Let's see, so I'd like to call this the October 19th meeting of the Town of Arlington Redevelopment Board to order. Please let me confirm that the open meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020 due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the Governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. For this meeting the Arlington Redevelopment Board is convening by Zoom as posted in the Town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by recording. So first permit me to confirm that all members of the Redevelopment Board are present and can hear me. I'll take roll call to confirm. Kim? Yes. Eugene? Present. David? Present. Katie? Present. And Rachel, I am here as well and our staff members who are joining us tonight are Jenny? Here. And I believe Erin is joining us tonight as well. Here. Great. Do we have any other staff joining us this evening? Great. No, we do not. Great. Thank you, Jenny. So I'd like to open the first item on our agenda, which is docket number 3633-1500 Mass Ave. This is a continued public hearing for to review the application filed on July 27, 2020 by 1500 Mass Ave LLC at 1500 Mass Ave in accordance with the provisions of MGL Chapter 40a, Section 11, and the Town of Arlington Zoning By-Laws. Do we have, who do we have representing the applicant tonight? We have Robert Anesee presenting and accompanied by Monty French, the architect, Emily Driscoll, the designer, and Darren D'Anushi, one of the developers. Wonderful. Would you like to start, Attorney Anesee? Yes. Great. Actually, I'm sorry. Before I have you kick off, Jenny, did you have anything that you would like to add from a staff perspective? Apologies. I think further to add, just how this proposal has been updated based upon my memorandum to the board. And I think we'll hear more from the applicant. I know there are some questions about those materials, so we'll get to that. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Jenny. All right, Attorney Anesee, please continue. As you know, we had a hearing with respect to this matter some time ago, some weeks ago, and we had a lot of comments. And I had the distinct impression that the proposal we had was not received very nicely or greatly by the board. And so we went back to the drawing board ourselves, okay? And we essentially started from scratch. But what we did was we took into account all or most of the comments of the members of the board at the last hearing. We basically have redesigned the building almost entirely. And as you can see from the plan, the site plan that we have, the setback with respect to the building from Massachusetts Avenue is very close to the line on Mass Ave. And I need to point out to the members of the board that that is not unusual for Massachusetts Avenue. And it certainly is not unusual for this area of Mass Ave. And as you go down Massachusetts Avenue, traveling in an easterly direction, you're going to see even some of the residential houses very close to the lot line on the other side of Massachusetts Avenue. You get to Allenton Heights, that business district, and of course everything is on the lot line there. You get beyond that. And even the residential buildings on the other side of Mass Ave heading down again in an easterly direction are very close to that front lot line. Matter of fact, you get to my building, which is at 1171 Mass Ave. And I think that's the first distinctive building with a substantial setback. So I point that out with respect to the way we've designed our plan to show that our plan is not incompatible with what's happening on Mass Ave, what's been happening over the years on Mass Ave. We think that it's compatible with the desired street skate from Massachusetts Avenue. And Montefrench is going to speak about that when he talks about the design of the building. We basically comply with most of the zoning regulations. In the redesign of the building, we have created a 10 foot side yard on the easterly side of the lot. We comply with a 10 foot side yard on the left side. We comply with the rear yard, 20 foot side rear yard in the back as well. We comply with FAR. And if there's any question on that, Montefrench and Emily Driscoll will be happy to respond to that. We also comply with open space. Now, one of the matters that was brought up at the last hearing was, again, we're talking a mixed-use building. And one of the issues that came up was whether in fact the size, the square feet of the office space we're going to have would be something that would be marketable in terms of the town. I had the opportunity, I didn't do a full-blown market research because quite frankly, I didn't have the sample to do that. But what I did do is I spoke with one of the well-versed real estate brokers in town, Robert Boats. Now, you may recall that we did, and the ARB did, the building at 925 massive back months ago, more than a year ago, I guess at this point, and that building converted into residential and an office use. There's an office use in that building that has approximately 500 square feet. That rented for $1,250. Our office space is being proposed at 475 square feet. And I'm giving you an understand in speaking with Mr. Boats that the rent we could get for that office space would be approximately $1,000 per month. So we think that it is a viable proposal to have that kind of office space in the building. We are of course proposing two levels of residential use above. We don't exceed the 35 height requirement, and each of the two levels above will be two bedrooms. We're also proposing, as we discussed last time, and we were invited, I think, and suggested to look into the possibility of having an accessible unit. So we have included an accessible unit in our proposal. I'm going to reiterate what I said at the last hearing with respect to an affordable housing unit. We cannot do an affordable housing unit. As much as that might be suggested by any member or members of the ARB, the economics do not work out. This project has been in the works for more than a year. My client has been carrying the building for more than a year. COVID has not helped in terms of the delay, and the economic costs involved in putting up a building on the site would simply indicate that we could not do an affordable housing unit. Now one of the issues that, in addition to the setback issue that we'd be asking for relief from the board for, and again, the board does have the ability to give a setback relief. We know that. We've been educated on that by Doug Hyme Town Council, who did a memo on the hotel project and indicated that you can, in fact, the ARB does have the ability to grant relief with respect to setback. We also will need relief with regard to parking. Essentially, we have five parking spaces, but we need eight. We don't need a parking space for the commercial space because it's under 3,000 square feet, but we need five parking spaces. I have indicated in the memo submitted to the board that we can satisfy two of the criteria for getting relief under the Transportation Management Act. One is covered bicycle parking and shared bicycle parking. I think, as we discussed last time, carpooling is probably not a viable option with respect to my coming up with a third criteria. So that would be a matter that I would be asking the board to give us some relief on. So the board is going to say to me, well, what are you going to give us in return? Well, I can't give you much in return because the space is tight to begin with. Again, we can't do affordable housing. What we have done in designing the project has been very sensitive to a butter outback. As you may know, there's a very, very high wall at the back of the lot. We are not going to do anything in terms of significant blasting of any kind that is going to disturb the neighbor outback. We're going to in fact be a good neighbor. So I'm asking the board to take that into account with respect to any consideration they can give my client with respect to relief. With regard to the proposal itself, I think I'd like to have Monte talk about that. But my point to the members of the ARB is this proposal, I believe, is a good proposal for the site. It's a good proposal for the town. It creates more residential housing which the town needs, which the master plan calls for, which the governor has called for as well. And it does comply with a mixed-use component of the bylaw. It may not give one or more members of the ARB as much commercial space as they would like, but we're doing the best we can with the economics as far as the site is concerned and with the development. So with that, I'd like to have Monte jump in and describe for you the plans as far as the developer is concerned. Monte? Thank you Bob. Good evening everyone. We are taking a look at the plans as submitted last meeting and all the comments that were made on the plans. And I don't know if we can put those back up. Jay? Sorry. Thank you. So what we'd like to do is go through the way this was originally conceived in the previous meeting and where we're at now. I think that there were several comments, as Bob mentioned, regarding site access for vehicles, where some of the utility spaces were, how the rear yard was treated, some screening issues, accessible units on ground floor, commercial spaces, and so on and so forth. I think that we've dealt with a great deal of great number of these comments that were brought up in the last meeting and we'll just kind of go through what we've done here. So what we've done is we propose that the building be moved forward and closer to the left side, as you see here on the page, and that's in order to address the one curb cut two-lane access to the rear of the lot for parking. Previously we had a three-lot access, one curb cut on one side and another curb cut on the other side. So that was our way of addressing that issue. We also think that it was in keeping with, as Bob said, some of the kind of urban design ideas that I think are present in the planning guidelines for Arlington and also just what is currently in the city and having the building pulled forward, which I think creates more of a, I guess, liveliness along the sidewalk, and then allows us to maintain some of the green space at the rear. The trees along the rear also maintain the screening that we discussed in the previous meeting. Those been placed on the site as required, and then if parking spaces, as Bob mentioned, we have five parking spaces, the two-lane access, and then along the rear there's our access to the enclosed bike spaces, the trash, and the mechanical space. At the front of the building is where we have, on the left side is where we have the accessible unit, and on the right side is where the the office space will be, or commercial space. So the accessible unit will be accessed through the stairwell, where all the tenants will be accessing the building. The front porch will be closed off, so it's not entered through the sidewalk. We want to try and keep people who might think that that might be a commercial space from trying to enter through that point, so we closed it off and made it a private space, whereas on the other side the commercial space is accessed from the sidewalk, and once we get to the elevation, you'll see that we revised the signage to address that point, and also made sure the signage follows the guidelines that are spot out in the ordinances. As we move up in the building, none of the plans have changed in terms of unit layout. They all remain the same. We did, I think you might have seen the note down below, we did address the other comment about having the sprinkler pump on the first floor underneath the stair. We have the shaft that's at the rear of the stairs here in this plan. You can see that it'll be used to route any plumbing from the first floor up through the building, and then as you work up to the building to the roof plan, if we keep moving down, thank you. The third floor is the same plan, and then the roof, so at the roof you'll see we have the screening system around the mechanical. I think that was another point that we talked about last time, and then as you move down towards the streetscape there, that's how the front of the building has been revised to offer this fascia that the signage would be located along. So we have office space signage, and there's a blown up detail later in the drawings that dimension that, and then the address of the building. Again, this is just side elevation that shows access to the side yard. Most likely this will need to be a step that goes up into the rear yard, so that we have rear yard access for maintenance, and if we keep going down, that's the elevation along the rear of the building, where the access to the bike room, mechanical room, and trash room is at, adjacent to the parking. And then this is the section along the drive lane that we added with the one curb cut, and then to the rear is the would be the parking. And then this is an overall site section that shows the adjacency of the building to the rear of butter. And then there's, you know, in our presentation material we provide a more illustrative section that shows the trees and how they provide the buffer between, the visual buffer between the rear of butter and our property. This sheet points out some of the details that are required for the bicycle parking, and off to the left on the sheet is the details for the signage. You want me to bring up the other renderings, the presentation board? Yes please. So you can see here, this is a updated rendering of the front of the building along the streetscape. We think that actually adds a little more liveliness along the streetscape, and again the one, the single curb cut to the left there. The lower left image you can see is the site section that's more of a rendered view of how this would be represented. The parking versus the the trees at the rear, the rear of butter in our building and that whole visual buffer that occurs there. More updated