It's available via Amherst Media Livestream. Minutes are being taken as normal. Board members, I will take roll call when I call your name. Unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and then we can place yourself back on mute. Maria Chow. Here. Tom Long. Here. Andrew McDougal. Present. Doug Marshall. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Here. And myself, Jack. Here, so we have full attendance. Board members, if technical difficulties arise, we may need to pause temporarily to correct the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do not, if you do have technical issues, please let Pam know. Discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed. In the minutes, we'll know if this occurred. Please, please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see you raised hand and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. Thank you. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment item. And other appropriate times during the meeting. Please be aware of the board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment during a public comment period, you must join the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing link. Link is shown on the slide. It could be entered into a search. The link is also listed on the meeting agenda posted on the town website via the calendar listing for this meeting. Or you can go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is listed. If you wish to join the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. We call upon please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes. The discussion of the planning board chair if a pleading if a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their lot of time their Persistent patient will be disconnected from the meeting. So, um, first item. Are minutes. Yes, you should have the set of minutes for February 3. Those should have come in your packet. Okay. Again, my, my, I've had some computer issues here just so I did a reboot reboot here and it took longer than I thought. And I'm bringing those up. I thought anyway.  I think I can. I have the agenda. I'm not sure what, not sure why that that's I've never had an issue opening the, the Adobe before. So I apologize for that. And do you have the minutes as part of your slideshow? Yeah, I'm trying to pull them up right this second and I'm not sure why. I could see everybody at least that that's a good, that's a good one there. Here we go. Can you see them. Can you see the agenda. So here's the minutes. Okay. So we'll ask the board if they have any comments on these. Or any motions. Jeff has seen Mr. Marshall raised his hand. All right, Doug. Motion to approve the February 3 minutes. Thank you. Is there a second. You wanna. I'll second. Oh, great. Okay. Any discussion on the board. I seen on. We'll do a roll call. Maria. Andrew. Approve. Tom. Prove. Janet. Approve. And Johanna. Approve. And myself approve. Thank you. I also approve. Did I skip you? I'm sorry, Doug. You didn't need my vote check. All right. So. That's it for minutes, correct, Pam? That is correct. I nearly finished another set this afternoon, but didn't quite get there. All right. It's okay. It is. So we will open up to the public comment. And. I see one hand up. Susanna. Hello, Susanna. Thank you. Hello there. Hi, can you hear me? You can. How are you? I'm fine. I just had a look at the picture main street website for North Hampton, which is about their downtown planning process. And I was really impressed by it. I hope. You all will take a look at it if you haven't seen it. It's does a great job of. Presenting masses of factual information. And. In a very non-technical accessible way. It answers frequently and ask questions. It provides space for citizens to make their own comments and share their own visions for downtown in kind of free text. And it promises to be updated regularly as their planning process is being updated. And it is also a great way to make sure you're looking at it. You know, it's a great way to make sure the city has an input. So I hope you'll all take a look at it and see. What we might be able to do here in Amherst. About our own planning process. Thank you. Susanna, can you say again what the name of that was? It's called picture main street. And I'm sorry. I don't have the URL here, but I think if you go to. North Hampton. You'll probably find it right there at the. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. So then I know that Northampton is going through the same sort of issues that that we are as right, you know, as a town and I have taken note of that. And I, I think that's a great suggestion. Thank you. And Pam, if you can find that link. It'd be great to forward to Chris so she can provide at the board. Any other public comments. I see none. So we can get into item three zoning priorities. Introduction to propose changes to the BL. And we have a presentation. I assume by Nate. Yes. And Janet, thanks for pictures and dog the sections. And we did have on. You know, there has been some comments. We're not going to. Doug, you send some and there has been some others. The, just letting everyone know this was previewed, you know, an abbreviated version this week to the, I think that to the town council and the community resource committee. So if you've seen this, you know, it may be redundant for some people, but we're, I'll go through it and then you can have questions. So, right, this, you know, staff was asked to look into.  And, you know, what we're looking at is the two BL zones, you know, along triangle street and north pleasant street and not the BL zone. And south prospect street. It's not part of what we're considering now it could be. You know, one idea was to remove the footnotes and basically have, you know, almost no dimensional standards are very flexible dimensional standards, and staff decided that that would actually increase density too much there'd be a lack of control if you know footnote be or other district. And so, you know, what we're looking at is something a little different. Before we jump into that the purpose of the BL zoning district it's limited business zoning district it's really a transitional area from, you know, core commercial or retail areas to the residential neighborhoods. Many communities have this type of zone, whether they call it a limited business or a transitional zone but they usually have, you know, this transitional zoning that allows for moderate density, a mix of uses, you know, a combination of commercial retail and residential. In the town and the town's limited business, the BL zone, the dimensional standards specifically building and lock coverage and the additional lot area per unit so if you would like to add additional residential units that has a requirement of, you know, a certain amount of square feet and it's a lot for the size of the properties. And so it really limits residential development. And, you know, this has been brought to the attention of staff in the town periodically and it's something now that we're examining. The goals of updating the BL zones, you know, would be to allow development and redevelopment with the opportunity for more residential units, whether that's an apartment or mixed use buildings. And at the same time, you know, incorporate some design guidelines. So, you know, affordability and streetscape standards and so when we say design guidelines would be specific to the limited business zoning districts it's not a set of necessarily design standards that would apply in all of downtown. Maybe they could but we're really focusing on just this BL area. And you know for affordability we're looking at updating the inclusionary zoning by law. Those were the goals, you know, so more residential development or the opportunity for residential development in addition to commercial. And then, you know, those standards and so to achieve those goals, you know, we looked at an overlay zone in the limited business district in those two areas on Triangle Street and North Pleasant Street. And the overlay would actually take the place of the current zoning so sometimes an overlay district is voluntary over the, say, the base zoning but this would actually be a zone that becomes what would be the base zone. So those, you know, when we later on in the presentation you'll see it really becomes the base zone. Another strategy would be to change how apartments are permitted. So right now they're by special permit and we could make those by site plan review in this overlay area. Again adopt and this is something that would be as part of the BL change but then could apply to any mixed use building would be to adopt mixed use building standards. And a few years ago there were some proposals that went to town meeting that didn't get approved but they were close to it and I think that, you know, a number of towns now are trying to determine how to, you know, regulate mixed use buildings in terms of residential space and non residential space and also what the facades look like so there's, you know, it's both the mix of uses in the building and then some design standards in terms of how it looks along the street. And then lastly change the inclusionary zoning by law to apply to all projects, excluding the subdivision of land, and we're still keeping the threshold of 10 or more residential units. Most communities have, you know, 10 units Cambridge has a complicated by law but they do, you know, capture, if it's six or more units depending on the development so typically the threshold for inclusionary zoning is 10 or more units. So on Amherst right now the inclusionary zoning by a lot only applies if it's a special permit or a certain dimensional standards are asked to be waived so, you know, for instance mixed use buildings in the downtown if they comply with the dimensional standards, you know, they don't they're not they don't trigger the inclusionary zoning by law right now. So as I mentioned this overlay zone in the BL district would have his own set of dimensional standards, and, you know, have, you know, its own building height, building a lot coverage and setbacks. And in this area we're not allowing any, you know, footnotes or waivers so, you know, if we say the heights three floors which we're saying that, you know, that could be subject to change but whatever the building height would be, you could build up to it but you couldn't be higher than it so you couldn't ask for a waiver to increase the height. Same with a lot and building coverage or the setbacks they would be, you know, they'd be set in the bylaw and there would be no waiving them through a special permit or through you know a request. And then there's also some design standards that are would be packaged into the overlay so treatments of building facades public open space. So, you know, I think what we've seen downtown is that the property lines don't often parallel the street right of way, or the, you know, the curb line and so you may have pinch points where the property line and the road are actually pretty close together and if a building is allowed to build right to the setback. You know, I think one is pleasant as an example where it gets pretty close to the actual, you know, the road, the roadway and, you know, we can have setbacks and then actually require public open space so that's one feature here. A few. This is within the municipal parking district so parking isn't required but again we could. We're seeing some, some parking standards and some, you know, standards for mechanical equipment. And here's a look at the BL overlay and so, as I mentioned it would be mandatory, and it applies to the first 100 feet along from, you know, setback from the property line so, you know, on triangle street you take the property lines of those properties and you go back 100 feet. It's shown in the black outline. And on North Pleasant Street is the same thing 100 feet back from the street. And the idea here is, you know, creating a corridor where we're trying to incentivize redevelopment and allow again that that moderate density. And then in the BL zones behind the overlay. So the current standards and law coverages would apply. And we're also, you know, suggesting here that the floors would be reduced to two floors right now so that there's a step down and floor height. So there's a, you know, taller buildings along the street and then behind that you'd be limited to two floors. So the idea really is to try to create a streetscape. To incentivize a streetscape redevelopment and, you know, someone, you know, developers could do that now I think the idea with this overlay is with the new dimensional standards and some of the new, you know, the law coverages and those things there it would it would add to help a developer increase what they could build there. And so, on North Pleasant Street. You know, come up with it, you know, its own set of setbacks front yard setbacks side setbacks and we are rear yard setbacks and you know it's it's somewhat unfortunate in that the the streetscape along North Pleasant Street is different than Triangle Street where the property line is already about 20 feet back from the curb on Triangle Street. So the property line is actually, you know, almost in the road and the town has an easement so that sidewalk that's on Triangle Street on the north side of Triangle Street is actually on private property. And so the idea with these setbacks is to create a space along the properties where you'd have public open space so you'd have areas for plazas for wider sidewalks for outdoor dining for landscaping. And so on North Pleasant Street, the idea is that there is a minimum of five feet and a maximum of 20 feet. And so the building would be within those, you know, those 15 feet the building front facade would be within those 15 feet differential. And then on other streets is 10 and 25 feet. So I'm like Halic or McClellan, they have a wider minimum. So buildings would not be so close to the street and the dotted lines and the image here show the minimum and the maximum. So that's showing where, you know, and then, you know, over that's overlaid on existing the building. So, you know, there's an opportunity to bring buildings closer to the street, but still be set back enough that you could have these sidewalks and public open space. Again, the height would be, you know, a minimum of two floors and a maximum of three floors. There are some comments about the maximum height but for now this is what we're, you know, suggesting and then we're open to comments. The idea is assuming a 15 foot first floor for commercial use and then 12 feet for the upper floor so it's a generous floor height and again we're not indicating any waivers here. I guess the big one within the overlay area is there's no building or lock coverage and no additional lot area requirements so that, you know, currently there's 4000 square feet per additional residential unit. We're saying now within this overlay zone, you know, there aren't any of these requirements and the setbacks, the site setbacks are also, you know, we're saying that with an overlay there's really no minimum and possibly no maximum. So, you know, there's flexibility to build out within the properties along in this overlay area. Triangle Street has something similar. The setbacks are different again so that we could have this space in front of the buildings to allow sidewalks and public open space and so if we, you know, if there's right now if the zoning allowed a zero setback the buildings could be put really right on the street and the pedestrian streetscape could be greatly diminished and so, you know, I've looked at a number of communities, some will have setbacks like we have here and some will just say we're required a 20 foot space, a 20 foot wide space in front of a