and redevelopment of the meeting via Zoom. Following Governor Baker's order of March 12th, 2020, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, General Law Chapter 30A, Section 20. Public comments will be accepted during the regular public comment period, including the open forum at the end of the meeting. As per board rules and regulations and guidelines, we will be limiting those comments close to three minutes as we can this evening. I would encourage people to be brief and present new information we have heard you. That's why we're back here third time this evening with this meeting. So I'll ask the board members to just respond in the affirmative that they are here. I'll just run down the list as I see you. Rachel Zimbari. Here. Jean Benson. Present. And Lau. Here. David Watson. Here. And Andrew Bonnell is here. We have Jennifer Raiden-Arens-Werco from planning staff. Jenny, do we have anyone else that I should announce? I can't see the entire list. I do not believe there are any other staff on this call. Okay. All right, so we're gonna move right into docket number 3625, which is 882892 Mass Ave continued public hearing. And I will open that up now. And turn the microphone over to Bob and Esther. Bob, go ahead. Good evening, folks. Good to be here again. The, at our last meeting, Jean, you had suggested that we meet with Rachel with regard to getting some guidance as far as design issues with respect to our building. And we had already met with Ken and we got some great advice from him as well, along with Rachel. And I must say that that harkens back to the days of Ed Choi, okay? When Ed Choi, and I think everybody knows who Ed Choi is, okay, and what Ed Choi's reputation was as an architect, okay? The Mormon Church, South Africa Law School, many other buildings as well, okay? Ed would meet with us, as you had suggested, we meet with Rachel and Ken for the purpose of getting guidance with respect to what a building might look like. So we've done that. Now, one of the issues that, and by the way, the architect, we have John Murphy with us. We have the surveyor, Aaron Mackey. We have two architects as well, okay? And they'll come on in a little bit. But what I wanna get to is a very important issue. And I raised it last time. And that issue was whether in fact, the ARB had the ability to grant relief in certain cases and instances, we're here to for that had not been done. Now, I took a look at the bylaw and quite frankly, it's never made sense to me that the ARB was the body that was chosen to deal with the important properties on the main terraces in town, but that when you went through a hearing with them, you hit a roadblock because they may not be able to grant relief for a particular item or matter. I took a look at the bylaw and it's a look at section 3.4.1 entitled environmental design review. And looking at that, I see language in that. Can you pull that up, Jenny, perhaps? I see language in that section that talks about the fact that there should be flexibility with respect to how the ARB in fact acts with regard to dealing with certain issues. And by the way, the beginning portion of section 3.4.1 lays out the jurisdiction of the ARB, part of it is non-residential uses and hotels and hotels in a non-residential district with more than 10,000 square feet. Another one is mixed youth. And we are, of course, mixed youth, we're in a B2 zone. If you go to section 3.4.4, which is part of that section as well, it talks about the fact that there are certain environmental design review standards and these standards are intended to provide a frame of reference for the applicant in the development of a site in building plans as well as a method of review for the reviewing authority. They shall not be regarded as inflexible requirements and they are not intended to discourage creativity, invention and innovation. Now that section also talks about preservation of landscape, talks about relation of buildings to environment, talks about open space, both usable and landscaped, talks about traffic circulation, talks about parking lots, all of the issues that are before the ARB with respect to my proposal. Now, what I'm hoping is that we're not going to be listening attentively, we can listen, but we're not going to be convinced, okay? By the folks who say that if it's black let alone in the zoning bylaw, the ARB doesn't have any ability to grant relief. I think that that's not what the bylaw says. I don't think that's what chapter 40A section nine says, which talks about special permits being authorized by a local city or a town. Someone put this language in this particular bylaw years ago and if it hasn't been used, then shame on us that it hasn't been used. But I think we're at a point where it has to be used and why? Because I represent a number of developers, okay? And by the way, the Piscota family is local. They're not from out of town, okay? I represent a number of developers who are saying to me, why should we spend the time trying to get something approved in the town of Allington, okay? We go before them, we go back two or three times and we still don't get relief, okay? And indeed what we hear is we hear from a certain element in town that basically always has negative things to say and quite frankly, never anything positive in terms of offering a constructive approach as to a solution. Now we need relief, okay? And you know that, okay? We've explained this before, but we need relief with regard to that side yard setback basically a bus to residential zone. And we know that you have the ability to do that in connection with section 5.3.1, start that, with respect to section 5.3.16 in the zoning bar. You already have the authority to do that even if you don't get to what I'm talking about in terms of the language in section 3.4, okay? So you have the ability to do that. With respect to open space, we've given you two alternative plans. One of the plans we believe complies with open space and one of the plans does not, okay? If we need to comply with open space, then we lose two parking spaces and we will have to get relief with respect to the loss of the parking spaces which we can do under the bylaw either transportation management or because we have three affordable housing units, okay? We also need relief and we've explained this to you before with respect to the stepback, okay? Now, nothing in the bylaw defines stepback, okay? But again, I fall back on the language of section 3.4.4 which again says to the ARB flexibility, creativity, you've got to be able to exercise that. You don't, and particularly because it's mixed use, okay? You don't fall back on the black letter law and have the black letter law dictate what's going to happen. You need to be flexible in terms of what you come up with as far as the, again, we're looking for help, okay? When I went before the ARB in the days of Ed Choi, we always got help, okay? We got help to make a project happen, okay? And at that point in my career, I didn't hear that is it really appropriate to go before the ARB or the zoning board because you're simply going to be delayed and you're not gonna get what you're looking for anyway. All right, with that, I'm going to turn it over to John Murphy. John, why don't you jump in at this point and have your speed. Thank you, Bob, and to keep things concise, I will stick to the one probably main issue without repeating, which would be the commercial space. And I would like to just lead with, I would hope that the number of people we've worked with this project since February and have been through probably 10 reiterations, everything from design to layout to you name it. We have sincerely taken probably 90 to 95% of the comments put in front of us. I sit here truly saying that if we could get rid of the rest of those first floor units and do all commercial space, we would. And I would hope that the feedback from all of your side of the table here is that that's what we have done with most things that have been thrown at us. So with that in mind, we have made some changes with the commercial space, putting aside some of the design changes on the exterior of the building. I'll let the architect talk about it very quickly. We did increase the floor to ceiling height on the outside as to create more room for signage and a more commercial retail appeal. One of the other things we did was designate some very specific space right below the commercial space in the basement. And one of our thoughts there is that gets us up to about almost 1800 square feet. You know, for example, we have already reached out to a couple of restaurants as an example that we hear kind of sniffing around the area. We know how we can make a restaurant work there. We know where we could put our two by two chase. We know we could give them the option to, if you would like to have a back office in the basement, if you'd like to put a staircase there, whatever you would like to do, we can accommodate you. So we can accommodate many types of commercial spaces, but what I can't sit here and say is that this project is economically viable if we lose those back three units. It just doesn't happen. And even if we wanted it to, we could not get the funds to make it work. And with what Bob was just referencing, I think they are be as ability to look at a project such as this where no two projects are the same. Every project has some challenges. This one, it's environmental. We have to deal with it. And what we'd like to do is at the same time put up a project and development that everyone can be proud of. So that is what we are working towards. And what I think everyone can agree on is that there is a need and a demand for housing. Both affordable and market rate, you could talk to any broker in town. They have a list of people they could call if a one bedroom came up. And we already know from our last meeting that the wait list is probably around 400 people or so for affordable units. So just taking a very common sense approach here, why would we take away something that, whether that we know everybody needs for something that it's maybe debatable if there's already enough in town. Now, a lot of people are gonna have different opinions as to why space is vacant and it could be the size, it could be the current condition of it. For example, I know the Bushido family has over 3,000 square foot very deep commercial space vacant on Mass Ave that has been vacant for some time. There's a lot of different opinions. Ours is that a deep space actually doesn't rent very well and tenants don't tend to like it because they are able to spread out, they have to pay for all the square footage and they would prefer to be in a very practical usable space for them, which usually means shrinking it a little bit to what they actually need. Cause if you're gonna have empty corners and empty offices or just space that is worthless, that they don't wanna pay for it. And so sometimes those deep spaces do sit vacant. I think this space is a little bit off the beaten path for the main strip of retail on Mass Ave and Arlington. So I think that's a factor. And I think it just really comes down to we think we have put a lot of time, effort, energy and most importantly money into many design changes where we think we've come with a solution with listening and taking a lot of people's opinions on mind and this is truly, I believe the best we can do. And from our standpoint, it doesn't make sense to take away those first four units when we know and we've heard it from people on the last call, even a butters, everyone acknowledges we need housing and there is a demand for it and we can provide it. So if it means getting rid of those units for commercial space, it's almost irrelevant because we won't even be able to do it. And so with that, I think I don't wanna repeat myself, I think I'd like to send this over to Adam Wagner from Market Square Architects to talk about some of the design changes that we made. And if there's more questions on what I just said, I'm sure I can jump back in later. Thanks, John. Thanks, John. So Adam Wagner, partner with Market Square Architects, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, thank you again for hearing us tonight. I'm gonna be as brief as possible, but we have made some pretty significant design changes since we met with you last. And a lot of that has come as part of a collaborative effort and some good feedback that we received from both Kin and Rachel as to what we could do with the design to enhance it, to make it fit in better with that location there on Mass Ave. So with that, I'd like to show the rendering. Do I, can I share my screen or Jennifer, is that something that you can do? Which document would it be? I have already- The front rendering. It's in the floor plans, Jenny. It's page nine of our document. This one? Nope, keep going, right there. That's good. So we have resubmitted the entire package. We have the plans, we have the elevations, the elevation showing scale of our building to adjacent buildings, the shadow study. But I wanted to put it on this so that I could kind of talk through the design changes that we've made. The first being something that John just mentioned. We increased the floor-to-floor height on the first floor by almost two feet. And with that, we reduced the floor-to-floor height on the upper floors by about six inches each. The net gain was about an eight inch increase to the total building height. But what it really did is gave a lot of a lot more importance and hierarchy to that first floor space. So as you can see there, that first floor now reads much taller than the other floors. It created the opportunity for the signage band, which you can see there and we have some generic signs thrown up. The other big thing we did is we added a lot of storefront along that front portion. So I really, I don't know if it can be argued that that doesn't read as a retail space at this point. So that was a big part of what we wanted to do is create those differentiating factors between what is retail, what is not, and enhance that on the first floor. The other area that we spent a lot of time on is the chamfered corner right above the 882 sign. One of the comments we heard back was that it seemed like a pretty blank expanse of wall. And so through the design process, we looked at how we could break down that to smaller components, have it fit in with the rest of the building and still make a nice corner piece at this intersection of two roads. There are a couple of other changes we made internally. John mentioned a potential restaurant user on the first floor. So we've gone through and taken a look at our design and how we could accommodate exhaust hood if we needed to bring one up through the building. So we're thinking through that type of design challenge now before we know who the tenant is. So we have almost flexibility in who we get for a tenant in those spaces. With that, I'm gonna hand it back over so that you folks can ask some questions, certainly anything that comes to mind, we'd be more than happy to respond to. But hopefully in our work with Ken and Rachel, as I said, we've really molded this building into something that not only is gonna fit on Mass Ave, but it's also gonna fit within the community there in Arlington. So thank you very much. Thanks. All right, I'll turn it to the board for updates and I'll begin with Rachel and then go to Ken. Talk to us about how you worked with the applicant and how things have changed for our request since the last year. Sure. So thank you for sharing the additional renderings and for the entire team for talking through some of the more recent changes. So one of the things that we specifically discussed was how to make that commercial space more usable. So I appreciate the fact that there is a location identified for a chase to support a restaurant use and