[Doug Carr]: Good evening, everyone. Welcome to tonight's meeting of the Medford Community Development Board. My name is Doug Carr. It's Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026, 638 PM. I'll call the meeting to order in a second. Please know that project materials for all products before the board can be viewed on the City's website medfordmass.org forward slash boards, commissions and community development board by clicking current CD board filings. For those on Zoom, you can also find the link in the chat. So. All right, roll call. John Anderson. John, are you on mute? OK. Sean Began. Present. Page Buldini.
[Dina Caloggero]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: Nadina Calagaro.
[Dina Caloggero]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman.
[Dina Caloggero]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, present. John, can you chime in? Thank you, John, appreciate it. All right, maybe Danielle, you can introduce some staff on tonight's call.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm Danielle, senior planner, and with us tonight is Director hunt director of the, our office of planning development, sustainability. We also have 1 of our graduate student interns, Natalie Rodman on the call with us. And I think that is it.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. Thank you. So, let me just briefly summarize what we're going to cover tonight. We're going to take things a little out of order. We're going to do 70 Lincoln Road, a new public hearing 1st, get that hopefully quickly out of the way. Then we'll move on to the Boston Avenue, the zoning amendment, which would be the bulk of this evening. And if there's time at the end, we'll look at the 4th item on the agenda, the Boston, the zoning amendment for vacant and foreclosed properties, which is more of a procedural thing, and minutes in the end. I'm going to ask that Attorney Desmond, first of all, let me open the public hearing. I'm going to read it to the record for 70 Lincoln Road, and then we'll get Attorney Desmond on here to make a presentation. The Medford Community Development Board shall conduct a public hearing on September 2nd, 2026 after 6.30 PM via Zoom. relative to an application by Samuel and Beverly D'Agostino for a special permit to construct a second single-family structure on the same lot. Subject property is located in the SF-1 single-family zoning district at 70 Lincoln Road, Medford, Mass. Danielle, is there any context you want to talk about before we turn it over to Attorney Desmond?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, I just want to state that this has gone to the zoning board and they got their use variance to allow 2 units on the lot. So, what is before you tonight is not about whether there should be a 2nd unit on the lot, but whether it should be in a separate structure. The. Lot is undersized. As you may know, in the SF-1 zone, it's 7,500 square feet is required. And so they are shy of that. They don't have 14,000. It's 13,277 square feet. So they're looking to put a second principal structure, which is allowed by special permit from the city board. So that is why it has come to you all. So that's all I have.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. To Desmond, I believe you have a presentation, right?
[Kathleen Desmond]: Yes, I do. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman and board members. I'm here this evening, I believe, with Beverly D'Agostino and Samuel D'Agostino. They should be here, although they might be a little late coming in because I thought we were second on the list, so they probably thought they had a little bit of time. The matter before you, as Danielle indicated, is to request a special permit to construct a second single-family dwelling on the premises. As Danielle explained, the ordinance allows by special permit two principal structures on a lot, but it doesn't specifically indicate that two uses, even if they're identical, are allowed on the lot. So the building commissioner required first that we get a use variance under the much harder standard than what has now been enacted, and then move forward on the two principal structures on one lot. So that's why there was a two-step process. By way of background, the subject property is 13,277 square foot lot on which a two-story, four-bedroom, single-family home currently sits. The subject parcel is an unusually large lot, approximately 723 feet shy of the 14,000 square feet necessary to subdivide the lot into two buildable parcels and proceed as of right. You'll note that the plans on this are somewhat older because we were actually waiting to see if in fact the zoning had changed because all we would need is, you know, if it was down to 6,500 square feet, which is similar to all the other lots in the neighborhood, we could have simply subdivided the two lots, done an A&R plan, and done it as of right. But where that hasn't begun, or we don't know what the status of that will be, the clients wanted to get it underway in the hopes that maybe that happens by the time they finish construction. But if it doesn't, they would condo them in exclusive use, the two lots. The applicants have resided at 70 Lincoln Road for approximately 37 years and have been very involved in the community. They'd very much like to stay in the neighborhood, but also would like to downsize to a single store, smaller, single story home. If I can share my screen.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, it's actually going to work.
[Kathleen Desmond]: Okay. Congratulations. So, thank you. So, this is the survey and as you can see, we've set forth here, it meets all the requirements as if there were 2 structures on the lot. If you doubled what the requirement was for a single, it meets everyone with the exception. of the lot area, because 14,000 square feet is required. And you can see here, the distance between the two buildings would meet what the 7 1⁄2 plus 7 1⁄2 setback would be. So it's 16.4 feet. You'd need 15 feet if you were able to just draw the line. It meets all frontage and width requirements and depth requirements. In terms of lot area, lot coverage. The 40% is the maximum coverage and the existing is 31.8. This particular structure obviously occupies substantially more of the lot than the existing structure, but it still falls within even if you were to split it within the lot coverage requirements that exist. I believe it's 39% if you were to just take a line and draw it down the middle here. and single family SF1 is 40%. So it meets so that when you look at it from a street level, you're not going to notice that this is a single lot. Part of the reason why we also had to do this was the doctrine of merger. You can't subdivide a lot and make two nonconforming lots, which is no matter how you did this, if you did an A&R plan and tried to subdivide it down the middle, they'd be non-conforming lots and that would be against the doctrine. So there's no real way to do this by way of variance either, which is why the two principal structures on one lot as opposed to seeking a variance for a smaller lot is really the only avenue available to the applicant. If you look at the structure itself, It is one story. There's a small basement area, but essentially what they attempted to do in this instance was to work with the grade, because the topography of the lot is higher in the back and lower in the front. So there's no basement. This is essentially on a slab, except for this small area. And the rest is a single-story building with a two-car garage. We've gone to the engineering department and made certain that we could obtain a curb cut, a second curb cut for the lot. So that has been approved subject to the special permit and the variance being granted. And this is the street view and the renderings for the property. As you can see, the grade slopes upwards, and that's why it may appear taller than it is, but they wanted to avoid any digging down, any blasting, any of that, and wanted to go with the grade and minimize any chipping or anything that would need to be done with respect to the property. These are the front elevations and the right elevation, and this is the The area plan, which will give the board a sense of what the lot sizes are in this particular neighborhood. Again, many of them are 66,000, 6,022, so that if the lot area requirement had been reduced, we would have been within, because there was a, once upon a time, there was a lot line here, but you can see that they would have been within what the surrounding neighborhood lot sizes are. And then we have some, I don't think we need that issue. This is the picture of it. So this would be the second lot. And you can see from the street view.
[Doug Carr]: We're still looking at the site, the neighborhood plan.
[Kathleen Desmond]: You are?
[Doug Carr]: I think we are. I can't see the photos.
[Kathleen Desmond]: It says I'm staring. Were you able to see the design?
[Doug Carr]: Yes, it was. I think my computer might have been just a hair slow, so please continue.
[Kathleen Desmond]: Okay, so this is the lot essentially where the structure would be. would be positioned. This is some pictures of the surrounding neighborhood. It shows again where the house would be positioned in relation to other homes in the neighborhood. And here again, you can see it would just fill in on the lots and not be, it would look as if it was intended to be there in the first instance. That's again, and then that's another picture of the lot itself. So in terms of the special permit standard, the project preserves an existing family dwelling, which has been well maintained. And, you know, in the neighborhood context may have some historical import. It allows a longstanding community members to downsize and remain in their neighborhood. It creates one additional single family, so the traffic impact and the safety implications would be negligible. It allows for additional infill of housing while maintaining the character of the neighborhood as many of the surrounding homes are located on nonconforming lots. and the GFA of the proposed single family is compatible or consistent with what is in the neighborhood. And it also, from the applicant's standpoint, if they weren't allowed to do this, they'd be faced with the Hobson's choice of leaving a neighborhood that they've been in for over 37 years or demolishing an existing home if they really wanted to stay and, you know, erecting a one-level home in its place, neither of which they want to do. This option allows them the ability to stay in the neighborhood, to preserve the existing structure that exists, and continue on in Medford. I'll take questions from the board.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Attorney Jessup. Anyone on the board would like to ask any questions?
[John Anderson]: Go ahead, John. When you described the reason that they wanted to put a second unit in there, that seemed to be the, that's the rationale for having accessory dwelling units. Did you consider doing it that way, which could be done by right?
[Kathleen Desmond]: So an accessory dwelling unit, you're limited to 900 square feet, um, which is, um, very tight and very small for a family, for them to move into, and it's not something that they really want to do. I mean, their intent in downsizing, so to speak, is to maintain everything on a single level as opposed to having, you know, a staircase or whatnot that they would have to go up and down, and they would prefer to be in a situation where they could have a two-car garage and where they could be on one level as opposed to the four-bedroom home that they have now. 900 square feet is really, you know, fairly small. And it's an accessory dwelling as opposed to a principal dwelling. So what you can fit in that context wouldn't be much in terms of living space.
[John Anderson]: Let me see if I understand the situation here. I'm trying to understand why two boards need to approve this. Could you explain that a little further, Danielle? I didn't really understand that. Because you would not be allowed to put a two-family dwelling on this lot, correct?
[Danielle Evans]: Correct. You can't do that by right, so they needed a use variance from the zoning board to allow two units. on the lot. And there's rules about how many principal structures you can have on lots in various zoning districts and in the SF-1 you can have two principal structures by special permit. So the second Unit would be or could be allowed in the 2nd principle structure rather than. In 1 larger. Ostensibly larger principle structure, um, may I ask why it's written like that? Why would you. Have a special permit for 2 principle structures that that didn't also allow the use, but the uses are distinct from structures and. There could be something, maybe a Dover use or something that could be in a 2nd principle structure in the lot. So. So, that's why it was the use and now it's the actual, like, built form. On the lot, the city boards looking at.
[John Anderson]: And by what criteria are we supposed to review this?
[Danielle Evans]: So, the criteria for a special permit, and I can read those to you. It's so. So, special permits shall be granted by the unless otherwise specified here and only upon its written determination that the adverse the adverse effects of the proposed use will not outweigh its beneficial impacts to the city or the neighborhood. and view of the particular characteristics of the site and of the proposal in relation to the site. In addition to any specific factors that may be set forth in this chapter, the determination shall include consideration of each of the following 1, social, economic or community needs, which are served by the proposal to traffic flow and safety, including parking and loading 3 adequacy of utilities and other public services for compatibility with the size scale and design of other structures in the neighborhood. 5 impacts on the natural environment and 6 the proposals compatibility with the purposes of the city's comprehensive plan. So. That's the findings that you need to make, you know, based on that criteria.
[John Anderson]: Okay. Now, did the butters weigh in on this at the, at the board of appeals?
[Danielle Evans]: I was not at that meeting. I am not. I have no idea. Yeah.
[Kathleen Desmond]: Yeah, there were, I believe, 1 or 2 abutters at the meeting who didn't, weren't necessarily opposed to it. They didn't like letters of opposition. They had some questions about the project, but they weren't in opposition per se. I think there were 2 or 3 abutters there. I know my client has spoken to, and she's actually in Italy, otherwise she may have sent a letter today to the left of the property. She's the, about who would be most affected, and she had no objection. She was gonna write a letter of support. I don't know if Bev was able to get her to text something or whatnot. I haven't seen anything. But she was not, she did not object at the Zoning Board of Appeals hearing.
[John Anderson]: Okay. And you got some letters of support from the neighbors?
[Kathleen Desmond]: I don't remember if there, I don't recall if there were letters of support per se, they were on the call. Um, and the board did see fit to approve, um, the use, uh, because it is the identical use and it's the use most favored, I would say in the SF one district, it's the predominant use. Um, and you know, in this case, You can't, you know, sometimes you have smaller lots and you can get a variance to a dimensional variance. But because these two lots are owned in common ownership, there's a doctrine of merger, they call it. And if you own two lots that are merged, no matter how insubstantial the violation is, you can't create and divide a line to create a non-conforming lot. So that's the choice. There are certainly instances in other cases where lots aren't owned in joint ownership and the boards have granted dimensional variances as to lot area, but it's not available when one person owns both lots. So that's the difficulty here.
[Doug Carr]: But I'll just remind there's going to be a public comment period after the board. So we will, John, if there's anyone who wants to speak, there's an opportunity.
[John Anderson]: Oh, I'm glad to hear that because I drove by the site. I drove by the site today and if I were a neighbor, I would have some concerns. It seemed to me that the style of the house did not harmonize particularly well with the neighborhood. I'd hate to see that beautiful big tree disappear. It obviously would have to. And I think it would make for a more crowded look on the street. But that's just my personal opinion. That's why I'm interested in what the abutters had to say. That's all.
[Doug Carr]: All right. Anything else, John? Thank you. I'll go to Ari Ness and then Dina after that. Go ahead, Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. I can't hear.
[John Anderson]: We lost you.
[Ari Fishman]: Trying again. Can you hear me now?
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Ari Fishman]: I think this is a really great example of natural infill and density that is necessary and appropriate and the kind of personal, this is literally a family that wants to stay and their needs have changed and they would like to add a second house so that they can have one appropriate to them and someone who needs four bedrooms can have four bedrooms. I think that is the development of the city that we've been talking about in this bigger picture. I think this is a really microcosm example. I think this is a great plan. I think that part of the nature of property is that with a personal house, you can make a house that you like. I don't think there's anything so glaring that it would violate any design standards we might have. I did want to ask about that tree. I think it does look like a big and substantial tree. It is right in the middle of the space, so I'm guessing that the plans are to take it down. If so, I do want to talk about preserving any other trees on the property and potentially planting new trees to make up for it. And that may need to be in kind of multiple trees because of its size. But I do think the fundamental question of like, can you, should you be able to build a single story house on this massive lot to age in place? Like, yes, of course you should be able to. So I want to make it clear. I'm absolutely in support and I want to talk about the tree.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Thank you. That's great. Dina, you were next.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, I was going to ask the ADU question. Thank you for doing that. And I do agree with Ari. You know, I think that's a big lot, a little concerned about the tree. I think another tree should be planted in this place. When we take one away, let's put another one up at the same time. But that's a great use of space. And I wouldn't want to move. I would rather just build something that I could stay in my neighborhood. I've lived in my neighborhood for over 50 years.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. I think Paige, you're next. Go right ahead.
[Page Buldini]: Thank you so much and I appreciate the comments from the board because they echo a few of the sentiments I had. One thing I also appreciated by driving by two and looking at these plans now is seeing where driving and parking will be, having the garage, having a driveway, leads me to believe that cars will be off the street. So that is, I think, a good thing for the neighborhood. And the thought to, yes, we would like to chat more about the tree and how we can continue that. And I would just be interested if that lot, I know it was a personal property, but if it was a lot that was used within the neighborhood, if there was just hopes to continue that, because I feel like this is a great neighborhood. I love that neighbors want to stay. As somebody who does use child care within our family. It's lovely when they're nearby. So I just appreciate that that hopefully will keep the neighborhood and also keep people staying in Medford with housing. So thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. Appreciate it.
[Sean Beagan]: Go ahead, Sean Began. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Attorney Desmond, what is the Thought process once assuming this is if this is approved. What's the thought process on the existing house? Is that then get rented? Does this become a condo association? And it gets sold. Is there a night? Is there a. Ideas to can you let us know what's going to happen with the existing? Yeah.
[Kathleen Desmond]: I mean, as you know, um. Attorney begin, you know, plans change, but right now, and I don't want to make representations, you know, to the end of the world, but right now, the plan would be and I think. what my clients, and they may be on the line at this point, would like to do is condo them an exclusive use area of the two lots so that it will, although it can't be two separate buildable lots, it can, from a neighborhood feel, be two lots with probably, you'd probably need master insurance, but otherwise everything would be exclusive use, you know, draw the line, and then you'd be able to do what you want. in terms of the two yard areas.
[Sean Beagan]: I think that's a great idea because now we'll have another house in the neighborhood on the market for sale for another family, hopefully. I live around the corner from this house. I've walked by this lot 10,000 times and always wondered why there wasn't a house there.
[Kathleen Desmond]: In terms of the trees, Chairman Carr, can you see if my clients are on or I can stop? Does anyone need to see my screen anymore?
[Doug Carr]: Uh, I would, uh, I do see the family on okay.
[Kathleen Desmond]: So, in terms of the trees, they can. They can speak to that there is a landscaping plan and they're fully willing to replant trees in in along the lot. But Bev, if you want to talk about a little bit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Hi everyone. And thanks for having this this evening. Yes, we love the neighborhood. We will absolutely, and if anybody's driven by the house, we're very, I have tons of trees. I love having a lot of greenery around us and we are planning on doing the same with this if this does get approved. where I have 10 grandchildren and they all live in Winchester and Arlington. So we really would like to stay here because it's a great location. I love Medford. We've been here for actually more than
[SPEAKER_01]: 41 counting our first house.
