massing works, it might affect it. I would, basically what I'm saying is I would feel like a five plus two would show the same thing. I'm just saying more for discussion, I would be interested in maybe taking the max height down, but maybe keeping the bioright height the same, and that might be a way to cut it in the middle, so.
[Emily Innes]: We have three options for everything else where we can do three options for this. So I think with this we have a sufficient direction to create those three options to show you next time. So I think for us the outstanding things are these three options will show height and boundaries. We have some questions that don't require necessarily build-outs or diagrams that we just need to answer. Then obviously, we have to give you the definition for the purpose-built student housing. I believe that is correct.
[Zac Bears]: I have Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Motion to go with those three options for BA3 and adjourn for city council.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Is there a second? Emily, just to confirm, for everyone here, at the next meeting on June 24th, there are four decisions left. It is reading the research definition, use table, and the guidelines for purpose-built student housing. It is the three options that we discussed tonight for BA1, the three options for BA2, the three options for BA3. Those are the four things that people can expect us to be voting on at that meeting. And when we have those done, We would likely, I mean, who knows what happens as a public meeting, government by committee, something I'm becoming very experienced in. But the idea would be we would make decisions on those four things. There will be one more opportunity for public comment on a public hearing and then we would be trying to move forward from there with essentially a set of CD board recommendations to the council for the Boston Avenue corridor district zoning. All right. Great. I have a motion from the council to move forward with those sets of options for BA1, BA2, BA3 and adjourn. And I'm just, I just need to say it and then I'll go to Doug.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. Go ahead, Dina.
[Dina Caloggero]: Okay. I just wanted to go over the additional recommendations I'm making after the public comments. So on residential uses for number seven, dorm, which is number seven, dorm, frats, such as fraternities and sorority houses, it's going to be a no under BA3. BA3, 80% building coverage instead of 90. BA3, setbacks at four stories, right, stepbacks. Number four is incentives for arts. Perhaps we can come up with a definition under the incentives, under incentive three. The other thing I mentioned was we were looking for some case studies on purpose-built student housing to address the issues with students living in the property. And again, I also backed with President Bairstedt speaking about some type of verbiage that if the property went back, no longer was purpose-built student housing, it would revert back to the affordability requirements for whatever the use is. And then I am in favor of 12-foot sidewalks. I can give these to you. I just want to make sure it's part of the record.
[Zac Bears]: And I would just ask if possible on your review of that list if there are things that feel more substantive policy versus technical adjustment that we might need to discuss that on the 24th. On the motion of Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Malayne to, for those three, for BA1, BA2, BA3, the sets of options and to adjourn for the city council. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Callahan is absent. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malayne? Councilor Scalpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Vice President Lazzaro is absent. And President Bears? Yes. Four in the affirmative, three absent.
[Zac Bears]: Motion passed.
[Doug Carr]: Yes. I'm going to mirror that same thing for the options for this study and adjourn as well. Yes. Oh, so moved.
[John Anderson]: Second.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. John Anderson? Sean Began?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Paige Bodini is absent. Dina Gallagher?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, yes. Motion passes.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll see you on June 24th.
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