building. There's probably different ways to say it, they probably mean the same thing in terms of, you know, what we're asking for. So what's important here is there's a minimum and a maximum front setback and some of that will then go, you know, be reiterated in the building design standards. So if we're saying there's a minimum setback, you know, we're then later requiring buildings to be built up to the minimum. And again, they can't be any setback further than the maximum of 20 feet here or 35 feet on Triangle Street. So if we see on the dotted lines that, you know, it's similar to what's there now but again, the idea is to try to create a streetscape, but not so close to the street that it becomes a canyon effect. So when, you know, discussions of the 40 hour happening there was some concerns about bringing buildings too close to the street and having, you know, taller buildings, and then a narrow street and so that's why we have recommended three floors and then these generous setbacks to create a space for, you know, public open space in front of the buildings. And I'll just keep going through the, my presentation if, if I, if there's someone really wants to raise the hand I guess pan if you see anything. So in terms of building facades here's the images of existing. Nate, Nate, I will have a question so the things that we looked at so far, are they all kind of conforming with the current BL. Oh, so, you know, in terms of the floor height, you know, we're, it's similar but you know with the 15 foot first floor and the 12 foot upper floors that it becomes a different, you know, number by foot. So 39 feet is different than what's in the bylaw. And, you know, within the overlay if there's no building or lock coverage or additional lot area that's different than BL now. It's quite a bit different. And same with the setbacks. And so the setbacks. You know, these are would be the way the set, there's no the setbacks aren't, aren't, you know, these standards here aren't the same. So, you know, essentially these setbacks are tailored to Triangle Street so a minimum of 20 along Triangle Street and a maximum of 35 that's not at all what's in the bylaw. The goal of that would be to have this, the space on the property along Triangle Street where you could have a sidewalk or public open space in front of a building. So current BL standards, you know, developer could could do this. But if they build to the maximum right if they push the building to where they want to in terms of the setback or other things, they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't be required to do this. And so the idea with these setbacks are you're actually requiring now developer to have this, you know, these setbacks these open spaces in front of a building. So, you know, someone could voluntarily do that but the setbacks don't necessarily require it or make it, you know, apparent. So are there any conforming lots in the BL at this time. Well, I think that's, so I've, you know, I think, you know, I'm trying to street these lots are large so they're conforming I think the idea would be, you know, right now if you look at what the buildings are underneath in this overlay they would actually be pretty close to being conforming even with the overlay so we're not, you know, we're not trying to make a new non conformity is that what you're asking. Well, I just know that the BLs is, you know, it's lacking in certain areas, maybe in the triangle street area, it's there, but I'm wondering about, you know, closer to downtown there. Right. This is probably more problematic. You know, I think, you know, it looks like some of the properties would be close to, you know, not meeting the setbacks but you know they would be, they would be grandfather, you know, I think most of them the idea was to try to, you know, at least have the minimum and maximum be within the range that you know the streetscape is now the facades are now Okay, we have, we have two other hands. Chris Brestrup has her hand up and Janet McGowan. Okay, Chris. Sorry to interrupt. Oh no. I just wanted to note that the main dimensional requirement that we're trying to deal with is the dimensional requirement for lot area per dwelling unit and currently there's a requirement of 20,000 square feet for the first unit which is almost a half an unit. And then I think it's 4,000 square feet for each additional unit but Nate could probably correct me. So that's the main thing that we're trying to deal with here, but we're also trying to make sure that development is focused on the fronts of the properties because we heard during the discussion about chapter 40 are there was a lot of concern from people in the neighborhoods about having tall buildings or large masses, close to their homes which were in the RG district so we were trying to respond to that and have the development that's closer to people's homes in the RG be of a lower scale and focus the higher scale development on the street. So those are the things that we're trying to do the other dimensional requirements I don't know if we're changing them too much but Nate would be able to respond to that. Thanks Chris I think that was a good point that Jack writes so right now you know on these properties within this overlay within this hundred feet. You know, if within the overlay we're saying there's no lot area for that so that initial 20,000 doesn't apply in the 4000 doesn't apply. And so, you know, the potential here then is there's you can get a lot more residential units, even within even on three floors and you can get a lot more of now. So, you know, when 236 North Pleasant Street came in, you know, in the Hallock Street up here on the corner, you know, because of the additional lot area requirement, you know they really couldn't make many residential units. And so, you know, even if we're saying that this is an area of moderate density or transitional mixed use buildings, you really can't even get a mixed use building with residential units because of those lot area requirements. You know, what we're saying in this overlay now there aren't those, those minimums those 20,000 and 4000 so you could, you know, you can get more units, and that's the incentive to try to keep buildings up on the front of the street. Good, Janet. Thank you, Nate. So, if there's not a minimum square footage per unit. How many units can be it sounds like you could fit as much as many units in a building. There's, there's obviously a limit physically because at some point you can't fit them but have you done the numbers and the calculations on how many units that could be if it was a, you know, 300 square foot apartment and 500 1000. And when you did that kind of calculation. Did you think about dense, like moderate density in terms of residential density. Right, no, I haven't, we haven't taken it.  You know, a double loaded corridor, you know, most buildings might only be 60 to 70 feet deep. And those are apartments on both sides of the hallway. And if you have two floors of that.  So, you know, the idea would be that with the design standards and then, you know, the buildings have to be within the overlay so outside the overlay, the dimensional standards start applying so someone wants a bigger building. The lock coverages would start kicking in in the areas outside the overlay on a property, but within that, you know, ostensibly within three floors what could someone do, right, maybe if they have a building that, you know, is 100 feet, 80 feet or 60 feet deep that could be, you know, if that's 10 or 12 units of floor then that becomes about a 40 unit building. I mean, we're, you know, we're saying that there's a maximum floor height.  What does someone do within that footprint of a building. Okay, I would, I would love to see the math for like, you know, different sized units going fairly small because that's what spring street turned out to be. The other thing is, you know, when you look at this map it looks like separate lots but we know that the same owner owns a lot of the lots. And when we, I think when Maria and Doug did sort of build that scenario, you know, assuming that the owner would consolidate lots, the size of the building the footprint was really large and so I'd like to see that too. Because it sort of, it was bigger than East Pleasant Street. And I think that would sort of took us back the last time. So that kind of taking into account the property ownership not just the lots I think I'd like to see next time. I do completely appreciate the inclusionary zoning expansion and I applaud that. And I also appreciate the effort to protect people living next to, you know, the BL. You know, that they're not being so subjected to like large, you know, bulky buildings and lots of people and stuff like that but so I'd like to like think about the, but I do want to think about the phrase moderate density in terms of size of building and, you know, number of people and things like that also. So I think that's probably our next level of analysis or next week or something. Sure. Are we ready to move on? Are we okay? Yes. Sounds good. Thank you. All right. And then so for the design standards, I think, Janet, to some of your questions about what happens if owners consolidate lots. So what we're hoping here with some of the building, you know, facade standards would be, you know, right now we're saying a 50% of a facade could be built out at the minimum setback. And so, you know, if you have 100 feet frontage, you know, we're saying 50 feet of that could be, you know, is at the minimum, but no more than that. And maybe, maybe that, you know, this, this minimum and this minimum or maximum could change.  You know, what many communities start doing is, so these next few standards really try to have some articulation of the facade so that you just don't have a blank wall that is, you know, 100 feet long. And so even if you do allow a building to be built out along the frontage of a property along the minimum setback, you know, we're proposing here that, you know, you don't have a blank facade that's more than 12 feet long. You can't just have an expanse of concrete or brick or, you know, or sheathing without any, anything there. You know, one another, you know, idea would be to have that, you know, every 35 feet you have to have a change in plane.  And so we're, you know, we could have this type of standard built into the overlay so that you don't have just a flat facade. You know, even if it's one building, you know, you could say after 35, we're saying after 35 feet, you have to have a change in plane. And we could get a little bit more prescriptive with this or there's comments about what, you know, do we, what else we do with that but that's what we're saying now and you know, I think what that does is it helps break up the mass of the building. And they're also saying that, you know, we're saying that if you're changing it less than one feet less than a foot it doesn't it's not considered stepping back in terms of the setback so you can't say oh well I made a small change in plane I'm no longer at the minimum setback and then just continue the building along the front edge so there's ways to try to get a building to step back along the front and have some articulation. And, you know, the idea here really is to have a pedestrian scale and, you know, allow this public open space so the 40 are also had you know along the top of the first floor having a sign band, and they had some illustrative graphics which we haven't included yet here, you know, it was interesting a number of violas that I read didn't really have graphic standards they just had kind of simple language, you know, like on the top of the first floor on the facade they'll have a you know, a two foot wide side, you know, sign band or something. You know, I think the graphic standards are helpful and we could incorporate those, but then they don't you know they don't capture every possible style or variable and so we're not trying to say you have to redesign the things to look like they are here, but you know their characteristics here that we could we'd want to repeat if the BL was redeveloped, especially along the front facade. And then the public open space is something that's new and so, you know what this graphic is showing here is that, you know, from the street back to the maximum setback, it would be required public open space so in the green area. You know, we're saying that developers would need to provide you know, walkways plazas corner plazas outdoor dining areas or landscaped areas and currently we're suggesting that you know 10% of the building footprint, including you know, overhanging upper floors would then have to be provided as public open space on the front edge of the of the property so if you have a square foot building you'd have 600 square feet of public open space that would need to be required.  And as I thought more about this, someone right now could maximize the landscape area not have the plazas and so, you know, I, the more I look at this and I'm sure everyone has other comments too but my thought is could we limit the landscape areas within this public open space we don't necessarily want, you know so much landscaping that there isn't really room for pedestrians or other things but they deal with this public open space standard is to try to encourage, you know, pedestrian level streetscape spaces where people want to congregate and be outside so not just, you know, a five foot wide sidewalk against a four storey building but maybe, you know, a 15 to 20 foot wide space that has different amenities and things happening. And then for parking and mechanical. Again, the things that are by law. I don't know if they say I'm so they might say this but it's interesting like, you know, if we want parking. In the back of the building, you know, we could just say this so that's what this is saying now that you know, parking shouldn't face the primary streets are relocated. You know, too close to the side streets even so it's just, you know, just put it behind the buildings or a minimum of 30 feet from the public way. You know, you know, consolidate parking across property lines so the safe space and curb cuts, let's you know aggregate parking behind buildings and across property lines and it's something that the planning board allows and you know it is allowed in zoning but I'm not sure if it says it so you know in this way and so again is there other other parking standards that we could incorporate into the BL area, even though it's in the municipal parking district, you know, if parking is provided, you know, how can we minimize the disruption to the streetscape or having you know many curb cuts or driveways and mechanical again just having them set back on the tops of building so they're not visible or you're screening them and you know really trying to locate them on the sides or backs of buildings where they won't be you know highly visible or disruptive to the pedestrian experience. And then here's just a development scenario. It's, it's a really, really preliminary concept but you know if this property has 100 feet of frontage and you can build up, you know, 50 feet along the front, you know the facade then the front facade is well, you know, most of it could be on that five foot setback and then the rest of it has to step back between five and 20 feet. There's a maximum three floors and so here it's a 6100 square foot building. They need 610 square feet of public open space out front which they can, they can provide within that green area. And for instance, if they want to then put an addition on or have a bigger building that extends beyond the overlay, you know that the one in purple would be limited to two floors, and then they have to comply with the other dimensional standards of the BL area. So, you know, lot area, building coverage and other things so it's not as if they could then put a massive building outside the overlay because those lot coverages would apply and the building coverages would apply in that area.  