[SPEAKER_04]: Counting our first house. Yeah. So, you know, absolutely. We will do what we need to do. And it was our game plan anyway, as far as that tree, just so you know, um, if it did get improved because we would love to be able to, um, make it look as nice as it can. So.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Are there any other comments before I make my own and then open up for the public comments? Okay. Could you put on the elevation sheet just again? I kind of agree with Ari. I think this is a really good use, a great infill. You know, it's not going to be anything other than a really big side yard for someone. And I think, you know, the architect in me, I understand this is not going to really fit in with the colonials that were built almost 100 years ago. That's the kind of house I grew up in, in Lawrence Estates, just a few minutes walks away from here. I think it's an intelligent design for what it is. It looks to me like the living space is double height. That's what you said was all one story, but obviously that back is quite tall. Is that correct?
[Kathleen Desmond]: It's tall, but it's cathedral. There isn't any second story. I think it's taller too because of the differing elevation from the street level to the back of the lot. There's an incline. Like I said, They're trying it's built on a slab and trying to go with the grade versus digging down and building a foundation.
[Doug Carr]: Sure, that's really only a comment. I think that I think the design is is is well thought out. It's it's again, it's a unique site and unique design because. buildings in Medford are not slab, a very small percentage of houses in Medford, which is fine. Is there, people have obviously asked some questions about the tree. Is, is there any way to move it and keep it on that site? Is it, is that physically possible? That tree must be at least 80, 90 years old when I look at it.
[Kathleen Desmond]: I don't think you can move trees that old or that tall. They take them down in pieces. So I had to ask.
[Doug Carr]: All right. So hearing no further comments, I'm going to now open the public comment period. a brief preamble here. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature, which may be under reactions on Zoom. If you're dialed in on a phone, you can use star nine to raise your hand. You can also message Alicia in the chat. If you're having technical difficulties before providing comments, please state your name For the record, a reminder that all meeting participants to please refrain from using the chat function to message any comments to the city staff or board members. As it is not part of the public record, each person will have two minutes to speak. If anybody from the public would like to put any comments about this proposed project, please raise your hand and let us know. Seeing anyone, does anyone see anything? Okay. Oh, there we go. Kim Oliveri, could you please state your name for the record, please?
[aBgYkA4WX0I_SPEAKER_03]: Sure, this is Kim Oliveri. I live at 25 Damon Road and my property will be on the back side of the property. So we have two questions, my husband and I. So first, we're not opposed to the project. We just wanted to have a few more details. About the trees. There are maybe five or six big trees on the property. And we were just wondering if the dog has had a sense of how many that we take down. And. And I understand you're traveling now, so it would be great if when you return, if we could just maybe look at the property together. And that might be reassuring to us and the neighbors. And then our second question was, The term condo-ization, is that a technical term? I think you touched on it last time, but it's just a little scary to hear that term, not fully understanding it.
[Doug Carr]: Attorney Dalesvink, do you have a landscaping plan that shows the trees?
[Kathleen Desmond]: I don't believe that we have a landscaping plan. We did the renderings, but we didn't do a landscaping plan. I think if Bev can speak to the plan with removal of trees, because other than that big one, I'm not certain what other trees would need to be moved. Bev, have you?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I mean, the game plan is to keep as many as we can. We want them as well. And Kim, I'm not away, I'm home. So certainly feel free to let me know when you want to meet and I'll take you through it. Oh, sure.
[aBgYkA4WX0I_SPEAKER_03]: I can get to the photographs. Well, we know where each other's live. Yeah, just name a day and time and we'd love to come over.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah. No, certainly could do it tomorrow. It's fine.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Thank you, Kim. I appreciate it. I'm going to move on, if that's OK. OK, your name for the record, please.
[JknWFpZeyhQ_SPEAKER_27]: Hi, my name is Debbie Hayes and I live next to Kim and diagonal from this property. And just for the record, my husband's right here and he said that he was opposed to it. So when you say that there was nobody opposed to it, I want to make sure that that is not the case. And mostly because, you know, even though you say it's a one family house, it's really quite tall. And, you know, we just did an addition and we made, we made very clear and made sure that our windows weren't going into either anybody's property. Um, these guys are right behind us, their current house and their lights are on all the time. They have a lot of parties. I mean, I can't say that they can't build and nobody's going to care if I do, but I just want them to be understanding that there's people that live right behind them. And you know, it's a family neighborhood and the parties that they have just be aware that there's other people around.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Mr. Do you appreciate it? Are there any other public comments? Okay. Seeing none, then I will close the public comment for the hearing and I'll open it up to the board for additional comments. I'll start with you, Paige. You're good. I'll get to you in a minute, Attorney Desmond. Hold on. Go ahead, Paige.
[Page Buldini]: Just real quick and I think it would be helpful for clarity. Attorney Desmond, can we just explain for the neighbor what condoizing means?
[Kathleen Desmond]: That's what I was going to explain. So, you know, it's a different type of development because you can't subdivide the lots in place and put two houses on what they would call buildable lots. So the only other way to do that is to condo. the property so that you then have a set of condo rules and regulations that apply to both properties, and there's exclusive use areas for each unit that are within the documents so that everybody knows which portions of the yard are their yard and which portions of the yard are not their yard. This isn't a condo project where you're having multiple stackable units or townhouses. This is really the only effective way to be able to place two principal structures on one lot without having to rent one out and allowing ownership rights in the property. So that's what this is. It's not, you know, a 10-unit development isn't going to develop overnight here. It's just a way to structure the construction and the units so that even though they're not on separate lots, they have separate rights and there's an ownership ability, which wouldn't be allowed otherwise.
[Page Buldini]: Thank you, Attorney Desmond. And just to clarify visually, where I live in the hillside, we own a two-family. And it's, we are a condo, which is our first floor in our basement. And then my brother-in-law is a condo on the second and third floor. So I think it's just to clarify sometimes and not to say that that's what the Diagostinos plan is. But I just know visually sometimes condos could be the thought of just a one unit. And again, not to speculate, but I know that sometimes condoizing the term can be confusing. So I just wanted to visually share that.
[Kathleen Desmond]: And once it's approved, we're also subject to the plans that are approved. So there would be no ability to just go ahead and do that.
[Doug Carr]: Of course. Sean, do you have any other questions?
[Sean Beagan]: No, I was going to say what Attorney Desmond said.
[Doug Carr]: Um, Mr. Agostino, because you're the proponent, I'll let you speak. You don't need to respond if you want to. That's up to you. But go ahead if you want to.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're on mute, Beth. Okay, no, okay. I just want to say that I certainly don't want to offend anybody in any way with what we're building. That's not the game plan. The game plan is to have our house one level, but where you see the elevation of a high window, that's not looking into anybody's house. It's like 23 feet. We can't get up there. So it's not looking into anybody's house. And I'm sorry about the lighting, because we just have professional lighting in the back. So I apologize to our neighbor for that, but please, I don't want to offend anybody, but I just want to make sure you understand that it's not going to infringe on your privacy because we can't even get up there. It's just more to have an open, I'm a bit of a light craver. So I thought it would be nice to have an open, you know, glass top, that's all. So I hope that helps.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Appreciate that. Are there any other further board comments? Otherwise I'll entertain a motion if anyone is so inclined. Does anybody want to make a motion in favor or oppose or anything at all?
[Dina Caloggero]: I make a motion.
[Sean Beagan]: Go ahead, Dan.
[Dina Caloggero]: I make a motion to approve.
[Sean Beagan]: Second.
[Ari Fishman]: Can I make a motion to approve with conditions? Does that have to be a separate one, or can we do it as part of the same?
[Doug Carr]: Let's talk about conditions first. I think that's important.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, because I do want the trees to be a condition. Go ahead. Oh, sorry.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead. I'll read you.
[Ari Fishman]: Oh, thank you. There was a lag. I'll appreciate the professional staff's assistance in wordsmithing this, but broadly, if it is possible to save any trees over, I don't know, eight inches in diameter, six inches, kind of whatever the sign of a mature tree is, that that should be done. And if not, that either one or two appropriate trees be planted in their stead. in on the property or kind of immediate surroundings. And I'm trying to think if there are any other kind of criteria or like ways of saying like, don't knock them down unnecessarily. And if you do make sure that's something that is a, you know, genuine substitute.
[Doug Carr]: Are you trying to get a one to one replacement for any tree that's removed? Is that your intent?
[Ari Fishman]: Well, that's not possible with these 100-year-old trees, so I think part, like, you can only plant up to, what, a 7-year-old. Is really like the maximum that's reasonable to transplant. So I think sometimes it is worth discussing like a 2 to 1 replacement and that's where I want the professional staff to weigh in. Do we have a new arborist? Do we? I know we've talked a lot about tree ordinances. I have no idea where it stands at the moment though. So that's where I would love professional guidance.
[Doug Carr]: Danielle, do you have any thoughts on the tree, on the possible language for the trees? And I'll go to you next, Sean, to think about that, because you often wordsmith these. Go ahead, Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, now I'm really wishing I had been on the zoning board call. I wasn't aware that this large tree was going to be impacted. I'm not advising that the, the footprint be shifted, but. It would have been nice if those, the trees were located on the site plan. So we could see how many were being impacted and if there was an opportunity. To shift it to avoid. Multiple trees beyond that 1 large 1 that smack in the way. And we don't have a private tree protection ordinance yet. That's in effect, but there's lots of language in there. You know, replacing, you know, if it's. I don't know what caliber sizes is, but. Um, like, say, if there was like a 10 caliber tree, then you would plant 5, 2 caliber trees or something, um. Or a contribution to the tree fund or something, um, not saying we're. Applying an ordinance is not an effect, but if it was an effect that would apply to this. Um. So, like, in that spirit, I wish I knew how many trees I wish I knew how many trees are potentially impacted beyond this 1 tree.
[Doug Carr]: The setbacks are only a couple of feet, I believe. It has been pointed out that it's not like this building can move 10 feet. It just can't. This building is only a few feet over the setbacks, I think, on most sides. I think the only ability we have here is to add trees as much as we can and save the ones that could be. I think that's what the kind of language we need to kind of move towards to get this to the finish line. Sean, do you have any thoughts on this?
[Sean Beagan]: It's going to be hard to craft the language without knowing exactly where the trees are located now. If we could, could we pull up, Attorney Desmond, could you pull up the photo from the street view showing the lot?
[Kathleen Desmond]: of unnecessary angst, but I didn't tonight. So the stars are aligned.
[Sean Beagan]: All right, so if we look at this photo, the tree smack dab in the middle of the lot is obviously coming down. There's some, call them evergreens or pine trees to the left of that, that I assume those are coming out. But when you go further back to the lot, they look like there's some other substantial trees in the back there. Are those, do we know are those coming down as well or no? And just, I would like, I just asked the D'Agostino's, if they know they're coming down, just tell us so that we can work with this. If they're not, if they know they're definitely not coming down, tell us, and that way we'll be able to move forward with this and get it resolved.
[Kathleen Desmond]: Bev, are you there on that question? You're muted.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay. Can you hear me? Okay. So what you're seeing is I planted a bunch of arborvitaes in the back many, many years ago. So those are just, they're just arbs. They're not big, massive trees. The only real massive tree that is coming down is right in the middle. We're going to try to keep as many as we can. Again, the ones to the left, I planted those. Those were I don't, I don't even know if they're evergreens or they're herbs too. I, I'm not really sure. And then there's a tree right in the middle of that, that's coming down. It's actually bent over that one. I know we'll come down for sure. And then I'd like to keep, there were four in total with the big tree. So I'd like to keep, um, I'm pointing with my pointer like you can see this, but I'd like to keep as much as we can. There's only two others back there. And one I believe is, no, I think one is Kim's in her yard behind that.
[Sean Beagan]: There's two good sized trees I'm looking at that are towards the very back of your lot. They're kind of on either side of the big tree in the middle of your lawn.
[SPEAKER_04]: Those probably will have to come down.
[Sean Beagan]: That's what I'm asking about.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I believe those will, but there's arbs in the back that I'm hoping that we want to keep those because we want to keep the privacy as I'm sure the neighbors do too.
[Sean Beagan]: And so you could fill in with, if those trees come down, you could fill in with additional arborbites in the back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. That's the game plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once we meet with the builder again, he will actually be able to tell us where the exact footprint is and which ones we have to go and which ones don't have to go.
[Sean Beagan]: I mean, I'm guessing and I don't think I'm far off. I think all your, what I'm gonna call mature trees are coming down when you build this house. I wouldn't build this house and leave those trees there. No, no, I mean, let's just talk practically. I wouldn't do that. I don't think you guys would do it. So let's talk about what I think what the board wants to know is what can you fill in with, uh, as a substitute.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I can.
[Sean Beagan]: I don't want to talk for Ari's got her hand up. I want her to be able to chime in because this was her motion. Go ahead. Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Uh, by the way, I use they pronouns, not her, but, um, I, Hearing that there is the builder who will know the answer to this, I do want to just remind the board that one of the tools we have at our disposal is to say we would want kind of this broad structure and kind of get seed authority to the professional staff to do it on our Kind of the half administratively once they get the details kind of, if we create an, if then and that way. If they're unresolved questions, they don't have to come back for another hearing. So I just want to share that. That's where my brain is going right now. But I would love to hear whatever was about to be said.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: Perhaps there could be a condition that. They. survey or at least indicate on a plan the caliper size of the trees and when they meet with the builder where the footprint will be and meet with planning staff who will determine where replacement trees should go if they're to be removed. If there's no wiggle room in the Floor or the footprint at all, like, if there was a way to, like. You know, come back like, a foot or 2 and that saved a tree. That would be my preference. I realize that we're. Ideally, this would have been looked at earlier.
[Kathleen Desmond]: Well, in terms of in terms of setback on the. On the. The homes and I and I think that actually after we had submitted these plans you had a little bit of buyers remorse and in terms of where the house was structured from the street and we have enough room to move it. forward a bit and still be within the setback requirements of 15. We've got 24.7 feet. It may be possible to shift it a bit forward and make room for a replant somewhere in the back of the yard. The other thing is there's also probably an opportunity in the front given the setback for there to be something that acts almost as a street tree. near the front of the property as opposed to the back of the property.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. I feel like I agree with conditions, but defer to staff on on. Making making sure that we have the maximum number of trees save the maximum number we can, if practical. And make that call about any kind of minor shifts to to to fulfill that goal. I was also reminded that. Probably a sidewalk is going to be rebuilt once this this project is done. So I think that's. I don't know if Tony Desmond, if that's something that has been discussed with the city, rebuild of that sidewalk as part of the approvals.
[Kathleen Desmond]: That hasn't been discussed yet. We just went so far as to discuss the curb cut because that would be necessary based on the topo and that was approved the second curb cut.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. I mean, there are city standards for sidewalks that you probably need to follow. Go ahead, Alicia.
[Alicia Hunt]: Because this is a private way, I think we actually want to condition that they rebuild the sidewalk to city standards. I'm not sure that the city would not normally build a sidewalk on a private way, but I took a quick look at the rest of the street. There are sidewalks up and down, and it's hard to tell, but this actually seems from this photo and the Google map to be the least formal section of the sidewalk.
[Danielle Evans]: So informal that your mailman parks on it.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, yeah. I would recommend the board include it.
[Doug Carr]: All right, John Anderson. Yes, thank you.
[John Anderson]: I just wanted to comment that I'm really glad these issues have come up because this is something we really need to be able to address more systemically. Because as we densify, the loss of old large trees is really going to be inevitable. And replacing them with sort of decorative trees, that's good. it has a decorative look, but it doesn't get us the benefits, the true benefits of large trees with the shade. So something like the tree fund, where when large trees like this are cut down, money can go into the tree fund to put some large, to put some future large trees somewhere else. That would be a good thing. Also, I think we need to be able to think about, we need to specify what happens when we approve development on private ways like this. I mean, that's not really for this meeting, but it's something we really need to be able to do adroitly without having it sort of come up just as we're about to vote on a motion. That's all. Thank you, John.
[Sean Beagan]: Sean Began. Mr. Chair, I would at this point move for approval with the condition that a landscape plan be provided showing the trees that are going to be removed and indicate what replacement trees will be planted. And that plan would be subject to planning department approval.
[Doug Carr]: And then we include a new sidewalk by the city standards per wishes.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I, the new sidewalk, if that's the wish of the board is we can add that to the motion as well. I will say the sidewalk on this street. If you're looking at this photo that we're looking at, if you keep going to the right down the street, by the time you get to Lawrence Road, those houses don't have any sidewalk. So this street is very hit or miss on sidewalk. Any sidewalk in front of these houses was put there by the owners of the houses over time. They're all different. Some are just grass, some are brick, some are like asphalt like you have here.
[Doug Carr]: All right, so we started with a motion, then we paused. I think we're going back to that motion again for approval with the conditions of an existing landscape plan showing existing trees or any planting to remain trees to be removed, a new landscape plan. And we're deferring to the PDS staff to make the judgment call on the final location. and quantity of these trees, I believe. And the sidewalk we built to the city standards. I believe that's everything. So that would be the motion, I assume.