that the storage space was added in the basement to augment the shallow space that is currently provided for commercial use. Looking at the Chamford Corner, I also thank you for following up on the conversation we had last week regarding adding a projection to give some relief and the Cornus return along that Chamford Corner between the first and second story as well as between the third and fourth story to again bring some additional shadow line and a differentiation between the different levels here. I think one thing that again, it's not going to affect a decision one way or the other, but I would look at that first floor at the Chamford Corner. It's still reading is very dark to me. So perhaps much like in the rendering of the, that I asked you to do for the side of the building, Jenny, and that's the following page, page 10, I believe. Perhaps if that lighter beige fiber cement panel continued around and that became the material at the entry at the Chamford Corner that would again continue this language that you're creating of a differentiation between the commercial space and the residential space. But overall, I think you certainly picked up on a lot of the building design elements that we discussed. One of the things that we discussed at length that I'd like to talk a little bit about is the usable open space versus landscape open space. Because we have talked about if you were going to, you previously had mostly landscaped open space as opposed to usable open space. And I realized in your new calculation, you flipped that a bit, but I don't know that every space that you're currently looking at really is usable open space. So can you talk to me a little bit about your thoughts on the changes that you make because I know that that was post the discussion that we had. Yeah, yes. And maybe we can get Aaron Mackey from Allen and Major to get on at this moment. And if Jenny, you could pull up please when you could the two plans that very specifically only look at open space versus landscape space. I think that would be the best. Yeah, we had a perfect. Do you wanna start with this one? Excuse me, I'm sorry. Do you wanna start with this one? Sure, that's fine. Hi, my name's Aaron Mackey. I'm with Allen and Major. We are the civil engineers on the project. So in this iteration, we tried to maximize the grass that was available for the tenants. And that's what we looked at here. So we removed some landscaping and you can see everything in blue will be just lumen seed grass space available for the tenants. Also, we converted a bicycle pad, one of the landscaped islands out in front of the commercial space. We have converted that to a bicycle pad. Now, I understand the comment that was raised about no horizontal dimension could only be 25 feet, but I'd like to speak to that a little bit. We believe that the intent of the definition really is structured towards a larger program because it suggests that a swimming pool or tennis court should be constructed. This is a much smaller scale project with much less space to work with. And if you could split to the next plan, the applicant is willing to remove two parking spaces to really even increase the grass more. And once that gets up, I could speak to that a little bit. So this plan, two spaces would be removed on either side of the dumpster pad and the dumpster pad would slide to the east, the length of one stall. So this would create south of the dumpster pad here. You have a 31.5 foot by 22 foot grass pad and then north of the dumpster pad, you have a 23 foot by 25 foot grass pad. And I will say the bicycle racks are completely adjacent to the public sidewalk. So there's no restriction there either. And all the landscape space is shown in green, usable, that will be grasses in blue here. And these calculations are based upon the residential floor area. That's what the percentage is come from. So with that, that's all I have for the open space. I'll open back up for questions. Sure. So again, I think the way that you're calculating the usable open space, especially where you're highlighting a portion of the five foot buffer and the little triangle next to the handicap space, that's my usable space. And so I'd rather actually look to give you relief for providing landscape space instead of usable open space than to look at a space that really isn't usable. And what we talked about last week was if you did provide a grassed area for the residents of this building that it should really be usable space. You should provide an amenity, whether it's seating, benching, a park setting. There is some space to provide a place for the residents of these very small units to gather outside. So that's what I'd rather see you use the open space for. And again, if I'm just keeping a list, and I think what I'd like to propose to the board is that at the end of going through all of our comments, we run through this list of relief that's being sought and take them one by one to be able to come to some decisions, not all of them tonight. But so talking about the usable versus the landscape open space, the forester story step back, the reduction of the parking, the parking aisle reduction as well from 24 to 22 feet. And the other one that I have here in my list is the side yard setback. Thanks, Rachel. Ken, I'll turn it over to you unless Rachel, do you have anything else? Not right now. Thank you. Ken, you're on mute. Sorry about that. Jenny, can you put that back onto the site plan? Thank you, Jenny. I think what Rachel said was great. Essentially, I think there are three asks that Bob is team's asking for. One is the relief on the parking aisle from 24 feet to 22 feet. The other one is the corner lot setback and open space. And I'm pretty much okay. We're giving relief for the parking aisle. 22 is more the norm nowadays anyways and cars aren't that big of the way they used to be. And I think our zoning is a little antiquated and we haven't had a chance to update that. Same with the side yard setback. I think this is a nice project and I would like to encourage more projects like this. So with the side yard setback, I'm okay with giving some relief there. On the open space, I see the two choices and I'm kind of caught between one or the other. I was wondering would the proponent be okay adding in maybe like a barbecue area and a picnic table. So one of these open spaces on either side of the, I think the side closer to the building on between the building and the dumpsters would become like an outdoor picnic area, barbecue area for the tenants there. So they have a chance to socialize amongst themselves in the back with a public grill and maybe a table, a couple of tables where they can, you know, tables of four or something like that that they can work with. And that becomes actual space besides the space where there's just plain grass that has no function. You provide a function for them. I think people will come and use it. And I think that'd be a good amenity for the building. And I'm okay with giving relief once you do some, do a gesture like that would help a lot. That's my two comments. I wanna finish with saying that this developer has been a good developer to work with. They've actually listened to most of our comments and taken it to heart. They have tried their best within the economic means to make things happen. And I think this is a good fit for this building here. Knowing that the building has to come down because of environmental cleanup. The building is coming down no matter what, if we approve it or not approve it. Correct if I'm wrong, Bob. And- Coming down for sure. And that environmental cleanup is no fault of the owner. It was something that happened there before and they have to address it. So I think they're doing their best within their economic means to make something happen there. And I think this is good. So I'm fully supportive of this project and supportive of giving relief in those areas. And the only one more ask I asked is maybe if we can have some sort of picnic area in the back for the tenants. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Ken. Jean, I'll turn it over to you. Okay, thank you. Hello, everyone. I'll just go through what everyone else has gone through. I'll start by saying, I think that it's making a lot of progress in the right direction. I appreciate that you've made it possible to put a restaurant kitchen into the retail commercial space. And I think that's a very positive development. I agree with Rachel that I think the front entrance to the residential area, the Chamford Corner, just really doesn't look very good. I think in addition to coloration, which I think should be changed, I think it would benefit from just looking a little bit more like a residential entrance than a commercial entrance. So I agree with what Rachel had to say on that. I have a question on the open space and I couldn't quite figure it out from the materials. One of the comments we got, and I think this is correct, is the open space should be computed from the residential floor area and not from the total lot area. And I can't figure out if you've done that and what the 10% landscaped and 20% usable would be if it were computed from the residential floor area of the building. So I wondered if you've done that. Hi, this is Aaron, Aaron with the major director. So yes, we did compute that in this iteration. If you look at the top of the plans, we provided calculations for both. So at the top, so for the, just looking at the plan with both spaces removed. Yep, that one, if you go to the top, you can see we've tallied up landscape space and then that's divided by 1,614. So that 11,614 is the total floor area of the residential units. Okay, okay, great. Thank you so much. Yep, no problem. I guess I also favor you're losing a couple of parking spaces so you can increase the open space. I'm just, I'm a little bit concerned about whether we have or should exercise the authority on the minimum pile driveway width and it's only 24 feet because the angle of parking is 90 degrees. If the angle of parking was 60 degrees, then you would only need 18 feet to meet the requirements. I wondered if you had taken a look at the possibility of doing that and whether that would work so that the angle would be 60 degrees rather than 90 degrees which would allow you to reduce the minimum driveway with from 24 feet to 18. You know, that's a good thought but we did think about that early on in the stages of the project and to really fit the building we needed, we needed to have a dead end parking lot as we show. I think really the only way to accommodate the angle stalls and have it really work for maneuverability would be to kind of loop it out and have another curb cut on a mass av which would not be favorable, I don't think. I think to maintain the 90 degree stalls that keeps the maneuverability correct in order to turn around and get out of a dead end parking lot. And I would just add to Erin that the reason, the main reason why we are asking for that two foot reduction is because we voluntarily pulled the building back off the sidewalk by two feet or so and we shrunk the building because a lot of feedback told us that even though we could build where we originally proposed according to our survey and the documentation following that, it was not favorable. So we decided we will voluntarily move the building back by two feet, we shrunk the building and it also encroached back onto the dry vial. Then we also added the five feet in the rear. So, you know, there's only so much space you can take from all these different areas and it gets a little challenging not to mention that this property line in general is curved, which also isn't the easiest thing to always deal with. So we're just trying to figure out where's the best places to take space from here and there to kind of satisfy as much as we can. Okay, I'll think about your response to that.  Yeah, I think you're gonna have at least a three-point turn to completely turn around or you'll have to back all the way out. Which we don't wanna have happen. Which is an ideal. I think you typically will see angled parking if you have a one-way road. So you can just back out straight and continue going the same direction. That's more typical why you would see. Like I said, ideally, if you were to do that you'd have it a road loop through and you'd have to have another curb cut on Mass Ave which at the corner here I don't think that would be preferable. And really the building program we provide is what John has made work. So I think we're stuck with the 90 degree spaces. Okay, on, I had suggested last time I don't know if you made note of this that at least one of the parking spaces have electric charging station for electric vehicles. At least one, can that be put into this? John, we did talk about that, John. Why don't you find on that? So yeah, we absolutely did talk about it. We have no problem committing to something like that. We kind of wanted to see what the feedback was in terms of where we were gonna land with the parking lot. But I think that we could have something like that attached to subject to that type of change, administrative change made with a potential approval. So we have no problem committing to that. And just while I'm speaking, Ken, we have no problem committing to that outdoor area you were mentioning either. Okay, thank you. My next, on the side yard setback, the Lockwind side. I mean, I agree with Ken that I think this meets the criteria for you to use the current setback. I say that for three reasons. One is you're not encroaching more than the current building encroaches on the side. So you're certainly not increasing a non-conformance. Second, as I think one of you mentioned, the street curves. So while at the corner where the building is, it's pretty close, but if you walk down as I did to where the next residential lot is, it looks fine. It doesn't have the feeling that you would have if it backed right on to a residential property where you could see and feel the big difference in the side yard setback. So for those reasons, I'm comfortable the way Ken is. And there is specific authority in the zoning bylaw for us to basically change or allow you to do this side yard setback. So I'm comfortable with that. I am not comfortable with giving you relief from the fourth story step back. And I'll tell you why. And I appreciate what you had to say, Mr. Enise, attorney Enise. But as I look through the bylaws, there are a number of places in the bylaws that specifically give the redevelopment board the authority to adjust requirements in the bylaws. They're not in the EDR review criteria, they're elsewhere and it specifically does that. And it doesn't allow us to do that for the fourth or step backs. And unlike the EDR, which even mentions things like open space and maybe theoretically, an argument could be made that it gives us the ability as a result of that to have some flexibility. I don't know that we have any flexibility on the fourth floor step back, but more than that, even if we did have this flexibility, I feel like you haven't made the case. The only case that you've made to us basically is we need the space on the fourth floor to make this work economically. And as I read through this, I see nothing here that I feel comfortable with allowing us to wave the fourth story step back, even if we had the ability to do so. And by the way, it is defined and it is specifically set out in the bylaw what it should be. I will give you one proviso on that though. It does say the step back needs to be on all frontages and I've spent a lot of time looking at the bylaw trying to determine what the frontage of a building is. And I'd say it's ambiguous. And when it's ambiguous, I would not want to impose the ambiguity on you. I think the better argument for this building is that it has only one front and that front