Sure. So this is Cole's Lane. So this, you know, this is Bruger's bagel bagels here. So, you know, the church is just south of here and then, you know, here's Halleck Street. So here's the, you know, realignment park right here is out on the on the street where the, you know, the cow. And so, you know, where this was this property, you know, we're not the idea to I guess Janet said it would be to investigate further what, you know, what exactly a building concept would look like. I think some of it was to hear comments tonight. And, you know, like I said, we heard some from the CRC as well. And then refine what we're proposing and then actually, you know, develop more concrete concepts. But so this is just to give you an idea of what, you know, what would happen, what could happen on this property. I think Chris has a con would like to chime in here. I just wanted to note that that purple area behind the building would most likely be commercial space or office space because the likelihood is that there's not enough additional lot area to have dwelling units back there. So I just wanted to make note of that. Thank you. Andrew has a comment as well. Thanks, Jack. Yeah. I sort of have a quick question seeing this line in these particular parcels to is if we're building more density in the first hundred feet is, is kind of a likely scenario without knowing the master but it's like a likely scenario. The first front like the right half of this eastern half of this would be building and the western half would all be parking parking field. There's going to be more parking demands by building the density such that it's like, it'll be half concrete half structure with 10% open space. There's no requirement to building parking. Right. So, it's all right. So just, I wanted to make clear on that because earlier, I thought maybe that we were going to treat it to treat the parking overlay district differently this that's not going to be the case. What I was saying is if we write in parking standards in here is just to say, okay, let's not have every property have a driveway curb cut. Let's see if we can find a way to minimize some of those disruptions. But I think, you know, I, you know, your comment to me was right. Are we creating a scenario where if a developer or property owner is is building a bigger building and they want parking. Are they just going to pave over the back half of the property to accommodate the new use and so, you know, and then only with only 10% open space so I think, I think that's a good comment you know what you know what are we, you know essentially we're kind of down zoning the back area and trying to incentivize and, you know, add the idea to add more residential units up along the street so you know I would someone want to add parking because that they have more residential units and they think the tenants want to that would they add more parking so it's a good question.  Yeah, thanks. Chris did you have a comment or my comment has been accommodated. Thank you very much. All right. Very good. Thank you. proceed Nate. Thank you. Mr. Marshall has raised his hand, Nate. Oh, Doug. Yes. Well my first question is whether Nate is at the end of his presentation or not because I was going to hold off and saying anything until he was done. Yeah, I'm all set Doug. Okay. All right, so my. Okay, so I have a couple of questions and a couple of comments. First of all, am I correct that a rooftop mechanical unit would not be counted in the height of the building or is that really the the ed the ease height. Right. Okay. And then I guess I'm wondering whether as we think about this we we would really want to mandate that these be mixed use buildings that we really want retail at the first floor. And then that leads me to the second question. Do I understand that the 50% calculation you're talking about as being the maximum at the minimum setback. Right. Is that the area of the entire front facade. Or is it 50% 50% of the footprint can be at that edge. Right, so the front facade right so the building could 50% would be could be built out along that minimum. So, so I could do a building let's say that was two stories tall and the ground floor could be entirely at the minimum setback. Right. And then the second floor could be one foot back. You're saying that the second floor even not know we're saying the building we're saying the front facade so not just the first floor. So you're saying like then have like an overhanging or. I'm really saying how are you calculating the 50% is that a plan calculation, or is it a an elevation 50% of the area of the entire facade. So I could meet 50% by doing the first floor is my 50% and the second floor is setback. Right, right. I'm not clear on that. And, and I guess it's related to my concern that this that we're going to end up with kind of a jagged street edge with that kind of approach. Right. If it's if it's based on, you know, the footprint of the building. And I'd almost be more in favor of mandating a uniform setback and mandating that where the front of the building needs to be. And then one question about consolidation across lot lines of parking. I understand that's easy to do if it's the same owner. But I guess I wondered whether you have any or anybody in the staff has experienced with that really being feasible when there are multiple owners. It feels like it could be a kind of complicated thing to do. I mean, it's obviously easy to do with access easements and such. But, you know, how likely is that to happen. You know, I wouldn't want to build a building that relies on somebody else for for access to the back of it. Right. I think, yeah, I couldn't start from your, your, your comment about parking yet Northampton actually has kind of gone this way where, you know, it's if a developer wants to provide parking they can figure it out. So they may need to then talk to the neighbors and have agreements about shared parking. And so, you know, the bylaw does allow shared parking. We're not requiring shared parking. We're just saying that if, if, if, you know, an owner is developing in terms of those standards, we're really encouraging that they minimize having driveways come out to the front. But, you know, if you can access them from an adjacent property to do that. So it wasn't a, you know, requirement. I think that, you know, private properties could negotiate something like this a lot. We're not asking the town to become the enforcement mechanism. However, you know, there was the downtown parking working group a few years ago and there was an idea of having, you know, a private parking be monitored by public enforcement and, you know, there's ways to do that and to make them have, you know, the shared parking be, you know, the enforcement then becomes on the town. Again, there has to be some, you know, there's details and nuances there, but then, you know, a private developer isn't worried about how are they monitoring the parking or managing it in a way if it's, you know, between different property owners. I understand what you're saying about the setback. Doug, because previously, you know, these buildings are all pretty uniform. And so, you know, even when in a lot of communities with 40 our districts in the downtown, you know, they actually the most they allow, most of them only allow 75 to 80% built out along the frontage minimum set, the minimum setback on a property. But I understand what you're saying, you know, could we actually be a little bit more prescriptive or clear about how we want a building facade to be developed along the street. And I think partly it's the fact that you've chosen these photos as to illustrate your text. But I don't think the regulations you're drafting. Allow that result in this kind of development. Right.  So, these, this was illustrating kind of the articulation of the facade and at three floors what you know, a, you know, taller first floor would look like and so. Okay. But you're saying about the setback. Okay, I guess we're not mandating mixed use buildings or apartments where they would be incentivized in the overlay because there's no longer those lot area requirements and so, you know, the use chart, you know, someone would still like to build just an office building, they could do that or if they want to build just retailer commercial space on the first floor they could do that so we're not, you know, the overlay is not one mandate, you know, mixed use buildings or apartments only. It's just that those could be, those would be incentivized because you know you can get, you can provide more units now with, you know, in the overlay than you can now because of a lot of your requirements so, you know, we're not prescribing just those uses. Okay. I guess then the last thing, you know, I noticed that one of these photos is a four story building. Right. And I guess I question whether all of this zone ought to be limited to three stories. One of the reasons I did those sections was to sort of look at the relationship between the, the width of the area, you know, between buildings, and probably starting it. I think it was Halak. You know, it seemed like maybe north of Halak Street, we could go higher. It widens out, and we're starting to get into the Kendrick Park frontage that really can accommodate a much higher development. Thanks. Yeah. The CRC meeting was suggested that maybe in the overlays for floors. And then if we are keeping the two floors in the back then really where we are really incentivizing development along the street with four floors. I think that's an interesting idea. You know, for down zoning one area, should we allow a little bit more moderate density along the street. And so, you know, there is a thought that three floors might not really be tall enough either. Yeah, I think to really be able to distribute the cost of an elevator and the kind of vertical circulation you need to have, you know, the more high, at least a couple of floors would make a difference. I think I'm running, I'm sharing the sections Doug that you sent around. I think if everyone can see those just to their visible but Yeah, I would know that, you know, it just, it looked like particularly as you go north along Kendrick the height of the five story building is not really, you know, to imposing on the size of that open space. No more questions. Thank you. Doug, thank you. Those, those are great. You always bring a lot to the table. Thanks. So we have Tom and then Janet. Hey, thank you for the presentation. It was super informative and really helpful and I think I really have too many comments but one is kind of following up on dugs I had a couple questions about the facade and its juxtaposition moving forward and backward. I agree with Doug that building a consistent frontline would be an ideal strategy here, which leads to my second question which is What is the level of incentive here to build above one or two stories because if you look down north pleasant now. It's pretty easy to put a box a colonial box with a gable roof and two stories right along the street there that will provide nothing of what we're looking at in the actual aesthetic that you're saying how do we build an urban street front and how, how is there a minimum height that we can build I guess what I'm asking is how do we encourage, or are we fully encouraging the development of a streetscape or are we making certain regulations that are may not incentivize people to actually produce the aesthetic you're looking for, because I think I agree in terms of let's build this kind of density along the facade. And that street front experience you're showing me is compelling but there are two and three story buildings there now that just they're just houses and you know you can build those, you know, in some pretty simple ways I'm looking down north pleasant. Again and provided some images I was going to just. Sorry to scroll so fast but you know here's triangle street. You know they're just one story so. Right. Yeah, it is interesting. You know without getting overly prescriptive or mandating certain design standards or setbacks or things. Can we how are we assured that would get the streetscape we want and you know I'd say right now we don't get it. We don't get it so you know what we've seen with some of the newer buildings whether or not we you know we like the height or the architecture they're pretty close to the street so you know here's some of the BL areas. So that's what I'm referring to like the share and some the building to the right of that. You know those are, you know, pretty straightforward dwelling or office spaces that don't really match the kind of streetscape that we're looking for. So anyway, there was just curious like how do we how do we bring that to fruition. We wouldn't prohibit something like this. The idea then if it was in the overlay though they would have the minimum setback and the maximum and then the open space requirement but they could still build.  So I'm referring that that level of detail. You know, I think there's still a discussion about what what would be appropriate design standards that would apply, you know, townwide or, you know, and more than just the BL so you know the thought would be in the overlay if we're encouraging bigger buildings at least to try to break up the facade with the setbacks. But I do understand what you're saying about the uniform setback, but then also you know those facade treatments about having some change in plane, some breakup of a massive facade so those, you know, we could look into a few more guidelines. Um, I, before Janna, I just want to note Nate, you mentioned the 40 our study, I thought that the the their introduction to the form based concept was was significant. And I wonder if you could speak to that or, or maybe Chris, because I think that that kind of is integrating with some of the things that you're, you know, proposing here. Right. Yeah, so if there's a 40 our webpage now under planning department in the planning projects but I think you know the town of looked at it a number of years ago to you know is having a form based code where it's really trying to regulate the, you know, from building front to building front across the street so it's really that public area what's visible, and you know, in a true form based code, the uses are secondary and it's really about the aesthetic. You know they have this you know the the transect of, you know, high density to residential and, you know, different standards for different areas of, of uses and density, I think, you know what, in the 40 our study I think there was concern that even the design standards that the consultants had provided weren't quite matching what people would want to see in Amherst and I think, you know, I think it's also difficult to have form based code that then can be essentially get the design you want so you know even with graphic standards, you know, saying that you have to have this type of, you know, a recessed entry in a higher first floor and assign band and maybe prescribing glazing requirements, you still could get a developer who creates something that isn't what you expect in terms of materiality or, you know, roofline details and so, you know, I think it's something that we're still exploring how you know how prescriptive and how detailed, you need to be in a form based code to get you know something that you want if you know if people want brick buildings, you know you'd have to almost say that and you almost you have to mandate in a way that you can't have any unforeseen development I mean we're not even a local historic districts in town don't go to that level of detail, you know, we're not, we're not anywhere in town prescribing materiality or sizes of windows or, you know, treatment on, you know, the size of fascia boards or corner boards and you know, some true form based code might actually have that detail, you know, graphic style so that it's really clear this is what we want we want wide corner boards we want, you know, overhangs we want, you know, cornice detail we want some relief along the roofline and, you know, and if that's what we want, you know, we could consider that it's we didn't take it that far in this study yet. Thank you. Can it please. So, um, Nate, can you run through the, the North Pleasant pictures just keep scrolling down. Oh, sure. Yeah. Thank you. So here's, and here's Kendrick Park. So here's, you know, this is still looking north. Keep going. Yeah, I think of that as a silver skate building. Yes, I do too. Is that so it can you go back to the beginning of North Pleasant then. And so I'm, I think it's, yeah. So let's go. You started, I think I try to break them up. I think it's there. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, um, so when I looked at this BL proposal, remember us, we sort of like broke off, I think at the planning board zoning subcommittee idea was, well, what do we want to see in the BL and let's zone to that. And so I wasn't thinking that what we wanted to see in the BL where the pictures that you were showing of, you know, the part and so, so, you know, you know, my question is what's wrong with the ragged edge and so, you know, are we trying to build an urban streetscape, you know, close to the property line in the BL. And, you know, basically all these buildings that we're looking at almost all probably are old enough to be considered historic buildings. They've had mixed use. So I don't really understand what's wrong with the ragged edge I find it actually one of the most appealing parts of Amherst is that we're a collection of these kind of buildings. And if you go to the, the picture, I think at the beginning of the downtown character section I had with the church with the build that behind it that Amherst College did. So I was kind of, you know, I thought about when I thought about like what do I want to see in the BL is like, I'd like to see these buildings preserved and the density built around them, or behind them in a way that matches that that fits and it doesn't have to here it is. So this, this picture here of the old fiber art center and old church is owned by Amherst College did a beautiful restoration, and then they built a kind of modern looking orange thing it's not a great picture of that. And that to me keeps the look of Amherst, the character of Amherst, and yet you you move ahead and you increase density. And so I just, I think if we, you know, maybe this is an issue to take to the public is like, do you want to see more of that or do you want to keep, you know, the buildings that I kind of like and find sort of funky, and, you know, expand the size of those buildings but keeping them in the style or something that's very compatible. So I'm a little, I think I'm coming at it from a different point of view. I do think that if we're going to change the zoning the BL, I think it's a good idea to address all the issues in the BL. And so, you know, parking is an issue in the BL like we have no parking requirement and yet we might be increasing the density that the number of people living in it without addressing that. I'd like to see some sort of flexibility on protecting small businesses or small commercial spaces. So I'm really, you know, protecting the historic look of downtown, and the master plan identified the downtown, the historic buildings as a priority area, as our historic preservation plan does too. So, I would, you know, the question isn't like, I don't want to see density is like I'd love, I'm happy to see density, but in addition to protecting facades and looks and I like the inconsistent look of Amherst I think I'd be sort of. On the board, some people are thinking, yeah, we all should be like pulled up against the edge. And I'm thinking I like the fact that the, you know, the hair by Harlow building has a different front and facade that you can sit down in front of hanging and you know by some succulents or have a bagel or not bagel sorry. I like that look and so I'd like to keep that look as you increase density and heights and things like that so I think we can get there, but I'm not sure this is quite it. But I do, and I, you know, I wonder if we can sort of fix all the problems in the BL, or, you know, call it a transitional zone and just figure out what we want to see there, and then zone from that. So I'd like to say that we, I failed to mention this because of my. Right, my computer reboot, but we're going to take a break, you know around eight, could be a 15 five minute break, just so people know that that they can kind of know how that to look forward to. So, Maria. Okay, thank you Nate that was really great I really appreciated the fact that you treated those two BL parcels very differently because when Doug and I did a study where like these are two different monsters to different animals. So all those sort of fine comb setbacks you did for both seem very appropriate. I kind of agree with the sentiment about, you know, we're down zoning one half, we're not really increasing too much on the foot of the streets face the street facade.  So you can kind of define that a little better instead of leaving it so loosey goosey so like when I look at the minimums of five and 10 I wonder. I just wonder if just go ahead and make it consistent. Oh, sorry. That's on other streets. Okay, so North pleasant you have it at five for triangle you have it at five for north for East pleasant and then 20 for triangle. I just wonder if, yeah we're, we're, we're trying to control it a little more. I need to do it where it's tricky. I just, I'm kind of torn between you know giving up a lot of frontage to landscaping versus, you know, incentivizing more housing to be built downtown by someone who comes in and develops. You know you only have 100 feet, and then you're taking away five to 20 feet so you're left with ED and that's just enough to get like a double loaded quarter, as far as apartments or condos or whatever above. I am a little torn about also just how the BL is still in the back half or you know whatever size parts, it's still in the back and it just it's a really it's like a real complex math problem but I mean I suppose they can figure it out it's just. Yeah, we are we taking away too much by. I guess, leaving that BL or not not saying that maybe the back half doesn't have to follow the sort of minimum additional lot areas or. Yeah I just I haven't really seen the numbers on like you know what the number of units you can get because I looked back at like had drawings of. You know what we thought we could get per floor if we were to change the setbacks and whatnot and it's not a lot and if you only have three floors like, for example that one you made an example of. I was only able to get six units per floor so assuming the first floor doesn't have any. You're looking at only four per floor because that back half is still in the BL so then that's only eight units so I guess I just maybe the next layer is just taking some of these parcels and seeing how many units can come out of it because. I just want to make sure we're not. I mean it's great. It's a great move we're finally getting housing where, you know, it should be in the place that's already got a lot of density and buildings and amenities that are walkable distance. So we are sort of easing it up enough that a developer could see it or property and could see it, you know, working out where the numbers are going to make it viable for them to build so. So I'm happy to help with that to Nate if you want our PDFs of you know the sort of unit layouts and just to see for each parcel you know how many units per floor you can get I think Doug and I got pretty far with that and in a lot of different scenarios I think that was per parcel or one owner consolidated a lot of parcels. I know that'd be great to share. Okay, yeah. Then I think the only last thing is form based zoning. I love the idea is just I think these are too small to put that much energy into you know it's just these sort of 100 foot strips of these two zones so I mean it makes more sense for like a big area but. There's all a lot but I think it's just a lot of energy for very little payback. If we were to like dive into form based zoning for for these two areas, but maybe like yeah if we find a 40 are somewhere else in Amherst that would be worthwhile to do form based on. But overall I mean I think this is great you're finally freeing the BL so I'm really excited about I just wanted. I think yeah next steps could be just seeing how many units so I'll try to organize my drawing so they're eligible to another human. But yeah thanks for the presentation is really informative. Thank you Maria. Janet. Two, two projects in Northampton on their main drag on route nine. One of them was, and it's that I think it's a Valley CDC project has a very huge old Victorian that they stripped down to the bones and it's filled with affordable housing and then they added on in the back more affordable housing. And then the old is that the old Northampton hotel that's now a bunch of condominiums. And I'm wondering, like, that's kind of what I was sort of vision envisioning for the BL with this zoning prevent that like if you wanted, you know if you were on triangle street and you wanted to use, you know, I think what we're calling parcel V, or, and you wanted to like different condominiums or apartment houses and walkways in between and some parking. Would you be prevented from doing that by this overlay plus leaving the old zoning on because I'd like to see more flexibility that it could become, you know, like triangle street leads in from a lovely very small residential neighborhood, kind of up to Kendrick place which is kind of a big stone. And so I think it'd be nice to to increase the amount of apartment housing there or condos or something, but in a way that is kind of cottage street and what's coming out from East Pleasant Street and so I would think I'd like to see this zoning loosened up so you could increase housing density, but have it sort of fit into the neighborhood more but I'm wondering could you build those projects. If you were limited to the 100 foot strip but you still had to conform to the BL and back. Like I wonder if you're cutting your options down a little bit. Do you know the projects I'm talking about anyone I do. I was just saying sorry just taking, just taking notes. I mean I don't think the current zoning would allow you to do that because of a lot coverage and additional lot area per unit and so you know I think you know I guess my thought would be. So for instance on triangle street if we like go back to. You know I think the, I think there's, if this is triangle street I think the, you know, the, it's the cost benefit for a developer owner, you know what's the cost of tearing down or changing the existing use to only get, you know if you're going to increase the density or the form on caught a street you may not, there may not be enough units to make it worth, worth the cost to tear down everything and try to get you know eight units. Of like if you were, you're going to increase the density it's the transitional zone, right, you know, caught a street is low density, lower density, then you're coming to the transitional zone so I'm not particularly happy with the existing sort of saying can you get to a more flexible thing like maybe reducing the, you know, 1000 square, you know, to 2,500 square feet like, do you know what I mean that's what I would that's the fix I was sort of expecting. Yeah, I mean we right I think you know, I think Maria alluded to it that you know this the BL and triangle street is so different because of its size and the property sizes compared to the BL on north pleasant and even in the BL on south prospect and so you know I think that's where you know what that's why there's different setbacks on these two areas and you know I think your question is you know we staff can discuss it you know how how uniform is is the zoning. And does it does this BL has to be something different than the other BL because really, if you have that if you want to apply the zoning consistently right between all the BLs in town if you have the same standards and one area may not work in the other and so I think because these properties are so big on triangle street that you know I'm not you know I think. Someone could come in and develop a nice makes these building up front or apartments up front in the hundred feet and then what they're allowed. In the back because it's so big they still might be able to get a few units but you haven't done the math to know does it work, or you know what kind of flexibility is there. I think I'm being really unclear because I was thinking, I'm trying to say is, if you wanted to use the whole lot that you know, and not be forced to pull everything in the front like if you just change the zoning the BL to reduce the lot requirement for every additional unit, would that give a developer more flexibility to put condos in like the condos that you see on North Prospect Street, you know, like, you know, but so people could walk in they could have some interior space to be in and there's no like space for any, you know, like there's no recreational space for anybody living under this but someone might want to build just a more dense series of apartment houses or townhouses. That kind of gets you between Cottage Street to the BG. Right. I mean that's that that's what I thought was going to be happening more and I just wonder, you know, if you just fix the BG and I can see how in different parts of town it would be different. Janet, some clarification recreational space for the BL. There's an environment for a special permit or a site plan review permit that would be some recreational, you know, like some green space for, you know, housing. With apartments, right with apartments. How heavily the town is invested in Kendrick Park and the green space there.  