[Sean Beagan]: That would be my motion.
[Page Buldini]: Okay.
[Doug Carr]: Now it's your motion, Sean.
[Page Buldini]: I second it.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. Roll call. John Anderson. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Page Buldini]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. way longer than I thought it would, but that's okay. We have all night, so to speak. All right, we're going to move on now to the bulk of the hearing, which is the zoning amendment for Boston Avenue neighborhood quarter district. Hold on one second. Alicia or Danielle, do you have any introductory comments when we talk about the nature of this portion of the meeting compared to the agenda?
[Danielle Evans]: There was a clerical error when preparing the agenda where we indicated that it was a continued public hearing and that this was the board deliberation portion that the public comment period was closed. Indeed, the public hearing is closed. So it's a deliberation, but I mean, it might feel like semantics, but it actually starts a shot clock for providing the recommendation to city council.
[Doug Carr]: And the practical effect of that is we're fine tuning this what we've already agreed with the city council, the big picture stuff where.
[Danielle Evans]: I mean, that was that was the agreement. I don't think there's any legal requirements, but that was the agreement that was reached between the 2 bodies.
[Alicia Hunt]: Go ahead, Alicia additional background, but I might say some of that and just slightly different words to make sure we're being super clear to everybody. Technically on June, the end of June, the public hearing was closed, but at that time. And I'm saying this for the public, the board knows this. The city council and the city board both voted on a lot of big decisions with regards to this, but a lot of it needed wordsmithing and the language put together. And there were one or two items in particular, which we'll get to where they actually said, we agree with this conceptually. Can you guys do the math and show us how this is gonna work literally? And so the staff and the consultants went away over the summer, took some summer vacations, and finished the language. We've run this through a couple of times. We had interns rewatch the meeting and make sure that what we remembered and what we generated was accurate. We asked the board before this meeting started just to make sure that we captured what had been asked for at that previous meeting. So the version that's in front of you tonight is what we believe is what was asked for from that meeting by the city council and the CD board. Tonight, the board is gonna finish deliberations and make recommendations to the city council. So it's up to the board what they want to recommend to the city council. What we believe is in front of you is what you asked for. I think there was one map error that we caught too late to actually change. And it was actually, as I understand it, a misunderstanding of language between board members and the consultants and myself is why actually it doesn't look the way you expected. And so that you'll clarify for us. So hopefully that's clear for everybody that we're not taking public comment, but we are, the board will be deliberating on this and may have found some additional tweaks to this over the course of the summer.
[Doug Carr]: Sure. All right. Thank you. I wish that's helpful. Thank you, Danielle. I guess I'd like to ask Emily to join us now. I think the way we should start with, we should start with the maps. I think that'd be the most logical place to start, Emily, if you agree, and get the big stuff out of the way. And then we can dive into the language, Does that make sense? Emily?
[Emily Innes]: Yes, absolutely. I can hear you. So for the record, Emily Keyes Ennis, president of Ennis Land Strategies Group. I will tell you that my video and sound have been working absolutely perfect up until the point at which we switched over to this topic. So if I freeze momentarily, I am here. I will come back. Um, I absolutely agree chair car that we should start with the map. So I'm going to share my screen so we can all see what we're looking at. And indeed it was a misunderstanding on our part. We thought that the. joint hearing was talking only about the areas where we had been showing the FIT studies. But as Director Hunt said, she and the interns had gone back to review the actual language of the meetings. And so these blue areas, we thought on this side of Boston Avenue, you collectively being the joint hearing, we're talking only about those two parcels being the 2B area. We had misunderstood that you were also talking about these, so we wanted to show you the map that you received and just note that based on our understanding, these parcels should also be blue and confirm that with you today. So that would mean that they're in the BA-2B, that is the three stories plus one incentive zoning to be no more than four stories. I did have a look at this as we were going back and forth to just confirm that we all had the correct understanding. And this, of course, you can see are the residential. This building on the other side of Boston Avenue is four stories. So those would be consistent with each other. So I just wanted to confirm that we are collectively on the same page about those parcels.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, so let's just pause there. Is there anyone in the board who has a comment go ahead page about this?
[Page Buldini]: Just really, really quick, a resident saw this when this was public. If you look at the BA2A, it says 57 stories, not five.
[Emily Innes]: Just a little funny thing. It should be seven stories, the four plus three, so total height of seven stories there, consistent with the four. Thank you so much, Paige. Yes, that was not meant to be 57 stories. Supposed to be, we'll make that correct. I can understand why a member of the public would get concerned about that.
[Page Buldini]: That's our job is to share the information. So thank you. Absolutely.
[Sean Beagan]: John, you're next. Yeah, no, I was just going to say, Mr. Chair, that I did go back and listen to the June 24th hearing and I agree with you and with Emily that absolutely that St. Clement's property was going to be in the blue to be area. It was it was very clear from the hearing.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, so when we send this to this. City Council will have time to fix this and make sure that that is, you know, we'll just, as amended, as agreed to with this meeting for that one site, because I don't think there are any other issues that I'm aware of from, that I've heard from any board member, unless they tell me otherwise, for this Boston South. Is that an accurate statement? Does anybody have any other comments on this, on this map, this area of the zoning? Okay, seeing none then, why don't we head, Emily, to the northern side of Boston.
[Emily Innes]: We absolutely want to reshare it, just so we have a clean transition here. I don't recall any changes to the northern side, but let's just confirm that at this meeting. These are the final boundaries.
[Doug Carr]: That's okay. Yeah, we'll stay away from the 57 stories, please. It's like the John Hancock building. We'll pass on that. So the only one, the only comment I remember seeing in the course of the last week or two It was the incentive zoning for BA3. This is something in text that I don't remember us actually voting on. It was the...it's at the bottom there. Incentive zoning height is not permitted within 60 feet along North Street. That is something, and I do think it's worth revisiting the massing plans, because I think that's where this came from. But I don't remember us actually voting on that number. I wanted to make sure that this board was comfortable with that number, or not, frankly. And if you don't mind revisiting that issue from a massing and shadow study, I think that's important, because that's different than I remember it, but it was two and a half months ago.
[Emily Innes]: And I think the text, when we get to the text, we might want to hold off full discussion of that till we get to the text, and it might become clearer there. But just talking through the massing studies and the shadow studies, when we were working on those in-house, we realized that if we went up to the full level of the incentive zoning along that stretch of North Street, it would have a detrimental impact on the houses immediately across the street from that sort of Let me see if you can see my cursor from this line here to go all the way up to the incentive zoning and this section would have a detrimental effect on these houses. So, in the massing studies, we had shown a, a shorter building height in that area and the zoning. as currently written, memorializes that height. It was my understanding from the last hearing that that was understood, but I agree that we should just talk it through and make sure that we're all consistent with that. As I said, we can look at the text and make sure that the text leads to the outcome that we all collectively want to have there.
[Doug Carr]: 100%. So, Sean, do you want to comment before we put on the matching diagrams or.
[Sean Beagan]: I can comment now on that provision that was added, or I can comment when we. Take a look at the ordinance itself, because it's in, it's written into the ordinance, but I definitely have comments on this issue, but I'll, I can wait until we get.
[Doug Carr]: To the actual, and we, once you put up the massing in the shadow studies, and we can, I don't want to wait for the text because I think this is a really important issue. It's a big 1 for the site. So maybe you can put up just the.
[Alicia Hunt]: It will take me a few minutes because I don't have them preloaded for this discussion, but maybe while Emily's pulling that up, what I'll articulate is what she's going to show now that when we went back to the slides, it was clear that the images that were shown in the slides showed one height along North Street and then a higher height further back on the parcel. we didn't talk about it. There was no conversation about that, but that is in fact what was in the images and the shadowing that we looked at. And so that's what we'd like Emily to, Emily, I had the slides that just have the slides, but I only have with the four shadow studies all on one page. So that doesn't.
[Emily Innes]: I've got them.
[Doug Carr]: And I guess I'd like to ask all the board members to think about, well, which, you know, is this what you is this what you intended when you voted for that? That's the question I have because I guess I thought that would be some of the passing diagrams were examples, but it kind of seems like this massing diagram. kind of made it into the zoning pretty cleanly as not just a 10-foot step back, which I think, like, Dina, you've talked about many times as a way to ameliorate, mitigate, excuse me, the shadow concerns of abutters. So let's let Emily go through this, and then I'll get back to you and Sean.
[Emily Innes]: That's great. So we had 3 options for this scenario. I'm going to show you the larger version of each, but just globally this, if you can see my cursor, this area here has that 10 foot setback in all cases on Boston Avenue. But then on North Avenue, we had the lower building height and the 60 feet just so, you know, if you do a double loaded residential corridor, double loaded means that there's a central Hallway with a unit on either side, the minimum rule of thumb for when we're doing urban design is that the minimum depth of a double loaded quarter is 60 to 64 feet, depending on the layout of the unit. So, when we're doing fit studies, that's the standard. Obviously it can be designed when you get to actual construction drawing in a different way, but that's kind of the rule of thumb for a FITS study. So the idea of the 60 foot was to go a full double loaded quarter back. So that's what you're seeing here. And then let me zoom in just so you can see all the different objects. Is you can see we're a full sort of double loaded quarter back and then the idea is that you can go up and the higher height in the back of this fairly deep lot. And then again, from Boston Avenue, that taller remember the incentive, the incentive floors were in the lighter color. So the incentive floors are step backed off of Boston Avenue. And you can see that we showed this for all three of the options that we had this year. We understand that it wasn't fully talked about, as Alicia said, when the team interns went back and reviewed everything. But because this is how we showed it, we wanted to make sure that the text of the zoning reflected what we had shown. And that was part of our discussion with city staff that we weren't showing one thing and then presenting text that had something different in it.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. Sean, do you want to ask your question and then we'll go to Dean next?
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I mean, my comment would be that when I voted on this in June, I was voting on it based on the language that was in the proposed ordinance in front of me at that date, which was a 10 foot step back at each story above five stories. So a 10 foot step back at six, a 10 foot step back at seven. We never discussed a 60 foot setback. So I was kind of shocked when I saw it and just put in there without any type of discussion on it. I did go back and I listened and watched the meeting from June 24th. The way it was presented was there's three options. There's also a variation. that doesn't allow anything over five stories on North Street, essentially. But there was never any discussion about which option was actually being approved. I thought we were just approving five plus two in accordance with the written ordinance in front of us, not adding, because the 60 foot number was, I know it was never discussed and verified that when I went to the meeting. and went back to the meeting. So I wouldn't have voted for it.
[Doug Carr]: Dean, why don't you go next?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I remember the meeting. I even took notes and went back to them. And it is a 10 foot setback at five, yeah, after five stories. Sean is correct. I would have remembered that. This is something new.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. I just think for clarity, I want to actually pull everyone. I'd like to talk, Paige, you go next and then John and Ari. Paige, what do you recall?
[Page Buldini]: Sam, as my colleagues, I'm just interested, and I appreciate Emily sharing those images, but looking actually at the rendering of Waukling Court, which I know is just a rendering and just seeing the difference on North Street, I'm interested. I know we are not trying to make big change, but I think having clarity and just seeing a different number would be just helpful to discuss what that looks like.
[Doug Carr]: Ari, can you go, you wanna chime in?
[Ari Fishman]: Same, that's a very different number and text than I was agreeing to. And that's not something that I am consciously recommending to city council. I feel like this, I need to really wrap my head around whether I could get there, but right now I'm not there.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you.
[John Anderson]: John, any thoughts? I have nothing to add. Thanks.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. All right, well, I think there's a fairly strong consensus that it's 5 plus 2. And I guess what I remember, I think John is saying now we're doing the 10 foot step backs on Boston Ave and North Street, but not on either other property line, not on the railroad tracks and not on, I guess, the Cummings boundary. Does that make sense, Emily?
[Emily Innes]: Yes, it does. We will make up making I was making notes as you all talked. We will make those changes.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. Go ahead, Sean.
[Sean Beagan]: We'll come back. One point, Mr. Chairman. So the language that was in the draft that we were working with on the 24th was footnote 2 under section 94-9.8.3 under dimensional requirements. That said that within the BA2 and the BA3 sub-districts, the sixth story and above must be stepped back a minimum of 10 feet. It was actually for the BA2 and the BA3, minimum 10 foot step back once you got above five stories.
[Emily Innes]: And we, sorry, just to interrupt briefly, we had actually, when we get to the table of dimensional standards, you'll see that we took that out of the footnotes and put it into the table. So it's front and center. So all we need, all we will need to do is modify another, the new footnote six on that, which is the one within 60 feet of North Street. and delete that, the remainder of the step-back language should be okay, but we will double-check that just to make sure it's considered.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Emily. Go ahead, Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: I just want to pipe up because I don't believe that they modeled that 5 plus 2 with a 10-foot step-back. Is that correct? Some behind the scenes modeling and I did it to where that kind of messing at North Street was very detrimental to the neighbors that cast them in shadow. And so it was recommended that that either the heights be reduced on that side or pulled back substantially. Um, I would have piped up at city council if I thought what you thought what you thought, because I don't think that 7 stories with a 10 foot step back. Is that what we're saying? Folks want it at North Street. Because that's that's not what was shown. So I just want to make sure that. I mean, if that's what you want, then you should see. That modeled because I don't think that was shown to you so that you at least have.
[Doug Carr]: You're making this, yeah. It wasn't shown, but I think from, I think, you know, the experience of going to Medford Square, I think we saw that, a version of that multiple times in Medford Square. I think people understood what it was visually, because it wasn't that different. I mean, Dina was a big proponent of this, of we got to a certain point and we just kind of go back, you know, mitigate the impact. And with each floor above 5, right?
[Danielle Evans]: Good, everybody's frozen for me.
[Alicia Hunt]: No, it was just just Doug's growth. Okay, let's turn off.
[Danielle Evans]: Let me turn off. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, you froze. Basically, I would just like to see what is being recommended modeled. It was the shading on the neighbors, and that was why it was the recommendation from INNIS that it should be pulled back on North Street. And I also agreed strongly about that. So I just want to make sure that it's at least informed what the heights should be at North street and what those impacts are. Because if what you're saying was not shown, if I, that's my understanding. And we were in part of the conversation was translate what was shown with the shadowing, translate that into words and numbers in the tables. So I'm not seeing that here. I think there's a lot of confusion. And I'll shut up now.
[Doug Carr]: Paige, why don't you go next?
[Page Buldini]: Thank you, Danielle. Yes, that would be helpful if we could see exactly what we're talking about. And also, if it comes to seeing what this 60, well, essentially just what it looks like and not to be making big changes. But if this is an opportunity to, as we've always wanted to do, give a clean version when we agree, I think that that is completely fair. So thank you, Danielle.
[Doug Carr]: Dina, you go next, please.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, I just, I'm just questioning it. We looked at shadow studies for both North Street and Boston Avenue. I think prior to the vote, I'm confused. I'm just asking like a little bit about why there, what's the distinction between the two streets and the shadow studies? Didn't we look at shadow studies for both North and Boston Avenue? And it was months ago and it was very late, but this looks a lot different than what we approved.
[Emily Innes]: I'm seeing if I can pull up the video. I mean, I'll go back and look at our meeting.
[Dina Caloggero]: I mean, we had shadow studies over and over again. I remember that during the meeting and I wrote down what we approved and this is not what we approved. We all voted.
[Alicia Hunt]: PB, Lisa Smith-Miyazaki, she-her, hers.: : Mr. Chair, I think it would really help to see the shadows, so I know that the shadow studies exist for this with the setbacks and I think that when we looked at it, you could see that the shadows were going on people's houses. PB, Lisa Smith-Miyazaki, she-her, hers.: : To some extent, so you could clearly imagine how much more they would be if it was taller. The other question I have, while Emily is looking to pull up those, is we had long conversations with the Medford square zoning about how much of the building across the street could be shadowed. And so off the top of my head, I don't remember if that language is in here, because that actually would sort of, you can have some shadows, but not too much shadowing. Even if you're allowed to go up 50 stories, if you shadow too much, you're not allowed to go up 50 stories. So I'm going to take a quick peek and see if that's in here.
[John Anderson]: You're on mute.
[Emily Innes]: So just so you all know, I am reopening the file. I was trying to play it from the PDF and it wasn't working. So I'm just trying to see if I can play it directly from the PowerPoint and if that might make it easier. So I will be back to you.
[Doug Carr]: Sorry, I was trying to join by my phone because the sound audio has been dropping out. But I think seeing them again would be helpful.