is on Massachusetts Avenue and the side that faces Lapland Avenue is a side of the building. It's not as if the building has two fronts and depending how you start reading the various definitions, you end up one place or another. So while I think the step backs are something that I wouldn't waive on the front, the front facing Mass Ave, I don't think they're required on the Lapland Avenue side or if they are, I think they are something that would be waived because of the ambiguity. And that's where I am on these things. John, do you want to respond to the reason we need the step back? Yeah, so I think I mentioned this in our previous meeting. It's not about economics, actually. This one is about, if we're going to voluntarily move our building back, we can't move it inch per inch back. So if you, we actually is involved some shrinking of the building. So if you keep those top units with a step back and you move the building back and you actually shrink it at the same time, those top story units become unlivable. I mean, we couldn't have them. So we needed to expand that front, that top floor so they become actual livable units because we could not maintain that when we moved the building back and shrunk it. Yeah, I understood that from last time. I just don't find that a compelling reason, assuming we had the authority. Now all of my colleagues may disagree with me and then they'll approve this. But if this building were not this sort of building but it was some sort of building where, I don't even know what it was, but there was some argument that it would completely change something that relates to the EDR criteria, maybe, but that's not where you're going. What you're coming from is something else. And I just don't think that with, even if we did have the authority the way to step back to me, you haven't made a case that that's consistent with the EDR criteria or the special permit criteria for that. So that's the one place on all of these things that I can't go. How about the equities, Gene, with respect to the fact that we are, and again, I think you even said this, we didn't cause the problem with respect to the environmental situation, yet it's costing us a million, $250,000 to clean up the site, okay? And that's one of the reasons why everything is so tight in terms of what we're trying to achieve. So if you look at it from an equitable point of view, it seems to me that that ought to weigh to some extent in our favor. And I'm just asking you to consider that in your deliberations. Yeah, I mean, I thought of that. Maybe you'll convince some of my colleagues, but I don't think that's a relevant consideration here. I did wonder whether there was a possibility of getting, and you don't have to answer, I just wondered whether there was insurance available to the owner for this, or whether they could go after the previous tenant or some other way. You never get money, Gene, Gene, I think you're an attorney. I am. As am I, okay? Practice that sort of law a bit too. That's okay. I've done this for close to 50 years. You would never get money out of the tenant, okay? That would be a total lost cause. So that's not ever going to happen. Okay. Can I speak to Gene about this for a minute? Gene, you asked for a compelling reason. And one of the things that when I talked to these guys earlier on, and I thought that was a compelling reason is, they pulled the building back two feet. Gave us much more room that we're accustomed to there on the front sidewalk along Mass Ave. That move, I think greatly helps the community in that right along Mass Ave, especially on the bus stop. So it was not jammed up in there. That's where I thought the compelling reason was to allow some flexibility on the top floor. And I said, look, if you give us pulling the building back and the mass out of building back from Mass Ave, we can talk about giving some really top. It was kind of a good compelling reason to do that. And that's where I'm coming from, Gene, that's all. I mean, that's fair to say. I just wish there was somewhere in the regulations that acknowledged that that's an acceptable trade as there is with many other parts of the regulation. Let me just mention something about the parking which I forgot to mention. I think if you reduce the two spaces which I favor, you need to do a demand management plan, transportation demand management plan. You don't get the spaces reduced without that by meeting the current number of affordable units. You need to add at least one affordable unit to get the reduction in the number of spaces without a transportation demand management plan. So I'm comfortable with you having fewer spaces and I don't think the demand management plan will be especially burdensome and might actually be helpful. It will not be, Gene, and we can in fact provide and we are providing covered bicycle parking and storage, provide bicycle or car sharing on site. And there's one more that I thought as well. We can provide at least three, there's no question about it. I'm sure you'll be able to do that. Right. So that's where I am on these issues. Oh, there was one other issue that was raised by one of the commentators and that was whether the lower level should be counted in gross floor area. And I'm wondering, Bob, if you have a response to that. John. I'm not really sure the exact question or what the issue was with counting it or not counting it is a relate to a specific calculation or issue. It's just the gross floor area of the building and the FAR and whether, if you have a position on whether the lower area has to be counted, I couldn't figure this out to the best of what I could figure out. It looks like all of the lower level is below grade and wouldn't be counted. But I didn't know if you'd looked at that and Rachel, I don't know if you had an opportunity to look at that. Aaron, is that something when we were calculating early on that you're behind a lot of those calculations? So we looked at the four floors above grade for that calculation being that back when we did it only the first floor was just storage for units. So we did not include that, but that's kind of that we have. We calculate the four store. Yeah, I think you need to, this is just me again, obviously the other members of the board might not agree. I think we would need some explanation of why the lower level is not counted or it needs to be counted. I think you potentially have an explanation. I just like you to go through that and let us know. That's it. Okay. Thanks, Shane. David, go to you. So I'll echo that I appreciate the work that you put in attempting to respond to the various concerns that have been raised. And I'm pretty much in agreement with my colleagues on the specific issues. So I'm not going to go over all of them specifically again. I will say with respect to the fourth floor step back, I'm somewhat in agreement with Gene. I think I may take a more expansive view of what we could do under the EDRC criteria, but I am not convinced that you have made the case beyond the economic argument for getting relief on the step back. And my concern is that we need to look at this with some degree of consistency. And if we accept this argument in this case, how is that going to affect other cases where similar relief might be requested? And I just wanted to talk about that some more. And you said, if you don't get the relief on the step back, then those fourth floor units are unlivable. And I want to understand what that means and are there, what would the impact be of, say, reducing the number of units on the fourth floor to make them more livable? Well, I would say we'd have to do that. You'd have to just chop the entire fourth floor off, which if that's the case, we might as well just all call it a day because we can't even come close to doing anything here. And unlivable specifically means an architect can hop on if I am incorrect with this, but I think they were getting somewhere around 300 square feet. And then again, it's because we moved the building back. We have no problems going back up closer to our property line and keeping the fourth story step back. We really don't. It was more of we can do either or whatever is going to make the most sense for the town, the ARB, and what people want. So if the step back is not as important as moving the building back forward, we can do that. We can do either of the options. We just, we need a little bit of guidance because I feel like if we keep going back and forth on step back, no step back, we can do either. So someone just needs to tell us what to do. And I think around 300 square feet, just personally speaking, is pretty small for a studio. And it only got that small because we shrunk the building moving it back off the sidewalk. So you moved the building back and you shrank the building. That's correct. And in order to accomplish that, you need relief on the upper story step back, the parking lane width. And what else was there? Side yard, the side yard step back. The side yard as well. Can I say something? Bob and I see, can I say something? Sure. I'm sorry, Rachel. I don't want you to go ahead. You were going to say something. Sorry, I was just adding into David's list and usable open space. That was the other one. One of the benefits to the town by way of our moving the building back two feet of courses, when the bus shelter was constructed and laid out, it was laid out in the wrong place, okay? So what we're doing by moving the building back is creating more space, which in turn creates safety for inhabitants of the town who are waiting for a bus, either around or in the bus shelter. So there is a benefit to the town by virtue of moving the building back two feet. There's no question about that. So I just say that for what it's worth. Right, and we're losing usable open space or we're gaining usable open space. Rachel, I would be so confused. My read of the plans is the way that it was calculated. They're not currently, although the calculations are showing that they're meeting the usable open space. I think if you actually look at the definition of usable open space, it hasn't been calculated correctly. So I would return the areas that they're showing that are not actually usable to landscape open space. And I would prefer to give them relief on that to what Ken also mentioned to creating truly usable open space in a smaller percentage of their. Just to jump in here and be clear, this is something that we can make a condition as a special permit. We take a vote on that and make it a condition that those things have to be done without them having to come back another time. Yes. We have to do what it's worth. No, now I understand now what Rachel just described. And I agree, I'd prefer to have, to the extent we can have real usable space, I would prefer to have that. So I also do appreciate the option of reducing the number of parking spaces in exchange for a TDM plan, which I think you're already most of the way towards having such a plan as was previously discussed. Can I ask about the fourth floor again, David? So there are six, I think there are six units on the fourth floor. Having a hard time understanding why you couldn't configure it to five or four units by using step backs. I don't understand why you would have to eliminate the entire fourth floor or all of the units would be too small. Well, at that point there's not enough units to support everything that we've been talking about. So that's an economic issue. But like I said, we can move the building back forward and we can keep all the units on the top floor and have a step back. It doesn't bother us. But two, the real issue here is you're trying to have a small number of units relatively to the cost support affordable units, support an environmental cost that should not be there. And when you're trying to spread out these costs over a small number of units, versus if it was 100 units or 75 or 50, you can't easily absorb these issues. So again, if it came back down to getting rid of half the units on the top floor, we would just prefer to move the building back forward where we can legally build and step the fourth story back. Gene, answer your question a little differently. Real quick, okay, what I'm saying is when they're trying to do is stack the units so that the plumbing and electrical and structural are aligned from floor to floor, which gives it some savings. Once you scatter the layout of units on the upper floor, it doesn't flow anymore. And that brings on exponential costs. I see what you're trying to get at, Gene, by maybe deleting one unit, but then allocating that space to other units, but then it's not a one-for-one there, I don't believe. You're correct if I'm wrong, John. Well, that is correct, thank you. One of the units is a lot larger than the other because it's the one at the corner. So, I don't know, I just think there must be a way to reconfigure that floor to remove one unit to add the step backs and then your golden. Of course, I'm not asking for a step back on Loughland Avenue side. I'm just saying a step back is required on the Mass Avenue side. And I'd agree with Gene on that one. Mr. Inesci, I had one question about what you said with respect to the location of the bus shelter and you said it was put in the wrong place. And I'm concerned if we're moving the building around to accommodate the location of the bus shelter, that doesn't sound right to me. Why are we being asked to move it back? Well, is it simply, I mean, frankly, if the bus shelter is in a bad location, it seems like it would be easier to move the bus shelter slightly than to. Well, no one from the town made that suggestion. The only suggestion made was for us to move the building back two feet. We've been operating on that basis from day one. I think I want to move into the public comment period.  There are a lot of people who are waiting patiently to speak, but I think the applicant here has been accommodating and making changes and responded to the things that we've asked. We as a board have asked them to do. And I think dragging them around here to browbeat them over a decision that's not just economic is not really what should be our job. Reconfiguring the fourth floor. And John, you can chime in here or Bob, you can chime in here. But my understanding is that reconfiguring the fourth floor would not only add in a reduction in the building, but it would lose one of the affordable units, which is really where we should be focused on this. What we've heard about for the last two years is the dearth of affordable housing in town and how difficult it is to be built. And here we are with a project that well, 100% of Arlington may not be in love with it is offering something that is in short supply and is a great benefit to the town and the town goals. And we should not look past that when we're considering giving this applicant relief on these points. Andrew, I think removing one unit from the fourth floor would not had result in a reduction in the number of affordable units. We're chopping the fourth floor down. We may- No, no, I'm not chopping the fourth floor down. John, can you respond to that? And then we're gonna move it to public comment. Yes, we're not in favor of removing one unit on the fourth floor and leaving the building as is. We need to make this project happen or just literally we're gonna have to wait until maybe construction costs change or something else changes in life that we can build a project that we can get money for. If we start chopping off units, we just can't. So it's just not gonna happen. So if we had to get rid of a unit on the top floor, we would just move the building back and say we can legally back forward and we can legally build our building here even if it's not favored upon and we can have the top story step back and keep those same number of units. I sort of feel like David did if the only reason you did that was because the bulk bus shelter was there, it's unusual situation where a little bus shelter moved a four-story building. It's not just a bus shelter. So actually the building could go in front of where the building is currently. So people felt like that was different than it is now and that's not viewed upon. We're actually pulling the building back in a couple of areas where it's not as far out on the sidewalk as the current building. So it's not as much about the bus shelter is, our property line is actually a little bit closer to it and the building could move forward in some areas where that's maybe not as favorably looked upon because of where it is currently. One of the issues about moving building back from where your original designs once as well was to keep the building from feeling like a street wall and keeping the wide sidewalk on that block which was important to know who commented first. I'm gonna move into public comment. The board will have other opportunities to speak on this this evening. So as we usually do here, please use the little app to raise your hand. I have 43 people in this meeting. I don't see all 43 of you on the same screen. So don't just wave your hand.  