renderings of the front of the building versus the existing conditions. The plans which we've already gone through some of the details of the bike rack and things like that that you're familiar with in our other submissions. And then we did talk about plantings. These are some of the proposed pavers that will be used at the front of the building and some of the plantings that will be proposed for the front of the building. So I think that you know for us I feel like we you know, we feel really strongly and actually excited about the move of the building. We feel like it's actually made the project better so you know the comments were really good. I think it drove us to a better project. It looks, I think it'll look handsome along the streetscape. There's a lot of moves and a lot of work that had to go into place to get this to work over here. As Bob mentioned we only have five parking spaces but you know we did try to look at getting more in there but this is kind of maxing it out in terms of just how the site is accessed in circulation and things like that. I think that that's pretty much it for the revision of the design based on comments from the last meeting. Be more than happy to answer any questions if you're all having. If we've missed anything that was brought up at the last meeting that any one of the members wants to bring to our attention that that would be appreciated as well and we'll try to address that also. Great thank you Bob and Monti. I appreciate it and I just wanted to start with one question and one comment before I turn it over to my to my colleagues. I guess we'll start by saying how much I appreciate the thoroughness of this revised presentation especially with the the section showing the a butter and the siting of the building itself. I do have a question about the access to the usable open space. I think Monti would started to mention that that would be through steps I believe through the side yard but I would like to make sure that that is in fact usable space. That was part of our commentary there so if you could just address that that would be helpful. Thank you. Yes I think we missed the there will need to be some stairs along the side yard that get up into the rear green space yes. Okay great and then my comment is actually something that I wanted to throw out there before for for some of my colleagues to discuss. So when we looked at this presentation last time I believe Ken you had made a comment about a requirement for an accessible unit and we had a little bit of chance to to take a look at what number of units actually triggers a requirement for an accessible unit which I believe is greater than four rather than four units triggering that requirement. So as I look at this revised proposal and especially looking at the front elevation I would actually much prefer for the entire first floor to be commercial space to be considered mixed use and given the treatment of the of the facade at both the proposed residential unit in the office space nothing distinguishes one use from from the other. I think that having both entrances along Mass Ave access office use space is much preferred in my opinion. So reverting to the the four units given that an accessible unit would not be required would be my preference I think it would also address some of the parking relief that you're asking for as well. But I just wanted to throw out that comment again just a comment for us to discuss as a as a board as well. So Ken I'll throw it out to you first. Well I'm going to say I want to respectfully disagree with you Rachel. I believe the codes say four or more units will require that one of those units will need to be accessible and I think that's we believe that for the co-enforcement in Arlington to determine that. I mean if I am wrong and I don't think I am but if I am having to all the ground floor being office is fine but I believe once you become once you have four or more units it's considered multifamily no longer residential. Yeah I actually just want to pass that over to Jenny because she did have a chance to speak with the building inspector today I'd ask her the same question Ken. Sure what did what did Mike say Jenny? Thanks Ken thank you Rachel. Yes Mike Bern the director of Inspectional Services and Building Inspector confirmed that CMR 5.21 section 9.3 which we were referencing at the last meeting that is related to five or more units. This does not have an elevator it is a three-story building and it's only when you add the fifth unit that you have to comply. Another example would be we've we've permitted other projects where there have been four units and they didn't have an accessible unit it's the fifth unit that triggers the compliance with 5.21 so I that is the message back to answer this question. Well if that's what Mike says then I will bow to the enforcement authority for that and I'm okay with that. Can I continue in my comments Rachel? Absolutely please do. Okay I too want to echo the comment on how thoughtful and well presented this is it's a good change of pace that we've been seeing and I really like I think Monty you did a good job it's a very handsome building. I like the fact that now we have one curb cut moving the driveway away from the corner of the street moving the building closer to the mass tab activating the street I think I agree with you that I think that makes the building much more attractive. If you look at this elevation and the other elevation existing one where just two big garage doors up a driveway I think this looks much nicer. Yeah that's right there I think if you compare this this new building with that old building there this is more interactive it's much it's more complimentary of the streetscape and I did a good job there. I do have one question well I have a couple one is on the front elevations you saw double hung windows 404 on the side and rail elevations you show casement windows it kind of looks like you know once it's sort of a modern building more and the front looks more of a traditional building is that something to just in a rush to get this done didn't look at that enough or do you guys want to keep the casement windows on the side and rare?  I think that you have to forgive me Ken I now I know you're talking about I believe that that's a remnant from the last iteration that it's actually a sliding glass door we used to have the balconies over there no on your new drawings you show they're not balcony doors they're actually casement windows okay and we'll revise those to double hung we'll make it more consistent and then yeah we won't we won't have the inconsistency there I like the front windows there you know there are 404 double hung windows and the yellow ones you know and if you look can we go to the side elevation Jenny if you can just add a couple more vertical pieces of trim just to break up that long bands of hardy panel I think it'd be much appreciated too you know you have any bracket the windows okay so you know just get a little more silent all they look right now is punched openings in the field of siding you know definitely no problem I mean I think your front looks really nice and I think you should give it you know I don't need the depth and shadow lines but if you just have a little vertical trim piece that's I think that's all I really need to look at okay um on the two top units are these condos or rentals I believe they're gonna be rentals okay um were there any possibility of maybe putting a roof deck up there we have not discussed that um I mean I don't know I can't speak to that because I don't want to offer up something that could cost more money I'm not sure if that's in the budget okay I mean I think the money that you can for the return for that may happen okay where it's just the two top units having a spire staircase up with a you know a hatch and a little deck there so that for each you know those are private not public so you don't have to get an elevator or any of that kind of stuff up there it makes the two top units like penthouse units you know right something might for consideration I'm not you know saying it's a requirement it's just a consideration yeah it's excellent and then is that box up there enough for all your equipment or will the will it be bigger uh usually the city multi systems can the condenser for one of those can fit in a screening system like that we've done we just did a building in back bay that had a similar sized unit it's a city multi condenser that can handle multiple the heads all right and then I'm assuming there must be a roof hatch up there from the stairs yeah there need to be a roof hatch access from the stairwell okay and it looks like there's plenty of room and no shadow lines if we if you guys ever decide to go with some solar panels right yeah I mean if that fits within their construction budget that would be a certainly a prime spot for it okay and then you seem to be missing some civil drawings the only thing that I'm looking for in you know is get a pool from the city is some aerial drains or a trench drain at the end of the driveway it's gonna it's gonna slope down a little bit I just don't want water spilling into the sidewalk okay besides those things I think it's very nice building um you will put fencing up on that wall right I'm assuming yeah there'll need to be a guardrail and things like that you have to you know there are some things that we'll need to button up we're trying to work through this as you can see there was a lot of changes that we went through I'm trying to get all you guys did a very good job at doing that just you know you might want to look at what that railing might look like it's not going to be like a shaming fence or anything right the quality of work you're doing here is not like that no no no certainly not that's all I have for now Rachel thank you can I appreciate it and I also appreciate you raising the question about the accessible unit before I think it was good for us to go through the exercise of reviewing that requirement so thank you again okay David thank you Rachel so I would also like to say I appreciate that you all have been responsive to many of the comments from our last meeting I shared looking at this the concern about the accessible unit for a few reasons one is there was no detail in here showing the actual layout of either the accessible unit or the office space particularly plumbing and it wasn't clear to me given the small sizes of those spaces that they actually could be built out in a reasonable way to meet those those purposes but I think that's that's maybe a move point because I also share the concern that as much as it would be nice to have an accessible unit I think that takes us a little bit too far away from from the mixed use intention so I would agree with my colleagues that I think that would be better off being office space than than trying to squeeze an accessible unit in there I wanted to ask we at the last meeting had some discussion about the deviations from the tree plan where additional trees had been removed and I wanted to ask where where things stood on that and has there been further discussion with the tree warden and is there a resolution far as I know Bob and I see far as I know the letter that we submitted to the board I believe Jenny has a copy of it from the tree warden is the last operative statement with respect to trees and that basically indicated that we were going to be taking down eight trees I believe correct me if I'm wrong Monta and that we were going to be replacing eight trees the there was a tree plan submitted with that letter that went to the to the tree warden as well but there's been no further discussion about that we felt that it would be better to come before the ARB see what their thoughts were with respect to landscaping trees etc although we do know that the tree warden would be the one that would have to be satisfied but at least we'd have feedback from the ARB on that issue so we know what we have to do it's a question of where it's going to take place on the site well thank you Mr. Nessie it was my understanding that more than eight trees had been removed from the site and and that was was kind of the heart of the issue if that's the case and more have been removed I'm sure the tree warden is going to revisit that and if that's the case then we would wind up replacing more than the eight trees right so along those lines one of the new renderings that shows the rear retaining wall and its relationship to the property behind this building shows a number of mature trees providing screening between the property behind and and the new building and do those do those mature trees still exist are they still on the property monta this is monty french no they're not it is part of the proposed tree plan to plant new trees back there you know of course they'll have to go through some growth to reach a certain height but the proposal is that and ultimately we would provide planting trees along there that would also provide the screening but not ratson i've just learned that it is 11 trees not eight trees my mistake that have been removed pardon me 11 that have been removed yes yes um i i think i'd i'd like to be sure that uh there's a resolution to that situation um before i would feel comfortable moving forward here um i don't want to feel like uh we are uh we are permitting a project where there's a question of whether uh the approved tree plan has been followed or not and it apparently hasn't if i could and we can i make a suggestion mr. watson with respect to the tree plan can we leave that as a condition subsequent to whatever the board may decide this evening so that if we can get a consensus we can move to a vote and have the conditions subsequent being that the petitioner has to in fact satisfy the tree warden we do know it's 11 trees okay and not eight trees there was a prior letter from the tree warden that it indicated eight but that subsequently got changed to 11 but again i would