[Emily Innes]: Okay, I think this should work. We may all have to turn our cameras off briefly, but let's try this. So we had modeled, just so you all know, before I turn this on, we had modeled the tallest height, which was the six plus two option on February and June, and we had modeled the five plus two option also in February and June. which was the shorter of the heights. So let me zoom in so we can see what we're looking at and see if that helps. And this, I'm going to show you the February one first, then I'll stop my share, and then I will show you the June one just so we don't have to worry about it hopefully not crashing on us. So everything up for everyone? This is the February version and you can see the shadows. moving across, and I'm just going to stop it there. Oh, well, I thought it was going to stop it there. The problem with these things is the loop's really long. Okay, so this is the February. Let's see if it will let me advance it slightly for you. Yes, I can maneuver it by that. So this is the February. Remembering that February is the longest of the year, and so by the time we see this here, At this time without scooting out, but it basically takes you to 3 PM, which, as we know, it's starting to get dark at 3 PM. So, let me see if I can flip to June. Are you seeing June up now should be a static image.
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Emily Innes]: All right, great. So this is June. We're going to take June 21st from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. So obviously June, it's light a little bit later, so the shadows will be different. And I'm going to see if it can pause as it moves over to the others. Okay, let's pause it there. So that is getting close. That's almost 5 o'clock. So 5 o'clock. That's 5 o'clock p.m. And what you're seeing is the five stories on North Street with the buildings behind being up to seven. You can see the shadows from the seven story buildings on top of the North Street facing buildings. And so it was those longer shadows that we were looking at at the time that we had made these lower buildings. I think we may have had an internal test Ourselves just working us back to about noon ish. There were there. That's about noon with suns directly overhead. That's why you don't see any shadows. And then these, of course, are the morning shadows where they're over Boston Avenue as the sun's coming from the east around up now that I have control over this. And over and then that is bang on six o'clock at night. So we're just short 530 at night.
[Doug Carr]: So, so my, my senses, we, we, we saw this in June and doing this, we, we voted the five plus two with the step backs without the 60 feet. I think, I think that's someone tells me otherwise that that's still what we voted for. And I think that's still the consensus that we know that there's. some impact on the houses, but we still think that that was the right decision. I think that's the collective decision we made.
[Emily Innes]: Okay, then that is that I can make those changes in the text. So, as we just discussed, that would be deleting, and you'll see it when we go through, I'm already marking it off. That would be deleting footnote six and leaving in the new table of dimensional requirements, leaving the six-story and above upper-story setbacks that we discussed earlier.
[Doug Carr]: All right, you have your hand raised, please go ahead.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes, I want to just create a moment. Does anyone in the either consulting staff or city staff want to make an argument as to why we should change our minds? Because I'm totally open to hearing that. If there is an argument to be made, please, I would love to hear it.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Danielle. You kind of made it already.
[Danielle Evans]: I think that 7 stories with a 10 foot setback on North Street is incredibly inappropriate and will be detrimental to the neighborhood and very much recommend that you do not approve that. I was under the impression that But we had had this conversation about translating those, the models, and that was the shadowing and the shading that we all had the stomach for. We all know that development is going to cause shading in neighborhoods. There's no way that you can't have shadows. But it's like, what is our tolerance for that? And how much is too much? the associates modeled it independently of what even I thought was, this should be pulled back. This is a little bit too much on this side. And I thought that was what was collectively understood. I think that the 10 foot setback at seven stories will irreparably change that neighborhood.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Daniel. Paige, go ahead.
[Page Buldini]: Probably short notice, but is there any way we could see what it would look like with the 60 feet? Or is that an option? I know modeling Emily on the spot is not appropriate to ask.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah, I can't page model this on the spot. This is a completely different program and I don't actually have access to it. Our GIS, our senior spatial analyst who does the GIS, is the one who did the bottling along with Paola. And unfortunately, neither of them are on the call.
[Danielle Evans]: So, otherwise, I would love to do this. What are we trying to look forward? I'm trying to see if I did that at some point. What are we looking for the 7 stories, 10 foot setback?
[Page Buldini]: Yeah, even what the change was originally, you know, what we're all discussing now that we didn't initially see.
[Danielle Evans]: So that was five stories with a 60 foot step back to seven stories with incentives, right? I'm just trying to make sure we're all on the same page.
[Emily Innes]: Five plus two. So it's just that.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. So that what she just, what Emily just showed is what was shown at the meeting. And so we, adjusted the numbers to make it match what you all saw and what the impacts of that was. If you want to see seven stories with a 10-foot step back, I can see if I did that.
[Doug Carr]: The massing that Emily showed was conceptual, and I can tell you that if I was a developer, I wouldn't build the tallest part on North Street. I would build it against the Cummings where I could go the full seven stories all the way up and have the courtyard not facing north, but facing south. Which means the impact is less on North Street because you're stepping down, not the whole bar along North Street, but you're stepping down little fingers coming off the main building, which is up against the Cummings property. It's just a concept. Emily was looking at ideas, that's all. There's five different ways you could mask that site. I'm sure Emily would agree with that. There's no guarantee it's going to be a seven-story wall on North Street because it's likely not going to because no one would design a north-facing courtyard if they could design a south-facing courtyard. It's just not done typically. It won't look like that diagram in the end. It's the reality of it is it will be something different, most likely. But again, it's concept. It's like, you know, you're never going to know until it's the exact program and the exact number of units they're trying to get and the exact parking that's in the base. Like, all that needs to be test fitted, you know, with someone who knows what they're doing. I don't think we obviously that's not an MOE's purview. That's not she's looking at big picture massing, you know, so it's. Even if we had that, it doesn't mean it would look like that.
[Emily Innes]: If I can just say it's one of the reasons we put the caveats on here is we understood that the public wanted to be able to get a sense of what the shadow studies were. But when you look at the individual slides, it's like, this is an unofficial schematic model only used for visualization purposes. An architect would design this very, very differently. and given the other site constraints in here where the sun is, I would agree with Doug, is that an architect would likely make other choices. However, we did model it to show what the greatest level of impacts would be should somebody design it like that. It doesn't mean that they would, and I think that's important to understand. These site concepts are by design blocky. We don't want them to look like real projects because we don't want people to think that they're real projects. And so there are other things, articulation of the facade, thinking about where it is appropriate to add height and reduce it in order to make a more, in order to reduce the impact of the massing. all of those choices will have impact on the shadow. Having said that, if somebody did design a very blocky five to seven-story building, you can see what the shadow impact would be on that.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. Go ahead, Ari. You have a question. You have your hand raised.
[Ari Fishman]: I feel like we're right now in the opposite of our normal roles on this committee unofficially, which makes me worry that I'm missing something. But I do want to flag that we do have empirical evidence that there are major developers in the area, perhaps affiliated with a certain university, that design buildings very differently than you would, Doug. Therefore, I do think there might be value in being very explicit about what is entirely off what is off the table if we want to be more conservative. I do take Danielle's judgment very seriously. I think kind of her vision often puts into practice a lot of how I think. So this feels a little disorienting and it did start with a, that is definitely not what we talked about in terms of the words and numbers, but I think conceptually I am being talked around to there being value to including this.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, well, I think I appreciate that. Thank you. And I appreciate the ability to think cleanly that we haven't seen this in a few months. Like, this is this is the time to reconsider things. I just want to I want to get a sense of the board. If they want to entertain. A different approach, it's still the 7, it's still the 5 plus 2, but it's a different version of it that there's no doubt. It's it's less mass and less development. And that has value. I don't disagree with that, but I want to get a sense of the board. Go ahead. Dina.
[Dina Caloggero]: The other thing is the, the city council also voted we voted. together on which schematic we would adopt. The other thing is, isn't there when a site plan review and we would do an additional set of shadow studies and make recommendations on the design as well? That's my understanding.
[Doug Carr]: Right. And to that point, I think, you know, if somebody is going to propose something on there, whether it's purpose-built student housing or multifamily, which is really probably the two things it could be, they're going to have to come before us and bring a design that we like. And we've already seen what we, there's very few designs that have come before us where we haven't made some kind of moves because of its impact. We still have that opportunity. no matter what is put in front of us. This is not a situation where we can't control anything.
[Dina Caloggero]: We still have that capacity there. The other thing is that site plan review would still need to have the shadow studies in place. It would still need to include the minimum daylight as well and all the other elements as well to hopefully discourage a big blocky building.
[Doug Carr]: That would be my goal for sure.
[Dina Caloggero]: Me too.
[Doug Carr]: So what is, what would this board, what's the sense of this board in terms of, we need to kind of close this out and move on to the text. Go ahead Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Apologies. My understanding is that this is also one of the, limited number of things that would apply to Dover cases as well. So if there's a case here to say kind of put in those stricter limits that does apply in situations where otherwise we don't have a lot of say is that my understanding that massing is one of the criteria.
[Doug Carr]: Danielle could you or Alicia could you speak to that because this is is there a possibility this could be a Dover situation?
[Alicia Hunt]: I mean, if what you're saying is that in the event that say, an educational institution or religious institution wanted to build at this location, then Dover would apply. And if Dover would apply, and we allow 10 stories, and they want to build 10 stories, and we say, but we don't really want 10 stories, we can't say no. If Dover, if we said we allow five stories and a Dover case wanted to make the argument why they needed seven in order to be financially feasible, they'd have to make it in an argument. They'd have to prove, show why they needed that, why that was reasonable. I think that's sort of what you're getting at, that if you underzone a little bit, it's safer if you're dealing with somebody who has a lot, has more rights than your average property owner.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, uh, Daniel, you have an apologize.
[Danielle Evans]: My camera doesn't seem to be working now. My camera's on, but. I'm just a black screen, so don't know what's going on with that. But. Yes, I think it would be difficult to tell. Someone that they can't have the stories that the zoning says they can have. So, if you don't. like seven stories there, then you should never allow it. Because yeah, the Dover, that's how Tufts got the hike that they got. Because that was the maximum height there. And it didn't matter if there was any shadowing. They could get it. Because that was the max that was allowed. So they were entitled to that. And there are also, someone could appeal it and say, well, I'm, I'm supposed to be allowed to have 7 stories here and you're only letting me have 5. I'm going to appeal this and then it's up to a judge what he thinks.
[Doug Carr]: Um, it doesn't require incentives are applied to Dover or not because no, I'm just saying for for anything.
[Danielle Evans]: I just. If you don't want seven stories right there, casting a neighborhood in shadow, then why allow that? Why have that? It's signaling that that's okay when you have that in zoning.
[Doug Carr]: Sean and then Dina, go ahead, Sean.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I think I don't I think it's pretty clear from a majority of the board tonight that we understood we voted for one thing back on June 24th and that was the 5 plus 2. Right with a 10 foot setback. So, I don't know that we can take a new vote. I mean, we agreed to that with city council. Unless city council had a complete, had a different idea and they, and their understanding was they agree. They voted for five plus two with a 60 foot setback or they set back. That was the width of the building shown in that diagram that was on the screen at the time they voted. We may have to revote. I mean, they may have to be, there's not, then maybe there wasn't consensus. Like we thought there was consensus leaving that night, but. I know what I voted for. I think the majority of the board knows what they voted for. I'm not gonna, I don't think it's appropriate for us to revote that tonight. I don't, cause we, we vote, we, that was the purpose of the joint meeting.
[Doug Carr]: I didn't hear you.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes, I completely agree with Sean. I completely agree with him. That's what we vote on. I mean, we would have to open up the public comments and everything. Again, you make. Remember our opening, we're going to make minor changes to the design.
[Doug Carr]: I mean, yeah, what we've been talking about is clarifying, is clarifying like this is something that it was obviously people didn't think it was what they voted for. And now we're obviously revisiting it. But I guess I agree with Sean, I agree with Dina. I think, you know, I'm willing to roll the dice on this, knowing that there are other ways to sculpt whatever proposals put in front of us. And I don't want to go against what I think the council on us voted on. Go ahead, John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: I understand the argument that we need to stick pretty closely to what we agreed to with the council. But if in discussing this, we think there's something significantly better, I think we should bring that to their attention. They can reject it if they want, but I don't think we should just ignore it because, well, it's what we agreed to. I think we'd regret it down the road if we just trust the developers, architects to do the right thing.
[SPEAKER_12]: Fair enough.
[John Anderson]: So I guess what I'm proposing is that we accept what we already voted on, but we also raise this as something that came up during the discussion. And we recommend that the city council and this board reconsider it. It's two separate things.
[Doug Carr]: Understood. Paige, go ahead.
[Page Buldini]: Can I just ask where that came from? And if that was gathered, the change for the 60 foot setback, because I think that would be helpful if that was something that was in the meeting, why that was an option. And I'm not trying to make this difficult, and I'm not trying to say that the CD board is, yes, direct on.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I, Isabel, if you don't mind, if I just sort of read what you had said to me, so we were, chatting in the background because she's watched this several times recently. And she said, I remember Ennis had mentioned the recommendation to limit it to five stories along that street, which I think is where the confusion started because the board city council didn't revisit that point. So we all assumed they had accepted it. So it was something that was mentioned during the original presentation, but wasn't later discussed. And then the consultants and staff thought that just meant everybody agreed to it, that that was a good recommendation. I think that's where this is coming from. I think procedurally, if the board was to, and we might have to help Danielle frame this with language. If say you wanted to actually now say, we didn't think we agreed to this. We actually think it's a good idea now. We could put it in language like that saying the board thought that they had not agreed to the 60 foot setback upon being shown it again, they feel it's a good idea, and they respectfully suggest that the city council should consider that, right? That would be stated in a way that's like, you're not overriding us. We're recommending you look at that too, and that you also re-look at these shadow studies and what we saw here tonight and consider it. I think we can say it in a diplomatic way. Oops, if they then say, You know what? No, we're not reconsidering that. You know, it's not that they're reversing you. Right that you're respectfully suggesting that they relook at this piece.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, do you know why don't you go and then page after that?
[Dina Caloggero]: You're muted. Oh, sorry. So, so maybe I missed this, but how did we get to 6. Like what about 15, 20, 30? How did 60 become the number?
[Doug Carr]: Emily, I think that was the shadow study that you thought that was a number that that would reduce the impact. Is that fair?
[Emily Innes]: Yes, exactly. That was basically to do one full double width bay back in terms of the residential. So that you were basically what it is, the one foot bay is an entire floor. So basically what you're saying is you can go up the five base stories, but you can't have the two incentive stories there. That's why it's a full floor. The two full floors of being five stories instead of seven stories is you're just saying you can't do the two incentive stories along North Street. That's how we modeled that looking at the shadow studies and the impact of the 7 stories on the neighbors across the street versus the 5 stories on the neighbors across the street. Obviously, there's going to be shadow as Danielle pointed out earlier, but the difference is the 7 stories to shadow reaches further into the neighborhood. than they did with the five stories. So the easy thing would be to say, you have a five plus two, let's just not do the two stories along the street. And then that keeps you to a five-story base.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Emily. Paige, why don't you go next, and then Danielle, you can follow up after that. Your camera's working again, Danielle.
[Danielle Evans]: Would it be okay here for people now? I think she was actually- I changed cameras. I found a remote camera to plug in. I was just going to- answer member Calgaro's question. The 60 foot came from what we saw modeled at the meeting, and no one said 60 feet because nobody had a ruler or weren't able to scale it out, but it was showing what was modeled, which was those five stories, And then that's how we got there, but the numbers weren't thrown around because nobody knew what they were. So that's how we got to that. But you didn't see the seven stories with the 10 foot step back. You guys did not see that. So I'd be surprised you voted on something you didn't see.
[Doug Carr]: Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : Okay. Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.:
[Page Buldini]: : page are going page first go ahead, thank you, so what, what do we do here, I mean did make a vote, I think. Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : we're not here we're here discussing which I think is really good and important um. Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : I don't do we have a general consensus, because.
[Doug Carr]: Well, I, let me try to answer that and then I'll go to Ari, but I think if we're going to present something tonight, like Alicia's diplomatic way of saying. We reconsidered this, take a look at this, but I want to see, I think if we're going to do that. we should vote that that's what we, as a group, as a board, to do that or not do that. I think that's only fair because it feels close to me. But if we want to do that, we should take a vote to say we'd ask you to take a look at A different mass on it, it's still 5 or 2, but having something different and see if that if that if the consensus is there. Go ahead already and then we'll give the show on.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. I want to, I think, given this discussion, I'm mentally reframing this not as we concretely voted on. At 10 foot setback and 5 to. But that we had had a discussion about wanting to reduce the impact of shading and massing in this neighborhood and had looked at that model and we're like, yeah, the vibes are right. And what city council wanted us and the staff to do is operationalize the vibes into zoning language. So it seems to me that is what. The consultants did, and so it is, in fact, the 1st time we're seeing these numbers and languages, but they are off of the vibes that we all agreed to, which is entirely in spirit of what we're doing. So I have no objection to us voting that. We kind of this is what we're recommending. I think that Alicia's language is very reasonable, but I think thinking about this as us going through the process of. For lack of a better way of saying it, operationalizing the vibes. which is in our remit.
[Doug Carr]: Sean, did you have any follow-up comment?
[Sean Beagan]: No, Doug, I don't have anything.