Call on you and I will start the timer running. Please keep your comments brief and I remind you that this is not the first time we have had this project in front of us. So first up is Winnell Evans. Winnell, go ahead. She's on mute. I'm even muted. There we go. Can you guys hear me now? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. This is directed to the architects and please forgive me, but I care deeply about my town and I'm gonna speak extremely bluntly. I've gone to your website and I have looked at the multifamily housing that you have designed and these buildings to me are completely totally generic. I see no difference in something that's built in Texas versus New Hampshire versus Massachusetts. And I would hope that you would spend a little bit more time thinking about how can we make this building appealing? I think one of the main issues that residents have with new construction in Arlington is that they find it visually unappealing. And I think that if designers spent a lot more time on the exteriors, they might find a little bit more receptive climate. To be perfectly honest, this building represents my worst nightmares about the direction that Arlington is going. And I beg you to think about how to make this building fit both our town, its position on the battle road, which has the potential to be a terrific tourism driver in town. And that's it. Thank you. Richard Pelletier, go ahead. Yes, I have a simple question. Does the commercial space have a dedicated parking spot? So I can answer that now. So the two spaces we're getting rid of, we were actually using for commercial employees. So technically no, and I think they don't have designated parking. And if it's under 5,000 square feet, I believe there's no requirement anyways. Correct me if I'm wrong, Bob or Erin. Thank you. That was 3,000, but that's okay. Yeah. Sorry, Bob, could you say that again? You were a little quiet. Yeah, I thought it was 3,000. Maybe I'm mistaken, okay? In any event, we're going for parking relief under the Transportation Management Act. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pelletier. Don Seltzer, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer Irving Street. Over the weekend, I sent the board my comments regarding dimensional issues related to parking and the calculation of floor area. This latest set of plans is disappointing and it has actually worsened the parking issues. Section six of the bylaw is very specific. You can't have parking spaces simply budding up against the building as shown. There must be at least a five foot landscape popper in between. The aisle between the rows must be at least 24 feet, as been mentioned. The lot is simply not wide enough for two rows of parking. It falls short by seven feet. That's going to come out of the drive aisle. You're talking about a 17 foot drive aisle between the two rows. Without radical design changes to the size, shape, and location of the building, there does not seem to be any way to accommodate more than a single row of parking spaces. I also wrote to the board about the incorrect calculations for gross floor area and for required open space. The first two sets of plans incorrectly use the lot area as the basis. The latest version used some other basis and is off by at least 50%. I finally figured out this afternoon what the mistake was and how the architects calculated the floor area. I could talk about that later if you'll grant me more time. Compounding these errors is a misunderstanding of what constitutes usable open space. The bylaw is specific that narrow strips in small areas simply do not qualify. The zoning bylaw says open space shall be deemed usable only if no horizontal dimension is less than 25 feet. In the first option that was presented tonight, only the southwest corner of the lot behind the dumpster seems to qualify providing about 700 square feet of open space. But the standards for environmental review require the board to consider that the location and configuration of usable open space shall be so designed as to encourage social interaction, maximize its utility and facilitate maintenance. It hardly needs to be said that space hidden behind a dumpster does not meet the standard. All of these problems come down to the simple fact that a 14,000 square foot lot is simply not adequate for a 21 unit apartment building. It is suitable for a two or three story building where the ground floor is all commercial and there are one or two residential floors above. That is the vision that was presented to town meeting in 2016 when they voted for mixed use. And that is the type of development that this board should support. Thank you. And if you have any questions about the letters I sent you this weekend, I'd be glad to try to answer them. Thank you, Mr. Shelzer. Annie LeCourt, go ahead. Yes. So I wanna make a quick comment about something that is in the letters you received in supporting against the building, which is that I am a member of the board of FoodLink and FoodLink was temporarily occupying this building. And the fact that we are building this building doesn't kick us out of some space for building our own building on Summer Street. Beyond that, I would just like to say that I support the project. We need the housing and that in my experience, what makes a lively streetscape is that buildings are consistently at the same distance from the street and that you have a road commercial all the way along. In the context of this building, which including the building next door and the two families that follow, doesn't have that. So it would be great to have commercial space throughout the bottom of this building, but you're not going to experience the kind of streetscape that everybody wants until there's more development further down the road that adds more taller buildings and commercial space in the bottom of those buildings so that you have lively streetscape all the way down. If you really wanna achieve that, then what we should be talking about is allowing the builder to build this building the same height as the building next to it. So they could add a floor, you could have your step back and they could have enough units to make the project economically viable. Now I understand our bylaw may not allow that, but if you wanna get everything you want packed into this building, that would be what I would, if I could wave a magic wand, wand. Short of that, I think we need to do whatever we need to do to get this kind of housing into Arlington because part of the problem with housing in Arlington is that the housing is so uniformly single family that we are missing diversity in who lives in this community and adding one bedrooms and studios is gonna increase that diversity. We're going to bring people into Arlington who may someday be able to step up and buy a house or a condo but who right now just wanna become members of our community in a way that they can afford. So that's my two cents. Thank you, Joanne Preston. There, can you hear me? Yes, we can Joanne. Thank you. I apologize, I'm gonna make a few points. I came in a little late, so I apologize if it's repeating something that's been answered. First of all, I just wanna correct 55% of the housing units in Arlington are multi units, they're not single family homes. And it's much higher percentage than Lexington, Belmont, Winchester and other communities. First of all, it seems like when you are getting to a possible solution, then we hear from the developers that it's not economically viable. But I have yet to hear them quote any figures or even approximations of why it's not economically viable. And I ask this question because I've been reading some real estate newsletters which talk about building residential housing is the most profitable with the greatest returns of any real estate ventures. So I'd like to question that. I also, and I might have missed this, but it's often mentioned that this apartment building with maybe for our senior citizens. But is there a wheelchair ramp in the driveway that will allow them to get from their car up the ramp and in the back door? Another question. The other issue is the commercial spaces really far too small. And we've had that experience with the mixed use across, the mixed use across the street took two years to rent. And then to a daycare center for which there is no parking. And of course that's now closed. So one doesn't even know whether that would be economically viable. So I hope you will consider my questions. Thank you. Thanks, Joanne. Chris Loretty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. Can you hear me? Yes. I would like to, oh, first of all, thank you for making the comment I sent this morning part of the docket. They pertain to the lack of open space on the site. But I'd like to address a couple issues beginning with the question of authority of the ARB to waive certain requirements. And I think it's important for the board to understand just where that flexibility exists that the applicant's attorney was citing earlier in the meeting. Because in section 3.4.4, that's environmental design review standards. And the first sentence is the following standards shall be used by the board and department when we're doing site and building plans. And then all that flexibility, that pertains to the EDR standard. And indeed, the board has tremendous flexibility in how it applies those. But it does not have the authority and it does not have the flexibility to rescind the requirements of the zoning bylaw itself. These are things that apply to all sorts of development unless the bylaw specifically says that it does. And so that's my first point. And I'm gonna end with a question. But the other thing also wanna bring up is the issue of ex-party meetings. And the attorney brought up Mr. Ed Choi. I served with Ed Choi on the Redevelopment Board. And to my knowledge, whenever we were in the process of a special permit hearing, there were no private meetings occurring between members of the board and interested parties like the developer. And indeed, Mr. Nessie himself has complained about that to the select board. I really think it's inappropriate for your board to be doing that. And I think you need to actually report on when those meetings occurred, what occurred and what was agreed because they really shouldn't be happening. Everything that happens in a public hearing should be part of a public hearing. And I also wanna say, I say this as someone who has voted for perhaps the two largest residential developments in this town in recent years. And in one of those cases, the Brigham's development, the developer got a variance before they came to the ARB for a special permit. There was nothing unusual about that. When Armstrong Ambulance got a special permit with the same attorney representing them who was before you this evening, they went before the ZBA for relief before they went to the ARB. So this idea that the ARB is a one-stop in a shopping place is just not true. So let me just close or end by saying, I really have never seen a developer with such a sense of entitlement as this one has. There are processes in the by-law that can be used. There's flexibility for things like parking. And if the dimensional requirements of the zoning by-law don't work for you, well, the proper procedure is to get a variance from the zoning board of appeals. So I'd like just to end with two questions. And the first is where does the ARB get the authority in the zoning by-law to reduce the open space requirements in that by-law or for that matter, the size of the parking lot? I mean, clearly you have lots of flexibility with the amount of parking and the developer does for where he locates that parking. I don't see one need and two, the ability for you to grant that relief. And again, I would just ask you to report on all these ex parte communications and meetings, private meetings with the developer and put an end to them in the future. Thank you. Thank you. James Fleming. I can unmute myself. Thank you. I wanted to echo two things, one from Ann LeCourt and one from I'm Sorry, your name is invisible, but you go by why now. I think that it could easily go to five stories. I was walking by the site earlier today and I was thinking about this and it didn't seem like it would be too imposing having a five-star building, especially if it was set back another two feet. I agreed with Wynell's comment on aesthetics for the neighborhood, most of the other buildings with the exception of the commercial property immediately across Mass Ave there are red brick and some stone accent, somewhat, something like that. So I think the only thing that I could identify that would make it blend in more with the surroundings would be to change part of the aesthetic and make it red and brick color scheme, but that's just my personal stance on it. The other thing that confused me listening in on this meeting is why there's so many, so much, I guess my phrase would be nitpicking commercial spaces and things like that. The developer already has an incentive to make sure that the space is usable because they have to rent it. They have to make money off that space and if they don't do their own due diligence, then they're gonna lose money on the property. So I'm not sure why we're fighting about commercial space. Thank you. Thank you. Danuta Forbes. Hi, sorry, I'm making sure I'm unmuted. I'm a town meeting member in precinct 10, which is in the space that you're talking about and I just wanted to echo the last speaker. If you compare the building design with the one across the street, the one across the street has two colors. Around the windows it's sort of got almost what looks like a pretty shutter and I can't believe I didn't even like that building when it was first put in, but when I compare what these developers are showing us, it's just ugly. There's like three different shades of brown. There's nothing around the windows. It's really kind of an eyesore. So if they could tweak that a little bit more and put fully commercial space on the bottom, I think it would blend in more and I do want to say when Elle's saying what a lot of us are thinking we want more housing, but you don't want these sort of matchbox buildings that are generic and they all look the same. I'd like to see a little more thought go in the design of this one. And so yeah, when I looked at the renderings, I thought, can we do a little bit better in the picture? So especially with the color scheme, it's just depressing. I wouldn't want to live there, but thanks. Thank you. Ben Rudick, go ahead, Ben. Hey, Ben Rudick, 40 Web Calet Road. Couple opening things. First, Andrew, I just