suggest that in the interest of again my clients have been working on this project for an awfully long time i would suggest that if we could leave that as a condition subsequent to the tree warden that perhaps we could move ahead with the project i'm i'm open to discussing uh what my colleagues think about that but i'm have to say that i'm i'm somewhat disturbed uh by uh the fact that uh that mature trees that were not supposed to be removed have been removed and can't be replaced in a mature state anyway uh and uh and basically we're we're being asked to uh to let that go uh and you know i think if if uh if the tree warden if there's if there's a resolution with the tree warden then um that's something we would take into consideration but i'm i'm disturbed by that um that that happened and that yeah David this is marty um sorry i didn't i didn't want to interrupt anyone but i don't want this to go too much further we were in communication with our client and he did have a discussion with the tree warden and did update his letter with the tree warden it is is documented that there will be 11 trees um and we did show the plan that we show shows 11 trees so there was a conversation about that and making sure that that's what was going back in um i don't know it looks like the the most current letter is not on the file here but 11 trees is what's documented with the tree warden now okay all right i can actually i can pull that up i'm sorry to interrupt david um i can pull up that letter it's actually in a different document so i i pulled up the old letter i apologize for that for the confusion um if you want me to pull up the other letter i can um also we are looking at the plan that shows that those that number of trees right whatever your wishes are i mean i'll i'll i'll move on uh and if if any of my colleagues want to discuss this further i'll i'll let them with respect to the tdm plan i mean really the only component that uh you're currently uh proposing to uh to satisfy is is the bicycle parking which uh you do show on the plan and i appreciate the creation of of the bike room uh and uh that certainly that and the short-term parking in front certainly meet the requirements of of the bylaw but i i think in terms of um of whether that's sufficient to merit a parking reduction uh as you mentioned i i do want more um and i like to suggest a couple of possible additions to your tdm plan that could help and i don't know if my colleagues have additional ideas but um one would be subsidizing mbta passes for the residents and uh the other would be charging for parking distinct from from the rent of of the units um and both of those are are possibilities that are listed in the tdm section of the bylaw um and uh you know given the nature of this proposed building i i don't know that any other any of the other suggested tdm provisions are really applicable um you know the office space is not going to be very large so i don't think it's likely you're going to be able to put a shower in there for employees but um i i think there are at least a couple of reasonable possibilities in there that you could add to the tdm plan and i'm open to other suggestions from my colleagues and that that was all i had right now thank you david uh gene uh thank you and um i agree with my colleagues that i think this is a um much better proposal than the one we saw the last time i liked pulling it up toward the sidewalk i think it as other people said makes a much better streetscape it's sort of consistent with the commercial building on one side of it um and uh i think that would be good and is uh attorney nessie pointed out we do have the ability under the bylaws to um allow a smaller setback than otherwise required um i also agree with my colleagues that the first floor should be office um and i had stated that last time too um it would be nice if there were um a handicap accessible unit but i don't see how that can happen since the first floor needs to be office what i would like to see for the offices is is some sort of connection between them so the landlord has the option of either renting them separately or renting them to one um office tenant so when you come back with a different design for the first floor i think we would want to see that there is that ability to rent it to either one or two tenants um on the parking um i think if if i've counted correctly you'll now need only six spaces maybe jenny can help me if i got that right if that's the case you're only one space short of the required number of spaces and um i'm not sure what the give back would be for that i think there are a few things that i would expect these spaces are going to be for the residents that's the purpose and not for the office tenants so there would need to be some way to designate them as for the residents only and not for uh the office tenants i'd like to see one at least one electric charging station in the parking lot as part of the offset and what i'd like to see is something in the in the um the leases for each one of the four units that basically says they only get one parking space and then with um the at least four of the five parking spaces designated with each one of the apartment units on them um i think that's a potential way to um deal with this that makes sense um to me um i agree with david i was very concerned about the trees and i very much appreciate the abutting neighbor on the back who brought it to our attention and then brought the number disparity to the attention of the tree warden i'd like to thank him for doing that when i looked at the 11 trees and i did count the number of trees and i appreciated that i did see that one of the 11 trees is not planted on your property which doesn't seem right to me if you can find that screen jenny or it has that or it shows that that's it the the one in the in the bottom right is on the other side of the property line so that would like need to be adjusted usually when we approve something we we see a planting plant what are the trees going to be like what are the bushes going to be like we've shown us hydrangea rhododendron things like that um it'll be helpful to i think have a copy of what the tree plan is that you going to submit to the tree warden for the 11 trees um i i am concerned as miss allow is concerned about runoff from the driveway and you show some permeable pavers i think for the front i wondered if you could do a permeable driveway also that does exist and i think that would help a lot with the runoff and um that's pretty much my comments thank you gene uh katie hi thank you um i don't have a lot of additional comments to add i wanted to just echo my colleagues that i really appreciate the care you've taken in responding to all of the concerns laid out in the last meeting um and appreciate again bringing four units of housing again consistent with our master plan we need more housing and it's great to have that and i agree with my colleagues that it makes more sense to keep the first floor as office space um thank you thank you katie before i turn it over to public comment uh does anyone else any other member of the board have any comments or questions i i had one other question um if if we are going back to office space my recollection is that the original plan uh had two restrooms uh somewhere where the trash room and bike room are shown today and uh what would the plan be for having restroom access for the for the office space on the first floor now monta any thoughts i'm sorry can you say that again it was kind of jumbled oh that that's okay the restrooms that were shown on the original plans for the first floor are not there anymore because the trash room and and the bike room are in that space uh so where would you propose to put restrooms for uh office space on the first floor i think that if if we go back to a scenario where the whole first floor is an office i think the best scenario because i think that someone mentioned it would be great that this could be one tenant or two tenants the best scenario would be to put the bathroom directly behind the stair so that if we need to create a vestibule for access to that similar to what we did in the previous scenarios that we could have a tenant on each side and have a vestibule that they each access to get to the bathroom in a lockable situation um privatize it that that would make the most sense but you know if you have other thoughts we're open to that monta i thought i think because of the size of the office space it's under a thousand square feet i believe one one bathroom should be enough uh for that but if they if they if i'm hearing comments that you know if we want to provide this in a scenario that it can be divided into two offices then you just put a hallway there between the two bathrooms and just have that that's exactly yeah that's that's i maybe i was being too technical that's what i was trying to explain yep i agree with you but i interject mr wasan if we in fact provide a bathroom uh in the office space would that be one of the prongs that would try to satisfy the tma well if it included a shower that would certainly add to the tdm plan but yeah yeah yep we'll we'll we'll take a look at that and see how we can work that in just to be clear to viewers and people on the board that the plan that i'm showing is the earlier iteration of the plan showing retail completely on the first floor not the current document that's being reviewed but the older iteration and that explained retail was a mistake it should have been commercial or office i'm sorry okay any other comments sorry i had nothing further no i'm done great thank you all right this time we'd like to open this up for public comment for any member of the public wishing to speak please use the raise hand function under the participants button on the bottom of your screen we'll take the we'll take the public comments in the order that they are identified please note that you have three minutes to speak and i'll ask that you identify yourself by your name and address prior to speaking let's see so first we have andreas kellis thank you appreciate it my name's andreas kellis i'm at 15 woodbury street on the abutter behind this property so i have a you know a personal impact please yeah rachel yes please thank you did that come through then i'm at 15 woodbury street thank you yeah awesome so i'm i'm concerned by this but i think if somebody had brought up you know the tree plan to me is a it's a very clear situation and i'm not sure why we're dancing around this i'll give you guys the facts and i've talked to the tree warden i've looked at the tree plan and i've talked to um some other folks as well the builders submitted a tree plan of eight trees this was approved by the tree warden and then knowingly removed you know three additional trees violated the tree plan you know why was this done because the removal of those three trees is but enable this larger development to fit in the in the property and the retaining wall to be both at a larger depth than it as is required by this plan of course the removal of these trees is irreversible and now the argument is that can replant um these 11 trees which are not in the mature state that the original trees were and uh and make everything better and the board should approve this this reason um as mr. Watson you know mentioned the tree plan was not followed um i think this really troubles me personally as not just the butter but as a resident of arlington um i think it's clear this is a premeditated violation of the tree plan to accommodate a larger project knowing that once the trees are removed it's irreversible and the project could move forward approved to me you know i'm involved in business i think this is a business tactic this is a disingenuous tactic and i think it sets a bad project in arlington um i urge the board does not reward this tactic in method of operation by approving their proposed rezoning you know i agree it's a beautiful plan it's a nice um way that it's being presented but fundamentally the project and the way that it was done is disingenuous and i think it's a negative tactic that should not be rewarded and i don't want to see it happening through the town that i live in by other developers that concludes my my statement thank you thank you very much i appreciate your comments see the next person uh we have is carl wagner thank you can you hear me okay where is this can you hear me okay yes we can thank you it's carl wagner thank you edgill road in arlington resident um i wanted to uh very briefly address comments to the board and to the developer um the the basic thing everyone watching this should know is that this use is not allowed in the b1 district it is not in fitting keeping with with that use and i appreciate many of the board members really working hard to make a better building but why didn't you look at the laws of our town i'd like to speak to the planning director aren't you supposed to work for us and the board appointed by the town manager aren't you supposed to work for us the developer is stretching doing doing something that shouldn't be done by the uh the law that represents mixed use if it goes through if you allow this the people of arlington like mr kellis and many others as these buildings come through will be be materially affected by this precedent of changing the intention of the mixed use law and changing the law which does not allow this building to go in thank you thank you mr wagner next up we have don selzer thank you don selzer Irving street um i have a couple of comments first of regarding the usable open space um i'm pleased that the applicant has actually put in the required amount of area uh one point i was going to raise has already been addressed by the board that there needs to be a way to get there and at the moment the plans don't show any the other concern for this is the fact that it's a my measurement there it looks like it's something like a 20 slope that doesn't even come close to