I think we have everyone here. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call the January 24 meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board to order and chair Rachel Zenberry. This open meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12 2020, which was extended due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. For this meeting, the ARB is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So at this time, I'll confirm that all members of the board are present and can hear me starting with Ken Lau. President. Jean Benson. President. Melissa Tintacolas. President. And Steve Revillac. Good evening, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you so much. And I believe that we have two members of the Department of Planning and Community Development. We have Jennifer Rates. Present. And Kelly Lineman. Present. Great. Is there anyone else from the department joining us this evening? No, there is not. Okay, great. Thank you. At this time, we will move to our first agenda item, which is the annual election of the chair and vice chair. So I will go ahead and take nominations for, well, just remind everyone that I'm currently the chair. Ken is the is the vice chair. And we will take nominations for the 2022 chair to start. I like to nominate Rachel. I second. I second that. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. So let's, are there any other nominations? Okay. So let's go ahead and take a vote for myself to continue as the chair of the board for 2022. We'll start with Ken. Yes, please. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Yes. And I am in yes as well. So I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I look forward to continuing as chair of the board. And we'll now take nominations for vice chair. I would nominate Ken Lau to be vice chair. For a second. Great. Any other nominations. Do you accept the nomination? Okay, fantastic. So we'll go ahead and take a vote. Starting with Ken. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Yes. And I am in yes as well. Congratulations. You will continue as vice chair for the 2022 year. All right. So that closes agenda item number one. And we'll now move to agenda item number two, which is the continued public caring for docket number three, six, six, five, six, 45 Massachusetts Avenue. And before we get to the applicant, I'll ask either Jenny or Kelly, if there is any additional information that department would like to share with the board regarding this continued application. Thank you. I'll speak first and then hand it over to Kelly if she has anything to add. But in brief, we provided an updated memo, which outlined that the applicant did respond to some of the requests from the board, but there are some items that remain outstanding. And I'll review those quickly. The first is they updated or they provided new windows in their design. Scheme so you can review that this evening. They did respond to your request to move the blade sign. They also provided some renderings related to benches and planters, which is would be a long mass of. They also responded to our request regarding bike parking. Particularly in the for the exterior, but the indoor bike parking is. Not necessarily what we would consider to be reasonable. It's in a lounge. The rear entry they confirmed was not sufficient and could not be used as an accessible entry. The bank information actually that you requested of our department had been provided for the last meeting, but because the hearing had been put off. I don't think you ever actually heard of that. So we put that back into the memo again. And then lastly, the board or some members of the board had requested information about the types of services or programs or. You know, what is actually provided or differentiates this bank from others in Arlington center or elsewhere in Arlington. That remains outstanding. And I believe the bank has. Some individuals here this evening who may be able to speak to some of these outstanding matters. And that also we received a couple of additional images, which the applicant has requested we share on the screen tonight. As I also speak. And I'll just see if Kelly, do you have anything else to add? Just to add that they are, they have also shown the benches and planters in the plan view drawings. So they're in the renderings, but they're also in the plan view drawings. And then on top of that, they have provided. Short-term bicycle parking in excess of what would be required in the zoning bylaw by a total of three spaces extra. That's it. Great. Thank you very much Kelly. I appreciate it. Let's see. So I see attorney and I see here. If you would be so kind as to introduce your team, who's with you this evening and. Go ahead and make your presentation to the board. We have with us this evening for Chase bank. A few individuals. We have Bruce Krabara. Who is the vice president in charge of. Real estate marketing for the bank. We have Jim Lally, who is an architect from core states. And we're going to have Richard Ramsey, who is the vice president for the bank. We have Jim Lally, who is an architect from core states. And we're going to have Richard Ramsey. We have Richard Ramsey, the owner of the property as well. I'd like Richard to have