You know, I think a developer, that's a really attractive place in town it could be a really attractive kind of community. You know, okay. All right. So we're getting close and to where we would want to break but we have your honor and then Tom, I think had a hand up, but let's let's go to your honor, please. Thanks, Jack. I'll keep it brief. Nate, thanks so much. This was really great. I also, I think these two spaces are really different in part because of the, you know, the current streetscape at triangle street right now does come so close to the street that I think having the wider set back on the north side makes a ton of sense I spent a lot of time at that intersection just the other day and was imagining what you know when we were considering the 40 are what it would feel like if there were taller buildings on the other side and I think having the wider set back there is really smart and thoughtful. I do. I also think that we could consider four stories. As the cap for both kind of revamped BL zones. One of the, one of the, I guess questions I had is in the 40 are proposal that a bunch of us kind of spent time on in the fall. It was, it also didn't mandate parking which I think is right. We shouldn't be doing that, but it did encourage underground parking. And I wonder if that's something that you thought about including here at all. If the developer wants to do it. Sure. But yeah, no, I think, right. I mean, we just had some ideas, you know, like I said, in terms of how to organize the parking and have the design better. You know, we hadn't fully addressed it because of the municipal parking district. And so, you know, Janet mentioned, you know, could we address all the issues and it's interesting that, you know, if we want to have say increase residential opportunity in the BL all of a sudden, you know, it becomes a spider web of things. So then parking gets involved and open space and, you know, I don't even want to talk about signs, but you know, right. So then I, and so we weren't looking at, you know, right, it's how much do you control within the BL and how much becomes other parts of the zoning bylaw. And so that's where the overlay was a tool because you can write in the standards within the overlay itself as opposed to changing the rest of the zoning bylaw. So, you know, if we want to have different parking standards in this area, we can. And, you know, maybe that's something we need to consider. But you know, we're not saying we're going to change the parking standards in the zoning bylaw. We'd like to then apply changes specifically to the areas where we're trying to incentivize, you know, redevelopment or more residential units. So, yeah, it's funny. I reread the 40 are to and I saw the underground parking and I was like, well, I think, you know, the template in the state does mention underground parking. So I feel like the consultants left it in there. Maybe they thought it's a viable option. I don't know for sure, but Thank you. Thank you. Tom, Tom Long, please. Yeah, I just have one last comment. Just to follow up on, I think what, what Janet's saying and I can't, I can't say I completely agree but I totally understand the perspective in terms of where the your discussion about the Amherst College building and the church kind of this thing that's nestled behind that keeps this frontage but does something that adds density behind. I'm thinking about the building behind Judy's for instance that, you know, has more density behind the sort of smaller street front. So if we do want to keep that more small scale urban front. The zoning that you're providing for that 100 feet is going to limit that because behind that you can't actually go up high, which again earlier, you know, I think both Andrew and I think Janet we're also saying it's good. Let's think about those people behind but at the same time, it doesn't allow us this opportunity to preserve something that we like in front, and then do something bigger add density behind so there's no incentive to do that either no opportunity to do that so I'm just wondering is that kind of the reference you're getting at as an opportunity and is that something that we might want to consider as a trade off. That exactly that that's exactly what I meant it's just, you know, you're, I don't, I understand the existing BL zoning is awkward and limiting but, you know, I think what you're losing is your historic streetscape and you're not all the incentives are to pull it forward and put it right on the street when what's on the street is pretty appealing to a lot of people I have to tell you something funny so I'm taking these pictures. And I'm taking the picture in front of share coffee and this is woman, and I said do you mind being my picture, and she said no. So I took a picture with her there. And she said what are you doing and explained it to her and I said well, you know the proposal is to change the zoning that would really encourage this building would be torn down and it would be like a three story kind of brick building. And so, and then she went into a long tirade against one East Pleasant Street and Kendrick place, which I often get from people. And I think that this is the point these are the parts of Amherst that people really like that it's, it's, it's the sense of place that makes us different from other places. And so the question to me is, how do you keep that and increase density and that I think is an interesting challenge, but I don't think we tearing down the hair by how Harlow building or encouraging developers to do that. You know, the master plan doesn't tell us to do it tells us that this is, you know the downtown Amherst is our historic gym and we should be protecting it. And how do we do both and I think we can, but I think we need flexibility in the zoning where you're not pushing all the incentives towards the tear down or the front street. And that so that is my point was like how do we, how do we get what we want, have the flexibility to get there. And I do think that there's some conflict in terms of what we're talking about if we add the density behind in that zone. This is a transitional zone so we're going to be adding more density and potentially height against those neighborhoods which is also we're going to get some pushback on that too right so we put all the density behind people are going to have concerns about that so I do think there needs to be some some trade off that happens if that is something that we think Yeah, and I don't think, you know, I don't think you'd want to put a three story building right on the property line next to, you know, you know, a two story or even a three story Victorian and you know, that's why you have setbacks in different areas so when you put those lot those properties together, it's a pretty big lot, you know, it can be kind of creative with it. Yeah, I mean I think, you know, there's the opportunity now for someone to build three stories in the BL. I think the idea is that there isn't a demand for office or commercial space and so developers aren't doing that because, you know, they just they can't fill that space with, you know, with commercial and retail. And so the hope is that if we reduce the, you know, those lot areas for residential then maybe, you know, we can get both, you know, more residents downtown and businesses.  What's the benefit of keeping them or restoring them. What's the benefit of tearing down and building new and so they have that opportunity now, you know, I've been in some of those buildings and, you know, I think that they, I agree it's a nice aspect of downtown it's you know it's a it's a residential feel of downtown but when you go into those buildings you know some of those they're not accessible. Some of the you know the heating vents from one unit are actually, you know, there's one doc that goes to another the electrical services are split in units and I think from a, you know, from a practical standpoint it works now but if ever someone needs to really clean it up it's a big project and so But lots of places that you can preserve facades or replicate them you know in the new building you kind of keep that look, you know what Nate I have to ask you so I'm looking at the slide, you know which is in the BG with a ton of little buildings that's owned to five stories like what's, you know Right so I think, right so right now, yeah I mean, so my thought is right that the owners, what's there works for them. So you know they, again, they they haven't Right there hasn't been a desire to tear down because what they have works. So you know right they could go come in here and do a mixed use building, you know they could tear this down so they haven't so But I think the thought is at least in the BL right now. The purpose was to have both a mix of residential and commercial and right now you can't really have any residential because the lot area of 20,000 and 4000 is really restrictive. So, I mean, it is interesting, you know, is there other ways to do it besides the overlay possibly there's probably other mechanisms or ways and so that's something staff can discuss. But I agree there is a conflict of you know, you know, I think we do want to have a streetscape and not push density in the back, you know, I don't want to see parking in front of a building I'd like to have, you know wider sidewalks you know the transportation plan, you have 12 to 20 foot sidewalks and downtown areas and have landscaping have benches and In some of those areas it's already accommodated on our pleasant but I think You know, I agree I you know I'm not saying we should keep the old besides the building but it'd be nice not to have everything torn down and then have just these You know something that's new and doesn't resemble what you know what people want so I think that would call for you know, I think more detailed design standards. You know, or you know more prescription there because you know even now in zoning we're not we don't tell a developer what to do with the front facade of a building or you know we can put a delay on it there's a you know demolition review so I think We do like those these roof lines and everything then we have to get a little bit more, you know, we have to be clear in the zoning of what we actually want if it's redeveloped, I mean I agree that. So, we're like at a perfect time where we can take a five minute break. And the board can proceed with some discussion then we can open up to the attendees, get some public input. Say, you know, 806 or such, we can come back. Does that sound good. Pam. Yes, I have a little, a little sign we can share. All right. Thanks. What do we need to do. You said you want to take public comment for 10 minutes on the previous topic. You can do that or not. I think we still have planning board comments. Oh, still planning board comments on footnote. Yeah, we take public comment and then continue talking kind of like a zoning subcommittee meeting would do. Would that be okay. Well, I don't think everyone has spoke yet on the board. So let's get through everyone and then. And then, and then public comment. Yeah. Yeah. So, please. Well, I have already spoken, but thanks for the opportunity to talk one more time. I had a couple of one question for Nate, which was the zero setback. The zero foot side setback requirement. You know, if you, if people decided to build right out to the property line and then.  And whether they'd have any concerns about access to the. You know, the required frontage of the building. If you have zero setback requirements. And then the other thing I was going to say, kind of in response to Janet's comments and the photos about. Of the, the small buildings that sort of dot the northern end of downtown. Is that I feel like Haleck street, or the southern end of Kendrick park is really a threshold location where the sort of double loaded. North pleasant street with the buildings facing each other. Changes to the Kendrick park. You know, it widens out. And, and at that moment. You know, you could really say that. I kind of feel like the main commercial downtown when people think of downtown kind of ends at that point. And even though there's a little bit of commercial stuff on the east side, north of there it's, it's so small and spread out that you don't have the kind of semi urban feel of the, the, the 19th century, New England. Downtown it's this sort of our historical remnant. I feel like maybe we ought to think about some, you know, changing the treatment of the, of the urban landscape of the and having a zoning change at that point. You know, north of there we think of Kendrick park as one kind of cohesive room, so to speak, and how do we want to build up the edges of it. And then south of south of that, that you might basically try to preserve the New England downtown. And whether that means, you know, more restrictive zoning to prevent the kind of big development that people have found objectionable with one of these pleasant or Kendrick park. You just say we're not going to let that go south of Haleck street. There's some merit to that in that. That landscape that goes all the way up to the common is really kind of the setting for Amherst college. And it's a small scale. It's a small college. And then, you know, as you go farther north, you're getting more into UMass land, which is a modern large scale. Much more, you know, higher, higher buildings and bigger population. You know, you know, Kendrick park is the place where you start to make that change from the historic district to the modern university. That's all. Thank you, Doug. I have to, I agree with your comments. And also I feel like the, the, the use of the term historic in some of the areas of the BL that aren't designated as. You know, it's not designated as a story district site. I'm reluctant to have that term thrown around within certain areas of the BL that are not designated as a story because that just seems wrong. In my opinion. But certainly. We could argue we could have a long conversation about whether parts of the historic districts we have are really historic also. Well, of course, we'll have a subcommittee on that one. So, Maria. Signing up for that subcommittee. I agree with what Doug just said. And I also, in addition to that, I think Triangle Street is also sort of this corridor that sort of is like a segue, getting good, whatever you want to call it, like gateway to UMass as well. So I think creating, because we don't have it, we haven't been to see it, but as a planner, you can kind of imagine, you know, like Doug called it rooms like Kendrick places of room. Triangle Street is like, in a way, circulation, you know, to this threshold where the end of Kendrick Park becomes UMass. And so, yeah, if we just to find, define, sorry, my pizza, define some edges better. I think that downtown could really make a lot more sense and a lot more activities can find their places because there's more sort of edges and places that are created right now it's kind of leaks out into them. You know, the edges are there and I would love to see, you know, something a little more commercial on the first floor and residential, the second floor right up against Kendrick Place because on people could spell out into the park, you know, it just, yeah, it's just begging for a little more define. And I think, yeah, Doug, your sections really clearly show that as well, just showing how the scale of Kendrick Place really feels like it could use a little more definition on the edges.  But but yeah, thanks for those sections. Yes, I agree. But Doug, you know, it really showed the space as you proceed, you know, from south to north. Once you hit that point, you know, near Kendrick Park, there's, there's an expanse that. Yeah, you appreciate from that work. So thank you, Doug, for doing that.  So I'm glad we're having this conversation because I think, you know, we had to figure out what we want there and then how to get there. But I don't think it's debatable whether a building that's 100 or 150 years old is historic. And so, so, you know, one of the reasons I keep on like sending out excerpts of the master plan is, you know, because we're supposed to be following it and, you know, the key directions are to maintain Amherst existing existing community character. I think we have to agree that the Amherst downtown is not an urban landscape. And, you know, does have some higher buildings, maybe a small center but, you know, the preservation of Amherst community character will require a variety of approaches including and promoting adaptive reuse of historic buildings and landscapes, focusing development in already developed areas, creating design standards that ensure that new development is an accord with existing neighborhood character. You know, new infill and redevelopment in historic downtowns, village centers and established neighborhoods will have to abide by rigorous and sensitive design and density controls intended to preserve and enhance existing character. This doesn't mean that no one else can move in there and that we can't have small apartments and we can't expand density, but we're working in a context that's already there. And so, you know, I think if you take down these buildings, one after another, I think, you know, you're destroying downtown character and I don't know I just, I mean maybe this is a does anyone else have any concern for preserving any historic buildings downtown I mean, downtown is sort of slated to be a historic district in the master plan in the historic preservation plan, where it's chock a block full of really beautiful buildings and they're but they're not all like you might look at the post office and say Well, that's iconic but small buildings are iconic to I mean it's part of the fabric and the landscape, not to say that the building can't get taller. The facade can't be saved or replicated.  