the requirements for usable open space that allows a maximum of an eight percent grade so there's going to have to be something done there to make it conforming i'm surprised the board didn't follow up on a question they asked last time and that is how are you going to remove the snow from the parking lot at least in the previous version there were some grassy areas that you could push it up to but now you've got i think it's around 3 000 square feet and there's absolutely no place to put it because it's in a canyon surrounded by high walls and the only thing you can do is push it out onto mass af which is obviously illegal um i had some comments about problems with the accessible apartment but those are now moot so i can ignore those and i'll return to the the real major point of all this in a b1 district it's quite clear that from the table of uses that you can put in a single family two family or three family you can't put in a four family it's not a it's not an allowable use in a b1 district i went through all the b1 properties in town and just for interest there are around a hundred of them and 95 of them are conforming in this way there are actually four grandfathered non-conforming ones that do have four units apartment units um when i say grandfathered i should say great grandfathered um in that they're all more than a century old uh there's this one in arlington center on 16 swan street that happens to be a b1 district and is uh grandfathered non-conforming four bedroom rather nice building the other three units you're a time if you could wrap up please okay uh just that all all four units that are non-conforming this matter have been built more than a century ago and there have been no new units could non-conforming units of four apartments built in that time since thank you thank you very much uh mr warden i do see you you're you're next okay am i am i unmuted yes you are please want to make uh two two comments i'm sorry could you please state your name in your address john warden 27 jason street thank you uh observer of zoning in this town for over 50 years um i just want to make two two two two comments um one of the one of your one of the board members mentioned that the master plan calls for more housing let's be precise the master plan calls for senior housing and affordable housing doesn't say anything about increasing the number of market rate apartments so when we're quoting let's it'd be great if we followed the the master plan which does not call for a lot more luxury apartments that's just adding to our tax burden the other point i'd like to make is called town meeting town meeting is as you know the legislative body of this town that makes the laws and sometimes we are persuaded to make laws indeed in in the planning area we are persuaded to make laws and change them and sometimes repeal them by the development board which is the planning board in town in 19 sorry 2016 when mixed use was presented to town meeting your chairman and another member repeatedly said on the floor of town meeting you can depend on us we don't you don't have to put limitations on us nothing no use that's not permitted in a particular zone will be included in mixed use and i when i spoke i said well traditionally we have been a rule of law is not a man and i'm sure you are all honorable men but suppose you are succeeded by those who are less honorable and and they and they are and they take a different viewpoint that you have expressed that you've used to convince the town meeting to approve this this this misuse for mixed use provision um well we didn't even have to wait for new members the former chairman himself said well mixed use means we can do anything we want it doesn't matter i kept he didn't say it doesn't matter what i promised town meeting but he may as well have and i warned against that and the town meeting thought no we'll trust they'll trust me development board to do what they said they would do and now we are seeing that that trust apparently was misplaced you should turn this whole thing down thank you thank you mr warden uh let's see uh mr larretti chris larretti thank you madam chair chris larretti 56 Adam Street can you hear me okay yes we can thank you um yeah i'd just like to follow up with a couple comments and i i think it's worthwhile that the board take a look at the definition or description of the neighborhood office district in the zoning bylaw because what the bylaw says is the district is one where the predominant uses include one and two family dwellings houses with offices on the ground floor or office structures which are in keeping with the scale of adjacent houses primarily located on or adjacent to massachusetts avenue this district is intended to encourage preservation of small-scale structures to provide contrast to provide contrast and set off the higher density more active areas along the avenue so what happens is we have a two family house that's torn down and now we have a four or five unit apartment building with a token amount of office space proposed in its place and clearly that's not in keeping with the definition of the district and it's not in keeping with the requirement under a special permit that the the district um or that the development not impaired the character in or integrity of the district clearly that's happening now and that's not just a matter of policy or preference as mr wagner pointed out it's a matter of law and as you know your board is currently being sued in another context for allowing in a mixed-use development a use that is not allowed in a particular zoning district you're repeating your past mistakes and i really don't see how you can allow this to proceed until the courts decided on that question i mean seriously are you encouraging the a butter of this property to appeal this permit because the fact is that if you grant this permit for this non permitted use that is what you're doing you're jeopardizing the town you're jeopardizing the board and you are acting in contrary to representations made to town meeting when the mixed-use zoning bylaw was passed thank you thank you mr already there any is there any other member of the public that would like to make a comment on this particular docket number seeing none i'll turn it back to members of the board um let's see so we have a number of comments that have come forth uh some having to do with civil information some having to do with revisions to the design of the building some clarifications on the uh accessible excuse me usable open space and some additional clarifications on the transportation demand management plan wanted to get some feedback from the other members of the board if we'd like to to see that to see those clarifications at a at a future meeting i'm seeing gene saying yes i think the civil plans i i would like to see the civil plans before we move forward with with approval and then what how they're going to restructure the first floor office space and some of the other things that i think almost everyone on the board mentioned is needed right so i do have a list of those sorry go ahead please ken sorry um thank you uh richel i'm on a fence i i'm okay with uh i think approving this with provisions and um let and jenny follow through with what we we revisioned i think some of the actual changes we talked about are just changing the window types and adding some vertical trim to break up the scale of the side elevations the other one was to add some showed proper drainage and i think that's going to have to go through dpw anyways and um adding the stairs have access up there that's that is going to be what's you know stairs up there um the only thing that might be in question is the location of the bathroom but typically in commercial space um that's just the dashed line depending on what the tenant's going to want anyways if it's if like jean said it's going to be one tenant or is it going to be two tenants i think we want to give them some sort of flexibility of locating that since it's a new building that's the advantage of having a new building you can sort of custom it and it may encourage someone to rent the space because it's a new building it's not there's not things to fix in there um i also i believe they're addressing the issues with the tree worn and i think i agree with robert saying that you know they'll buy by whatever the tree worn comes up with and if 11 is 11 you know i would you know say you know let's try to say with the tree worn to encourage as much mature trees as possible but that's my feeling i think i'm on an offense right now i can sort of see not holding off this progress right here because it's just we're just asking to see stuff we're not asking them to make changes and that's where i stand david do you have an opinion one way or the other um i hear what kin is is saying um i i do feel like uh like we do need to see more on the tdm plan um in order to feel comfortable granting parking relief uh because what's what's shown so far is just not sufficient if i could make a suggestion please we could either do a shower or we could charge for parking we're open to either as that third prompt i think if we provide that then we've satisfied the tma i think david's david's tma not my tma i want the leases tdm i'm sorry i want the leases to limit to one parking space per apartment and i'd like to have a electric charging station for cars in the backyard so i have a slightly different list than david does i i don't disagree with your list gene i i think we have to decide on on what what the mix should be gene are you talking about a conduit for the availability for a charging station or a charging station we're going to do a charging station for sure charging station okay we can do a charging station no problem we can do a shower and the the issue with the lease i think we can we can address that no problem my the other issue that i remain concerned about is how how the tree situation gets resolved i i if i understand the proposal is to plant 11 trees because 11 trees were removed but that doesn't restore the property to the state it was in prior to the improper tree removal on the other hand it's really not it's not within our power to directly address the tree issue that's the tree wardens responsibility and i don't know other than requiring them to replace the trees i don't know whether there is anything else in the tree wardens power to to do that or could ask them to do to make up for for the removal of those mature trees so i'm not i'm not very happy that this is where we're at but i'm also not sure that there is any any benefit to to waiting for the tree warden to do something else we're going to satisfy whatever the bylaw says and the tree warden says that's suggested earlier if we could move on this matter this evening and have as a conditioned subsequent that the approval would be subject to that condition subsequent that the tree warden approve the tree plan for the replacement of the 11 trees that's what i would be requesting taking a note uh i would agree david i i i think that that's really the the best that we could under our jurisdiction request is part of this a condition in this approval um i think the the question i would have that i'm still struggling with is the actual usability of that usable open space which again absent of any additional information how how people are going to access that and ensuring that it is truly usable i know that you know when we recently approved a project with usable open space that was one of the things that was was a condition that there were amenities provided such that the residents could actually use and enjoy that space so i wanted to see if you could address again how you envisioned um residents actually using that that space monte yes um we can certainly do an updated plan to show the the stair access on the side that we were missing um we did look at the grading i think that pretty much there's a good portion of that that meets the eight percent requirement um so i think that we do need to provide some update to show how that works jenny um rachel i just might suggest we have another hearing that was supposed to start a while ago um i might suggest some sort of movement um at this point in time sure decision to either continue or or something else it sounds like there are a lot of matters that need to be resolved um so i i can provide you other dates for continuation if needed so i personally i think would like to see resolution on the the civil um the civil issues and the usable open space um prior to having a a vote but again if if the others feel ready to to vote i i'm also on the fence kim you said that you're you're ready i'm ready to vote jean i would prefer a continuance for the reasons you said i also would like to see how they're going to redesign the front facade now that there's not the apartment there as well as what the open space is going to look like or the commercial katey i'm ready to vote and david i i heard that you you'd be interested in seeing this come before us once again yes okay so i think we'll plan to continue this um jenny if if you um could provide us with with some dates i think november 2nd would be my suggestion it's after your three hearings that are first owning warrant articles coming up um that evening you might also be discussing your report to town meeting but i think that would be the next possible option to continue and i think that's i would i would guess that's enough time for the applicant to be responsive um but i i also won't assume that so i can provide another date no that the next then the next date would be december as you know december 7 second would be fine jenny yeah okay okay second so before i ask for a motion to continue to november 2nd um i'll run through the list of of items that i have here to be addressed so that would be access to the rear usable open space um changing the casement windows on the side facades to double hung and the rear and the rear thank you kin um adding