[Doug Carr]: Dina, we've got to close this.
[Dina Caloggero]: I know. Last thing I'm going to say, I still would like to see it modeled at 2030. To go from 10 to 60, all of a sudden, I'd like to see how we got to 60 because it's so drastic. from what we originally agreed to. That's it.
[Doug Carr]: Oh, Emily, obviously we can't do that.
[Dina Caloggero]: I know you can't do it now, but it's drastic.
[Emily Innes]: I'm not sure it's going to give you the answer that you're looking for with respect, Dina. The 60 feet is just simply a story's depth. As I said, if you're doing residential, the standard double loaded quarter is 60 feet deep. You're not going to do 20 feet and then the rest because what you've got basically is a 20 foot depth apartment or 25 foot depth apartment, 25 foot depth apartment and the rest is hallway and maybe common space. So you round it up to 60 feet. Sometimes 64 if you start doing an increments of 10, it doesn't work for creating a floor as well. A developer is not going to want to do a single loaded quarter on a building like that. It makes the so you've either got it. The 10 feet back, which could be a balcony and you rearrange the units a little bit, or you've got a full floor. You're not really going to divide it up into sections. So that's why the 60 feet is if we didn't do the 10 foot setback, it's the entire floor. And again, it's just the difference between the base of five stories and the two incentive stories. So we just said for the purposes of this modeling, because we saw the impact of the shadow, let's just not make this section eligible for the incentive.
[SPEAKER_12]: John, go ahead.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I guess, I don't know. We have to move past this issue, obviously. Why don't, my suggestion would be majority of the board understood they voted on X. City Council, send it back to City Council. This is what we understood we voted on. Did you vote on the same thing? Or did you think you voted on something different? Because then we don't have consensus. And if they thought they voted on something different, maybe both boards need to revisit again. But if both boards understood they were voting on the same thing, I don't see any reason at this point after closing the public hearing that we would go back and revote what's a pretty, substantial issue, at least to this lot. I mean, I guess I could go, let's take it a step further and say, why don't we go revisit the shadow studies on all the lots and down in BA2? You know, it's, I just, I don't get it. I was surprised when I saw it. I watched the whole meeting again today. There's, you can't convince me that we voted on a 60 foot setback. at that location. You just can't convince me of it. No way. I know that there was just a misunderstanding that wasn't vocalized. I mean, I think that's what it was. There's a misunderstanding in the planning department versus what the board thought they were voting on. And that's how it got into this paper.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, I guess I'm less focused on the like. I think we weren't voting on concrete language at the time. I think we were looking at the images we were discussing and I think there was a discussion of we want to be. If I remember correctly, and I will say I did not rewatch this. that that was an area where there was interest in being cautious about the shadows and massing, and that we wanted to see what that looks like. So I am arguing, I think, not on the facts of what exactly did we vote for, but that part of this process is saying, hey, actually, when we do the math, I think it is very reasonable to say Having looked at it, we think that the spirit was actually. Plays out a different way, so I think it is worth flagging to them, not just as a point of fact, like, did you mean to vote for this? But like saying, like, hey, this is what we think. And what the professional staff think is. more in line with the final goals. And I really don't want to get caught in the like, what exactly did everyone know and intend in that moment? I think we could discuss that forever. I want to focus on what do we actually want to see in this moving forward and politely saying what it is we actually think. And if you don't think that's true, you're welcome to vote otherwise. I have been convinced that this is worth diplomatically suggesting.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, um, I think there has to be a way to send this to the city council saying that, you know, this is a obviously a point of contention, right? That we're a somewhat divided board on this. And there's clearly some people who want to stick with what we had, some people who want to do the 60 foot step back and thinking that they're both generally compliant with what we agreed to, but I think we have to put it on them to say, and this would, they'd have to see, I think, and that's exactly what we'd have to do, they'd have to see the shadows that we saw tonight and just decide, do they want to revisit this or not? I guess that's the only way I see forward, because I think we're quite, if I'm counting correctly, I'm seeing three and three right now, I'm not seeing consensus. So Alicia, do you think there's a way to thread that needle to make a recommendation to the city council that they take a look at this and that we have basically two options on the table, what we thought we voted for, and then what was, there's obviously enough groundswell for some support for the alternative, including among Danielle and yourself about the shadow impact and the study.
[Alicia Hunt]: I feel like Danielle's looking at this because she usually writes these, but I've jotted down a bunch of the phrases that you guys have all put out there. There've been a number of different phrases, and I feel like we could look to Natalie and Izzy to help us put together some language sort of explaining that there's not consensus and the recommendation. And Emily, do you think, could you have shadow studies? So if this is voted out tonight, the city council intends to pick this up on the September 15th, that's Tuesday, right? Correct. To have, for you to be able to show them the studies. It's going to be a long meeting that night because they haven't met in a month. And say, you know, the board recommends that you also take a look at this, some of the board thinks you should do the 60 foot, some things you shouldn't, you should do the full, but you all should be making an educated decision and not just voting. I feel like we could frame it, we could say it, and that we would run it by Doug and say, does this convey what you all were thinking?
[Unidentified]: John.
[Sean Beagan]: I would suggest we have a vote before we make that agreed to make that recommendation. Okay. So, um, I think someone, if someone wants to make that recommendation, make a motion to options, you make a motion to send it to the city council.
[Page Buldini]: I make that motion.
[Doug Carr]: Second exactly what are we recommending sending to the city council? Exactly what we should describe.
[Ari Fishman]: So, yeah, I'm, I think we are, or at least the motion I think I'm seconding is to summarize this disagreement as these are 2 reasonable interpretations based off of that discussion. The board is split. we are returning it as these are two ways of formalizing what we discussed. They can vote on which one they prefer. And we are making sure that it is clear to them that there is disagreement.
[Doug Carr]: Sure. All right. So that motion has been made and seconded. I'll call the roll. Danielle and Alicia, you're okay with this?
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, it is my expectation. We're going to run it by you, though, before we send anything. I feel like we would normally, but I, I feel like we might go back and forth on the language on this 1.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, and I think, okay, that's before we go before we vote. Can I just say something? I think it's a mistake to throw it back to the city council and say, we can't figure out what to do. I mean, that really cuts the ground out from under us. We should take a position, either we want to change it or we don't want to change it, or, hey, this needs further discussion. But to just throw it back to them and say, you guys decide, I think that sets the really wrong mindset. That's all.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry. Isn't that what you're saying? This, this needs further discussion. Like you guys don't need to discuss it with them some more. Some of you feel one way, some of you feel the other way. They should also think about it.
[John Anderson]: I guess I'm suggesting, I guess I'm suggesting we should try to make up our minds.
[Doug Carr]: If you do that, then there would be two interpretations and we take a vote on each.
[Ari Fishman]: I think that would be less appropriate in the spirit of not trying to make different decisions. I think this is a, there are like genuinely different interpretations, not just different opinions. Um, but I, I do hear what John is saying.
[SPEAKER_12]: Um,
[Danielle Evans]: We don't know what city council thinks the interpretation is. So you don't know if you're going against them or if you're going with them. I mean, I walked away with a completely different interpretation than Sean, than Dina, I think, and you, Doug, completely different, completely. So I don't know that city council, like, I have no idea what they think they voted on. I just know that I thought we were basing it off of what was modeled and shown to you. And that was what was shown to you. So I'm, I don't know. I'm just kind of like beside myself to be completely honest. I feel like maybe I wasn't there. Maybe did I dissociate? I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm dissociating now. I don't know. Sorry, it gets late. I get punchy.
[Emily Innes]: Oh, yeah, if I, if I may, Mr. chair, I think the idea that I heard at the beginning of this is your sort of collective role is the community development board in this meeting is to review what we wrote and decide is this is this consistent with what you heard. And what you thought you all agreed to at the meeting on the 24th. And what I think I'm hearing you say as that some of you are saying, we think this is consistent. And some of you are saying, we think this is not consistent. I would say, in my opinion, that it's appropriate to go back to City Council and say, we have a disagreement on whether or not this language is consistent with what we voted on the 24th. And I think that Director Hunt's alluded to it. I think Senior Planner Evans has alluded to it. I think that's a reason you're not abrogating your decision. Although I take Mr. Anderson's point, you're not abrogating your decision. You're just saying that there's not consensus that the text is accurately reflecting what we voted.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, John, thank you, Emily.
[Sean Beagan]: Honestly, I disagree. I think there is consensus among this board as to what we all thought we voted on, because when we started this discussion, at least five of us said, that's what I understood we voted on. Now, if the question is, there's some of us on this board who think something else is better, please take a look at this and let us know what you think. let's be clear what we're asking them to do, because I don't think there's confusion as to what we voted on. I think we know what we voted on, a majority of us do at least. If there is now something that is being proposed that is different clearly and better because it matches a drawing that was on a screen that wasn't in the verbiage of the ordinance we voted on, then that's fine, but let's just be clear what we're doing.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Sean. Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: I stand by, I did not vote on 60 feet as a specific thing in line, but I do think I've been clear about, we had a discussion about the concept and that was based off of that vision and these are the issues. I do actually think That there is not a, we clearly voted for this very specific thing. I think we had a shared understanding of a concept and the goal here is to. Change that into language, so I am what the people who say there is actually a disagreement on the interpretation. I do not agree with you, Sean.
[Doug Carr]: I think we can go back there. There was a motion made and there was seconded it. Are we ready to vote on that? I think we are, right? Okay. Could you repeat the motion, please? I wish I had the brain power to do that, but at the moment I don't. We're gonna need to take a break right after this vote, by the way.
[John Anderson]: I can't vote if I don't know what I'm voting on.
[Ari Fishman]: I didn't write it down. A motion as I described it is to, sorry, you did not write it down, is to summarize this discussion as two interpretations of that discussion and state that there is disagreement in the board, both about what it kind of was discussed as, as well as what it should be, and that we would like to understand how they interpreted it, both as what happened and what it should be, and that there should be an informed discussion with an understanding of that disagreement.
[Doug Carr]: How's that sound, John?
[John Anderson]: Okay.
[Doug Carr]: All right. To the motion. John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Sean Began. No. No. Paige Bodine. Yes. Dina Calagaro. You're on mute. Dina?
[Dina Caloggero]: Sorry, I've been trying to shut off the camera with the bandwidth. I vote no.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. Ari Goffman-Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. We'll send it to the council. We'll have to make sure that the language is as clear as it can be. I'm not sure how we can. All right, let's take a five-minute break. It's well past 8.30 normal time. And we'll circle back and we'll continue this conversation.
[SPEAKER_12]: All right, Talisha, shall we get going?
[Doug Carr]: All right, sorry that took so long, okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: You missed it, I played different music this time.
[Doug Carr]: I think we should move, I think we're done with the maps now, can we move to the text?
[Emily Innes]: Absolutely, Mr. Chair, would you like me to share my screen? All right, so I'm going to pull up the text just so everybody can see where we are. There's an opening memorandum, and then the sections we're looking at are the division into districts, overlay and special districts, zoning districts, table of use regulations definition, and then the actual neighborhood corridor district. What you'll see is that new text is bolded and underlined so that the changes that we made should hopefully be relatively easy to pick out. I'm just going to zoom in a little bit more so people can see this as we move. If you need me to change the zoom, just let me know. So I'm just going to go slowly through and call out each section. There were no changes in the table of zoning districts. and overlay in special districts, in zoning districts here with the BA1, 2, and 3. We get into the table of uses. There are a couple of minor changes as we go through here. So you'll see that we split out dormitory versus fraternity or sorority house. And the change from that, of course, is we have to renumber everything, which is why you see those in bold and underlined there. For dormitory, we left it. Let me just scroll up so we can see the areas. 1 and 2 are no and 3 is CDB special permit. Fraternity or sorority house are no in all 3 of these. I'll just pause there to see if there's any comments or questions. It's, it's, you know, I can't see your screen. Oh, can anybody else not see my screen? I've been able to see my notes. I'm going. Okay. So, do you know, you're the only one who can't see your screen now, but everybody else can see it. Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: Just check it on the, I can't see it. Maybe I'll on the top. You can click on Emily and this is screen or meeting. And are you accidentally clicked on meeting?
[Emily Innes]: Oh, yeah, it's on the very top. You'll see Zoom workspace on the far left corner. And then you see meeting and you, well, it says my screen, but for the rest of you, it should say Emily Ennis's screen. And you should be, if you click on that, you should be able to see the screen. You may have to maximize your screen. So it takes up the whole screen on your computer. If not, just so you know, we are on page 3 of the text.
[Dina Caloggero]: I have my notes, so I can just follow along. What are we on?
[Emily Innes]: We're on page 3, and we're looking at uses, dormitory. We've split dormitory and fraternity or sorority house. Any questions on those? Right, so then I'm going to move on to page right? Yeah, so I'm going to move on to page 4. We've added a new use purpose built student housing. Again, no in 1 and 2 and CD board special permit in 3. And I'll just continue on somebody shout out or raise their hand if they have a question. So again, anything that's not underlined, there was no change to that. slow down a little bit so I don't make us all dizzy.
[Doug Carr]: Emily, one quick question. There was a question about the, I think I saw a couple of questions raised about the buy right and about the parking ratio, the one per four beds. And I think the buy right, the community development board, you know, had special permit approval. The last meeting was two points.
[Emily Innes]: On the purpose-built housing.
[Doug Carr]: with a purpose built student housing.
[Emily Innes]: Yes. So it is one per four beds in the parking and it is not by right. It's community development board. So it's the special permit.
[Doug Carr]: And was, do you recall if there was a conversation about that at our June meeting? Cause I don't remember that, uh, that the conversation about really about either one, I'm not questioning either one. I'm just asking if there were, if you recall any conversation about it.
[Emily Innes]: I don't remember a conversation on the parking. I think we pulled the parking directly from dormitory because that was already one per four beds. So we just matched that up. I thought we had determined at the June meeting that it was going to be a special permit with the Community Development Board, but I would just actually like to call out The interns, Izzy and Natalie, for the amount of work they did in reviewing everything. So, you know, thank you certainly from me and my team on that. I don't know if Director Hunt or if I can direct questions on them, but I thought we had discussed it being a special permit from the CD board for purpose built student housing in three.
[Alicia Hunt]: That I feel like that was definitely something that we, it was something that went back and forth. And in the end, there was this concern that some developers were really professional, but that there was the potential here for developers to try and do a big money grab and a special permit would make sure that we could hold things accountable. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I think it was a guardrails question. That's right. We put more on what you said. Dina, did you have a comment on this? You're on mute.
[Dina Caloggero]: Having all kinds of technical problems today. OK, here I am. Maybe my screen will come on. I'm not sure. So on the purpose-built student housing, BA3, I think we went back and forth on that. So, how would that work? There would be a community development board approval before there was a site plan review. Is that a double check?
[Alicia Hunt]: No, I was that work together, but you would have more authority to say no.
[Danielle Evans]: Because it would be 1 meeting.
[Alicia Hunt]: I mean, unless they said they wanted to do special permit first. But frankly, you would ask for everything you would ask for in site plan review during the special permit anyhow. So it would be one meeting. It'd be the same thing. Right. Right. Right. But you'd have more authority special site plan review. You can't really say no. You can just put conditions on things and if they fight you on the conditions. You could lose whereas with special permit, you, you have more things you judge it on.
[Dina Caloggero]: Okay, but if they met all the requirements. Under the zoning for that, we would, we could give them the special permit as well as. you know, approval of the site plan review. I'm just trying to avoid more meetings.
[Alicia Hunt]: No, you would do it in the same meeting. That's actually why you would do a special permit from the CD board rather than a special permit zoning board. If you did a special permit zoning board, then they'd have to go to the zoning board, get approval, and then present to this community development board. By doing it with the CD board, it allows you to have one meeting, but you can have stricter standards. than if it was just site plan review.
[Emily Innes]: Okay. If I can build on that, they would have to meet the site plan review standards, the special permit standards, and as we'll see later in the text, there are use standards for purpose-built student housing that are within the proposed new zoning. So they would have to meet all of those in order to receive a special permit from the Community Development Board.
[Dina Caloggero]: Okay, and that would all be part of that 1 big meeting. Yeah, thank you.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I mean, I know after this meeting, I did receive a comment. From a member of the community related to this purpose built student housing and the. Whether there should be a community development board special permit or a by right. And. Their argument was that this is going to be reviewed by site plan anyway. So why make us get, why make us jump through the other hoop of the special permit where, you know, there seemed to be an opinion by both city council and the CD board that we wanted to allow this type of a use in that section. So I don't know if the other board members are interested in revisiting that at all. Um, but I did, hear that from the member of the public involved with this particular use. The difference being the special permit is a, the difference essentially being is that for a developer, the special permit is a bigger question and a bigger concern than site plan review. In other words, You can get turned down for a special permit, however unlikely that might be. You can get turned down for it. So it's really part of an investment analysis that people do when they're looking to invest in a piece of property. I don't know if anyone else on the board wants to debate that, but that's what that was brought to my attention. I see their point on that. I do. I think I, I understand their point. I don't know what the consensus of the board is, whether that's worth revisiting or not.