You know, Janet which section of the master plan. The key from the key direction to the community. And another one is an excerpt from the land use policy map. But, you know, it's, you know, the guide new housing growth as to minimize impacts on Amherst open space and small town rural counter counter character increased density of residential units and specified areas when strict design and planning guidelines are met. You know, so that's our job is to implement this plan and not to tear down these buildings are just, you know, I don't know.  This isn't a city. You know, I've lived next to a building that's built to it to my property line. It's kind of a pin in the ass, you know, it's sort of like, but you're in a city and so you accept these things. Are we going to, are we going to follow the master plan and protect the community character and historic buildings or is that just not a core value. And then our design and changes have to protect that and enhance it. Yeah, I'm just looking at this, you know, we have to encourage the vitality in the downtown village centers. There's a lot of competing interests within the master plan no doubt. I don't think they compete I think you could do both at the same time but you can't abandon one for the other. Yeah, but the town has as essential needs with regard to the downtown it's everybody's downtown. So, if we're going to quote the master plan I just wanted to know what we're pulling from because there is, there are a lot of kind of, you know, missions, you know, they're at but I'm sorry I lost the hands here for that, you know, staff was looking at, you know, the question was how to work on the residential component in the BL.  Or are we now opening up a bigger project saying okay are we defining what's downtown you know is it is it like Doug said you know is there a section that is more the commercial area the more modern area I mean we you know we if we want to do that. You know we you know that would just you know that would be something a little different than we're doing now right so if we want to start redefining what's downtown what is the commercial area what are the transitional zones that's not something we were doing as a part as part of looking how do we increase or change the residential development opportunities in BL so I mean I think so I you know I think you know there's a great conversation I just think that, you know, taking all my notes I'm like okay well where are we, you know what where are we going are we we want to take a step back and say okay. What what are the, you know areas of downtown or do we just keep saying okay how can we improve the BL. You know that that we're looking at so. Thanks Nate, Tom. Yeah I said a couple of quick comments I mean I think if you talk to most historic preservationists. Not everything that's old is historic and not everything that's old is good and I think, you know, at some level we have to make some judgments about what preservation is and means and so maybe consulting some people bring them on to actually have a conversation with us about that might be really valuable. A second comment is something when I was interviewing for this position. I had some comments about the master plan and its use of the word character, and that is a dog whistle and then we want to be careful about how we utilize the word preserving character can become an exclusive practice and I just want us to be cautious about how we use that and when we use that and something that we should probably address in the master plan as we go forward. Andrew. Oh, excuse me. Yeah, Andrew. Yeah, not a ton to add Tom actually covered on a lot of it I think the article that Maria sent out. Really captured some of those comments you just articulated Tom in terms of when when zoning works and when doesn't when it doesn't in terms of providing opportunities across income levels and and and just promoting diversity so anyhow like I think that's a great comment I think in general, I'm, I'm, I really like the work that you put together here Nate I like the, you know, I like the, the creative idea of the hundred foot buffer I think all of the ideas that you've shared seem consistent with a lot of things we're trying to accomplish for solving the BL in terms of getting some of that residential density and so that's all I have to add. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah, I also Tom, I forgot to thank you. And good comments there.  Yeah, I just wanted to say a couple of things. One is that I consider the historic center of downtown to be the area that surrounds the North Common and the South Common, where there's the Grace Church and the town hall and the beautiful buildings along Main Street and along South Pleasant Street. And once you get down to pretty much where the fire station is and beyond that, I don't see a lot that's there that really is worth sort of putting in a jar and saving it forever. I think that the St. Bridges Church is beautiful. I think the old post office is beautiful but a lot of those old wooden buildings are really in bad shape. And if we save some of them, that's fine, but I don't think we need to save that whole streetscape. And I also agree that the area beyond say Oh, probably beyond where one East Pleasant is or including one East Pleasant all the way up to Triangle Street. I think that could be all developed as as new. And that's kind of the gateway to UMass and so I feel like we have to be judicious about what we say we want to save because it's going to become like, I don't know. It's going to become sort of a hollow expression if we say we want to save everything. And I really feel like there are certain things that we definitely want to save and other things that I think we could probably not care too much about. And we also need to remember that we have an entire historic district a local historic district that was carefully delineated and it's it includes a lot of properties I think it's over 200 properties in the Lincoln Sunset area and beyond that page Street Best in Street up to Fearing Street, etc. Nate could probably give a better delineation of this. But I think that those buildings people really did a lot of research, and they convinced town meeting to create a local historic district there and the buildings along North Pleasant Street while some of them are charming I don't think all of them are necessarily worth saving so that's all I wanted to say, thank you. Thanks, Chris. We have Doug, please. Yeah, I kind of wanted to apologize to Nate for maybe getting us off topic with my comments. The main reason I mentioned that and kind of wandered into that conversation was, I thought when we're talking about the allowable height in the BL that I think there's an argument to keep it lower south of Halak Street, and that there is an argument to make it a little bit higher north of Halak Street, where, where, you know, so that you're starting to address the size of the big room around Kendrick Park. No, no problem.  Thank you. We have. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. I just have one more thing to say with this, which is, you know, it's 2021, the buildings and the zoning that we conceive of now will lead to buildings that are going to be here in 2050 and 2100. And given what we know about what's happening with global climate change we absolutely need to be thinking about the challenges that that that the world is going to be facing and we know that we need to move away from individual car usage and that we need to kind of just be more efficient with the footprint that humanity leaves behind. So I really, I really appreciate the move towards density I think it's required I think Amherst has been incredibly forward looking with setting aside open spaces and when you factor that issue in which I think needs to, you know, just like the Biden administration is kind of putting that as an overlay for all their operations I feel similar urgency around it for our work and I think it's highly relevant and it's important that we keep it in mind. And I think, you know, these proposals of greater density and concentrating development in the areas where there's public transit and where it's walkable and ideally bikeable.  So that's all I have to say. Thanks, Johanna. Yeah, I could, I can quote, you know, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission data that shows that Amherst has the highest percentage of conservation and you know natural resource area of any town in the Pioneer Valley so we got that going for us which is which is fantastic. I just wanted to say one thing to your comments made me think of, you know, reading some articles about defining, you know, building standards makes use buildings or design standards. You know, more recently, you know, in the planning magazines are saying you know zoning can be more adaptable and flexible so, you know, although we haven't changed zoning too frequently downtown I mean the thought would be if we if we try this right if we change the BL and in a year we don't like what we're seeing. Hopefully we can change it again right so it's not something that we set in stone and we just leave for 50 years. You know, more recently there's an articles about makes use building standards. You know a few years ago communities were really strict about the square footage requirements for commercial retail. And now they're saying well that was limiting because they they they were too prescriptive and so now they're having to go back and change it. And that's not a bad thing but as long as they're adaptable and you know they're willing to change and be flexible so I thought is here we have a good discussion we have some things going on but if you know two years from now we aren't getting what you know we're not seeing the results we don't like what we're seeing we can. You know I'd like to think we could change it so you know because you know maybe people won't take up the development and get the density we want or maybe they're not providing. We're still providing parking when we want more foot traffic or public transit and so then how do we encourage that how do we encourage you know more bike sharing or multimodal development and I'm not sure what we're proposing here you can you could get it but a developer may not need to do that so yeah so I just it was interesting the American Planning Association had an article recently that's just said about you know adaptive zoning was really about making sure you know let's change it let's be flexible if we need to and I think that's something that towns don't do a lot. Thank you Nate. All right, Janet. So we do have some buildings downtown that were, many people aren't happy with and there hasn't been any effort in the BG to address that. I wonder. I do and I'm very cognizant that zoning changes last forever and they take forever to change. So I wonder if they're having like, this is the design review board, you know, cover things in the BG. You know anything built there might be helpful. I think it is sustainable to keep to do adaptive reuse of historic buildings and, you know, I so I don't you know that's in the, it's in the mass sustainability principle so I'm not. I, you know, so I just think it's, I find it odd in 2021 to be arguing for protecting, you know the historic character of a 350 year old town I don't know. I feel sort of a little kind of at a bit of a loss I don't think we're competing density versus maintaining the best parts of Amherst or the good parts of Amherst I think that will that will draw people to Amherst I know it draws people to Amherst. Those little shops and the sweetness of Amherst is it's part of its community character it's it's a tourist attraction. It's what people like about Amherst is why people move here it's what college students like about it. You know I don't know if we had to draw everything up to the you know, you know, create an urban edge along North Pleasant Street, you know, so I don't know if I'm missing something I don't. I'm not anti increasing density, I just think we need to kind of fit it in in a nicer way. Maybe the design review board is something to prevent the next one East Pleasant Street. And that's actually why I started out asking, like how big could these buildings go, you know, because we know that a few property owners at a lot of lots. Let's open this up to public comment. And I see Pam Hilda, Susanna. Let's start with Pam. You have three minutes please. Hi Pam. Hello. This has been a good conversation. I would like to advocate. I've heard several men's mentions of the mixed use billing standards and inclusionary zoning I would like to ask, I would like to challenge you to put that on the neck on the, on the plate next because I think the quality is that mixed use buildings are what will be developed, no matter what just because right now they have the opportunity to make the smallest number of smallest size units, and therefore maximize the number of units that can be built. So we clearly are going to have some of that coming down the pike and I think that's very important to get a handle on. A question several times people asked, you know, what are the numbers of dwelling units that you think might be allowed through some of these overlays. And then actually just appreciating the creativity of thinking up this zone. And I would, in answer to Nate's question of, you mean we have to go back and sort of look at this again and I would say, yes, I think you need to go back and look at it again because again, each of these little sub districts is different than a neighbor and I think, I think I've heard a couple times we kind of need to keep in mind what it is we're trying to achieve I don't think we're just trying to achieve, you know, some housing in the BL or a footnote M or footnote a, all of these things work together, and they all have ramifications. So, yes, I think we definitely need to think of them in concert. The building the buildings that we're talking about when I look at the strips of development and particularly the one in the very large parcel triangle street. I'm struck by the fact that we are still using the images from town center are are a little bit of commercial strip in the town center and Main Street. So what we're talking about as a transition zone between a cottage street and the RG, you know, right up against downtown area. I think we're looking again for that transitional, it can be housing transition. It doesn't have to be commercial looking transition. And then the 100 foot script. It feels like what you're trying to do is create. I would like to see a neighborhood there. I would, I, it can be dense, you can create some some presence on the street. By golly make it a livable workable neighborhood rather than a strip of apartment buildings, which have no, no character, no contributions to the neighborhood or to a community setting. There is nothing in a in an apartment in an apartment that makes somebody want to get out and engage with the neighbors. I really think we need to keep in mind what we want. And that is density, but density with a residential character. That is exactly what you are trying to create. Nobody's buying a part of office buildings these days. Nobody's buying much retail. What you are selling is is residential. And so you want to make. Thank