want to thank you so much for your service. Sad to lose you and sad to lose you in Arlington. I know it's really hard right now to figure out how to take care of kids. So thank you for your service. It's not an easy thing, especially as chair. Also, I'd like to say I hope that even whenever we get out of this pandemic, I hope that we continue to allow this sort of remote participation, whether it's all remote or whether it's some sort of supplement. I think that what we're seeing now is a massively greater increase in the number and diversity of participants here. I know just for me, I just had to step out for a second because I had to soothe my toddler who's going down for a nap. And I think I might hear my infant crying, hopefully not. And it's just very challenging for people that can't make a meeting for three hours on a Monday night to be involved in, I think is what intended to be a very democratic process. And that may be people with mobility issues, people that for whatever reason can't get there or people like me that would love to participate, but just also have childcare duties with young families. So I think it's really great that we're doing that. Two more comments. One, I'm involved in a group called Arlington Neighbors for More Neighbors, which has 270-something numbers and were for secure, abundant housing for everyone. And so I would just say to the proponents, the developers and also the board, there is a tremendous amount of enthusiasm here in town to have more housing built, however we can do it. And I would hope that the bias in these conversations be around finding ways to support and improve the projects and not risk them in any way because we have done a very bad job as Arlington is a greater Boston of building more housing over the last 40-something years and we're seeing that in the housing crisis we currently face. And it does not help that 79% of our land area is single-family zoning. And so the areas where we can build multiple units is limited. And so we have to do everything we can with this space that we've got. Putting on a totally separate hat, I professionally have spent a decade as an analyst in commercial real estate. I don't do anything in Boston area, but I would say as a numbers guy, which is my main baliwik, there's nothing I've heard from the developers in terms of financial viability or difficulty of financing with the increased retail space. There's nothing I've heard that does not ring true to me from what I know of the current environment. And I even hope that if they get everything they want, I'd be still nervous about getting financing in this post COVID moment. So I would need to see specific numbers to verify their exact claims about what is not financially viable. But I would say that off the top of my head and from what I'm hearing, it sounds like they're telling the truth. And so I would just put that small note in. So with that, I hope that the project can move forward and continue to increase the housing base here. So thank you. Thanks Ben. Take a look real quick. I don't see any other hands up, except for Richard Pelletier. If you do want to speak again, I'll come back around to you and see if there's anyone waving. Andrew, John Warden has his hand up. Go ahead, John. He's on mute. John, you'll have to unmute yourself. All right, thank you for that. So you can thank him. Can you hear me now? Again. Okay. So thank him for recognizing you.  I wanted to thank Mr. Benson for calling your attention to my waving hands, which I'm doing for the last 20 minutes or so. All right, a couple of comments. I hope everybody saw the front of the globe, the front of the business section of the globe, which said study sees virus spread in crowded housing. And this is from Chelsea, where they have a lot of density. And that is one of the reasons that some of us think that density is not a good idea. Now you talk about, and it has been mentioned, that there is a need for housing in the Boston area. I don't disagree with that, but Arlington has done its share. Arlington has done more than its share. We are of 351 communities in this state. We're number 12 in population density. We're just, there's only one town, Brookline, that has more people per square mile than Arlington does. We have done our share. We've already got more neighbors. And how many more are we gonna squeeze in? How are we gonna educate their children? Where are they gonna have parks to play in? Now, I do have a question about the, I couldn't tell looking exactly how many commercial spaces are being provided. It looked like last time they had one, did they have two this time or how many did they have? So we have designated around 1,800 square feet between the first floor and a little bit in the basement. And we're not chopping them up in any certain way. We're kind of letting interest aside. If we get, say, one restaurant that wants the whole thing, we'll go with them. If we get someone, two people that have more interest in a smaller space, we could divide it down the middle or two thirds, one third. You know, we're kind of just designating that area for it. Thank you. The, I go back to 2016 when this proposal was, when the mixed use proposal was presented to town meeting and that there were those of us who urged that ex afforded an amendment that would specify a given percentage that would be devoted to commercial uses. And the redevelopment board assured us that don't worry, we don't need a criterion. We will be sure you get plenty of commercial uses. And I remember commenting that, well, you know, in this country, we try to be a government rule of laws, not a rule of men, but I expressed the hope that everybody on the board being honorable men, they would stick to what they said and what they promised it to town meeting. And the board's compensation doesn't change that much, but the idea that several people this evening have brought up that the first floor be entirely devoted except I suppose for a main central entrance to commercial uses has not happened. So what happened to the honorable men? And even I remember that same meeting, Paul Slickman who almost invariably supports the establishment line spoke of glowingly how great mixed use would be. The whole ground floor is gonna be commercial uses, interesting shops and so on. And the people upstairs are gonna come down and use them. And now we see, I don't know, 1800 feet out of all the feet that are presented there. So that is a severe disappointment. It's better than the one token one that was proposed originally. But it's certainly not what we were led to believe at town meeting would be the sort of thing which you would bring to us under the mixed use. Now, another point is these to setback. I'm not really crazy about the idea of the step back at the fourth floor, but it's in the law. It doesn't say it's a variable. If they need a variance to get away from a requirement that's not subject to, a environmental design review aspect, then they go to the zoning board. And they know that, Mr. Netschy knows that. And he's pointed out that they have done it before. So another point which I'd like to make is when we keep hearing, well, we can't do the fourth floor exactly the way it is. We can't sacrifice one square foot. Then the whole project doesn't work financially. Well, I don't know, show me the numbers.  Are you not going to affect the number of affordable units? That the whole thing becomes unbiased. I'd like to see the numbers. And I think the board should see the numbers before they buy that as any part of the argument. And the, yes, and there's also a sort of reference to earlier in the meeting about an element so-called that opposes development. Well, that's, there may be people who believe what would not without reason that Arlington has already pretty fully developed like it has been for many years. What is opposed is overdone, oversized, ugly, inappropriate excess development that adds more people, not much affordable housing. We agree there should be more affordable housing. We would say, we're going to build housing, build affordable housing. That's fine. That's a social need in which we all burden, which we all share, but just to build luxury units and so that sort of thing is something that we don't need more of. And we shouldn't just figure this corner and blow off the promises that were made by the board to town meeting about not limiting the commercial space and should not be gutting our commercial areas in order to provide housing of which we have more supply than almost anybody else in the whole common world. Thank you. Aram Holman, go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Aram Holman, 12 Whittemore Street. I'd like to second the comments of the people who say that this is still too dense, still has not enough parking and it still has inadequate living space. Those haven't changed since the last meeting. I would like to see an ARB that is not, that should be setting as policy for Arlington that the business mixed use should not simply lead to a wholesale conversion of business space to residential space with only a token quantity of business as a SOP to the business district that was not the intent that should not be the effect. Regarding the pleas that I heard earlier of poverty, Pashuto is not my rec. This is a development proposal. This is not a poor college student asking for financial aid. And I don't think it's up to the town to give away the store and give breaks to help pay for Mr. Pashuto's necessary remediation of his property to deal with the environmental issues. I'll second the comments of people who say that affordability continues to be an issue despite the three or so units that will be made officially affordable. The rest of these will not be affordable. Again, the larger policy issue is that we should not be converting wholesale business areas to residential. And I would like to see an ARB that will state that as policy and then it will make decisions which will reflect that. Thank you. Thank you. Will there's anyone else who would like to speak? We should fill a tier.  I'll let you go again, but please limit your comments to things we have not heard yet. Okay. I guess I just want to say that I am in support of this. There is a demand as has been stated. And I believe one of the board members said that this family or this developer has been working with the town and they're a great developer. And I'm just confused about the commercial space. You look around different towns in this empty storefront everywhere. So I'm not sure why there's such a demand for commercial space, but there is a demand for one bedroom apartment in Arlington. So why would we force them to make more commercial space that may be unrented when there is such a demand? Once again, I'm fully in support and thank you for your time. I don't want to get into a habit of letting people come back for more time, but Dawn, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I just want to go back to what I claim I made earlier, in which I stated frankly that the floor area that they have calculated for this is incorrect by about 50%. I only figured out this afternoon what they're doing. For residential, the gross floor area, for residential use, they only counted the area within each apartment. They ignored hallways, the elevator, the stairwells, things like that. And that's, I wish I could do that with my house, tell the assessor, well, why don't you just subtract from my floor area the stairwell and the hallway space and I'll pay a little less in property tax. It doesn't work that way. The second, third and fourth floors are 4,500 square feet each and they're totally devoted to residential. About two thirds of the first floor is as it is now. And the lower grade area, the bylaws cover two ways, whether it's a basement or a cellar. I think this is categorized as a cellar and it says that for calculating gross floor area with a cellar, you include all the space that has a residential use and that's everything other than the 450 square feet that you're using for commercial storage. Below grade. So they are way, way off on what the residential floor area is and they're way, way off on what the required usable open spaces as a result. Thank you for this time. Everyone who wants to speak has had a turn to speak. I believe, see no other hands up. Don't see anyone waving. So I'm gonna turn it back to the board for discussion and I'm going the same order I went before. So Rachel here first. Go ahead. So where we get to the, I'm hearing that we have some alignment around the usable open space relief versus landscaped open space. It sounds like we're moving into agreement on parking and the side yard, but where we're still the one, I think where we need to chat a bit more is about the four story step back. And I've thought a lot about this. I really think that in pushing the building back and creating some of the softening around with the landscaping around the corner and creating a streetscape that moves back and forth coupled with the fact that we have the large apartment building next door and the developer with the feedback that was given for his initial meetings with Ken started pushing and pulling the building. So we have a one foot step back at portions of the building where we extruded some of the bays makes me feel comfortable that the building is doing what was intended by that provision in the bylaw whereby it's creating an undulation in the facade and eliminating the possibility that at the property line there is a sheer face. One of the things that I've heard in a lot of the hearings over the past year I've been on the board is lamenting any type of vegetation in front of a commercial space that does set itself right up to the lot line. And I do appreciate that the developer in this case took that initial piece of feedback and cited the building where it is. Ken, go ahead. I understand what Richard said. I greatly appreciate the building being set back greater than what they have to be. I see that that is the only major sticking point right now. I could be wrong, but that's what I've heard so far. And I'm okay with giving them relief on that setback because they did make a genuine effort to pull the building back to give ground space where it's I think it's usable by everybody not just having some air rights out there that may or may not be appreciated by anybody because mass average here is extremely wide from curb cut to curb cut. It's pretty big pulling it back that setback there I think it does very little for the shadow study. It does very little for the massing. So I'm very comfortable in my belief at least that with the ability to pull the building back and giving them relief on the setback is fine. I'm fully supportive of this project right now as it is. I asked them to do a few tweaks, especially what Rachel said about maybe the color around the entrance area there. I think that would lighten up the whole area and make it a lot more readable. And I think the components is willing to do that. Maybe adding a little barbecue pits tables out there which actually make usable space usable space and not having just open grass space. I think that'd be very nice. And that adds a good amenity for the people that socially interact which is what open space is for. So I'm supporter of the project. I'd like to see the board support that for the following reasons I stated. I think we should encourage development like this where we are having people willing to have mixed use and I truly think this is mixed use. And it's addressing certain things that are very important. One is it's all one bedrooms. They don't really tax, generally one bedrooms don't really tax a community. It gives the elder community a place to age in place. I mean, because it's a four story building there's an elevator. So from parking all the way to your unit you have accessible