[Doug Carr]: Sure. Dina, you raise your hand.
[Dina Caloggero]: I mean, we did it with the setback on 60. We could also just bring it to the council's attention.
[Doug Carr]: But this is our board, right? I mean, I feel like we should make this, even more than the last one, we should make this decision. Go ahead, Ari, and then Paige after that. Ari? Okay, Paige, why don't you go?
[Page Buldini]: I just think with this being something that's new and it can be exciting and awesome, I like that for BA3 having the option to come in front of us. And so we figure this all out. I think the special department, I think the city board having the opportunity to talk about it is really valuable. I think it would be important.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. John Anderson?
[John Anderson]: Is the motivation of Taking away the special permit to sort of lessen the regulatory burden for the developer. Is that basically the idea? Give the developer greater confidence that their proposal will be approved? Is that the idea, Sean? That's the idea, John.
[Sean Beagan]: more confidence going into a project that you know you can do this. It's just a matter of what restrictions the site plan, you know, what conditions the site plan is gonna have as opposed to investing the money, getting all revved up or doing everything it takes to get a site plan and a special permit ready without no, and possibly getting denied the special permit.
[John Anderson]: I mean, because one way we could address that concern is allow developers to come before us with some preliminary plans so we can give them feedback before they do all the investment required for detailed architectural plans. Would that be of any value, Mr. Chair?
[Doug Carr]: I think we do that anyway. I don't think that, you know, site plan review, you've seen the joint come before us. They're not exactly CD level drawings. You know, so, you know, there's always a, there's always a gamble here about how much you invest. in a concept in terms of development, you need plans, elevations, and some, you know, some, you've seen the level of detail that we receive. I don't think it's dramatically different for a site plan versus a special permit in terms of the content of what they're creating. It's just, as Alicia alluded to, there's more there's more, we have more control with a special permit than site plan review. There's just an extra layer of guardrail. That's how I would describe it. I don't know if Danielle or Alicia disagree. Ari, you've raised your hand again. Maybe not. Ari, we can't hear you if you're speaking.
[Alicia Hunt]: No, we're not hearing you. She just messaged in the chat. You just yeah, yeah, she's in the chat. Okay, you may need to let me just maybe already in which your question was not.
[Doug Carr]: Can you read the chat? I don't have access to that on a separate screen.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think there was a clear discussion to increase the regulatory burden for this new contentious use. That that was the actual discussion that occurred was it's contentious.
[Doug Carr]: She's saying keep the special permit. Yeah, she's saying keep the special permit. which I guess I sense that Paige is agreeing with that. I don't know. Dina, did you agree with that?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah. No, just questioning why we needed to do it twice. But it seems like Alicia's answered the question.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Paige.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm sorry. Ari uses they, them pronouns, and we keep messing that up tonight.
[Page Buldini]: Ari, thank you so much. I was just going to say they had a really, really good point. And I agree. And I appreciate keeping that opportunity for the city board for BA3.
[Emily Innes]: OK. OK. Move on to the next one.
[Doug Carr]: Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : Well, I guess i'm not hearing another contestant to change it from the group i'm seeing in front of me is that that's my sense of it. Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : We already have one. Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : I guess alternative we're putting before the Council.
[Emily Innes]: We will also be revisiting this when we get to the youth standards. So I'll move on and if it comes up again, we can talk about it then. So just scrolling down to the next bolded and underlined area. That's why I'm moving through this. rapidly because I want to focus on the changes. Doggy daycare, we added in consultation with planning staff, we did add parking and loading requirements for doggy daycare. And we just looked in order to get to these, we just looked at similar use types to get a sense of what might work. And then plumbing or carpentry shops, sorry, this is page 9. On plumbing and carpentry shops and other similar service or repair shops, there was a little bit of back and forth on this. As I recall, a member of the public had indicated that it might be unfair to completely borrow this from the area as they could be useful. But we also discussed the fact that some service and repair shops might have more of an impact than others on the neighborhood. So the decision was to allow them in all three districts, but to allow them by special permit. I'll just keep going again, raise your hand, please, if you have questions or otherwise flag me. This was a discussion as well. So this is page 10, the renting of one or two rooms without separate cooking facilities to lodgers within a dwelling unit to one or two lodgers, two total lodgers. And the discussion was to remove the parking requirement of one per guest room and just make it not applicable. That there would be no additional need for parking here.
[Dina Caloggero]: And then that was the end of the table.
[Emily Innes]: uh, in definitions. Um, yeah, sorry.
[Sean Beagan]: Could you just scroll back up to page 11? I just had one question about, um, the parking, uh, this section here. So I just wanted to, um, clarify. So in the Boston Ave zoning, we have the minimum parking requirement reduction to 0.8 if they meet certain requirements. Does this affordable housing reduction to 0.5, that's not going to apply anymore in the Boston Ave zone? You can only do the point. So if people are doing affordable units, they're not gonna get the benefit of the 0.5 anymore. They can only get the 0.8. I just wanted to clarify that.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah, so this is because this is the the footnote that's in other parts of the zoning. So yes, it's just the 0.8 per dwelling unit. And then there was a comment. You'll see it later when we get to it. There's a comment from Mr. Anderson to repeat this in the appropriate section of the parking requirements. That's correct. It is interesting that Zero point that a reduction of parking is an incentive for affordable housing units because in many communities, people who live in affordable housing are more likely to need cars in order to get to their jobs. They may be doing shift work, or they may be doing they may be doing work. at times when public transit doesn't run. Either way, that is just a non sequitur of mine and a little aside. But this was in fairly early on. This has not changed, which is why it's not underlined. So it's just the residential parking requirements as noted below.
[Sean Beagan]: I think, I think the same language is in the Medford square. Yes, as well. I just, I just never, I never looked at it that closely I just wanted, you know, it dawned on me that that is coming out because I remember. that 0.5 parking space issue actually came in very handy for a builder on Salem Street. It kind of helped them get to where they needed to be.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah, no, it was it was pulled, as you say, from Edford Square right here, though. All right, just keeping going through. So definitions, the next one is we added, so we're amending section 9-12.0 definitions by adding purpose-built student housing, which hasn't changed, and then dormitory. We did check to make sure that sorority fraternity houses are actually defined in your current zoning. So this has been no change since June.
[Sean Beagan]: I had a couple of comments on this section that I had sent over. In the definition of purpose built housing, we're using some different terms than we're using down below in dormitory. In other words, so purpose built student housing, we have a building not owned or operated by a college or university. And then dormitory, we're using instead of college or university, we're using educational institution. Do you think we should have some parity there with that terminology? I don't think educational institution is not actually defined in our zoning ordinance. So I actually think, I don't know if I like that term better than college or university or vice versa, I know educational institution I checked today is not a defined term. And then we have dormitory is any dwelling. And then I think up in purpose-built housing, we're not using the term dwelling. I think we're using building. Yeah, that's right.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah. I'm just very quickly checking your current zoning. Just one moment.
[Alicia Hunt]: The definition here for dormitory is from our original zoning and we never changed it. Danielle and I had some thoughts that maybe we should change the language around that and. Fraternity sorority, but it really wasn't there didn't seem to be appetite for it every time we brought it up, it kind of people just OK and that thing ever. was actually changed. So I'm just saying that this dormitory definition is the old, old definition and purpose-built student housing may be using more modern language.
[Emily Innes]: Yes, agreed. I just double checked it and this is the same. I think we left it in here because we had been offering other options so much, but actually it should be crossed out because we're not actually modifying it with this zoning. This is the original and current dormitory definition. So, unless there's a change, we should remove this before it goes back to city council because it's not new.
[Sean Beagan]: My only my only comment would be that it contains terms that are not that are also not defined within zoning. I guess to the extent that. There was some, I don't think there'd ever be an argument over what an educational institution would be. Certainly, it's going to be not in the sense of a dormitory, but it's just something I picked up on, seeing the definitions back to back like that and seeing the different terminology. I'm just always looking for areas where there's going to be, you know, I'm thinking in my head, how would I make an argument? you know, to get around something.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry. I'm enrolled in Kumon and therefore I'm a student. I, you know, I go to the Japanese language school on Saturdays, therefore I'm enrolled in an educational institution.
[Emily Innes]: I'm a private K through 12 and I am a boarding K through 12.
[Sean Beagan]: That's what I'm saying. Educational institution can be anything you want it to be.
[Emily Innes]: This is where I'd like to go, though, is a purpose built student housing is for college or university dormitory might be for an educational institution. That's K through 12. you wouldn't necessarily do purpose built student housing for K through 12. So there could be a reason to keep them different.
[Alicia Hunt]: And in fact, Danielle, I think didn't the. The building behind St. Joseph's that was being used as a dormitory for students who were boarding here because of some hockey program that qualified as a dormitory, they were in fact high school or younger students. They were, yeah, Matanyan hockey players. Right, but they were in fact controlled by the educational institution, the entire building.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, but it was owned by the archdiocese, which also controlled the high school.
[Alicia Hunt]: But what we don't want is somebody to say sort of the opposite. So we wouldn't want somebody to say this is privately owned student housing. I'm sending my kid to Matignon. I should be able to book them a room there.
[Sean Beagan]: I think that would go to the definition of who a student is, right? Which is later on in the regulation.
[Doug Carr]: John, you have a question or comment?
[John Anderson]: Oh, I was just going to suggest that if we're concerned about the vagueness of educational institution, we might say accredited educational institution,
[Alicia Hunt]: I think the question is, are we going to, at this point in this process, edit the dormitory definition, which is in fact our original from our zoning? That if people are comfortable with the purpose-built student housing, then it would be perhaps a future recommendation when we're revisiting definitions.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, I certainly can go along with that. Do we have a list of definitions we need to review?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm trying to remember if Christian actually wrote that up for us or not. You know, because these things are a list of missing definitions. OK.
[John Anderson]: But I mean, for example, the whole thing about high density public transportation. We ran into that on Salem Street, and I don't know if we ever totally resolved it.
[Emily Innes]: We resolved it from Medford Square and for this one by referring to different definitions. So I think that's still out there for a city cleanup discussion, but it's not something that affects this zoning. Okay. Yeah.
[John Anderson]: I just get concerned that cleanup could be a long ways away.
[Emily Innes]: Well, in this case, I think for the dormitory, because educational institution and college and university aren't necessarily the same thing. One's a broader definition than the other. I would recommend that we cross this out because it's not being modified by the magic of word. I've just done that. And then that becomes part of perhaps a future conversation if that's agreeable to the board.
[Doug Carr]: I think that's good. Sean, are you okay? I want to continue to move on. Yeah, no, I'm fine. We can move on.
[Emily Innes]: Okay, great. Thank you. So now we get into the zoning itself for the Boston Avenue Neighborhood Corridor District. The purpose has not changed in applicability. We just wanted to have a definition of the two sub areas for BA2. And this really refers to the height and the step backs. We already talked about the map for it. So this is just the written text around why there is a difference. BA-2A is the one with the slightly higher height and therefore a little bit more growth opportunity. BA-2B is where we kept the height lower to be consistent and respectful of the abutting neighborhood. So that's just a change there. Then we move into the table of dimensional requirements. Now all of the height, so primarily the things that you see that have changed are the height. the setbacks. So the setbacks are at ground level and refer to how far back the building starts from a lot line and then the step backs. And what we did is we created the 2A and the 2B to govern the height differential there. That was the blue and the green in the southern portions. All of these heights were the ones that were voted on in June 24th. And the way the height is calculated is that the ground floor has a higher height to accommodate contemporary restaurant retail heights. And then the total, the upper heights are based on typical residential heights. So it gives a little bit of flexibility in there. Those heights were all discussed June 24th. In terms of the setbacks, the difference again is in 2a and 2b where we have a setback start instead of being either zero for the front setback and then a 20-foot up to a 20-foot maximum setback to keep that street wall going. If you remember on Winchester street, we wanted to have a deeper minimum setback again to protect the residential. So this is Winchester street variation. So the other reason for having to be. And then, as I mentioned, rather than having step backs in a footnote city planning staff suggested, and we agreed that they should be brought into the table itself. So it was very clear that these step backs applied. And so 6 story and above, that's when the upper story step backs come in. So those were the changes to this. Then we rationalized the numbering for the footnotes. It had gotten a little out of whack with the different variations. We clarified that the height exemption section further down just to make sure that those all lined up. And then obviously we've been discussing the 60 feet of North Street. In the front setbacks, it was a 10-foot sidewalk that was agreed upon in June. And also in the height transition to adjacent residential districts, there was an agreement to exempt the properties that abut the MBTA-owned rail right-of-way, provided that the additional requirements are met in this further section. under dimensional waivers. We changed the word height waiver to height exemption just to clarify. It still belongs in this section, but height exemption clarifies how it applies. We had a public comment on the energy efficiency that I think collectively we all felt was better wording and simpler wording than our original wording, so we kept that. It just allows for changes in technology around building energy use to come in over time without being too specific about what the technologies are now. I have a section where we don't have a lot of changes, so I'm going to just skim through here. The next one was the purpose built student housing. We had a lot of comments in here. So one of the things was to make sure that we use beds rather than bedrooms, because you might have different ways of breaking up beds in purpose built student housing. We had some questions and comments on what defined as non-student residency and how to calculate that. So, let me go first to beds and bedrooms, no fewer than 150 beds and no more than two beds per bedroom. Non student residency number of non students residents no more than 20% of the number of total residents documented at the start of each semester. We felt that anything more frequently with that would be too much of an administrative burden. reported to the city upon request. So, in other words, they have to keep the records. They don't necessarily have to turn them over until there's been a request. All student residents have to be enrolled at an educational institution in Medford or Somerville. Non-residential use, retail is allowed on the ground floor of the building. Inclusionary zoning, while the use is exempt from the requirements of inclusionary housing, it's also not eligible for the affordability incentives under development incentives. So that was important to call out. We had additional text on on-site professional management that clarified what that would be. So who's part of the management team, That student residents had to be held to the code of conduct established by their respective college or university and that the team had to establish a formal relationship with the host college or university to coordinate management issues. Meetings have to take at least place at least monthly and also be documented. A lot of these provisions came out, I think, from a community development board meeting, and then we worked with city planning staff to get the wording right so that we could all agree on the clarity. Annual certificate of occupancy, city board shall list a fee for the certificate and reviewed that annually. and then clarify that site plan review applies and that we would have additional required submissions for the operation management plan. Added to that was a waste disposal plan, description of duties and responsibilities of staff members by title, and the copy of the resident conduct planning policy and sample lease agreement. And then the conversion to non student housing was a big discussion because I think we'd approached it from a couple of different ways. So we agreed based on the comments that we heard through city staff from the community development board meeting. discuss it with city staff, Warren Smith did it. So it lays out, I think, a much clearer method of converting from student housing to non-student housing. It has to be an application to the Community Development Board. It has to meet the zoning requirements for the proposed new use. If it's not eligible for parking variances and must now comply for inclusionary housing, at the time of conversion. So that was a key piece. So you can't just say, hey, we had this parking for the purpose-built student housing. We had this number of, we didn't have to comply with the inclusionary housing, so we should do that. No. If you're going to convert to non-student housing, you have to require, you have to comply with the parking and inclusionary housing requirements at the time of conversion. So there's no incentive to build student housing and then automatically convert that to non-student housing after being granted some variances. And before I move on, any questions or comments on that section?
[Doug Carr]: Sorry, go ahead, Sean. You go first.
[Sean Beagan]: Go ahead, Doug. I've been speaking too much today.
[Doug Carr]: Honestly, no such thing. Emily, have you ever seen a conversion of this? Because I'm not aware of any student housing ever being converted to market rate. Have you ever seen that?
[Emily Innes]: No, thank you. I haven't. I've only personally worked with one project that involved purpose-built student housing. I haven't seen it. That's not to say that it, you know, couldn't happen at some point. I think, like, some things with zoning is you're trying to anticipate conditions that might happen, you know, 10, 20 years from now and at least set the parameters around it. But I have not actually seen it happen. Be interested if other people have seen that.
[Sean Beagan]: Go ahead, Sean. Um, yeah, before we do student housing, just one thing before I forget on the, um, dimensional table on the, the BA to be on page 14. Um, the, I just want to make sure I understand. So the, the minimum. The minimum setback for a BA to. be lot on Winchester street is 20 feet. That's the minimum now?
[Emily Innes]: That's correct, yes.
[Sean Beagan]: When I listened to the meeting, I thought the amendment was to go from not, so it would have been zero to zero. I thought it was changed to six, not 20.
[Emily Innes]: I don't recall that in our discussions with city staff, I think we all recalled a 20 foot setback, not a six foot setback.