you, Pam. Well, thank you. Thank you. So we have looks like, you know, five more. So that's like, like half hour that's going to take us into past nine, maybe nine 10. And people know that are, you know, we're looking at putting them that we're going to get more later in the evening. And hopefully that break helped us to go a little bit longer than normal. So, Hilda, please. Hi, Hilda. Hi. I know you guys are very ego involved in this but this latest plan sounds like throwing spaghetti at the wall. And it's not sticking it's coming off. The first thing I'll say very quickly that I just checked the website and yes indeed, there is a downtown commercial historic district which was founded in 1991. I don't know the exact boundaries but part of this area is a national historic district. It was left out of the local historic district for political reasons. The other thing is between some of these buildings, they're built on the side of the hill to the property just to the south of the beauty power is a big drop off. So those parking lots could not be combined and it tends to go down the street down the hill. All right, so the other thing I wanted to talk about a shadow she got 39 feet high. I don't know what that means of the building has a peak roof. It's probably going to go up to about 42 feet high. We already have problems now on triangle street a good part of the winter triangle street is in shadow. When the sun is low, you put a tall buildings on the other side of Kendrick Park. You're not only shadow when the sun's low on the east you're going to shadow everybody in the local historic district and on the sun sets in the west you're going to shadow Kendrick Park all day long. Okay, nobody's thinking about that. And then the other big issue is we've lost so many local businesses to the carrot shops when they went. The whole summerland building which were small buildings have been emptied out because we're going to put more high rise there. The only businesses left downtown that people can go to that's not an Asian restaurant or a bar is the little buildings with Hennians Bakery and the bagel shop and all flowers. And you tear them down. Where are these people going to go? Where are they going to be able to flood ground in Amherst? And then so you build more housing downtown. What are these people going to do? There's nothing else to do except to go have go drink or eat. So there's no real reason to bring anybody downtown. There's no grocery stores. There's no stores to go shopping in if these, you know, so you go have a cafe here and a cafe there, but a couple of cafes that get torn down so you can put more ugliness on that side of the street. Even though you may not like these historic buildings, they are in a historic district. And I just think this plan should be scrapped. You want to get rid of the whole issue of the 4,000 feet? Just let people build a building that fits on the lot and whatever fits in that building fits in the building and just get rid of the 4,000 feet. Right now it's attractive. That's when the trees are in bloom and you have springtime and you've got flowers there. That's a very pretty part of town and people might want to go to the New Kendrick Park. But you get rid of all those trees by having 39 foot buildings there. Who wants to go downtown? I mean, I go down and have my hair, but if you tear down that building, where's my hairdresser going to go? That's planning. Thank you. My timer is going crazy here. Next we have Susanna. Hi Susanna. Hello. Well, I have to say I'm an advocate for the old buildings downtown and I have a question of clarification and then a request. Would the proposed overlay district still be governed by historic commission review and planning design review? Yeah, the demolition review and other regulations would still apply. Okay. You didn't say that in your presentation. My request would be, and maybe this is for Maria, is that if you're producing some visuals, what would really help me would be to have side by side diagrams of what we have now in that section on East Pleasant and what could be the plan to build out under your proposed zoning and plans sections. The whole thing from the street with a sidewalk, compare the two because it would be a lot easier for those of us who are not planners to visualize if that could be done. Thank you. Maria, do you want to respond to that by any chance? I think the planning department is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Doug and I did some plan studies showing number of units per parcel, and then Doug did those sections. So we'll try to communicate with Nate and see if he wants anything from us, but we're not being as proactive as we were. Thank you. Elizabeth. Hi, thank you. Yes, this is Elizabeth Vierling at 36 Cottage Street. And I just wanted to say that I certainly agree and I live right next to it that the BL on Triangle Street is really poorly used space. And I'm glad to see it being discussed. However, I have to agree with Pam Rooney that it would be really nice to see it developed into a neighborhood. And the thing that I, I want to, I have a question which is based on the, what I've heard, I don't see how or I don't see why that space couldn't just be built into one giant apartment building, which I don't think would constitute a neighborhood nor would it constitute a transition to the neighborhood that both Pam and I live in. And this also brings me to the question of what really kind of resident you're trying to address with building in this area, what, what kind of resident are you trying to attract. I'd like to note that right now there's a sign out in front of Kendrick place saying apartments available of all types. So, I'm not sure what's going on there but certainly I don't want to see more of those apartments built if the apartments that are already there are empty. And this issue of how many units is that going to be. I appreciate, really appreciate the idea of alternative transportation. However, I've noted in a previous letter that triangle street is completely unbikable. And it would be great if that was, if that were dealt with before anything is built up against the street or even back from the street on triangle street. It would be lovely if we all didn't need to have cars, but I think that anyone with a family is going to need a car and live in Amherst, regardless of what they can walk to any senior citizen that lives in Amherst is going to need a car. And we really do have to deal with, with parking. And my final comment is that we're building this wonderful park in Kendrick Park. And, but at the same time we have, we're gradually eliminating all of the amenities, all of the reasons for anybody to be in that park. There's no, there'll be no stores in the neighborhood to go to. I'm not sure other than going to the park, what are people going to do, walk along the frontage of one East pleasant or walk along the frontage of apartment buildings. I think there needs to be more planning as far as just the whole picture of what we want this to look like, as far as retail and walkability and who we actually want to have live here. Thank you. Very good. Chris, I don't know if you want to speak to that because, you know, when we have the people, then there's, there's a logical flow of stores that are people that want to develop businesses because they're people downtown. I, one thing I can say is that we don't have control over what kind of retail or commercial entities want to rent space for instance like, we can't go out and recruit a coffee shop or recruit a dress store or a flower shop or anything like that. You know, we, we can provide the space and we can zone it properly, but then it's up to them to, you know, to come and decide that they want to rent the space and offer the service so we don't have control over that we have control over how big the spaces are going to be we have control over what they can be used for but it's sort of like we can open the door but then we can't force people to come in so I guess that's what I can say about the uses there's really no control that the town has over the uses spaces that we build will be enticing for people who want to set up businesses but that's that's kind of what we can offer. Thank you. Janet Keller. Janet. Hi there. I would like. I can't hear you. And I'm basing my experience on about 40 years that I've had of working with a neighborhood where I still have a house in Providence. I have a vision for economic development. And I hope you will look at places like that and I will mention just one, which is Eagle Square. And it had 11 historic mills and the developer wanted to replace it with a $7 million strip mall. And we worked the community and the elected officials and the appointed officials all worked together and ultimately saved four of those buildings, of which one has 40 living units. And it has, it was going to be a $7 million strip mall. It was a $41 million adaptive reuse of four of the 11 mills. It's been a great success. A price rate market located there and has been become one of the most successful in the region. And the city got a lot more tax revenue over since that has been built over the years from a much bigger, more expensive, more inviting adaptive reuse. And we've got some examples here in Amherst 75 Pleasant Street is a wonderful example. And I'll, I have some some pictures and discussion of that that I'll send to you. I implore you not to throw away this important opportunity to make this a real place that people want to come and not to turn it into a bunch of blank brick blobs up on the edge of the sidewalk leave room for there to be outdoor dining leave room for there to be real life. And that's my pitch. I had to I almost didn't come to this meeting and then so I didn't really prepare anything but I implore you to think about what history can do for the town's bottom line. Thanks. Dorothy Pam, please. Counselor Pam. Hi Dorothy. Hi, how are you. Well, I agree with a lot of things that are said but I'm going to come at this slightly differently. I'm definitely want to preserve, which is beautiful and historic but I'm, I'm, you know, looking at this, these proposals with an open mind. And I'm looking at the question of who you want to live downtown. And I am suggesting that we really do want to have some families and young families you've got a park there so wouldn't you want to have some children right around it. And today, we had to go to Worcestershire for my husband to get his COVID shot. I saw some incredible new affordable housing that was built out of wood colorful wood with different angles and arches and it and front porches and it was so inviting. It's a revitalization process I've got to get the name I did take one picture but I got caught in traffic. So you can build something really wonderful in family houses that fits with the neighborhood and I'm saying wood as opposed to brick, because I want to speak about the car. I came here as a grandmother and I'm still a grandmother. So what did I have I've been doing for 10 years I've been driving children around to at a time can't do it on a bike, even with a basket or a double seat. And this is something you know we talk about Amherst cultural revitalization. Nobody's ever mentioned in all the meetings I've been, we have the most incredible bunch of creative activities for children in this town. So where do I go. Oh have I driven over the years Hampshire gymnastics Amherst Montessori Hitchcock Nature Center, the Eric Carl, that's all South Amherst pineapple dance Amherst ballet and then for circus we went to East Hampton. Certainly I came up here even before I lived here I was driving up to Amherst to take the babies into the Mill River pool for swimming lessons guitar at Miss Latisha's piano at the Unitarian Church. Amherst leisure activities multi arts things held in churches up in the north than the schools. Computer at Amherst College, computer at Holyoke Community College, all over town.  So I'm saying please include parking if you're going to build residences, please include some parking. A lot of ideas have been discussed today of ways to make it so that it's not too jarring for other people a lot of excellent objections have been brought up to, but you have to do it. Otherwise, you're just pushing it into the Lincoln Sunset Historic neighborhood, which is already has quite a bit of a problem. And once we're back to real life again, we'll have a bigger problem. And Chris, I do appreciate your strong position on the neighborhood it is a gem of a neighborhood. And I think we really need to not kind of slide it to realize what an important place is part it plays in Amherst and how it can cook to and connect to the downtown which I do hope will still have the little shops I go to which does include here by Harlow Indian Bakery and bagels. I mean, I go there that's where I go. Okay, so please, I know it's a real problem. Find some way to keep our little shops and to bring back some more of our little shops. So thank you for all your good work. I tune in to see where we go every week. It's an adventure. Thank you. Thank you, Pam.  Oh my God, yeah, is amazing. Thank you so much. Ira. Hello, Ira. Hi, how are you. Very well. Thank you. So I just want to build on a couple of things. Chris, I appreciate that you said that you hope downtown would be enticing. And I'm a big fan of hoping. I really am. But also I would say go beyond hope to hire another economic development director. Somebody that would actively be enticing somebody who would go out and try to lure businesses from elsewhere, you know, get tandem bagel which is expanding to open one here or whatever restaurants you like. I did this just as a retailer in Long Island and I brought several people into my town. I think the town needs to advertise. This is what we want. Let's do an ad for bring your business here. Consider living here. Make a model. I keep harping on the three story building, which is like the nicest thing I see downtown mixed living above retail, not above commercial. I don't know what it means now to say commercial. Does that mean the mass mutual data center that nobody ever seems to be in? I don't want that to be the first floor of downtown. And then as far as residential goes, I, it's the first time I heard of making neighborhood out of that big area in Triangle Street and that's really exciting. I think that we could put out a request for proposals of like, here's this opportunity for the right builder who can come in and build an intentional community and elder co housing or whatever the imagination could could do that would fit into that zoning that would bring people downtown and really be the right buffer more than just apartment buildings, which would not be a buffer. So I think that I think the town has more homework to do. Aside from just saying here's what's allowed and what's not allowed saying here's what we want. Here's what we would encourage. Here's what we would invite you to build. And I agree with a lot of the people that said that there's less and less reason to go downtown and I think if we just fill it up with residential which does seem to be the easy sell it's hard to attract interesting retail and hospitality. It's much easier to just build a lot of apartment buildings and fill it up with really the easiest fish with the fish are students. Nothing wrong with students, but we want diversity in all ways. And I also just want to put in a plug that character of the neighborhood is not a racist dog whistle less woke and more mature attitude towards what character of the neighborhood means would be great. So thank you so much. I have a question. Ira, I, what was the comment with regard to mass mutual. And can replace hearing a change from first floor should be retail and hospitality and service businesses to first floor should be commercial, which seems to expand the definition to allow a mysterious data center that nobody seems to come and go from the people that work there. I don't see them going into local restaurants. That's not what should be on the first floor of downtown Amherst. Okay. My personal experiences. I have a neighbor that works there. I think they bring a lot of it. That's a big attraction.  