some things to say about. His ownership of the property and his efforts to rent the property. We think that this site is a good site for the bank. Yes, Jenny, we did not address all of your issues. In your written requests. I do that this evening. And I believe that Brooke Krabara is going to have a lot to say. In terms of the issues relating for example, to whether there'd be an overabundance of banks. In Arlington. She can talk about the different type and she will talk about the different type of services that will be offered by the bank. She will also talk about services like matters that you and the board had asked for previously. I'm going to say this too, that Arlington is one of the communities that has fewer banks than most surrounding communities. If you look at most surrounding communities. It's not really nine banks. The Chase ATM is not a bank. That was counted as one of the nine. The Lita Bank residential loan processing center across from the high school was really not a bank. People don't go in there to do banking. That's simply an administrative office. So really, Arlington has seven banks. We feel again, this site is a good site. And I'm gonna have Jim Lally, the architect for core states, address a couple of the issues that were raised with respect to the ADA parking on Mass Ave. Jim is also gonna talk to the long-term bike parking and the rear entrance issue that I tried to address in my response as well. Jim, would you jump in at this point, please? Hello, Jim. Well, I thought I was gonna get Jim. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. There you are. I know what he looks like, that's him. Okay. I was on double mute for some reason, so. Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. Good evening, everyone. Yeah, I heard just recently in the opening statements, there was a question or a comment on the long-term biking, bike parking being in the lounge. Be happy to hear the board's thoughts on that. We were thinking that would be a good spot for, you know, possibly an employee who will be parking their bike long-term out of the way. We would provide a formatted rack that the bike could stand in without a kickstand or without lifting the bike for the board. If the board feels this should be in a more accessible area of the bank, I'd be happy to talk about that and work on that with the Chase designer to find a more suitable location if that's the case. Jenny, do you have that image of the bike stand that I asked that you show? Jim, is that what you're alluding to? Yeah, we would do a simple stand like this attached to the floor where the front wheel or the back wheel could be put into the stand. There's really no lifting, no kickstand required for the board's requirement. One of the other issues that were raised in the request to Chase Bank, Jim, was what could we do about the rear entrance? Why are we concluding that we cannot do anything about the rear entrance? So we did address that in our letter and the board did acknowledge that site constraints at the rear in terms of the existing public access and sidewalk and the existing parking back there, the ramp would actually be very long, would impede on the sidewalk, would take us out of the property boundary of the building. It's just a large undertaking that would snowball into many different things and then most importantly impede on a lot of the access of the sidewalks. I did note that there are a lot of other businesses in the area that have the same issue. And there are other banks I might add in the town that do not have rear entrances as well. They have a front entrance, but not a rear entrance. With respect to the ADA parking on Mass Ave, do you have any comments on that issue, Jim? There is ADA parking on Mass Ave, almost essentially on the corner of Mass Ave and David Lampson Way. There seems to be one ADA street parking per block. Sometimes there's, when there's parking on both sides of the street, I'm sure the board's familiar, there's a spot on either side of the street. So it seems that one spot is basically servicing the block which it's on, which basically services all the businesses. We're relatively close. It's right outside Caldwell Banker there. And we're on it right on the other side of David Lampson Way. So it's basically a similar situation or the same situation that exists there today. Do you have any further comments, Jim? No, I think that's it. We have an, our main entrance door will be on Mass Ave, essentially in the location where the main entrance to the restaurant would be. Our door there will be fully accessible. We're going to make sure the slopes at that door are accessible. So it's really not changing too much in the way the way the access is granted today. The, where shall I think I'm going to move on and hold the questions for later. Is that correct? Is that the way? You had mentioned that you had a representative from the bank who you wanted to address. That's my point. I'd like to move on to the next speaker. Absolutely, please do. All right, good. All right. I'm going to ask Burke Krobera to talk to the issues I spoke about earlier with respect to why the bank would like to come to town, what the bank could bring to the town if it does come to the town and what the bank may offer to