[Sean Beagan]: All right, maybe if someone could just go, it's around on that meeting from 624, it's around the two hour and 53 minute mark. If someone could just relisten to that may just to verify that's what was voted on.
[Alicia Hunt]: Isabel saying that she believes it was six to 20. And I think that what we saw was modeled was 20 foot set back from the street.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I think that the conversation was around how much do they need to give a 12 foot sidewalk and be back here where the model is showing us. And if they need 12 feet plus six feet to be would be 20 feet, 18 feet back from the edge of the road, from the edge of the existing sidewalk to give a 12 foot sidewalk, that's okay. But right, we were trying to get at what do they need to give, but if the sidewalk is already 12 feet, and this is 12 feet from that sidewalk, or this is 20 feet from the sidewalk. So that's why there was a discussion of between six and 20 feet. In order to be set back to this point on the lot line that we're seeing in the model.
[Emily Innes]: We could certainly change it to 6 to 20 feet because the setback for the sidewalk, sorry, the sidewalk requirements would still apply.
[Sean Beagan]: I just think that again, this. I just think it's what we voted on, so I just want. I just want to make sure that what's in this ordinance is what was voted on at a public meeting and not something that in retrospect, people thought would work better.
[Emily Innes]: You can probably see on my screen, I'm just making a note to check the tape.
[Alicia Hunt]: Ari is saying, I don't think it was as small as six. I remember what Alicia is describing.
[Sean Beagan]: But I think what you're describing, Alicia, is a sidewalk that's 12, which is a separate provision, which they have to hit.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. If they have to give 12 feet for the sidewalk, they don't have to then give an additional 20 feet. Right. So they have to get it so that they are 20 feet from the lot line. Right.
[Dina Caloggero]: That includes a sidewalk of 12 feet. Right.
[Sean Beagan]: I just want to make sure we just put into writing what we voted on. And if, again, if there's a confusion as to what we voted on, let's clarify the confusion that we voted on.
[Alicia Hunt]: Isabel was saying to me in the motion, Isabel, did I not make you a co-host? And I can't find Danielle to make her a co-host. She fell off the call. In the motion, they did explicitly reference the six to 20. COB, Erika Vandenbrande-Hartman Center.: : Setback, though I'm not sure if they fully considered the sidewalk requirement in mind.
[Sean Beagan]: So six six feet minimum 20 feet maximum. That's what that's when you say six to 20. That's what that sounds like because it was zero to 20 and it's changed the six to 20
[Emily Innes]: And I'll know the 0 to 20 still requires that the sidewalk be put into place right on the other ones we just correct.
[Sean Beagan]: you may not, just because it says zero to 20, you may not have, you may not be building on your lot line if your sidewalk is four feet wide.
[Emily Innes]: Exactly. I think the concern as I recall the conversation is that even just bringing it to a 12 foot sidewalk was still a little bit too close for Winchester. So the goal was to have it set further back from that than the other properties.
[Sean Beagan]: I agree, that was definitely
[Page Buldini]: Purpose I agree to thank you only for saying.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, I, I agree, but I think we need to clarify from what was said is what the additional setback is.
[Emily Innes]: Okay, then we will do that and confirm the number.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah.
[Emily Innes]: Um, uh, so I've got the notes in there now, as you can see, we'll just double check that we've got the right numbers.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah.
[Emily Innes]: Okay, great. Sorry, everybody. I make you dizzy.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, my notes are different on that.
[Emily Innes]: All right. All right. So the purpose built student housing, were there any changes to the the wordsmithing that we did to bring in the community development boards discussions at their meeting into this language?
[Dina Caloggero]: OK, I think Sean did most of this language. It looks fine.
[Sean Beagan]: I yeah, thank you, Doug. I just a couple observations because some of this Yeah. Some of the language that's old. It is new language. Correct. Yeah. So. Right. Okay. So. In item C three C on page 19. Right. I believe right. So right now it says all student residents shall be enrolled in educational institution in Medford or Somerville. And I definitely remember that we discussed that. And the purpose was to get essentially tough students out of the neighborhoods, hopefully, and into this housing. After over the summer, I was thinking about this. My, I do have a concern that this, the way that this is drafted right now gives Tufts University quite a bit of leverage possibly over someone who builds this type of housing. If for example, it became their policy that we don't want our students living in that housing. whether they could legally enforce that or not. Whether they could legally enforce it or not, if they said it, it would have an impact. I do recall that the attorney for Tufts did stand up and speak at this meeting and kind of said, we as Tufts have a concern about this use. We're not too keen on it. We're still considering the proposal. So that kind of put in my head, This could, this might be a leverage point. We don't necessarily want to give tufts. So I don't know if we want to, I don't necessarily want to remove that language in its entirety or the essence of that language, because I still think that's, it gets at what we're trying to do, but I almost think perhaps there has to be, an escape valve for the community development board that's reviewing this that says that we can, these requirements in paragraph C are subject to review by the community development board at a site plan review.
[Doug Carr]: You want to give flexibility, Sean, to the board?
[Sean Beagan]: I think we need to give some flexibility there so that we don't have an unintended consequence given the amount of kind of weight Tufts throws around in that neighborhood.
[Doug Carr]: Paige, why don't you, you have a comment on this?
[Page Buldini]: Thank you. Yes, actually Ari had put it in the chat as I raised my hand too. So Ari, I can give you a sec. I do appreciate that, Sean. And I think it's really important that the city board is being mindful of Tufts, but I do know it was also for non-Tufts students and faculty too. So I think that it could go both ways. But I do want that to be really clear that we are trying to find valves as well to get students out of the neighborhoods. So maybe that percentage is higher. And Ari, if you want to speak to this too, I think the comment that you made is really great. But I think we need to be really mindful that Tufts University is what we're trying to drive over here to.
[Doug Carr]: Ari, can you speak or are you still going through the chat?
[Emily Innes]: Their comment is in the chat. I can see it and read it if you like.
[Doug Carr]: If you don't mind, Emily, that would be helpful.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah, absolutely. They say, I remember us allowing up to x percent of non-Medford Somerville students, possibly up to 20%.
[Doug Carr]: And that's what's in this paragraph. What John is arguing, I think, Patrick, is you want them to be flexible.
[Emily Innes]: So the non-student resident shall be no more than 20% of the number. But all student residents shall be enrolled at an educational institution in Medford or Somerville. So then the question, I think this, Sean, I think you mentioned earlier that the who is a student might become a discussion. And so.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, so a couple of things I think we could maybe tweak. to avoid, help try to avoid the issue that I'm a little bit paranoid, I guess, about is changing perhaps in the first line, the word non-student residence, and just change that to non-student residence. so that it can be up to 20% of, that 20% could include perhaps students who are not students in Medford and Somerville. In other words, it could include non-students, but also students who are not in Medford or Somerville.
[Emily Innes]: Up to 20% of residents may be either non-students or students of educational institutions, not in Summerville or Medford. something like that?
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, something like that I think would provide a little bit of leeway and then maybe just like I said, a sentence at the end that just said that we still have some review power over this section in case three years from now when you're ready to do a site plan here, you know, things have changed over in that area or with Tufts, so to speak. I mean, what if Tufts builds all the student housing they want on the rest of their property? I don't know if that's feasible. But what if they got to a point where they were housing all their students on campus?
[Alicia Hunt]: Graduate students. Yes. They have no intention of building graduate student housing, and they have no room to build graduate student housing. And their graduate student population is larger than their undergraduate population. Right.
[Sean Beagan]: I was thinking of that as well.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right.
[Page Buldini]: I just want to make sure Ari is commenting, so I just want to make sure that we're seeing their comments, please.
[Emily Innes]: I can read them or somebody else can read them. Whichever you prefer. So, there's a couple in there and it starts with, I think C is not accurate to what we agreed on and I also am okay with universities and developers pushing against each other. Both have a lot of power and interest in the situation. Next comment, was it 20% or 10% that I don't remember and could see an argument for either, but I don't feel confident it was 20. I would like that reconfirmed and or rediscussed with council. And if Tufts builds all that housing, then the developer doesn't build. And I think that was right about the time that you were all discussing graduate students as well as undergraduate is when that last one came through. And correct.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I'm looking. I guess my comment was further future looking. What happens if something changes in the future that we're not anticipating now?
[Emily Innes]: I wanted to address that because I don't, I'd have to think about how that could be worded. I think your choice at that point was you might have to go back and change the zoning. I don't think you can put, Talking off the top of my head, I'm not sure you can put a provision in here saying that the Community Development Board can change that percentage without actually going back to change the zoning.
[Sean Beagan]: If it was in this, if we put it in the zoning though, why wouldn't we be able to?
[Emily Innes]: How would you word the in 5 years we can come back and change that 20% to something else?
[Sean Beagan]: I would I would just say that the that the provisions could be reviewed either at site plan or by future application of the owner. Party and control the property.
[Emily Innes]: So you put in a waiver require allowance for that. I think so. I think the thing here that's going on is and also before I finish my sentence, I just want to note that Ari stated that they joined with their phone and could Alicia allow. them to unmute. I think the key thing on this is this paragraph is requiring a documentation. So it's not a, it's something that could become a condition of a site plan review. that by the way, you have to document that no more than 20% of your population is meeting the standard. I guess the waiver would be that you have to document that no more of than X percent, whatever X percent would be. The question is, would the board want to establish an upper limit for a waiver like that?
[Alicia Hunt]: Do you mean like the board could waive this up to 30% if upon application by the owner and presentation?
[Emily Innes]: Something like that, yes. And I just heard Ari speak.
[Ari Fishman]: I was just asking for you to re-say that because I had been trying to deal with the technical issue during part of it. I worry that if we say that explicitly, that feels like tacit permission to say, it actually is 30% and that feels really different than what we were discussing. And I am a little thrown by earlier, like what we agreed on was set in stone and now we're kind of changing it. And I'm open to changing things, but I don't think explicitly saying 30% is something that we're like, even having an explicit process and expectation of. I think that is not in spirit of what we wanted and I would certainly argue against it.
[Sean Beagan]: I would agree with that. I would agree with Ari. I don't want a specific upper limit percentage. I just want, I would just say that I think caution would. would want to allow us to revisit this if situations changed that we're not anticipating. And all of a sudden, getting 80% tough students into this building became very difficult, but they could do it with some other amount. And if it was a legitimate reason, such as, Tufts has told their students not to live at such and such. And that's what's being said. And we're hearing this from all sorts of students. They don't want us applying here. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I'm saying it's not out of the realm of possibility.
[Emily Innes]: And I completely understand the desire for the flexibility and to be able to address this. My concern is by putting it in the zoning without having some sort of parameters around it, you end up creating something that's It's very discretionary and not measurable and so that's why if you're not comfortable putting in a waiver with an upper limit or some sort of guidelines around it, then I would say that what should happen is if that comes to pass. it maybe becomes a zoning change at that point where you have the evidence that it's happened and that argues for the flexibility. I'm just nervous about, in all the discussions, you all in the city council have been so careful to create measurable standards. I don't want something to become unmeasurable at this point is my concern.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Emily, Tina, why don't you go next and then Ari after that on the phone.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, sure. Go ahead, Tina. I agree with Sean, but we can revisit the zoning again and make changes to it, right? Is there any timeline and when we need to review the zoning to go back to it? Because I do agree with Sean. I remember the attorney from Tufts saying he raised an eyebrow. I'm not very happy about this proposal about the idea of purpose-built student housing. So we could go back, but we just have to go through the whole track again.
[Doug Carr]: It's not something we couldn't do. I mean, this is direct competition with Tufts, right? That's the idea of this. And so they obviously don't want it because they've got a product down the street that they want to fill. You know, I mean, it's pretty obvious. Sure.
[Unidentified]: All right.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead. Unmute.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes, thank you. If a private for-profit development is not financially feasible within the explicitly and carefully created guidelines of City Council and the CD board, then they're welcome to either come to us or fold. But we came to these decisions with public comment and in the public interest. I don't think it's appropriate to try to make it easier for them right now. I think that's wildly out of spirit of both the specific discussion of this development. I think it's out of spirit of what this overall process is. And I'm not at all comfortable with it. If they can't make it work, then they can't make it work. That is frankly not my problem.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, thank you. All right, John Edison, go ahead.
[John Anderson]: I guess my question is, isn't zoning rather time-consuming to change? I mean, if we could say there's a problem, we'll change the zoning. Well, we could suggest something to the city council, the city council could debate it. Even after it gets approved, don't these changes have to be reviewed by the attorney general? I mean, it's hard to, no, good.
[Emily Innes]: That is for towns. Once town meeting adopts zoning, it has to go to the attorney general for review. The process is different for a city. Once city council adopts it, it is adopted.
[John Anderson]: That's because we're so wise here in the cities, I guess. Anyway, but even still, is it not a rather time-consuming process?
[Emily Innes]: When you're doing the level of adopting new districts, obviously, right, you're doing planning, you're doing the engagement around it. If it's a tweak like this, I would assume that the process in Medford has been to include discussions to the public and that would happen, but you're not changing the entire, you're not bringing in an entire new district, you're talking about one specific So I would expect that it would take less time than bringing in an entirely new district.
[John Anderson]: What would be a reasonable timeline for making even a small change? I mean, a week, a month, three months?
[Alicia Hunt]: john there's a legal hearing process right so if the cd board wanted to say we have a new uh we want to you know new definition for dormitory here we've drafted it the cd board can make only certain people can start a zoning change a property owner um the cd board the city council The CD board can make the recommendation to the city council, here is a zoning change we want you to adopt. Then the city council in a public, in their regular meeting, has to refer it to the CD board. We then have to notice a public hearing. We have to notice it for two weeks before you can hold it. So now you've just put us out basically three-ish weeks from that city council meeting in order to literally do it, as an absolute minimum. Then you have your public hearing, maybe it goes very smoothly because it was your idea in the first place. You recommended to the city council that they adopt the thing that you referred to them. And then they have a public hearing, and that has to be noticed for two weeks. We've been shortcutting that by noticing them together, but then it has to go back to the city council for their public hearing. And then they can adopt it. If you were really doing something that everybody agreed on, it was really simple. You could notice a joint public hearing. And so there's three weeks, right? You meet together. The board says, we recommended this to you. Here we go. Y'all hear from the public and they vote. That would be lightning, right? That would be like the legal minimum.
[John Anderson]: That would be three weeks total.
[Alicia Hunt]: That would be crazy, but it would be legally the minimum. If you had the joint public hearing and everybody agreed on it.
[SPEAKER_12]: Once like anything that talks about how much we love joint hearings, but let's assume a month or two, it's a bit more realistic.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. Yeah. But not a year. Right. Five or six weeks. Okay. Thank you.
[John Anderson]: I just think we should bear that in mind when we say, well, we can go back and revisit this.
[Emily Innes]: It is not as long as say a town would take with town meeting where you have to go through, you know, you have to bring it forward for the warrants. You have to have the public hearing of the planning board. you have to bring it to a town meeting and have them vote. That's typically, again, if everybody agrees, it's probably a six month process rather than a two month process. That's why I say at a minimum, that's why I say City Council form of approval is faster than a town meeting. Thank you. Yep. So, on this, just to confirm, we're going to change that first sentence to start with up to 20%. This is what's on the table for discussion, as I understand it. Up to 20% of residents may be either non-students or students of educational institutions, not in Medford or Somerville, to be documented at the start of each semester and the rest of that. Is that correct? Is that where we are?
[Ari Fishman]: That was my, I think so.
[SPEAKER_12]: That's my sense of it.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I believe that that's intended to say, this is just saying it more clearly. Yeah. Not changing the meaning here. We're just using more words so that it's not confusing.
[Emily Innes]: In fact, I'm going to have trouble. That's correct. Okay.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. All right, let's let's move on.
[Emily Innes]: All right. Are there any other changes to the purpose built student housing or any other clarifications? Rather, I should say to the purpose built student housing section.
[Doug Carr]: John Anderson, what do you got?
[John Anderson]: What does student residence shall be held to the code of conduct established by their respective college or university? What does that really mean and who holds them to that code of conduct?
[Emily Innes]: So the, as I understand it from the changes, this came out, I believe from the city board meeting, the code of conduct, all institutions, educational institutions, including college or universities, I believe have a code of conduct, certainly now mine did, that they have to abide by. And so then this case, because this is part of onsite professional management, the requirement of the management team, those would be the people holding them to their code of conduct. As I have seen it in the one project that I was involved with, it's included in their lease, basically, that they would have to abide by their code of conduct, which means that any infringement is a violation of their lease.
[John Anderson]: My understanding is that most colleges and universities, they have a code of conduct that also applies to students living off campus. So that would be what would apply to the students from Tufts or whatever other institution they came from. So that sort of makes this redundant, except it's kind of putting a marker in the ground, right?
[Emily Innes]: It allows you to make it a condition.