I've worked by there a million times. I don't see anything happening there at all. I don't see a neighbor that moved to Amherst to work a mass mutual in Kendrick place. That's one person. Not to get into a debate with you about it. It would be a more interesting downtown if it was stores restaurants, boutiques, interesting businesses, not somewhere that could be anywhere. In my opinion. Chris, can you help me here. Well, I just wanted to read off the list of uses that are allowed in a mixed use building besides residential retail business institutional government public service consumer service office or similar principal uses and lawful accessory uses. There's a wide variety of things that are allowed in mixed use buildings. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. I'm not saying disallow it. I'm saying entice more interesting things. Thank you. Okay. Hilda has spoken before you have something additional. Hey, Hilda. I just wanted to add one thing that the people have been saying that the green and this is to answer Joanna, that the greenest building is the one that's already built. Don't forget when you tear a building down, you got to put the stuff somewhere.  I don't like the look of it. But anyway, the greenest building is the one that's already there. And then the second thing I want to say is that the little businesses that I'm talking about are like the old music shop where I used to buy strings for my kids by a land, or where I would go to a lane and and and Molly little antique shop there that's gone. They cannot afford the rents in the new buildings. But if you look at what they charge my son charges the same rent for brand new three bedroom apartment that they get for studios almost new bed. So how is a little business going to be able to afford the rents that they have to charge on the new buildings that comply with all the building codes, which make things, especially in Amherst with the with the extended whatever it's called. Building on how to for more efficiency how are these little buildings going to businesses going to be able to afford to be in a new building but they can afford to be in an old building that probably doesn't have a mortgage anymore. And you got to think about these things. People live here they have a job, you know there's no workforce housing that's a good thing but maybe people can have a store and live above it. And I noticed that I don't know what what the story is, but I don't see any signs of life on calls road there. There are no businesses. The store that used to be the old beauty parlor and North Amherst and send those little strip mall there. That building has been empty since the beauty parlor left. Yeah, we had a. It was empty for about a year and a half while the pharmacy rehab the space on the pharmacy didn't last, and the store has been what why why are we not able to bring stores to a neighborhood or why couldn't Atkins with all the traffic of close by calls every single day going back and forth to UMass. Why can't they keep a grocery business going there I don't understand it, but I do know the the ramps and new buildings are very high. I have to clear up just for a minute. We've talked about this one particular topic for two and a half hours and we have one more topic to go. I really need to move on so I wonder if Hilda could send me comments in an email and I'd be happy to finish. I mean, I've just said that. Thank you. On that topic, I would just like to say that that the, you know, an existing old building is the most sustainable is a little bit of a fallacy. I know maybe Johanna can speak to that. But as that old building continues over decades, the energy efficiency efficiency just the carbon footprint is this it becomes quite high. So there are advantages to improving, you know, site properties with more efficient buildings. I mean, I think Johanna may may be able to help me with that but just that's just my gut. Yeah, I mean, I can chime in. It really depends on the building. So there are some old buildings that work. And there are some old buildings that are total energy hogs and that, you know, weren't being replaced and I don't know, not much more to it. All right, I just wanted to speak to that. Thank you. So. Mr. Marshall has his hand raised. Yes, please. Yeah, I just wanted to echo what Chris said and ask that we move on to the next topic. I don't feel like we have to respond to every public comment. Okay. I see no other board members with questions. So most certainly let's move on to the discussion on removing footnote footnote am section six table three zoning bylaw additional lot area per dwelling unit for townhouses and apartments in the RG zoning district. Chris. Oh, I, we have Maureen Pollack a planner in the planning department who's going to present information about footnote am. Great. Thank you. Right. Hi, everyone. It's, it's me again, Maureen Pollack. It's so let's just get right into it. Let me open my, my presentation. So, let's see here. So, picking up where we left off from last time I had mentioned that in preparation of tonight's meeting I would provide the, the, the planning board and the public, the net change of number of units allowed for parcels that are maintaining the existing use with and without footnote. So, previous in our study, we kind of just looked at parcels without accounting for what's actually there. So now we'll take a closer look at, of, you know, what are the existing uses on these parcels and how many more units could be added with footnote and without. And also I'll walk you through a few concept designs a few examples for lots in our study that could maintain the existing use and add more units and so we'll walk you through that as well. So, I wanted to, I believe I might have showed a similar slide last time but I just wanted to remind everyone of this map shows the lot size in acres of our study area and again our study area is 343 parcels. And over here on the legend, where you see the parentheses, it will say how many parcels are actually within those thresholds. So there's 122 parcels that are between zero and a half an acre, 178 parcels that are between a half acre and one acre. 31 parcels that are between one and one and a half acres and and then the list suddenly declines greatly. So the majority of parcels in the study area are between a half an acre and one acre. And so this map is showing and I'll explain it is showing the net change of number of units allowed with footnote. Considering the actual in reality existing uses and the way I was able to do this to the little little elbow grease, which was that I needed to figure out what are the existing uses and as we had said last week, we don't have the we don't have a sort of one shop database for this, at least currently. And so what I did was I went through the rental permit registrations and I in that list, the units. And there's only so many. I think there's 76 units, 76 parcels within the RG. Part RG zone that's when that is through the that has been registered through the rental permit process saying too much. Anyways, so I got the data from rental permits and also I manually looked up some other parcels by looking at the property card or site plan review or or special permit or what have you and that was how I determined the the what the actual existing uses are by lot. And so you can see over here on the legend that that you know predominantly there are single family homes within our study we that I was able to find out the existing uses and just to say I was able to find 176 parcels for the uses. So our studies sort of getting smaller. So anyways, so there are lots that have predominantly single family homes and another item to mention in this slide is that because we're looking at this map is looking at what could be added on the parcel with footnote. You would need at least 20,000 square feet to accommodate that. So anything that's less than 20,000 square feet in lot size is not considered in this map. And so just kind of for the sake of time I'm just going to focus on this the existing uses that have single family homes there. They're sort of green with little dots will call them. And so with footnote M if you turn your your attention to the parcels along Lincoln Ave. You can see that these single family homes, you know can add some additional lots ranging from nine additional lots five additional lots. Sorry, nine additional units, five additional units three additional units for and and when we go to the next slide. You can see that that now it's actually opening up even more opportunities. And also it's including more lot sizes. And so with the removal footnote M to accommodate at least three units you need at least 17,000 square feet, opposed to when you had footnote M you needed at least 20,000 square feet. So now there's more, more opportunities for adding infill. And so there's actually 96 parcels that are single family homes that have at least 17,000 square feet. And in these numbers that are appearing above the the parcels themselves is indicating how many additional units you could add to that parcel. And so you can see sort of the, you know, the increases throughout the study. And so taking that same data, I then created a chart because that might be a little more user friendly. You can see that this vertical access is the number of lots, and the horizontal access is the number of units allowed per lot, either with footnote M which is represented in blue, or without footnote M which is represented in a sort of sort of orangey red. And here on the right side, vertical access that's showing the percent change. And so when you compare the blue to the orange or with footnote M and or without footnote M, you can you can see that, you know, there's an increase from 37 lots that can have three units to now 42 lots that can now have three units. And you can see the comparables of there's more 27 units or 27 additional parcels that can have four units. This is looks like a flush for for lots with five units. This actually went down and this went up and you can. So it is based on what what in reality what are the lot sizes. But you can see that these first lots that have that could have three units or four units, you can see that that there is an increase and you can see sort of, you know, small, smaller increases, as this list goes on. And that is largely because, as we know, the majority of parcels within our study are smaller lots for single family homes and two family homes, or or a better way of saying it, they're half acres to one acre parcels. And so now to the examples. And so we at last last week's planning board meeting we had agreed on that we would focus on parcels along Lincoln Ave, between amity and faring street and parcels along Gray and High Street. And well what's the purpose of providing examples which we hope will help determine whether footnote M should be removed or not. There are factors to consider and determining whether you know these developments these concept drawings are even feasible. And so sort of questions that we could be asking ourselves as we go through these examples is, let's see here is does the development meet the dimensional regulations for the increase of density with or without footnote such as parking requirements and building a lot of bridges and setbacks. And so we'll, we'll first focus on Lincoln Ave. And so we're just going to focus on with within the red is the focus area, I was able to add some more so for right now we don't need to pay attention to that. And so again you can see the majority of parcels up with along this segment of Lincoln Street Lincoln Ave rather are our parcels that that currently have a single family home. And it looks like there's like two that have two parcels that have three units on on their property. And I believe this has probably like nine or nine units. But again, predominantly, it's a, it's a neighborhood full of single family homes. And as we had discussed earlier. And this is looking at, or this slide is showing you of how many more units could be provided within this focus area, looking at the existing use and looking at footnote and the lot size obviously. So here you can see that nine additional units could be provided on this lot five units could be five units could be provided in addition to the single family home. And you can, you know, you can go through that yourself and look at the differences. One thing to note is where you see these X's is that in order to have a three unit building on a parcel with footnote M you need to have at least 17,000 square feet. So I, I remove those lots that are less than 17,000, 17,000 square feet and you can see there's a good amount of them that are that are all parcels. And so just for our, you know, our intention or our for our exercise those those parcels just are not part of our study because they're not applicable. And then the X the black X represents lots that are between 17,000 square feet and 20,000 square feet. And so with footnote M. They can't have they can't provide additional units on their parcel. However, with when you remove footnote M those parcels are now provide are they now have the opportunity to provide more units because footnote M has been removed in that additional lot area would be 2,500 square feet opposed to the 4,000 square feet with footnote and so now you can see that there is more opportunities the number of units increases as you go back and forth. And there's a, you know, on average, I could, I would say maybe there's an additional maybe three or four units added on these parcels if footnote M is removed. Can you kind of flip back a couple of times just so we can kind of get a visual. No, absolutely. So this is with footnote M without with them without I feel like I'm doing an eye test with them. Okay, cool. And, and I'm sure Pam, if she hasn't already put these slides on the website, I'm sure she'll put them on the website tomorrow on the planning board web webpage. And so here is our first example with it's a parcel along Lincoln Ave. There and it's, you know, obviously aligned in this yellow here, and there the existing use is a single family home. The parcel is a little over one acre it's 54 52,000 square feet with footnote footnote M, you could add 10 additional units there if footnote M was removed. 16 additional units could be added again solely just looking at the lot size. And the existing use. And so here's our that example taking this this parcel the single family home and then this garage. This is the concept drawing for a development that removes footnote M and so the existing house would remain and it would be converted into four units. The garage would remain and continue to have two spaces parked inside. And here with the blue hatching is a would be extension of the existing house which would accommodate 1212 additional units. And let's see here, but let me back up and so 34 parking spaces would be required. And, however, 23 spaces were provided, because there were the lot area was maxed out. So a lot of your requirement in the RG is 40 is at 40%. And with this proposal as laid out here is at that maximum 40%. And so, you know, this, this person, this theoretical person would, you know, kind of go through this, you know, process of they would have to go through A for well a for the use for the apartment building, but be for they would also have to ask for a reduction of the parking spaces required beca