route. There's not that many units in Arlington that has that right now. I really like to see how many one bedroom units we have that will allow aging in place. That's one factor that people don't realize. And then when you compare retail space like what was across the street, I think that's unfair because what's across the street was every limited. It's very tight space back there and I don't wanna get into all the specifics but it is what it is. It was an abandoned gas station that sat there for a long time. If this is not approved, I think we're gonna have a hole in the ground that's gonna sit there for a long time. I don't know how much stronger I can support this thing here that we should gotta support these mixed use ventures along Mass Ave. It helps the town. I really believe that. And it gives the ability for the town to be more diversified. It gives the town to have a teacher someplace to maybe to live. A fireman or someone's just starting out. Not everybody can afford a three quarter million dollar house, single family house somewhere in Arlington. And I think this is something that is important enough that I think we should work with. I'll leave it at that. Thanks, Kim. I don't think I could have said it better. I think those are great points that you and Rachel both made. Jean, go ahead. Well, I'm very conflicted about what to do about this because I like the project. I think it would be a good project to put on the space. I wanna respond to a few things that people said. One, people should not be concerned that there's a relationship between COVID infection rates and density. In fact, the report that the article in the globe is about actually says the exact opposite. And I was on a webinar with the person who wrote the report last week. What the report said, it's not density. It's overcrowding in apartments. That is the factor that causes in places like Chelsea among other factors, the increase in COVID infection. So there is no relationship between density and COVID. So people should definitely not be concerned about that based on the reporting and the studies that have been done so far. That said, I also think that the lower level of this is probably a seller that the residential uses were intended to be apartments in how that is described. But that was something where I wanted the project proponents to come back with us on how they did that and maybe take a look at the gross floor area again because clearly if they didn't count the hallways and things like that they were required to. It's supposed to be from wall to wall in all four directions. So I think we need to have that looked at again. And they can also say what they think the resolution should be with the low level. I think that the bylaws are really ambiguous on what we should do when there are things that clearly are not consistent with the zoning bylaw. And they are also things that the bylaw does not specifically give us the opportunity to adjust as it does, for example, with the side yard setback, which I think we've all done here. But when it doesn't give us any specific direct authority or criteria to use with things like the fourth story set step back. And I just very much appreciate what everybody else had to say about this. And before I say what I'm thinking about it, I do have a question. The step back is supposed to be seven and a half feet. And I don't understand how pulling this building back about two to three feet would have allowed you to build in the seven and a half foot step back. The math doesn't seem to work on that. If you, I didn't hear anybody saying you were pulling the building back or shrinking the building by seven and a half feet, which is what the step back needs to be. I heard a couple of feet. So I really don't understand still how pulling this building back from the sidewalk, which I think is a very good idea, by the way, I don't understand how that gives you enough, reduce enough extra space that you couldn't do the step back. Can somebody explain that? I can jump in and explain that. So the way I understand it is, when you go above three stories, that top story has to be a certain distance back from the property line. No, not from the property line, from the building wall. Okay, sorry. Seven and a half feet back from the building wall. So when we moved the building back, we could not move it inch for inch back into our parking lot. Right, right, right. All right, so. So you're shrinking the front of the building without expanding the back of the building. So that's how those units get so small that when we moved the building back, we couldn't make it work. Okay, so what I'm hearing is moving the building back didn't get you or you didn't lose the seven and a half feet, because you really didn't have seven and a half feet in the first place. You really just had about three feet. So as I understand it, what I heard earlier was you pulled the building back about three feet. So it not exact, but pretty close to where the current building footprint is facing mess up. Three feet is not a seven and a half foot step back. So I don't think that idea that pulling the building back three feet was the reason you can't do a step back works mathematically for me. As I said, I think it's hard to figure out what to do when there are specific things in here where we don't have specific authority. And while you could stretch it a little bit for environmental designers, your standards by open space and say, maybe we can do something about that circulation. Maybe we can do something about that. I don't see anything about the step backs. So I would say either for the step backs or for the open space and for the width of the driveway, although I think we can fit width of the driveway and open space into the EDR review. Maybe they go to get a variance for all of those or maybe you'll disagree with me, but I can't vote for getting rid of the step backs for the reasons I stated. Even though I liked the project a lot and I think it would be a good project for the town, for all the reasons people have stated who liked it. Thanks, Gene. Go ahead, David. So I think I largely have to echo Gene. I also like the project and I wanna find a way to make this work. But I don't like having ambiguity in whether and how we can adjust certain parameters. And if the clean thing to do is for some of this to get an explicit variance to clean it up, I'm struggling with that because I do think that EDR, the EDR process gives us a great deal of flexibility, but our zoning bylaw is messy and it's not entirely clear to me that that flexibility applies to everything. And that concerns me when we're being asked to grant relief on something that is not entirely clear on the base of the bylaw. I'm honestly not sure what to do here because I do think this is the right type of project for this space. I will say I do not like how this building looks but I do appreciate that they've worked with the members of the board that have more experience with design issues to try to improve it. But they're asking for a lot of relief here. And it is not clear to me that we should grant all of it under our EDR and special permit authority. Bob, do you wanna chime in? Yeah, again, my position remains consistent with respect and I agree with Gene. I think Gene agrees with me with respect to the EDR paragraphs that we talked about earlier, the open space parking lot circulation and the like, okay? When that particular section, section 3.4.4 talks about open space and indicates all open space, landscaped and usable shall be so designed as to add to the visual amenities, the vicinity, et cetera. Isn't that intertwined with the fact that in order to deal with that paragraph and that language, that the ARB would have the ability to make a determination with respect to open space. That's, I mean, I'm trying to be logical about this, okay? And if I apply logic to it, okay, then it's inescapable to me that in fact, under section 3.4.4, all of that extra language would not have been added and the language with respect to the board shall have flexibility and that the standards are not intended to discourage creativity invention and innovation, I think applies. If the feeling on the part of the members of the board is they like the concept generally, they think it's good for the town, they think that the added residential units or one bedroom units, I think Kim stated it very nicely, okay? That people could even age there in place, okay? There is an elevator, okay? You're going to get, what you're going to get in this building are either individual aging in place or younger folks, okay, who are going to be there for their formative years, okay? And then move on to perhaps buying a home, whether it be in Allenton, whether it be somewhere else. So I think this building is going to serve a very relevant purpose in the town. And remember, you heard Pam Hallett last time from the Affordable Housing Group, okay? Basically saying that we needed additional housing, particularly one in bedroom units in this town. So my position would be that the board does have the ability and I think Mr. Benson agrees with me. I'm not sure where I am with you, Mr. Watson, on anything other than the step back, okay? Whether you agree with my analysis of 3.4.4 on the other issues, the open space, et cetera, okay? Is the step back your only issue, Mr. Watson? Yeah, I'm most concerned about the step back and I think my concern is that when that provision was added, I'm now realizing that probably due consideration was not given to the fact that we are not simply a planning board. We are also a redevelopment authority with broader powers. And I think the way that that was worded does not necessarily mesh well with that broader power. And some of the other provisions are more clearly aligned with the EDR criteria. So that's where I'm struggling. If I could just say something, I think I agree with Attorney Anise to extend if we're gonna walk down the road with him on using 3.4.4, we can get to flexibility and open space. We can get to flexibility on vehicle circulation if I were to walk down that road. But that road does not lead to flexibility on step backs to me. I understand you very clearly, Mr. Watson. Could I jump in here, Bob, real quick? A very simple way to look at the step back for this building is where we are currently proposing it, we moved the entire four stories three feet back. Well, I'm just gonna use the round numbers that were used previously by one of the board members. Consequently, we could move those lower three stories back forward that three feet and then step that fourth story back the required amount. To me and to us, and what I've heard, it's debatable. It's a better project to have all four stories that three feet back first. We have no problem moving those lower stories forward and satisfying the step back. What I just really wanna avoid here is going in all these different directions. We've gone through so many iterations. We've blown our design budget. We're just trying to get to a place where we can have some feedback that we can get this done. And it sounds like the step back is an issue and we just really need some direction because it doesn't hinder us either way. And that's kind of how we feel about it from our point of view. We just wanna know how the board would like us to proceed on that. Andrew, I'm obviously not an attorney and there are several other members who are attorneys on this board. Is this something that we should, if we can identify where we have alignment and if this is the only issue that we have, is this something that we could get town council to weigh in on in terms of- I'm gonna have Jenny chime in a little bit as well because town council has been consulted on this. And we, I know where he stands. He generally agrees with attorney Nesse's position that section 3.4 gives the ARB as a redevelopment authority broad powers to have some flexibility with respect to the zoning bylaw, especially when there is a market benefit to the town and when the benefit to the town is an advancement of the town goals. I don't see this as an economic decision. As I said before, I think economics plays a part. But I think the choice here is adding affordable units and necessary housing stock to the town or taking something away and putting nothing back, which is really what the developer has told us they will do if that happens here. And I don't see that as a threat as a sort of a developer myself. I understand their challenges. And I don't think that that's a good outcome for the town. I don't think it's a good precedent to be set by this board. And I don't think it's a good way to head things off in the future with respect to the relationship that this board might have with Attorney Nessie, with the Pashudo family or with anyone else that wants to come in and see some progress in town. Leaving issues of design aside and leaving issues of what's going away aside, I fully support this project. And I'm surprised and disappointed that we don't have unanimous support for something that the town, the residents and the board have been clearing for for as long as my tenure has been here. One of the things, as I said before, one of the things we've always tried to do is advance the idea of affordable housing. We all understand that building 100% affordable housing is not commercially or economically viable, but building affordable housing is something that we figured out a way to do. It's a characteristic process. It's not the best process, but it's what we have here. We have a developer here who is ready to be able to build what we've been asking for in exchange for some relief. And I think we can and should give them that relief. I think we have the authority to do that as a redevelopment board. And I would vote to support this 100% with all the relief requested by Mr. Nessie and the applicants. Can I mention I spoke with town council about this and I don't think I'm allowed to say the details, but let's just say he and I agreed that there was a textural way to look at it and a non-textural way to look at it. If you just look at the text, you don't find anything that gives us the authority. But if you look at it as a general, the bylaws give the redevelopment board broad authority when things come before it for special permit and EDR, then the question becomes, where does that broad authority really end? And how broad is it really? And I'd say we ended up where the feeling was he could make his decision about where it ended up and it was appropriate for me to make my decision where I thought it ended up. I mean, my feeling is looking at it right now, this is a better project with the current design with no step back than moving the building back forward on the sidewalk. I mean, there is the outstanding question which you raised, Jean, and some others mentioned about the gross floor area calculation. So I guess I would ask, perhaps we should get an answer to that and make sure we're working from the real numbers. Aaron, are you still on? Yes, I'm here. The gross floor area, we can provide a detailed calculation to the board on that matter. I will say when it comes to calculating open space, I think we are correct when we use the unit footprint for residential floor area. If we're beyond open space, Aaron, beyond that. Yeah, yeah, I know. I agree. I was just touching on it because I did know it came up on the residential floor area as well for open space, but back to gross floor area, I'll have to touch base with Adam and we'll have to make sure our calculation is accurate and we can provide that to the board. I mean, perhaps we could take a vote on all of these issues and just leave the final vote on the permit on seeing the gross floor area and whether that allows us to go ahead. That way, at least they'll know where they are and everything else. I would not. John, how do you