[John Anderson]: My other question is, it talks about the manager management team, formal relationship, meet monthly with the university. With the host college or university. So if there were students from more than one college or university, the management team would have to meet with each of those colleges or universities on a monthly basis. Sorry, go ahead. And if the college or university wasn't really interested in having their students live there, and they just refused to schedule meetings, where would that leave the management team? I'm sort of speculating. You know, we said, well, maybe Tufts might not want their students living there. This is competition. This would seem to give them a way of making it less likely that their students would sign leases there. You know, I mean, what would happen if they didn't have monthly meetings?
[Doug Carr]: I mean, my sense, John, is if the university or college would not cooperate, I don't think our intent of this board is to give them veto power over this project and it would be null and void. So, I think that's a protocol that can be worked out. I know I understand your intent, but I don't think It's a deal breaker, frankly, it's just, you know, that's another guardrail we're putting on here because it's a new student type, a new building type in Medford that we're cautious about. We've obviously both the council in this board have gone out of their way to add this to this zoning because we want to explore the possibility, the potential of this being used. But we're being careful, and this is just one more thing. I just don't think this is any kind of veto power, if you will, if somebody would refuse to participate. I don't see it that way. I'm not sure you're saying that, but that's what I'm hearing.
[John Anderson]: I guess I'm just suggesting that he. For the people in the dormitory.
[SPEAKER_12]: Right.
[Doug Carr]: OK. Sean, you have your hand raised. Is there another thing here on student housing?
[Sean Beagan]: No, the two things that I was going to speak to are the two things that John just asked about. I think there is an open-ended. I think John rightfully pointed out there's an open-ended question as to what happens if the college does not want the formal relationship that is required in this ordinance. So you could probably modify that sentence. just to say that, you know, modify it such that, you know, if the college was amenable to such a relationship or, you know, something like that, because if they don't want to, then to John's point, okay, what happens then they have to request, they have to somehow get a waiver from that requirement. And then just a, in terms of the lettering for section three. So paragraph 19 stops with F and then it goes to A, B, C again. So I think, I don't know if A, B, and C were supposed to be subsections of F or if they should be, if that has to be, if there's subsections of F that it should probably be Roman numeral one, two, and three. Instead of continuing with letters, if it's separate letters, it just needs to be sequential.
[Emily Innes]: I will check. We were given a format to make sure it was consistent with. I'll just double check that that was the format. But yes, you can see that they're inset from F. I don't remember if the format had that going to the little i, 1, 2, and 3. or something else, but I'll double check the format.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, it's the same with the same with H now further down below.
[Emily Innes]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: And can you, Emily, can you just like a little bit of language there about, you know, yeah, the cooperation of the institution, just something there to kind of make sure that that's desired.
[Emily Innes]: Seek to establish or yeah, seek to establish or Um, cooperate, we can work on that in addition to my spelling. And I'm also going to check format. Um, seek to establish, um. I think the formal relationship came out of the what we heard from the community development board. but seek to establish, shall seek to establish probably gives the most flexibility if that's something you all are comfortable with.
[Doug Carr]: Sounds good. Ari, you have a comment?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes, I feel fine about seek to establish. I think it's fine not to give the university veto power, but I will flag that. The universities do usually have an interest in kind of keeping an eye where large numbers of students congregate, especially in designated locations. And if they refused to at all engage, that's something that we would want to know about and keep an eye on. So I don't know what the kind of action with that is. I am OK with seek to establish, but that would be very jarring and frankly out of character having worked at Tufts and a number of other educational institutions.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. Thank you. I appreciate the comment.
[Sean Beagan]: Doug, I just had one more question now that I think about it. Doug froze.
[Alicia Hunt]: You guys overlapped. Doug is frozen. Doug was saying let's move forward while Sean was saying I have another comment, and I think that that was unintentional.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, just my last comment on this section is in the bottom of page 20I, and it goes on to page 21. Just what was the basis or the thinking behind saying that if the development had to convert to some non-student purpose-built student housing, why would they not be eligible to seek a parking variance?
[Emily Innes]: So it's not if they had to convert, it's if they wanted to convert. So it's their choice as to whether or not to convert. My understanding as we were talking with the planning staff, and also I think some of this may have come from the CD board, there were conversations around it, so I don't remember the exact, but the idea was they would have to abide by the parking requirements, which include shared parking that is allowed in this area. but they would have to abide by the parking requirements and the inclusionary housing requirements at the time of conversion. They would not be eligible for the parking variances that would be allowed for student housing. So that's all. So whatever use they come up with, they would have to meet that use. There are allowances for doing shared parking and other parking reduction, but they wouldn't, which they'd be fine for, they just wouldn't be allowed to have any variances on parking.
[Sean Beagan]: All right, so the way our zoning ordinance is currently written under parking, if they came before, let's say they changed uses and maybe they had to come before Community Development Board again for a site plan review. We have the authority to pretty much do whatever we want to with parking the way our zoning ordinances are currently written. So you're saying this, they would not be able to, we would not be able to do that in this case?
[Emily Innes]: No, they would have to abide by the, so I'm just gonna skim down, sorry guys for making you all dizzy again, but let me just skim down to the past development standards, instead of parking standards. Here we go, reductions to parking space requirements. These are not variances. These are development standards for parking that allows you to reduce. They would be eligible for these. This is not a variance. They just wouldn't be eligible for any actual variance, the parking requirements. They would have to meet the parking requirements in this zoning.
[Sean Beagan]: Okay, so they couldn't go to the ZBA and get a variance, that's all we're saying here, but they could come to us and we could give them whatever relief we thought was proper.
[Emily Innes]: Whatever relief, as long as it's within this zoning ordinance, they could have that relief.
[Sean Beagan]: What I'm saying is outside of this bank ordinance, there's another ordinance in the larger statute that basically says community development board can waive parking requirements. That doesn't apply anymore?
[Emily Innes]: That doesn't apply to this ordinance. Same thing with Edwards Square is the requirements of that larger ordinance. There's a portion of that larger ordinance that's superseded by the language in this zoning ordinance. We'll get to that when we go to the parking. They would have to abide by this ordinance. I'm sorry, I'm going to make you all dizzy slightly again. Any other questions or comments on purpose-built student housing? Seeing none, I'm going to move forward to the next time. Okay, so the next big one, I'm sorry, this part should have actually been underlined. That is my fault. As you may all remember, the city staff were working on some modifications to the affordability section. There were concerns that the original math that was put in was not leading to the outcome for allowing the incentive that was originally intended. So this is the new recommended development incentive bonuses for affordability. So that's 1a deeper affordability and 1b more affordable units. And we put in at the recommendation of planning staff an example of how the math would work so people could understand it. I thought it was very useful. So that's just to say that this is consistent with the recommendation from city planning staff, which I believe is going to be eventually applied to all of the zoning districts that had the original affordable incentives, correct? So that will make them all consistent. but this is the first one. Okay. Yep. All right. I think we're fine. Excellent.
[Emily Innes]: You are breaking up a bit there chair Carr, but I think I understood you to say that you'd already discussed that at a previous meeting. No changes to design guidelines or development standards, which is correct. Okay, great. Thank you. Skimming through that. Now I've skimmed so fast it's hung up. Okay, parking. So this was a comment that came through to city staff that was passed on This sentence here where it says the residential parking required may be reduced to 0.8 parking spaces per unit. Mr. Anderson had sent in a comment to city staff suggesting that we refer back to section 94-3.2c, which was table A, footnote 4. That's the table of dimensional standards. just to make sure that there was a cross-reference between the two sections of the zoning. I think that's a great idea. So I've added the text in here saying per section 94, et cetera, et cetera, the residential parking requirement may be reduced just so there's a consistency between those two sections. So they now refer to each other, basically. The other recommendation that came from the Community Development Board, yourselves at a previous meeting, was joining a local transportation management association at a partner level or higher membership to be renewed annually. So they couldn't just join at the lowest possible membership level. No changes from there. I saw the hand go up.
[Sean Beagan]: Oh yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. So I just want to make sure I, I'm looking at page 30, is that where we are with 94-9? Okay.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Sean Beagan]: So it says this section supersedes 94-6.1.9. Yep. Okay. So, and replaces it with this section. Correct. Maybe I'm missing pages here, maybe I didn't print. Is there a section that says that 94-6.1.10 is superseded? No, I don't think we have that superseded, no. Because that's the section that I believe says that we can waive parking requirements or to basically do whatever we want with parking requirements.
[Emily Innes]: Okay, in that case, Director Hunt, I'm going to ask you, let's hash this out because that I don't believe rises to the variance that we were talking about, but I just want to make sure that we're on the same page. And I think I've got it open on my end too.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm looking at my book at the numbers. It's 6.1 point.
[Emily Innes]: I'm also doing the same thing. Special part special permit to waive or reduce requirements.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think it's 94 619 is shared parking and 6110 is special permit to waive or reduce requirements. Right. That's what
[Sean Beagan]: That's what I'm talking about, yeah. I'm just trying to get clarification if that section still applies overall to them.
[Alicia Hunt]: It gets very confusing because wasn't that specifically if student housing is changing to regular multifamily, then we're saying they shouldn't be allowed to get parking variances. However, this is saying for all of Boston Ave, shared parking is not as it says in 619, shared parking is as it says here, 989. So this one here is about all of Boston Ave.
[Sean Beagan]: Right. No, I understand the difference. I guess what I'm trying to understand is I thought what Emily had said a few moments ago was that our power to waive parking was gone and now we were going to be held to these regulations. And I don't see that in this regularly. I think we still have that power to grant a special permit if we want to, whether someone's applying in the Boston Ave corridor or any other corridor in the city. And I just want to make sure we still have that power because I think it's gonna be an important power going forward on zoning applications.
[Emily Innes]: So my understanding, this is a special permit by the CD board. That's not the same thing as a variance. The language prohibits variances. That's how I as a planner would read it, right? But this gets to be my moment in the conversation where I point out I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I read it as a planner.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll have to say that I don't fully remember how we came to that specific thing, but our big concern was that somebody would use the student housing as a backdoor to create multifamily housing with significantly reduced parking saying they were going to do student housing. And after one year, they were going to say, oh, it turns out we can't fill this with students. Turns out, look at that. Now we have a multifamily building. And we didn't want it to be a backdoor.
[Sean Beagan]: I hear you. I agree.
[Danielle Evans]: So that's absolutely my concern. And that's why I'm very concerned with having some guardrails on this. The more you erode who can live there, it starts to look like multifamily housing. but with no affordable requirements. These will count as year-round housing stock. So it will be added to our denominator and will lower our percentage of affordable housing in the city. So it'll be very hard to achieve safe harbor with you know, hundreds of units added with none eligible for the SHI. So when it starts to look more like multi-family housing or like a loophole, I'm just becoming like more and more uncomfortable with this. This doesn't feel like what was discussed.
[Sean Beagan]: I don't think we've changed that much on this actually in our discussion tonight. But my bigger question was not as to this specific that my bigger issue and I got us off track. So I apologize. My bigger issue was not as to the waiver of parking ordinances for student built housing. My bigger issue was I thought Emily said the CD board was losing a power that it had under the general broader statute. I just wanted to clarify that we didn't lose that power on Boston Ave.
[Emily Innes]: Apologies if I gave that impression. No, I was speaking solely to the student housing.
[Doug Carr]: We're coming up on four hours here. Ari, you have a comment, but I think Dina is about to leave soon because we're getting, I think we're close to the end here though, aren't we?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, I have an inspection very early in the morning. I have to go to Worcester. So I was trying to get an estimated time. Yeah, I hope we're close.
[Doug Carr]: I think we are. Ari, did you have a quick comment?
[Ari Fishman]: Very quick, when we had talked about joining the transportation authority, we had said whatever that level or equivalent or higher so that if they change the names of their memberships, we don't have to change the zoning.
[Emily Innes]: Thank you. Thank you. And then I will just quickly double check to make sure there's no other. Yeah, that was it. That was our last change.
[Doug Carr]: So. Okay. So I presume the next step would be a motion to approve this final version of zoning as amended. There's obviously a little bit of wordsmithing here that we weren't doing live, but I think the genesis of, we have the essential pieces here. Is that reasonable? assessment after, after, well, it's been three hours on this one. If so, I'll annotate a motion to approve as, as edited. The zoning in front of us.
[Emily Innes]: Just, is it approve or is it recommend to the City Council?
[Doug Carr]: I guess technically we're recommending it. We're, we're, we're approving recommendation.
[Dina Caloggero]: Right, we're approving the recommendation.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. Do I have a second? Seconded. Thank you, John. Roll call. John Anderson. Yes.
[Sean Beagan]: Sean Deegan. Yeah, just before I vote, just a point of clarification. So we're approving where we're voting to recommend this ordinance as we edited it tonight with the carve out for the earlier vote on the BA3. In other words, we didn't edit BA3. We didn't edit anything in BA3. We've sent it back to city council. Should we clarify? I just want to make sure the record's clear as to what we're voting on, because I know people have a real concern about what is going to be, what we're recommending on BA3.
[Page Buldini]: Thank you, Sean. Can we clarify that? Can we have them, can we get that, I don't know, that clarification and then vote? How does that work?
[Alicia Hunt]: I clear your. Oh, do you have it, Emily?
[Emily Innes]: Yeah, I copied. Thank you for putting it into the chat. I'm just scrolling up to it. I copied it out into this text here. To summarize, this discussion is two interpretations of that discussion, state those disagreement in the book. I know you're going to clarify the actual worded recommendation, but I do have it attached to the language here.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, so the recommendation will be a memo from Danielle that we will help her with that. I'm Emily's going to need some assistance. It says the board went through. There were some edits. You know, this is the recommended version. Emily will be prepared to present it to the city council. Sorry, Emily. At this particular section, we will put this language around it that we want you to look at it, that this isn't a, you must do it this way or that. This is a, we'd like you to look at the images, the shadow studies, and think about what did you actually mean back then and what do you actually want it to look like going forward.
[Doug Carr]: And I think to do that, you have to have both versions modeled. I think that's what we didn't have, obviously, but I think that would give them the tools, the visual tools. You guys don't need to put that into this text, but as a procedural thing, and I know you'll have 13 days to prepare that, so that should be okay.
[Emily Innes]: I will talk with the team about what we can do before then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[John Anderson]: Can I just ask, we're putting the developer incentive review aside for tonight. Is that correct?
[Alicia Hunt]: The developer what?
[John Anderson]: The developer incentive review.
[Alicia Hunt]: The credits. Yeah.
[John Anderson]: Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: So my recommendation on that would be to do that separately from this. Sounds good. Affordable housing is in here and that What I think we should do is to say, bring those changes. We, the staff bring those changes to the board, maybe at your next meeting and go through them with you. And then, you know how I said earlier that the CD board can recommend a zoning change to the city council. Then you actually refer it to the city council for review and change throughout the whole document.
[John Anderson]: Sounds great.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think we could do it in the next two months, like the whole process. So you had a motion half on the table. Danielle has her hand up. I'm sorry.
[Danielle Evans]: I got booted from the meeting twice. Was that paragraph deleted about the historic preservation with the The part about the demo delay.
[Unidentified]: Yes. Okay. Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Yep. Okay. So back to the motion on the table. John, John Edison, you already said, yes, Sean, we popped you. Are we voting? I guess I thought we already started with that. Okay. Go ahead, John.
[Sean Beagan]: I'm voting yes to approve the edits that we made and to forward those edits to city council.
[Doug Carr]: Yes. Page Buldini.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Calgaro. You're about to go.
[Ari Fishman]: Okay, thank you, Dina.
[Doug Carr]: Have a good night. All right, Goffman and Fisher.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. Pass six to zero. We're clearly at the end of our line here. I think we just need to, if there's no other items we can take up at this late hour, any agenda items, we should just have a motion to adjourn.
[John Anderson]: I move we adjourn. Second.
[Alicia Hunt]: PB, Lupita D Montoya PB – she-her, she-her. PB, Lupita D Montoya PB – she-her, she-her. PB, Lupita D Montoya PB – she-her, she-her.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, so before we adjourn, a motion to continue the public hearing to what was the date again, Alicia?
[Alicia Hunt]: Danielle, am I right? The 16th, that's two weeks from today.
[Doug Carr]: Two weeks from today, right?
[Alicia Hunt]: I want my calendar open. Yeah, 16th.
[John Anderson]: So moved. Second.
[Doug Carr]: John Anderson. Yes. Sean Began. Yes. Page Buldini. Yes. Tina Calgaro, somehow still here. Or maybe not. Ari Goffman-Fishman.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. Motion to adjourn. So moved.
[Ari Fishman]: Second.
[Doug Carr]: Second. John Edison. Yes. Sean Began. Yes. Page Buldini.
[Page Buldini]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: I dare you to vote no, Page. Dina Calgaro. Gone. Ari Goffin-Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, yes. Motion passes. Good night, everyone. We'll see you in a couple weeks.
[aBgYkA4WX0I_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you all. Recording stopped.
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