the town that might be different than other banks are offering to the town. Brooke, would you jump in? Hi, everyone. Good evening. Nice to meet you all. I'm Brooke Krobera. I'm the market director of real estate for New England for the bank. And very excited to be here to put a face to the name of Chase to give you some color on our expansion into the greater Boston market and to explain to Bob's point how our offerings differ than that of our competitors. So I'm just super proud of our expansion in the last few years in 2018. Chase did not have a single branch or ATM open in the market. And as of today, we have 29 open with just over 50 plans. So super aggressive expansion. And when you see such a national presence coming into a market like Boston that just I think further supports why we're excited and ambitious and here to stay in the Boston market. I was asked to provide a market study as to why we chose Arlington. But I think the more apt question is why not Arlington? When we looked at that market, I see a heavily trafficked high retail synergy area with a good community that's upper income, high density and a six-figured median household income. So in the 50 branches that we planned, I have a hand in not only the strategy of where we go and why, making sure that we're enhancing our quality over quantity, excuse me. But making sure that there's even distribution. So that's really as simple as it is. We come into these markets and we look at how our competitors are performing and given the density and the income and the opportunity just to enter the community. That's really the simple math that was the equation that we landed on the Arlington market. As far as the overbanked comment that I know Bob already addressed to his point, our ATM doesn't count as a bank because it's just a walk up ATM vestibule. We opened that a couple of years ago because Arlington was so high on our priority list that we wanted to have a presence in the market while we were trying to solve for a branch opportunity. And it's been a long road with Mr. Ramsey who's also on the phone or on the Zoom call, excuse me, as we've always had an eye on this end cap that's formerly occupied by not your average Joe's. So when I look at other communities, I know Bob had mentioned Lexington as over 20, Belmont nearby, similar numbers. When I look at other communities in Boston, there are significantly more banks and I think that's as simple as I need to address that point. So I really argue that it's underbanked. How are we different? I think when you look at our branch format and even look at the floor plan, when you walk into one of our branches, it's not this stuffy dated bank that you're used to seeing where there's a long line of tellers and it's not very inviting. We've really tried to modify that programming so that when you walk in, there's an area for a seating that's called the living room and the employees are dressed in jeans and they're trying to be more of an advice center that's very welcoming and accommodating to those that either just need to drop cash in the ATM or ask a question about a mortgage and all the other things that would go into the advice center that we're trying to generate from our locations. Back to the quantity over quality over quantity piece. When we first looked at opening branches in Boston, you look at a Bank of America and they have roughly 160 with our roughly 50 branches that really enforces picking the right sites, being in the right markets and having this even distribution so we can capture as much customers as possible. So that's really the biggest difference from the experience that you walk into the branch. And I think too, we really, to the extent we can attempt to hire locally so that we can embrace the community as wholly as possible and in turn generate more success from our branch. Although we're looking at markets like Arlington, we're opening in Dorchester and Roxbury and Maddoxon and we actually a couple of weeks ago had our CEO, Jamie Diamond, go to our Maddoxon branch and speak to how even in a low to moderate income community, we change our format to make sure that we're giving the residents of that community access to the resources that they so desperately need. So I think that's also something that I find to be very interesting because we really tailor the market to what is required of the community. The other piece I'd add just in how we add value, when COVID first hit two years ago almost, I was not told by my senior leadership to press pause while other retailers with their expansions did or restaurant deals, perfect example of being not your average Joe's, either defaulted on their rent or had to blow up deals that were in progress. My team nationally is so confident and so excited about this expansion that I was told to keep my foot on the gas and to press on. So I think another really important thing to note is the economic prosperity and stability that a bank like Chase offers to a corner that is owned by such a local steward and resident of the greater Boston community. So I really encourage all of you on this call if you haven't been into one of our brand new branches chase.com slash Boston you can find a list of open branches today and I encourage you to experience our new