vertical separation to the to the side facades to to break up the massing um looking at the possibility of a roof deck or solar panels on the roof including civil engineering drawings including the trench streams at the end of the driveways or looking at permeable surface for the driveway a detail on the guardrail or fencing at the usable open space changing the accessible unit to office space preparing a transportation demand management plan including a shower room for the office spaces charging station for electric vehicles and putting a provision in the lease for the spaces beyond the one parking space included per unit addressing the actual usability of the usable open space addressing the tree species and sizes subject to approval with the tree warden and that's what i had on my list did anyone have anything else that i'm missing could i ask gene one question please gene with respect to the transportation management act what do i need to satisfy you i i just asked for those things the electric charging station that each of the leases limits the tenant to one parking space and that the parking in back is reserved for the tenants and not for the office thank you and david had some others i have those are in the list that i just read off as we have david yes jenny a in relationship to the parking is um the signage that reflects gene's uh preference right thank you jenny i forgot great okay so do i hear a motion to continue the hearing with the uh stated provisions to uh november 2nd so moved may i second second i will take a roll call for a vote uh kin no david yes gene yes katie no and i am a yes so this uh will be continued to november 2nd thank you thank you very much so i um erin you're a co-host right yes i am okay so you'll erin's gonna share the screen because the applicant who is on has some other images that would like to be uh shared and also you have the image of the application if needed right yep okay sorry rachel just needed to clarify no problem i appreciate it okay so we'll now be opening docket number 3637 for 476 mass avenue uh this is an application filed on september 25th by chad cullen marco rioti group in accordance with the provisions of mgl chapter 40a section 11 in the town of arlington zoning bylaws they are proposing to renovate the facade of the vacant storefront at 476 massachusetts avenue in the b5 central business district uh so who do we have here uh this evening representing the applicant hello it's uh do you hear me yes we can yes yeah chad cullen applicant great thank you please uh go ahead i'm sorry before you go ahead um jenny or erin do you have anything um from the planning department to share i um just to share that um it's a little different than normal but the history arlington historical commission has already reviewed this plan and provided their uh decision of approval and so what we're being shown this evening has already been has already been covered by the history to meet the historical commission's guidelines uh for appropriateness in this district um it's not an historic district but they do have um the ability to review signs and any other facade changes um which they have done um and the only thing i would add is that some of the members of the board may recall that we spent a lot of time reviewing the next door unit um and space um and i would just state that i was i'm very pleased to see what this property owner is planning to do with this particular this unit in the building which i think has been very challenging to rent frankly as a result of the conditions that they're trying to improve so um i'll turn it over to you rachel thank you jenny chat i apologize for cutting you off before please go ahead oh yeah no problem so it's uh the 496 mass av it's they had an old brick storefront that was put in probably like a 60 to 70s uh and we're going to take it down and put in a new glass storefront to make the uh space more rentable that's about it that's about it okay great um let's see i will turn it over to my colleagues for any questions uh katie the plan seemed really straightforward and with the approval of the historic commission um yeah i don't have any further questions great thank you and kin yeah um we're just reviewing the signage correct i mean this is not a special permit use because it's not a change of use it's still what it's still a retail space the only thing we're reviewing is signage is that correct no you're curious because they're significantly changing the architectural design and facade of a building that is a long mass av you also are in charge of looking at the signage um there isn't a tenant though so you're only looking at the sign band when they have a tenant identified we would be charged with reviewing their signage um but at this point in time there is no use identified other than the existing use which i believe is just retail or office or uh commercial space um but it is those are the reasons why you're reviewing this well um i'm going to agree with katie and say um i have no real comments um the historic commission looked at it and i agree with them it's it's a nice change great thank you kin uh gene i agree with my colleagues i think it's a really nice improvement i have no comments questions or comments okay david i also agree uh i never understood why there was that strange curved brick facade there uh so i i think this is a good improvement and if the historic commission's okay with it then i have no other issues great um i i also agree i think this is a significant improvement and um knowing that we're not approving any any signage specifically the only question that i had was actually on the side of um i think that's uh the elevation two you have some goosenecks above a looks like a a recess in the uh in the facade there so i just wanted to ensure that there was no signage planned there are those those aren't windows i seem those are there's some sort of a decorative element or a recess there yeah that's correct i think the brick the brick is decorative um and when we had this drawn up we had both doors vacant uh but right now but yeah 478 got rented so we're just focused on 476 okay but there's no signage planned in that in that area where the goosenecks are along the the side correct because you don't feel out one sign on that yes i believe you're referencing the um number two swan place right side elevation yeah there's no signs planned okay as far as my knowledge goes great that was my only question any other questions from the board before we turn this over to public comment okay saying none if any member of the public would like to um to speak in reference to this docket number please raise your hand using the raise hand function under the participant button and i'll call you in the order received okay seeing none i will close public comment um let's see do i uh have a motion for approval of this um of this docket as we didn't have any real comments so as submitted so motioned we have a second second great i'll take a roll call for approval starting with kin yes david yes gene yes katie yes and i am yes as well congratulations on the approval of your plans thank you very much appreciate it okay let's see moving to the next item on agenda is the presentation of the economic analysis of the industrial zoning districts and i believe um jenny you had mentioned that erin was going to be taking us through that yes um erin is going to be making a brief introduction and then we also have eric halperson um from rkg sorry about that and um emily inis who's with herman um and the three of them are going to be making i think there's a powerpoint presentation um erin's going to be scrolling through that after the presentation ends then we'll i think open it up for discussion and i believe that also we have uh just to note um ralph wilmer as well as uh john warden um and of course david all participate in the zoning bylaw working group um so there might be additions to anything else said after the presentation as well i want to thank emily and eric for their work on the project and i'm looking forward to their presentation and our discussion it's a lot of interesting interesting details to share tonight so thank you and erin are you all set maybe yes i am um i just want to make sure um i see eric and oh there's eric okay thank you pulling up the presentation um so uh let me just make this full screen can everyone still see that okay great um so uh thanks jenny for the introduction um welcome eric and emily uh to the meeting um we will have a presentation tonight on um a project that we kicked off uh about this time last year on the economic analysis of industrial zoning districts um at this point we are here to present draft zoning recommendations for consideration um on the agenda i will go through the goals and the background um eric will take us through the process to date um emily will take us through translating concepts to draft zoning and present the draft zoning as well so the project goals of this project um as stated in the request for proposals that we submitted was to position arlington to attract new businesses and jobs and emerging growth industries to the industrial district as well as create opportunities through which arlington can realize greater revenue with strategic amendments to the zoning bylaw and the zoning map and as you can see in the graphic those purple areas are our industrial districts um so a quick note about the project background um last year in september we released an rp um rkg associate and harriman were selected as our contractor um in december of last year we held a project kickoff and during uh 2020 um rkg and harriman completed an economic analysis the preparation of zoning recommendations at the beginning of the summer we held a virtual public engagement opportunity which was a video presentation and a survey that community members could take at their own pace um due to the pandemic and more recently with the end of the summer arriving um we began working on the draft zoning amendments um the uh zoning bylaw working group where it was presented with um the draft zoning amendment on october 7th um they uh are still in the midst of reviewing it and providing comments um so now is the perfect time to present this to the redevelopment board um you can also see the members of the zoning bylaw working group on the slide and i'll note that um this is not slated for a town meeting yet um definitely not the special town meeting um which would be a really accelerated timeline um but we're looking for feedback right now on um the draft zoning um but there's there's room for um uh time to uh improve this so with that i'll turn it over to Eric and Emily and just let me know when to switch the slide great um thanks so much Eric can everyone hear me okay great um thanks for the intro um Aaron and hi everyone my name is Eric Halberson um vice president principal with RKG Associates and joining me is Emily and us from Harriman um we have been the two leads from each of our firms working uh with Jenny and Aaron and the zoning bylaw working group over the last 10 or 12 months on this project so so happy to be invited tonight to share our progress so far in some of the zoning work that we'd love your feedback on so just uh very quickly on the on the timeline um this process has been uh slightly drawn out probably like everything nowadays due to the covid situation uh we originally intended this to go a little bit quicker but um obviously we're all dealing with this um with all of our projects so we began in November of 2019 um the plan is to continue work through I think the remainder of 2020 um during this time as Aaron mentioned our team undertook a townwide market analysis of each of the districts um that really looked at supply and demand for commercial and residential development um together with Harriman we looked at different land use scenarios in each of the industrial districts to sort of test what size buildings might fit as a way to help inform the zoning uh we also um conducted a the sort of potential fiscal impacts of future development we looked at that and then um we sort of the zoning concepts that we looked at which eventually led to the zoning recommendations that Emily's going to be talking to you about tonight next so I'd like to just spend a couple of minutes kind of giving an overview of some of the land use real estate and market data for the industrial districts as kind of a precursor to Emily's discussion on the zoning next so as Aaron mentioned this map shows the location of the five industrial zoning districts which are primarily located along Mass Ave sort of in between Mass Ave and the Minimum Bikeway from the most part and working from west to east we refer to them commonly as Park Avenue, Forest Street, Dudley Street, Mill Street, and Mystic Street so there's five in total that we looked at and as you can see the industrial areas are really surrounded by a wide range of other zoning districts including both business zoning districts as well as residential and that really you know I think kind of makes these industrial districts unique in their land use composition as well as the sort of character of the development that you'll see in each of these districts next. From a use perspective the industrial districts comprise a very small number of parcels at only about 0.7% of Arlington's total number of parcels and only about 1.2% of all the land acreage in Arlington so they are very small districts I comprise a very small amount of Arlington's total land area and also from a development perspective the built space within the industrial districts really only comprises about 1.2% of the 48 million square feet of built space in the town so in terms of the buildings in the space they take up it's also a fairly small amount. Next about 69 of the properties or the parcels within the industrial districts are currently used for businesses classified by the town's assessor's office as industrial these businesses are mostly auto