feel about that? I would not have a problem with that. I'll rely on you for that. So it sounds good. Yeah. We're in agreement. I don't know about the other people on the board though. So how exactly would we structure such a boat? Well, we essentially have to continue to hear and we take the entire vote in the next meeting, which would be August 17th. We could at least take a straw vote now saying who would vote in favor of each one of these things? No, you don't want to do that, Andrew? No. Okay. Jenny, can you give some guidance or direction here? I know you've spoken up in the past about some of these issues and I'd be interested in your opinion. I'll do my best. First, I want to say it's been a long night so far. There's a lot of listening. We've now, you know, listened to the public as part of the public hearing process and quite a bit. I think that that has shaped some of the outcomes here. And I think that that's good. I appreciate the work that's been done thus far. And also the input of the board. I guess in terms of how the board, what the board's role is. As Jean noted and as Andrew noted, we have consulted with town council, some of us individually, which is of course, okay. And also at your direction, I've consulted directly with town council a number of times on this particular matter as well as other matters that come to the board. I've also consulted with inspectional services. And in both cases, we are, we continue to head down the correct path. We haven't done anything. We're not doing anything that's out of line. We're out of scope of what the ARB, the Arlington redevelopment board is allowed to do. That was the whole purpose of creating the Arlington redevelopment board is to review and ultimately decide upon proposals such as the one that's before you this evening and has been before you now multiple evenings, including other proposals that you're similarly reviewing. The zoning bylaw actually, while there is some ambiguity here and there, I agree with that. There's actually quite a number of fine points and, and, and answers to some of the questions that have come up this evening, whether we were talking about frontage, gross floor area, you name it, there's a lot of things that have come up. And I would urge you individually to go back to the zoning bylaw to review those issues. If you have questions about them, I'm glad to answer them in the intervening times that we meet or provide maybe a better presentation to this board about the zoning bylaw. But I will say that the environmental design review process is designed for you. It was built, it was built by you, not you individually, but the old, the first version of the redevelopment board that grew from a planning board so that you would have some better and frankly better powers, you know, improved powers in order to get the kind of development that you need to see happening along our major corridors. That's your main purview, right? And we also know based on lots of conversations, whether it was during the building of the master plan, not all of us was here, we're here for that. Or where we are today that there's a lot of challenges with redeveloping along those corridors. There's no doubt about that. Nobody's no, I don't think anybody on this call, whether they've piped in as a resident or a business owner or the people who are making this proposal or the board members would disagree with that. If you do, I would encourage you to take a look at the parcels and apply the regulations that we have and try to come up with a good product. It's very challenging and we all understand that, but environmental design review was built so that you can do things like potentially this type of development. The purpose of the zoning by-law is very clear. It says to encourage housing at all income levels. Location access is important. An appropriate use of land is important. Review and cooperation by use through incentives, bonuses and design review, encouraging the expansion of our tax base through redevelopment. Reasonable consideration of the district with a view to going, giving direction of effect to land development policies and proposals by the redevelopment board. And then when we do approve things, we refer back to our master plan and our housing production plan in our case because we have one that's adopted and approved by the state, both of which say that this is the type of thing that we would like to see in our town to meet town goals. Then you move into 3.4, which is what Mr. Nessie has referred us to in thinking about what environmental design review is telling us we should look at. It is not telling us to hem ourselves in. It is telling us that they're a frame of reference and shall not be regarded as inflexible requirements. The more we hem ourselves in to finite points, the more we find that we're actually, we are being a little bit inflexible. And I would discourage that. I would encourage you to think about, do you think right now that there are adverse in effects from this project versus that it's outweighing something that's beneficial? If you think that way about it, then that might influence the way that you look at this particular proposal. But I think that we can say that all that we've heard from this applicant, all that we've talked about over the many hearing nights of the hearing so far and from our residents and people in the community who have communicated various opinions to us. That there are some reasonable things that have occurred in being responsive, but there might be some more to do. Those things that are some more to do can be built into the special conditions that you often include in your decision making process. I don't think that you're out of, you know, scope to think about ways to address some of these issues through that special, through the special conditions process in addition to the general conditions of course. But if you think that more needs to be done or you have a specific recommendation, then maybe you can do that too. But you are under, you're allowed to make this decision, whether you want to make it or not is a different issue. If you choose to deny it, I would ask you to think about if the adverse outweighs the beneficial because that's what our zoning bylaw asks you to do. Thank you. Can I say one thing, Jean? Go ahead, Bob. Yeah. I'm looking again at 3.4.4 and paragraph B, relation of buildings to environment. And I know Jean Benson is looking for something in that section to hang his hat on with respect to a proposed relief with regard to the step back issue. That language talks about that the proposed development shall be related harmoniously to the terrain, to the use scale and architecture of existing buildings in the vicinity, et cetera. Why can't that step back issue fit within the language of paragraph B? If we're looking for some language in the bylaw to hang our hat on in terms of concluding that the ARB as it does with respect to open space and other issues has the authority to deal with the step back issue. I just throw that out. I mean, I will think about it. I mean, it's not abstract language, Jean. No, no, it's not abstract language. I will think about it. My problem, which continues to be my problem is I don't think that section was intended to give us unbridled discretion to change every one of the requirements found throughout the rest of the bylaws. And as I mentioned before, there are many other places in the bylaw where it says, and the ARB can, you know, change this, alter this, et cetera. But the step back is pretty new. It came in a long time after that was there. And the same way they added other requirements to other, the other requirements giving the ARB some flexibility, they could have put it there. They didn't. I'm struggling with this because I like the project. I agree with Jenny that I, as I said before, I think it would be a benefit for the town to have the project that meets a lot of the goals in the housing production plan. And in the master plan. I just don't know if that's, if that's the reason why we can just say we have the ability to do this. But I will give it some more thought between now and the next meeting. So Jean, you're proposing to continue this to the next meeting. I'm not proposing that. I'm saying if we do continue it to the next meeting, you could take a vote now. I wouldn't be opposed to that either. I would be reluctant to continue this to the next meeting because we haven't asked the applicant to do anything else. Well, we have the gross floor area, gross floor area. We haven't asked them to do anything concrete or. Constructive between then, and I'm not sure what will change between tonight and August 17th, except that a project sits for another month. I'd be really interested to see what it would look like if they could reconfigure the top floor with just one less apartment. I think they've been clear. And the step back. They have been clear. I don't know. I just don't know why we would do that if we could then legally move the building forward and build within the property line. And have the step back. I just don't know why we would want to just do that. I guess just to be completely. Open about it. Is there any way that we could. If I get a read on how all the members are going to vote. That is. We could get a vote. We could get a vote. Approving the permit with a condition subsequent. Whatever that condition might be, Jean, that you feel you would need. With respect to your concerns. And same thing with Mr. Watson. I can't think of a condition subsequent. Right now, Bob. Suggest one that I would like. I'd be looking for a favorable vote. And your concern. One of the issues you've raised is that you want to see more information with respect to the floor area ratio. Is that correct? The gross floor area. Correct. So is there any way we could fashion a vote. Approving it. Okay. Okay. So. Subject two. The petitioner submitting that information to the board. I would be happy to one that says subject to the. The petitioner submitting that information. And the planning department determining it. Did not change any of the requirements. Other requirements of the bylaw. Andrew. I would be not supportive of that. I don't want to set a president's where.  I think me and Jean are fine. A great relationship here, but I don't want one person to hold up the whole thing and hold the thing hostage. We either vote on it to say it passes. Or we say no, we don't pass it because. The majority says no. I don't think every single decision here will always be unanimous. And I think we, that's what one of the good things about us is that we all come with different background and different views. We all share the same goals, but we have different criteria. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with Jean having a different opinion on the setbacks and stuff like that because I think we do need that. We don't, we don't want to come across rubber stamping or everything, but I don't want to say we got to please everybody and we have to twist around everybody. That goes back to an earlier thing that I talked about is encouraging development in Arlington. If we, if we, if we do it the way with seems like it's heading. It's not encouraging development. It's making it more difficult. I mean, all, all the, all the developers wanted to do is something consistent. And they want to know what the, what the, what the thing is, and if they can make it work, they will make it work. If they don't make, if they can make it work, they won't develop there. And this ambiguity that we're doing here is not helping future development. And I, I, I stand opposed to that. Okay. I agree with you on that point. Ken, I think continuing hearings and continuing hearings and, and nitpicking to the nth degree has served us poorly, especially in the last year or so. And to think about the things that could have happened or have been lost or never even begun is an issue. And I think we've heard all five members of this board this evening say, this is a good project. This is a good project. I want to approve this project. Then we're here. This is why we sit on this board is because the town manager and the planning department and the select board have entrusted us with the authority to make these decisions and to look through the things that the applicant has put forward before us and to make the right decision to further the town goals and to do what's best for Arlington. And I do not see any way that denying this project or even continuing this project and continuing the reputation that Arlington has for being difficult to build in and impossible to develop in is a benefit to the town. And I would strongly urge that we vote to approve this this evening. And I don't have much more to say than that. I think it's been clear, clearly stated several times that this board has the authority to approve the relief the applicant is asking for. I think we should do that. I think we should move on. We've been over this and we've been beating this force for months now. And I think the time has come for a decision. I think where I'm coming down on this is this is a better project as it's designed now than when we started. And it's more beneficial in this particular situation given the the siting of this building to have the wider sidewalk space out front than to have the fourth story step back. And given that, I think I'm whatever ambiguity there may be in the zoning by law about this, I'm willing to construct that in order to in such a way that I could vote in favor of this project because it just doesn't make any sense to me to do otherwise at this point. Sorry, Rachel, do you have any last words? No, it sounds like we're almost ready for a motion. So I think we need to run down the lit. We need to make a motion and we need to make sure that the specific conditions are in place. And since we're moving toward a vote here, I'm closing public comments on this, this matter. So it sounds like we're going to vote this evening. So someone will need to make a motion with the specific conditions that we've outlined in our discussion this evening. Rachel, it probably would be best that you do that since you've been tracking those conditions. Sure. So I move that we vote to approve the project with the conditions that we, that they work with the department to update the usable space to include outdoor amenities for the residential units that we work together with the department to continue to massage the design of the corner entry. There were a couple of suggestions that were made that sounded like they were amenable this evening. That we move forward with the site plan that included 23 spaces and that they provide a transportation demand. Response plan. And. We have here that the developer commit to. Including an electric vehicle charging station. At least one. At least one. In the parking space. I think that there's typically a note Jenny correct me if I'm wrong, that the signage is shown for illustration only and is not approved. Signage that they'll need to work with the department for final approval for all of the commercial spaces. And that I didn't see it on the plan, but I want to ensure that they. That they don't. Include the chase or venting for a restaurant use for the commercial property. That pretty well captures everything. Anything. No, I think that pretty well captures. We've been talking about unless. Any of the other members have additional special conditions they'd like to see there. Are they going to put a solid fence along the back of the parking lot. To shield it from the residential. Yeah, I think I'll just go back to the second one. I think that. I'll do it. I'll put them in there now. Yes. Okay. With plantings and buy. Okay. Thanks. I like to second that. Your motion and a second. So. Rachel, you made the motion. I'll call on you first. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, I can say I feel better voting. No. because I think all the rest of it makes perfect sense. I vote yes. So this pass is four to one. Congratulations, gentlemen. Thank you very much. For the work. Thank you. The development of this. Thank you all. Hearing is closed. Thank you all. So we're moving on. One minute here. All right. Thanks everyone for your patience in this. And it's been along several meetings. So we're moving to the discussion of the Whittemore Park renovations. Jenny, I'll hand this over to you. My understanding is that this is really just an overview of what's happening at the park. But please walk us through. Yes. Excuse me. Thank you. So we have Carlo Irmi, who is here representing the design firm, Crowley Patrell, who has helped to design this plan and also participated in our whole entire design process. And then Allie Carter, who is the town's economic development coordinator, who is the project manager. So I think both of them will probably tag team a little bit on this presentation. This really was just meant to share with you. And we are at a point in time where if you have some additional thoughts or suggestions, we would love to hear them. But I'll hand it over to, I guess, Carlo and Allie. And I can advance the slides for you. Can you? Oh, I got it. There we go. Thanks, Jenny. I don't know if we wanted to say a few things to talk at the beginning, or I'm happy to just dive right in or through the presentation quickly. I think actually Allie, yeah, Allie, would you like to just quickly give a little bit of a background and then Carlo, maybe? Sorry. Sure. So thank you, everyone. I'm Allie Carter, economic development coordinator for the town. So we have brought, we've been working on this project for a couple of years now. But we have went through a whole conceptual plan, which we are now moving forward implementation. But these project goals that are on this first slide really have been more part of the conceptual planning process and came out of that. And we feel like we've really gotten to a place with a design where it meets all these goals. But I want to just hand it. It's been to the Select Board. It's been to the Historical Commission. It's been to Mass Historical Commission. We have some details to have approved with the Arlington Historical Commission and Mass Historical Commission still. But you'll see everything that they're going to see in the presentation tonight. And just look forward to hearing your comments. But I'll turn it over to Karlo. If you don't mind. Sorry. I just want to jump in on two quick little things just to add to what Allie said. One is that this is a Community Preservation Act funded project, which Jean sits on the CPA committee. So he's pretty familiar with this and the history of the project. I don't really know how familiar all the other board members are or anybody else participating in this Zoom call might be. But actually, the project emerged from work that we did as part of the Mass of Reconstruction Phase 2 project, which we started back in 2016. It was meant to be a build off of the end of Phase 1, which was for East Arlington and travel through the center and beyond to continue the roadway reconstruction work, as well as streetscape and amenities, including parks. And we actually had a number of sessions where we started to reimagine some of those public spaces, which included Whittemore Park. And initially, we thought we would do the work. But instead, what we ended up doing was a planning process, which has led us to where we are now, which is we have funding to do different phases of the project. The one you're going to hear about tonight is Phase 1. And so with that, I'll hand it over to Carlo. Great. Thank you, Jenny and Allie. So I think that this just as you said, this first slide just speaks to the project goals that came out of our public outreach and the planning process, more generally. But if we go to the next slide, we can talk just a little bit about our initial kind of analysis of the site and some of the things that we thought were working and weren't working. The park as it is right now, sorry, if you go back one more there. Right now, the park, the circulation in the park is really oriented towards the Jefferson Cutter House, the Dowling Museum. And that circulation is cutting the park up in sort of bisecting the park and creating there's not really a central gathering space or a central event space, which is something that there was a desire for among the community and I think has become more important with the success of the beer garden in the last couple of years as well. The other issue was that the tracks, the train tracks, running through the park, which are a really important feature, are closed off. They're disconnected from the circulation system in the park. So other than that one crossing path, that motion, that line is not really followed through and there's also a lack of accessibility both to the tracks and throughout the park itself, mostly related to the brick paving, which has heaved and moved over time and is not accessible. So if we go to the next slide, this is sort of a diagrammatic version of the scheme that we came up with, which is replacing those paths that are diagonally cutting through the park towards the Cutter House with a circuit path. And then we're also creating new entrances to the park that are aligned with the tracks themselves and a path that's running along those tracks. So there's a continuous, successful connection to those parks, the whole length of those tracks. And then in general, it's sort of compositionally, it's about creating a center to the park, a central lawn and tree space that can be used for events, that can be used for gathering, and also creates a sort of sense of place in that center. I can talk a few more about the sort of specific design moves on the next slide. So just to show again, this is the existing plan of the park, you can see the tracks, those paths, those brick paths moving through the park, and the heavy tree canopy. And then also you can see there is that granite post and metal rail fence that is wrapping around the entirety of the park and also is between the park and the Jefferson Cutter House. Now on the next slide, you can see that how we're retaining a large part or most that canopy within the park but creating a central lawn panel that's directly in front of the Cutter House. You can see how the circulation has been realigned and then also the creation of planting beds around the outside of the park, around the outside between the sidewalk and the circuit path. And the intention behind that is partly there's some areas of that park where because of the slope or because of the exposed tree roots, it's gonna be really impossible to establish a successful lawn. So using ground cover shrubs in those areas is gonna be more successful. And it's also to create a little bit of a sense of enclosure between the park and Mass Ave to again create a little bit of separation there. So on the next slide is rendering that's showing our treatment specifically around those tracks and I have a couple of slides in the future that are also talking about that. So we're removing that crossing path that's cutting the tracks in two currently and are restoring and uncovering the segment of the tracks that's underneath that but rails are still running through the top of those fabric path currently which is adding to the accessibility problems currently. And then you can see that we're using contrasting exposed aggregate concrete. So there's one color of concrete that we've used that the town is beginning to use in other places that we've proposed for the majority of the circulation and then using a contrasting color to continue the line of the tracks as they would extend have extended in their original condition from curb to curb or from sidewalk to sidewalk rather. And we're also calling for in here a detail and metal strip or something else that can call out specifically the tracks themselves as they continue through that area. You can also notice on the left side of that page that some of that granite post and rail fencing has been removed towards that new entrance and that's part of creating a more open and more inviting park that has more places to enter into it and it's not closed off. One of the comments that we got a lot from during the public outreach was that people felt like this space really belonged to the Dowling Museum and it was sort of the front yard space of the Dowling Museum rather than being a public space that belonged on Mass Ave and really belonged to the entire town. So the next slide just shows a little bit more about that material treatment. So in the tracks themselves between the wooden rail ties, we're proposing replacing the ballast that's in there which has been lost and has degraded to large degree with a resin bound aggregate paving. So that's a large stone aggregate that's similar in size to the railroad ballast but is bound together with a resin. So it can sit flat and remain in place and can be swept or vacuumed or cleaned off. And also it's not gonna lose gravel or lose ballast the way the existing condition does. And then on the right side, you just see a sample of those two existing those two different contrasting concretes with that metal strip in it that's continuing the line of the rail tracks. The next slide is just speaking a little bit towards the planting plan for the park. There were a couple of trees that sort of prior to this work had were determined by the town tree warden that they were failing and needed to be removed. And then there were a few more trees that we got approval from town meeting and then from the select board to remove as part of this work. So that was three trees that we ultimately sought approval to remove. And we've gone ahead and replaced that with seven new trees. We're leaving in place most of the largest trees which are at the center of the park in that central lawn area. We don't necessarily think that those trees are going to last that long. They're not species that generally live for very long. But the idea is that we're now planting around the outside where those trees are going to be competing less with the new trees. And then over time as those older trees die or fail their new series of plant can go in that central lawn panel to replace those down the road. The next slide just shows some of the tree species that we're looking at. I won't go into this in too much detail but these are all New England native species. And it's a mixture of mostly or majority canopy trees but some mid-sized trees and then some flowering ornamental trees again all native ones. And then the next slide just speaks to some of the additional planting around the park. So that's drought tolerant, low maintenance ground covers and New England native shrubs, things that are not, high maintenance do not need to be pruned or maintained in an intensive way, not perennials, things like that but things that can cover ground and survive and do well both in our climate and in urban environments. The next slide just is speaking a little bit towards some of the historic elements in the park. The park currently has a lot of different forms of signage and monuments ranging from the Samuel Whittemore stone to signs for the Dow Museum, signs for sort of general informational signs about Arlington history and then a number of stones, engraved stones that are set in the brick paths that are pretty illegible. They're very finely engraved and they've worn over time to the point that they really can't be read. So going to the next slide, we're proposing replacing that sort of mix of different kinds of monuments and interpretive elements with something that can be more cohesive and more of a single language while retaining certain things in place that really are important. Like the Samuel Whittemore stone, which we think is really relevant to the site, is really important to the town, has a clear reason to be there and we're not proposing moving or doing anything to that, but that otherwise we would be creating a sort of zone around that circuit path which could be the site for further kinds of historic signage or interpretation. And on the next slide, we just have a few, these are just Preston images, different kinds of signage that we thought were successful and useful. I think we've reached out to the Arlington Historic Commission about, and we think that they should be the ones who are thinking and driving the conversation about what is important to have marked and have written on this site, probably with either our consultation or the consultation of a sort of historic interpretation specialist as part of what it is. The following images are just talking about that fence. So we are proposing removing the fencing that's between the park and the Dowland Museum and opening the fence around the tracks at those areas that I noted. The metal rails also connecting those granite posts are failing, have been bent, are falling out of place and they're one, I think that they're not, the metal posts are not the, or the metal rails are not the most attractive option and they're also very difficult to replace and maintain when they do get damaged. So we're proposing to keep the granite piers, the granite posts in place, but replacing those metal rails with wooden rails that would be painted similar to what you see on the left. The image on the right is a very rural image, but I think that our inspiration for this was really, it's the kind of fencing that you see around Cambridge Common, a lot of areas in Harvard Square for those sort of town greens and town centers and we think it would be appropriate for the site as well as being a lower maintenance option. The next slide is just talking about furnishing. Again, we're looking at the historic nature of the site and trying to use furnishings that are new and well made products, but also reflect on that historic character. We've looked at both all metal benches and combination metal and wood benches and that's something we're continuing to evaluate and be curious about opinions on. In terms of lighting, we're just interested in something that has that historic appearance, but also is one, a dark sky compliant fixture so it's not contributing to light pollution and also is sort of high quality LED fixture that's energy efficient and creates good quality, safe, attractive nighttime light. And then the final slide is just going back to this proposed plan just for reference and I would be happy to answer any questions or clarify anything. I know I moved through that fast, but I know we've all been here for a while and you probably don't want to hear me talk for too long, so. Thanks, Harlow and Allie. Yeah, thank you both. Thanks for your patience. Can I ask a question? Yes. How will the park be dealing with rainfall and water runoff? How will that work? The grading has not really changed significantly from the current configuration. There are currently two catch basins in the park which are attached to those circuit paths or the brick crossing paths. We would have somebody clean out and maintain those I think actually based on the way it's currently graded now and the changes that we're proposing, I think actually one of those can be eliminated. I don't really think that the park does not grade separately or drain separately to those two distinct catch basins. So we'll probably be moving down to just one catch basin which would be near the circuit path on the lower side of the page there. And then otherwise it would continue to drain the way it has currently. Replacing some of the compacted lawn area with planting bed will be slightly more pervious, permeable rather, but it's not a significant change in the drainage. And there hasn't been an issue with drainage up to this point? No, not to our kn