format. Great, thank you very much. With respect to a hiring and the like of Brooke, would your preference be that you would rather do that with the local community? Typically we see more success with that but I'm not in a position where I can commit to that. It's one of the things that enter into our HR and hiring strategies so that we can, again, more homogenously enter the community, i.e. this might be an off color example but if you are opening a branch in a lower income community and you hire someone that doesn't understand what those people need and what they go through and can't relate, doesn't really make a lot of sense. So I would say yes, within reason to the extent that we can absolutely. Thank you. All right, I'd like to move on to my last speaker aside from me, Rachel, and that would be Richard Ramsey, the owner of the property. Richard, do you wanna jump in? Good evening to everyone. I'd like to just start off to assure everyone on the board that we as the landlord did everything in our power to keep not-driving shows open, including some very steep financial concessions. Not your average Joe's management ultimately determined that this was an underperforming location and they opted to walk away from the building. These economic challenges are not unique to Arlington. In the past several months, we have seen Belmont Center announce the closings of Starbucks, Jamaica Jeffs and Camelers. We have other property on Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington Center. Several of our tenants were experiencing difficult times even pre-COVID. Today they find themselves in precarious financial situations. We fear more businesses will be forced to close. We continue to make substantial concessions to help our tenants and prevent vacant storefronts along Mass Ave. We have carried 645 Mass Ave for the past two years with virtually no or negligible rents. As the landlord, this has been by no means a temporary issue or event. We continue to pay all our expenses, mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance. In closing, we've never asked for any financial concessions from the town of Arlington. We are hopeful that our track record of supporting tenants in Arlington will be viewed as a positive. In a perfect world, discussions regarding the comparative value of one type of tenant versus another may have some merit. But based on our experience over the past two years, this is not a perfect world. We simply request the Board approve Chase's application so we can proceed with the necessary investment to renovate the space and onboard a financially viable tenant. Chase would restore stability to this building, which is exactly what Arlington Center needs. We feel strongly that we should be working in lock step to ensure the long-term viability of Arlington Center. Thank you. Appreciate you. I'm sorry, taking a lot of time for this presentation. If you could wrap up, that would be great because I'd love to. Let me wrap up. Okay. Thank you. I pulled the assessing record on the property. And you look at the assessing record and the assessing record talks about in the narrative description, the parcel contains somebody's square feet, restaurant use, okay? So I mean, it's a fixation in some people's minds that this site has to be a restaurant. It does not have to be a restaurant, okay? And it has to be property that will bring a viable return to the owner so that we don't have more vacant retail spaces in the town as we've had for many years. We still have them up in the heights. We have vacant spaces up there. We have them in the center. And this has gone on for years. Now we're slowly making it back, but I must tell you that trying to rent this space to a restaurant owner has been impossible for the last couple of years. We cannot do it. No restaurateur wants to invest in a restaurant. They do not wanna do it because of COVID, they do not wanna do it. They don't know whether Omicron is going to go to a different Delta at this point. We simply don't know. We have a viable tenant at this point that will allow the owner to pay his real estate taxes, to carry the property and to make a slight profit. I am suggesting to the members of the board that this is a good site for Chase Bank. There's no overabundance of banks in this town. When you compare seven banks in this town with all the banks in the surrounding communities, I'm asking the board to favorably consider the Chase application. Great, thank you, Bob. I appreciate it. Jenny, you had mentioned that there were some updated renderings. As I start taking questions from the board, actually perhaps beforehand, if you could share if there were any substantive changes in the renderings that you received, if you could take us through those quickly. If I can find it. It's in... Is it in the package that's uploaded on the... It's in the main Chase package, and it's only the windows. Okay, and if that's what was... The windows are the outdoor elements, so it's in the main package. I'm happy to scroll through it, but there's specifications about windows. That's fine. I saw that if that's what was in the package. I just understood I thought you meant that there was something that had not made it into the package that was new. So we don't need to go through this since this was provided. We actually did share that, which was the bike, the Wilwerks Superstand, and then the other one was an image, which they did not ask me to put on the screen, but they basically is a Google Street view of where the ADA parking space is on Massive. Great. And with some arrows explaining the Chase proposed entries and parking. Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. We'll go to Kim for any questions you may have for the applicant. Hey, Brooke, I looked at the floor plan here, okay?  I mean, is that what this is? And then you've got an area that says lobby, which it looks like a table there. You know, if you explain what that program is. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, when you see those booths on the floor plan, picture them like the booths at a dime, where to your point, you could sit down and have a conversation and have a bite to eat, but it's typically outfitted with a computer, and you can have that conversation with a branch employee. So, if it needs to be a more private conversation, you can be escorted into one of the offices, but it's a great place if there's no extra space sitting on the couch for the living room area, or, you know, it doesn't need to be a private conversation to sit there and one of the employees can demo, you know, how to request a new credit card, you know, replacement credit card through the app or any kind of question you could have about a mortgage or et cetera. The living room is quite, as it's described, what you'd picture, you know, and during someone's living room with a couch, it's just a little bit more modern and it's designed with that kind of S-curve shape, but it's all really comfortable and it's supposed to be as inviting as possible. Now, you mentioned the lobby with a table. I wasn't sure, are you talking about directly next to the living room just on the right side of that blue line? Yes, it looks like a dining room table to me.  It's another kind of space where we used to call it a digital access bar where the employee could have an iPad, if you will, and they could walk you through technology use. So it's just another version of a booth that's a little bit different so that, you know, you feel like there's a lot going on and innovation within the space. Thank you. I also want to comment on fact, you guys changed your windows along the front along Mass Ave to be a little more commercial and now they're very similar on both sides of the elevations and adding the benches there and some planters up front where it used to be very interactive where people used to walk and sit in front of the restaurant and I think it's also a good thing. I might... Ken, I would also add too that when you look at the rendering of those windows, they seem super dark. That's not the intention, right? You wouldn't put windows in a building or modify them to make it seem dark. So the whole idea of activating that as well as to really brighten up the space and make it more transparent all the way through. Yeah, thank you. I wasn't envisioning it being dark. I'm envisioning it light coming out and seeing activities in-site. So that's not one of my comments. I know it's a rendering, but I know you're going to be this more transparent when you look inside and see activity going on and so forth. But just having the planters and people sitting out there and hanging out with it, you know, if they want to choose so they can do that. I was getting to the bike racks. Maybe Gene touched base on that a little bit more. I think he was more familiar with the actual recommended bike racks based on our bike code. I'm not exactly sure that's it. It's, I think it allows, I'll let Gene speak about that, but I don't think that's exactly quite the bike rack we were recommending, but if you guys can follow that a little better, I think that'll take that away, no problem. In general, I'm very supportive of this project. I don't think there's too many banks in our house in. I think this adds another anchor point to the center. Right now, if you look at the center there, there's quite a good density of restaurants which has available seating up front just next door or down block a little bit. And this here here has a higher concentration of banks, but that's okay. So I think it's all within a good mixture here. And I'm not as concerned as maybe all our board members about this being necessarily a restaurant, having to be a restaurant. I used to go to the restaurant a lot and I know that it struggled with being empty a lot. So I understand what they're going through. So that's about it. I'm just saying I am supportive of this project with a few minor tweaks. I think we can get there and approve this. Great, thank you Ken. Before I move on to Jean, I just want to remind everyone of two things. One is if you have your hand raised, I will get to you when we get to the public comment period. So I just want to acknowledge that that will be after each of the board members has had an opportunity to ask any questions. And I'll also remind everyone that only four of the board members will be eligible to vote on this this evening. This was opened before Steve Revillack joined our board. So just so that everybody is aware of how this will run this evening. So