repair storage and warehousing in nature but there are actually some unique rng and lab spaces that we found tucked away in the districts as we did our fieldwork and our site visits and what's interesting is that the land these buildings are sitting on top of is assessed that about twice as much as the buildings themselves this suggests to us that if someone were to purchase an industrial property today and redevelop that land they would likely need to seek development alternatives that could attain higher rents or higher lease rates because they end up paying so much sort of per acre for not only the building but really for the land itself. This sort of creates redevelopment pressures or even pressures to sort of change the use from maybe sort of lower scale or lower end industrial to something that could attain those higher rents or lease rates. Next, during the early stages of the process we conducted several focus group interviews and heard that existing businesses that are here today in Arlington really value this land as it's quite scarce you know, comprising only I think 1.2 percent of the land area and if they were to sell one of the challenges that they have is that they would really have to they would likely have to locate or relocate much further out in the region to find industrial space that's both available as well as cheap enough to be able to run their businesses. We also heard that there are some challenges with the existing districts such as parking for larger vehicles because the parcels are smaller and the buildings tend to take up take up a lot of space on the sites and we also heard a lot about the difficulties of having some some types of industrial use is located next to residential and that is not only the case for residential districts or even residential buildings that are adjacent to the industrial districts but also within some of the industrial districts you have housing that's sitting next to commercial and industrial uses next this idea of not a ton of industrial commercial space in town was also backed up through some of the market data that we obtained through co-star which showed that there were no commercial sales listings in Arlington over the three-year period from 2017 to 2019 in the three years prior you can see those little blue dots sort of indicate sales by quarter throughout each of those years there were only about 13 total listings between 2014 and 2016 and as of late 2019 when we collected the data the commercial vacancy rate in Arlington was frequently shown as being below two percent next so placing added pressure on top of that low commercial vacancy rate and the desirability of the industrial districts are the rapidly rising housing prices for both owner-occupied housing and rental housing much like the rest of the immediate boston region Arlington's median home value has increased over $300,000 since 2008 people want to live in Arlington and the supply and demand equilibrium in the region is really causing a significant drive up in the cost of housing but also the cost of land and the cost of construction sort of all three of those things are really coupled together next and the same is true on the rental side median monthly rent in 2019 in Arlington was just under $2,500 a month while rents here are lower than almost all the adjacent communities that we looked at which are shown here in this graph it's still quite high compared to median household incomes in the area these increasing housing prices and the changing income dynamics in all these communities not just Arlington are driving factors for investors who are seeking cheaper land in some of these commercial and industrial districts next so that really led us to a question of if we can you know what what kind of potential demand might there be over the next 10 years for commercial and industrial space in Arlington so the way that we went about answering that was we took employment projections over the next 10 years for Middlesex County and we applied what we call a fair share approach to see how much space might be needed in Arlington if the town continued to grab its fair share about one percent as it's been over the last few years of all the employment growth and job growth in Middlesex County so if we take that one percent figure and apply it to future employment growth it equates to about 200,000 square feet of additional space needs over the next 10 years or about 20,000 square feet annually so not not a ton 20,000 square feet you know it's not a lot by any measure but it is some some of this could be absorbed by existing vacancies or even additions to existing buildings so it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be brand new built space although it could be much of that future growth is projected to be in industry sectors like research and development the sciences higher education computers and tech c-suite management of companies those kinds of industry sectors which if we compare those to what's in the industrial districts today those two things are very different next but interestingly there are companies and I like to point out tetra genetics because it's one of the few examples of kind of the biotech r&d industry in Arlington's industrial districts today so tetra genetics was really breaking that mold and moved to Arlington in 2015 from Cambridge the company was looking for more affordable space a space that met their needs and also a space that was closer to where some of their employees lived in Arlington and Arlington at the same time has definitely done a lot to position itself for the entry of biotech by becoming a certified mass bioretic community and also allowing these types of uses in the zoning today next so some of the key takeaways for us that helped inform the zoning recommendations in our discussions with the zoning bylaw working group the existing industrial districts as I mentioned are very diverse in their businesses the types of businesses that are there today as well as their employment and most of the jobs actually pay relatively well compared to other jobs in the town at the same time firms in these what we like to call legacy industrial sectors in Arlington still struggle to justify the higher rents and if they have to move out as I mentioned before they'll really need to locate much further out in the region one of the unique dynamics about the industrial districts today is a fair number of the properties in the buildings are actually owner occupied so the people who own and operate the businesses might actually in many cases own the building and the land so kind of puts them in a unique position where they're not necessarily impacted by increasing rents or increasing lease rates they own the building and whether they have a mortgage or they don't you know they're paying that off as they go along but at the same time it's it's important to note that there is potential to attract the sort of high tech or biotech uses as the industrial districts maybe tend to morph over time you know we think they do they do in wood view Arlington is desirable it's certainly a little bit less expensive than being in Cambridge or Boston but at the same time recruitment could be challenging if you're trying to compete with Cambridge Boston, Waltham, Watertown, Somerville where a lot of that lab development the R&D is taking place last thing I'll mention is that the pressure from the housing market will continue of course until there's a better balance that can be achieved across the entire region from housing perspective and I think that's just an important consideration as we discuss the zoning so that's my quick overview and I'll turn it to Emily for the zoning piece. Thank you very much Eric and Erin if you don't mind moving to the next slide please. So when we worked with Eric and the working group over the summer of early spring into the summer one of the things that we did was show a lot of fit studies so we took the information that Eric gave us looked at different parcels in the five different areas and said what can fit on these sites given the other physical constraints whether it's the irregular parcel shapes whether it's the presence of the Brooks and the wetland buffers obviously the Minuteman bikeway was a key asset for potential employers in these areas or current employers in these areas so the idea was to take the these fit studies and start to develop zoning guidelines and dimensional standards for them and as part of that we also proposed several uses and we started to think about if we varied any of the existing zoning to allow for example bonuses for development what are the types of things that we would want to have in there we being obviously the community of Arlington and then ourselves as professionals trying to figure out this puzzle what's important what are the trade-offs if you allow a relaxation of some dimensional standards or require tightening of others and then as we took those concepts that we tested in May and tested again in June in the survey the next question was how do you create standards that are enforceable at the right point so in other words if what you're doing is reviewing an application for a use or for a building permit what standards can be put into place at that point to review and what are the things that would have been nice to have but are really tenant driven and would happen after after a building is permitted or use is permitted so we considered this developer against tenant relationship the enforceability whether or not the incentives we were looking to have were temporary or permanent incentives and then also thinking about the relationship some of the nice to have or even required cost more than others so you know those things should deserve a greater relaxation of the rules or a greater density bonus or however we were thinking about it at the time and then also finally and this came out of some of the discussion in the the public meeting was that idea of what's the public benefit versus the private benefit so as you're thinking about okay and one of the things that we targeted was height of course if you're thinking of for example increased height what's the what's the benefit to the public of allowing that increased height so this is how we started to think about these so Aaron next slide please so the first off we looked at uses and this goes to the idea of zoning almost as marketing in a way is that some of these uses are probably allowable underneath your current regulations if you push them a little bit and think about the flexibility of definitions but there's a lot to be said for calling out particular uses because you want them in your community so things like the breweries distilleries the wineries food production facilities almost certainly could fit under your light industrial with a few tweaks but again these are things that you want to have and they may also require different standards and so when you look at the zoning guideline or the the drop zoning rather you'll note that we've got some new uses in there and we've got with those new uses some development standards now it was brought up in the working group that those development standards don't belong in the definitions and i completely agree with that but we've cut them together for the purposes of review so that you can see this use requires something a little bit different and then once where we're all firm on the uses we'll move them into the appropriate point in the draft zoning next slide please so these are again some of the additional uses that you could have work only artist studio maker space vertical farming these again might fit under your light industrial but it makes a lot more sense to call them out as these are the types of things that we'd like to see in arlington next slide please so then we started to think about okay what are the base development standards that are appropriate you are going to build or significantly rehabilitate a building that already exists what are what's the town going to require from you so one idea was to have the building solar ready and the working group brought up we probably needed a definition of that so i've pulled one out we want the buildings to stay relatively close to the sidewalk so it's not going to be as close to the street wall in that you have all the buildings lined up together as it might be in a downtown area and certainly people in the the public meetings brought up the idea of maybe you don't want them too close to the sidewalk in an industrial whether it's because we want wider sidewalks or plaza or just a little bit more green space and perhaps trees to offset the heat island effect let's keep them but we want them keep them close enough so we're leaving at 10 feet from the lot line but you know no more than that and then the use of yards for low impact stormwater management especially in the areas where we're in a wetland buffer and that you'll see that again the idea of stormwater management when we get to parking key pieces we want transparency we want those ground floor windows to have the feeling of being activated even if you're not necessarily looking all the way through there are standards on on how that's dealt with we'd like the facades to have equal treatment yet just because it's an industrial building doesn't mean it has to be you know blank facades and all four sides and it's critical to have connections from the public sidewalk to the front entry and then lighting dark sky friendly no over spill no up lighting things that contribute frankly to energy efficiency as well as dark sky friendliness next slide please then we get into this idea of pedestrian amenities so eric mentioned earlier that and as an error and these industrial areas are close to if not directly abiding residential neighborhoods so to get from one area to the other we really wanted to help create a walkable environment so the standards you saw earlier which are not typical for industrial the idea of the equal treatment of facades the