the next board member I'd like to invite for any comment is Jean. Thank you. And I'll start with the bicycle parking. And I was actually going to ask Jenny or Kelly whether the racks proposed for inside and outside are consistent with the bicycle parking guideline racks. I didn't have time to look at them since we got to see them. We felt the outdoor rack was consistent. And as Kelly noted, they provided even additional parking spaces. The indoor rack was what there wasn't really anything. So what we shared on the screen was their proposed updated example of a potential parking system for a bicycle in the lounge. Yeah, I think- Which would be compliant. Yeah. Okay, thanks. I, yeah, I'm not that concerned about parking the bicycle in the lounge as long as there's not going to be something where the employees are discouraged from bringing a bicycle into a lounge area as opposed to having a separate location that's designated for a bicycle. And with that as a problem, I just wonder if there could be a separate little area designated for the bicycle. Rather than- Jean, if I may, the lounge to be very clear is the employee lounge. So that is where they have their locker for their things and it is secure. And that's where they sometimes will enjoy lunch. So I guess my question would be where you feel more appropriate location would be. I don't know. It's somewhere where, and maybe you've answered the question where, you know, an employee's not going to be told, don't bring that bicycle that just came out of the rain into this part of the bank. Jean, it's certainly something we can look into to see if we can accommodate that. I'm just wondering whether there's a better place for it. That's all right. A question for you, Brooke, is how many full-time and how many part-time employees will be- Roughly five to six full-time employees. And then we have other types of employees that are, you know, either private bankers or that will kind of float between locations so they're not necessarily dedicated. Okay, I have a question for you, Bob. The initial application, I know you didn't fill it out, indicates that the present facility is about 6,400 square feet and the proposed is 3,826. What accounts for that disparity in square footage between the average shows in the bank? I haven't tipped up on that, Jean. Jim, do you have any information on that? Or maybe Mr. Ramsey or Mr. Ramsey knows. Yes, the square footage, we had a architect, this isn't the proper word, shoot the thing. It is 3,800 square feet. Brooke and I went over that a few different times. I thought it was 4,000 in the bank. The building. The bank showed me it's 3,800. I don't know the exact square footage, isn't that what you saw, Brooke? Yeah, we had a 360-degree survey taken where our architect, Jim Lully and team measured the space. So when we had originally started negotiating conversations on this deal, Richard and I, and then since my team re-measured the space, ended on the correct square footage measurement. So it's still the same four walls, if you will. It was just measured differently. So I'm just wondering, I'll go back to Bob, if you have had a chance to look at the initial application on the first page where it shows about 6,400 current square feet. Is that just an error? That's got to be an error. Yeah, I believe that's the basement, right? It probably includes the basement if I had to guess, Jean. Okay. So this gets to the issue about whether Arlington is overbanked or underbanked, which was one of the issues that we discussed a few months ago when the bank was here. And we weren't looking at whether there were too many banks in Arlington. We were concerned that there were too many banks in the immediate neighborhood of this bank. And that's why the material that the staff presented wasn't the entire town. It was just the area that the staff considers Arlington center.  So that's different than are we overbanked in Arlington. And one thing that I asked last time, and I have a feeling you haven't done it, is why not somewhere else in town? I think it would be great for a case to locate somewhere else in town. But there is, I think, only one bank in East Arlington. One bank in the Heights. So the idea that you want to be on Mass Ave, great. There are a lot of other Mass Ave places. And I'm just wondering why the center, what concerns me in part, and I haven't made up my mind about this. So I want to hear what you have to say and what we hear during the public comments. But one of the things that concerns me is not only, is this a few banks within two blocks, but it's across the street from the Civic Block. And what that means is you don't get as much sort of foot traffic after hours as you would if there were stores and restaurants on both sides. It's great to have the library and the garden and town hall there. But it puts, I think, an extra burden on the stores across the street and the properties across the street. And I think that, I think, makes me wonder whether there are better places in Arlington for this bank than right here. I wonder if you had looked for other places in Arlington. I can absolutely speak to that. So as I mentioned earlier, we've been targeting this market for three or four years now. When you look at Mass Ave, how it stretches from Arlington into Arlington Heights, we look at the traffic counts, the retail synergy, and the visibility of the site. So because banks are a convenience, not a destination, right?  So a part of our expansion that's really important from a retail standpoint is making sure that we have access and convenience to the daily needs users. So when you look at the concentration of banks where we are at Arlington proper versus up in the Heights, we like this area because there's proximity to the whole foods and the CVS and the stop and shop. If we hadn't picked this end of the market, we would have gone much further north and we would have gone over to where that Trader Joe's was, but there was a lot of conversation around, again, with 50 bridges, right? Where do you put one and is it too close to another? So when you have such a dense influx of residents in the greater 128 corridor, if we had gone too far north, the sites we had looked at were not as superior as the site that we landed on with Richard. So a lot of thought goes into that absolutely. And, you know, driving it with senior leadership and making sure that it's going to serve our needs in the community as best possible. To add to that, if I could add to that, this is a B five zone. It's a business zone. It can be a, an area, a gene as you would see in other cities and towns where you have a centralization of a certain type of business. Now, I know you're alluding to, well, maybe people should be in a position where they feel they can walk along the sidewalk and have stores and the like. Keep in mind, as Kin suggested, that there are ample restaurants in Ellington Center, you know, less than a quarter of a mile away. We have looked at other sites in town to see whether in fact we could locate the bank at a different site. We can't find another site. Richard Ramsey has tried to rent the space to anyone. Okay, any business, okay, including a restaurant has not been able to do that. I tried to emphasize in my response to Jenny's requests that maybe it's time for a little bit of consideration to also be given to the owner of the property who has to carry the property through good times and mainly bad times as we're experiencing right now. But I'm suggesting to you, Jean, that this would not be an aberration if you have another bank in this location. Again, it happens all the time. It happens in other communities. With a restaurant used as an Ellington Center, you have a centralization of restaurants in Ellington Center. I'm going to turn the floor back over to Jean, if we could. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to think about this, but you know, Arlington prides itself without having three sort of centers in Arlington, the center, the Heights and East Arlington. And I think it would probably be more desirable to have this bank in one of those other two places. But I'll think about it. I just have one other question. Okay. I'm going to turn the floor back over to Jean. Thank you. Thank you for Mr. Lally. And could we see the rear elevation of the building where the rear entrance is for a second? Sure. We'll see if Jenny's able to pull that up. As Jenny's pulling that up, but if it's okay, if I might. The other thing too, Jean, is that we've looked at seven or eight different sites in all three points of the market of the last four years. Okay. So the car that's in this photo. Is that, is that space a space of this building? Or is it? I can answer that. It absolutely is the six spaces that have, but the building in the back are controlled by Mr. Ramsey. Okay. So for the, for the other candidate in the building. I don't know if you could see that. I don't know if you could see that. But I can guess by this space couldn't go away. And a ramp couldn't be put. On this space. To go up to those two entrance doors. So you have an ADA. Accessible area and back because. I know a lot of people parked in the parking lot. Right. Back there. and ATM inside would be preferable. So I'm wondering about the possibility of turning that parking space into a ramp so that the back would be ADA accessible. The landlord would look, I'm sorry. I mean, the landlord would lose that spot that the ramps, it might even flow outside the property due to the slope of the parking lot. So I can't guarantee that it would stay within the constraints of the property. It might get you up to that lining there, but as you enter those doors, there's still staircases to deal with. So it's not a huge benefit there, but we don't control those parking spaces. I may have missed it, but I thought once you went inside the door that would go into the bank and back, there was a vestibule with- A little bit more stairs from there. Jenny, I don't know if you could pull up a plan to show Jean. Thank you. There's also, when it will get you in the vestibule there, there's some internal stairs to the bank, and then obviously stairs that go up to the, to the second floor tenant in the stair tower that's over there. It's this sufficient, this plan, thank you. Okay. Jean, I'm sorry to interrupt. It's not only the ramp space, but also a handicap space adjacent to the ramp that would then need to be created because you need a safe space to go from the handicap car or van to the ramp, and then up