transparency and then having the buildings a lot closer to the street that starts to create the walkable environment but then we wanted pedestrian amenities and especially because of the bikeway and the ability for people to actually commute from the residential neighborhoods by bike or by walking to places of employment let's make that a little bit more attractive so here's where we get into choices and this is the idea of how do we make it easier for developers to come in and meet the requirements we want them to meet and they get to have a choice so on the top choice they can choose either shade trees or planters which has the effect of greening up the area making it a little bit more attractive but also especially in the case of the shade trees dealing with heat impact or heat island impact over time then they get a second choice so first they've chosen the green parts now we want some additional amenities whether it's public art on the left two benches in the middle or that's an example of artful rainwater design where public art and the stormwater are actually integrated into one so the idea is you've got an active view of the stormwater the key here is that you're creating either visual interests or you're creating a place where pedestrians can rest and you see that the two benches comes about because Eric and I had a discussion where he said are you really going to let them just have put one bench in and call it a day so we're trying to create these things that are reasonable trade-offs with each other next slide please Eric so then we get to the idea of the height bonus now in this area there is already there's a couple of things happening there is a step back after you go off a certain number of stories we're removing that it doesn't make sense for an industrial building because that becomes wasted space at the upper floors and there's also as i'm sure you're aware the reduced height when you're abouting the residential area so we're addressing that in two different ways one is we're allowing the developer to potentially have a bonus in height where he doesn't have where they can go up to 52 feet from 39 and if if they meet certain requirements and so the first thing is the roof we tried to think about what was it that a developer somebody actually building the building as opposed to a tenant so it could be an owner occupier as well what they would be able to install at the type of construction and so we touched on the roof partly for the environmental aspects of it and getting closer to net zero and this is an overall public benefit and partly to reduce storm water management need or again looking at the heat island impact so these are the options and there's percentages in the zoning itself these are just the images itself so they can do any one of those roof treatments or accommodation thereof and they have to do 100 on-site storm water management which will help with water quality as well next slide please then for parking standards i mentioned already that we have the idea of the low impact development and integrating the storm water management into the surface we're also requiring for impervious surfaces high albedo surfaces and shade again dealing with heat island impact in an area and in type of use that tends to have a lot of impervious surfaces if they're going to want to provide more parking than is required by the regulations that has to be pervious surfaces highly encouraging rain gardens electric vehicle charging stations and we also altered the required number of spaces we decreased the requirement for cars and we increased the requirement for bicycles again with the men at man bikeway path there having access from the from the neighborhoods to jobs and be able to commute by bike is ideal we want to encourage that next slide please so these are the specific modifications we're looking at the definitions removing requirements for the upper story setbacks including new development standards and standards for additional height we've redefined the industrial district to allow the mix of uses including residential as an accessory use and retail as an accessory use change the dimensional density regulations and change some of the review and approval thresholds for different uses making more of the things that we want by right and then finally the changes to the parking so that's a brief overview of it and happy to answer any questions great thank you very much i really appreciate the uh furnace and the the unique ideas too that that come towards the end of the presentation too with with really giving people choice too in in some of the ways that you're addressing some of the options as well um i'll throw it out to the board members for any questions or comments starting with uh gene yeah i i think um it's a terrific work and i think it's going to be really really helpful uh for the town and i look forward to seeing when you actually have the draft uh bylaw changes for us to look at i only had a few very minor comments one was on the definition of solar ready because i think what people are starting to find now it doesn't have to be solar voltaics can be solar hot water or solar thermal and the way you've defined solar ready seems to only allow for solar voltaics and not the others so i just put that out there is something to think about um second on the roofs too i just wonder if there's some sort of conflict between allowing vegetated roofs and blue roofs and solar ready and all of those things at the same time to allow um the additional height i don't know if there is or not but i i just wondered about that um the and then on vertical farming i wonder if you took a look at the town's rules on marijuana cultivation to make sure that um what i'm not saying there'd be vertical farming of marijuana i have no idea that works but if it did that there tends to be no conflict between what we would allow with vertical farming and the town's current rules on marijuana cultivation or whether we need to change the bylaws in marijuana to deal with the possibility of vertical farming so that was it i really was impressed i thought the proposals all look like they would be very helpful great thank you gene uh david well i uh am on the zoning bylaw working group and so have been been looking at this for a while and just wanted to say thank you to rkg and harriman for the great work on this and bringing some really interesting ideas to the discussion other than um then things that have already been mentioned my my major comment had to do with bike parking and the potential for drawing large numbers of bicyclists to something like a tasting room adjacent to the minute man and the fact that i had seen problems with sufficient bike parking uh at a brewery with a tasting room in summerville which is uh while not too hard to get to is not quite as accessible as a tasting room would on the minute man would be so i could imagine that being very popular and wasn't sure whether we should specifically think about how to encourage much more bike parking in that kind of scenario or just leave it to to the business people to to figure out if and when they they had that issue but i know that aeronaut brewing in um in summerville had a very significant bike parking problem which i'm not sure they've actually fully resolved to this day despite being very popular that was that was all i had great thank you david uh katie um that just as with my fellow board members i'm really impressed by this presentation um i wanted to echo david's comments about bike parking i'm really excited about how much has already been built into this proposal and to be attentive to sort of places where maybe we can even add in more given that that's like one of the incredible assets of this town um and the other thing that i just wanted to flag is something i really appreciated was the emphasis on improving the pedestrian experience in these places you know it feels like the being able to speak to the community benefits is clearly going to be really important as we present any bylaw changes and thinking about sort of what we do in those places and making it a more pleasant place to walk seems like a really important contribution so thank you for your work thank you katie and kim yeah um yeah thank you for all your good work here i do have a couple of quick questions here um when i first read this i thought this was putting a little too much um stress on requirements for owners and developers in these industrial areas i mean we're trying to encourage growth and encourage development and and maintain these industrial areas and you know seems like every give back that we were giving them the requirements seem like you know twice as much which is opposite of discouraging growth and and development then when i thought back then i went you know i read this several times so um you know so i'm as i'm reading through it again and again i'm feeling less so but i'm still that the initial thought still hasn't left me i mean we're trying to convince owners business owners and developers to invest in arlington and invest in the industrial zones and you know when i talk to um owners and developers you know what they're looking for is transportation so their employees can get there easy enough so i like the fact you guys zoned us to five zones i always thought there's four zones have we thought about maybe having um like in the mornings and evenings um bus routes that to have that um dedicated uh path we did an experiment over that earlier i remember jenny you did that uh on mass av can we just do maybe five stops that go to a hub somewhere where it may maybe address some of these concerns of having ready transportation um some of the other thing i was looking at is incubator space i mean if some company's gonna come here and want to stay here they want to grow here and since all these spaces so small and chopped up it's very hard for the company to come here and say oh this is the place to be we're gonna grow here because there's plenty of room and is so forth maybe we say okay there's no room but we're close to schools we're close to the population that you want to attract maybe this is the incubator space and then they can move on once they grow up i don't know i mean i was just thinking all the ways of looking at these are all suggestions by the way i'm not saying you guys didn't do a good job here i'm just thinking other things here to add to it don't take it in any other way than what i'm trying to say is it's additive it's not i'm not just trying to discourage your work um and i like the choices you have some seem really cost prohibitive and some seem very easily doable so you give the developer and the owner a choice i think that's good i'm encouraged to see what more comes out of this thank you can david well just just to respond to kin uh i i actually um think you brought up a couple of important suggestions i mean the first is really about finding the right balance between the give and take uh to encourage development but to get the kind of development that that we'd like to see here and you know maybe maybe we don't have that balance quite right yet but i like that there are a lot of ideas on the table to to discuss so i i think that that's worth digging into a little more and make sure we get that balance i agree david at a reasonable point um the other thing it sounded like you were talking about was something like you know private shuttle service like uh like some of the companies and uh and uh and office parks due to like ale wife you know that that is that's kind of an interesting idea i wonder if we could think about something like that you know because like lexington has their lex express um you know maybe arlington could think about about doing something like that to help with the transportation issues since not all of our industrial areas are are super convenient from a transportation perspective great before we move to um public comment emily or eric was there anything were there any comments that you've heard from the board that you wanted to address before we move on there are a couple actually just to confirm on the some of the things that gene said at the beginning uh solar hot water happy to look at the a different definition of solar ready just to make sure we're not being exclusive of anything um and on the vertical farming um uh we are going to make that specific to food called today or food productions so that it won't interfere with the marihuana jenny had actually brought that up to make sure that uh we were consistent on that and you also mentioned the roofs i have seen images of veg of roofs that share vegetation um and blue roofs um i will double check and see if there's any conflict with solar great thank you very much eric did you have anything else to add before we move to public comment um just quickly on the idea of um that i think kin brought up about the incubator space i i agree i think it could be a really interesting um maybe sort of a niche for arlington because i i do agree that i'm not sure there's a ton of opportunity at least in the near term because of how small a lot of the parcels are in the existing industrial districts maybe with the exception of one of those um that it might be better to focus on the smaller spaces and sort of growing those companies and then hopefully they stay here long term um if they don't you know i always say sort of what's good you know what's good for the region is good for arlington as well so we all sort of uh rise together so maybe this is arlington's way of having it's it's kind of niche role in the regional economy it's an interesting concept great thank you very much um at this time we'll open the floor up to any members of the public who have any questions or or comments that they would like to propose relative to this topic so if you'd like to speak please use the raised hand function under the participant button at the bottom of your your screen and i'll take comments in the order they receive please remember to state your name in your address and you will have up to three minutes so first is don selzer thank you madam chair don selzer irving street one of the more interesting points that came out of the study i thought was about employment jobs in which you noted that i think it was that 93 percent of arlington workers actually commute out of town go elsewhere for their jobs and the jobs that were actually in arlington are mostly filled by people who come into town um they don't pay enough that those people can actually live here and the other point that was related to that was that um in the industrial zones you find some of the best paying private sector jobs of town so this is something that i think we really want to encourage we don't have much industrial zone left let's try to maximize its use for high paying jobs so people don't have to drive elsewhere they don't have to crowd the red wine and take the tea into cambridge or boston that they can walk or bicycle to work right here thank you thank you mr selzer uh next we have i see mr warden you waving your hand so please thank you uh we can hear you yep we can hear you and see you good i i can't find any raised hand i uh that's fine i was able to see you okay uh well just two comments i'm on the i'm on the zoning by our working group and we've been working with these folks for is described for quite a long time now and there's a lot of interesting statistics and ideas here unfortunately in the very midst of our our work for the industrial areas that my rex come along and plant a 40 b right in the middle of our biggest industrial district and and that's and then so various people in town rush to embraces they want a great idea and a terrible idea and i don't know that we can do very much about it i would hope we could but but cannibalizing this terribly small slice of arlington is the gentleman pointed out it's like what 1.2 percent of the land area or something and start putting more unneeded residential in it's just an abomination um the other thing uh i would like to point out again let me mention tell me when this the idea of this $70,000 appropriation for this study was brought up there was some grumbling you know we we already face very high taxes in this town and and every little every few thousand dollars helps or birds you might say um and the chairman of the finance committee mr toasty at that time uh who is um actually looking at this proposal these proposals right now um uh spoke to town meeting and persuaded them to endorse this study because he said it was so important we have industrial commercial space that we can't afford more people that we cannot have uh residential uses we got to save this space to use for tax productive uses that don't send any children to see didn't say don't send any children to schools but that's part of the big cost of residences but he said we cannot afford more people and in one version of the the by law proposed by law changes i saw it said mixed use per end no not including residential now that has been removed and this somewhere there's a footnote i can't find it it's a micro type somewhere i can't find any the printed versions i have that says you can have 50 percent residential in mixed use building that defeats the entire purpose of this study and it defeats it's a totally inimical to the when the chairman of finance committee urged the town meeting to approve this it was the idea that it would be non-residential property and so to come along and put residential in it is just again it it's it's it's not it's not it's not doing what town meeting was sold and i think that all everybody here has to really pay more attention to what town meeting says because that is the legislative body mr warden you're at time thank you very much thank you for your comment uh next we have uh chris loretty thank you madam chair chris loretty 56 Adams Street i'd just like to continue where mr warden left off and i think the problem he's alluding to is that the draft changes to the zoning bylaw delete what is known as footnote d to the table of use regulations and that footnote pertains to mixed use in the industrial zone and it says that residential is not allowed in the industrial zone now by taking off that footnote since your board has decided that the table of use regulations for individual uses doesn't matter when you've got a mixed use development and you can put anything you feel like in a mixed use because it says mixed use that means without that footnote that you can put your typical residential development in the industrial zone with your token amount of a non-residential use and that is a very big problem i don't see that anyone in town is going to support that now i understand the consultants may not have realized that that's how you have chosen to interpret the bylaw you know based on the miss misinterpretation of town council and i i suggest you'll probably get shot down in the courts based on the hotel lexington decision when that comes out but that's a very big problem and you need to fix it i suspect you are only um or the consultants were only thinking that that residential would be part of these artistic work in living spaces but the way they've changed it it opens up a whole can of warms and basically allows the industrial district to become entirely residential except for this token amount of non-residential in the mixed use development that really needs to be fixed thanks thank you mr already next up we have Ralph Wilmer uh hi thank you my name is Ralph Wilmer i'm a resident at 17 Wilmer court and i'm a member of the zoning bylaw working group um i just wanted to get back to um some of the discussion earlier about sort of the give and take um i think one of the things that works pretty well with um what we've seen so far is that the uh the way the we've been thinking about the draft bylaw changes it's not prescriptive so it allows for developers to choose between several different options uh in terms of some of the developments and site design standards which i think uh work well for the areas in which the zoning districts are allowed and um and also uh they go a long way i think to promoting some of the sustainable design provisions that we'd like to encourage anyway so i think it's important to try and keep those provisions uh in in the mix um and like i said i think that it's not as prescriptive as a lot of zoning a lot of other zoning bylaw provisions that i've seen um in in other communities where where you really don't have that kind of choice so i'd like to just enforce that concept thank you thank you mr wilmer uh before i turn it back over to jenny and erin to talk about next steps emily or eric did you have any closing thoughts for us yes please thank you um just to note for the um two members of the public who spoke on the residential footnote d is actually it has been struck out that is correct but it's been replaced by footnote e and footnote e provides additional restrictions on residential so um you know i understand their concern we tried to address it by adding this additional footnote and i urge them to read that and if they still have questions um we'd be happy to discuss more about it uh through erin and jenny great thank you very much so i'd like to turn it back over to erin and jenny to talk about next steps before any final questions from the board thanks rachel um i guess the the next steps that i just wanted to mention is that the zoning bylaw working group will meet again um during the first week of november um we are they're regularly scheduled meeting time is um wednesday at 8 30 being the day after the election we're looking to reschedule that to um a date and time later that week to as anticipating a late night um in any event uh it would be um great if the redevelopment board members have any additional or specific comments if um if uh that could be uh sent to jenny and myself um by uh that week that first week in november um by uh generally um november second would be um great but uh we do have a little leeway and we can present those comments so specific comments from the redevelopment board to the zoning bylaw working group members during their meeting that week um so uh if there's other questions um you know in the course of the review i'm happy to discuss with any of the board members um as needed great thank you erin do any of the board members have any other questions or comments before we uh move on to our next item jean i'll just say what i heard david talk about everybody biking to a brewery all i could think about is like all inebriated people trying to bike home at 10 o'clock at night on that note we will thank um evilly and eric and erin for the presentation um really really wonderful study and thank you so much for sharing with it sharing it with us tonight thank you thank you great um so that uh closes the presentation agenda item number two so now we will move on to um public forum so anyone who would wish us to speak in the public open forum you will again have uh three minutes uh you'll need to state your name and address for the record and please use the raised hand function under the participant section and i will call your name in the order received so the first is don seltzer please go ahead thank you madam chair don seltzer Irving street earlier this week i requested copies of the uh new um document package for the 1500 mass af hearing and i was told that i would have to wait until late thursday to receive them that it apparently is now the policy of planning department to not issue it before then i have two objections to that one is that if you are serious about wanting public participation in this and feedback thursday close of business doesn't leave an awful lot of time for the public to review these plans and send something to the board for the upcoming monday meeting and the second thing is that it actually states in your own rules and regulations that both the agenda and the document package is supposed to be available and made available to the public on noon by wednesday before the meeting so uh i've raised my objection and i hope you'll reconsider this policy in the future thank you thank you for your feedback as i mentioned in my email to you we'll address that at a future meeting date thank you uh is anyone else wish to speak in the open forum this evening seeing none we will close the open forum and that concludes our agenda items for today uh jenny thanks rachel um if it's okay with the board i just wanted to make a couple of points um i know this is sort of i'm referring to a number of things but i just want to say a few important items if it's okay rachel please do okay first um the comment that was just raised i suggest that we talk about the board's rules and regulations as well as the goals at the goal setting meeting which i think based upon all of the feedback will be on december 7th um at 5 p.m i'm sorry just what i said december 7th uh december 14th correct was that the date december 14th we had two that we were looking at um let me just december 9th maybe that was the december 9th date december 9th yes you can't do the 14th exactly okay december december 9th okay so that i would i would like to talk about this topic that at that time um i'm well aware of the timelines of things that need to be done um and when they need to be done and they can't always be done in that manner that we originally agreed to when we adopted our board our board rules and regulations they're actually not really our rules and regulations broadly it's about know this agenda rules which i think only basically maybe one or two of you had a roll-in adopting back in the day when we first started with novice agenda and then we later amended it um i think that after those amendments it's become very challenging to for on a number of counts actually so i'm i'm actually interested in having that conversation and not so that's what i would like to propose is that that's when we talk about this if that's all right in greater detail five o'clock maybe too early for me i'm not sure it's i have to make a few changes then okay um i think the other option was 6 30 that i can make for sure but uh do you want me to hold on to five for now and just let me see if i can make make a change i believe that was the preference of most all right so i'll get back to you as soon as i can if i can move the meeting i'll move the meeting okay i just want to make one quick point which is a word that was used earlier which was grandfathered i just want to make it clear that that word actually was deemed to have racist origins by the massachusetts appeals court and that the preferred way of referring to land in that manner land or use is that it's provided a certain level of protection to all structures that predate applicable zoning restrictions so it's that word if we can choose to not use that word i would appreciate that i would also just like to respectfully state that this board is composed of both male male and female individuals who identify as such and that every time our public refers to us as gentlemen is extraordinarily disrespectful to the members of this board and i would hope that in the future that doesn't occur we also have female staff members who are also participating so i would like to respectfully request for that to not occur in the future and then one last thing i want to notice that our master plan very clearly states as a goal that we will provide a variety of housing options for a range of incomes ages family family sizes and needs and that every time we hear again and again that housing is not a major element of the master plan is inaccurate so i just wanted to crack that for the record thank you rachel thank you jenny any other items from the board seeing none i'm looking for a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn give a second second take roll call for the vote ken yes david yes gene yes katie yes and i'm a yes as well that closes our meeting tonight thank you very much thank you good night