the ramp into the gate. So it's just not just the ramp. So I think you might, I looked at this earlier, and I think involves more like three parking spaces in order to make this happen. I can ask James to back the level a bit. I would say out of three parking spaces at a minimum because you need the area obviously for the ramp, the space, the handicap space and the access aisle for it, as well as to access the ramp. I do want to point out that the doors are very tight on this landing. There's no way for us to get the clearances for ADA at that door. The landing is too small. We'd have to go outside the property line into the sidewalk, but we also have building structure there as well. So it's a real challenge and tough feasibility-wise. Okay, I appreciate it. Jim, is it fair to say that this would impede on this? I'm sorry to cut you off, but we're gonna kick back over to Jean. Yeah, those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you, Jean. Melissa. Yes, well, thank you for the presentation and Mr. Ramsey, thank you for your effort to kind of tenant the space and looking at this. And I think the conversation is definitely more in-depth than we had initially. So thank you for that. I guess my concerns kind of go back to our charge as a board and looking at the use and not to say the use bank over restaurant, but just in my experience in economic development, I see the value of what you're doing to the property itself, which is generating the commercial tax revenue that is for the community at the end of the day, helps support services. So those pieces are beneficial, obviously leaving it vacant and unattended would be, it's sad and it's blighted. And as an Arlington resident walking those streets, it's kind of sad. But thinking through, do kind of the adverse impacts kind of outweigh the benefits in this project and thinking through, going through the master plan, our charge to look at these nodes and what kind of gene reference are these centers. We've talked a lot about creating these, I guess kind of unique mixed use nodes and with a high concentration of banks, the hours of operation and the limited interaction, social interaction that's produced by these type of uses is where I have a lot of trouble with. So that's what I've been wrestling. And it's not just that I'm looking or thinking that, a restaurant would be better in this space. I'm thinking of the use that creates more potential for those higher level community goals that we've articulated through the master plan and through some of our zoning for the center business district. So I guess with that, those are some initial comments on my thinking. I have a couple of questions, just maybe for Brooke, you mentioned this is a high traffic area. When you referenced that, are you, what are your metrics? So there's a way to obtain data on average daily traffic on a given corridor, retail corridors, vehicles only. Yes, vehicular traffic, absolutely. Thank you. Have you looked at foot traffic? We have not, no. Okay. So foot traffic is a big piece of the walkability that we talk about, connecting and linking uses and understanding those metrics and how this can benefit and enhance that or diminish it would be something I'm really concerned about. Kind of looking at, you know, renting to other tenants. One thing I'm thinking about is just the price point. So having a property, if you're looking to rent, obviously it's based on the demand and the price point. You know, do the rents change when you're looking at tenants? Is this a question for the owner, Melissa? For the owner, or yeah, Mr. Nessie, whoever would like to. The rents didn't pay for an extended period of time because at one point, if you've read my response to Jenny's request, your not-average shows was paying 6% of the rent. And quite frankly, the landlord carried them. The landlord was hoping that they could make it and they didn't make it. Right, so, and I'm familiar with that too in terms of the last two years, which was referenced a lot.  And that includes, you know, a lot of service retail. So obviously, this would be more of a unique time. Prior to that, maybe could you speak to that at all in terms of, you know, demand and success for tenants in the, you know, I would say other uses, not exclusively restaurants. So are we to, are we, I'm sorry. I believe that was addressed to the property owner. All right, that's fine. All right. Melissa, I can address that. We have another block. I don't want to give too many specifics, but we have tenants that are well over a year and not, it's not within the last two years. I mean, they've had big struggles and we have two of them. And it's only a four unit building. I mean, we're doing everything we can to keep these units occupied. I truly believe if you start to get too many vacant buildings, whether it's in one building or in a town, you create a downward spiral. And we're doing everything we can as property owners.  That Chase came to us in 2019. And this was the location they wanted. Not your average Joe's was there. They were doing better. We would have gotten a higher rent from Chase, but we chose to keep not your average Joe's. We're not out for every dime and that had nothing to do with it. If not your average Joe's was vibrant today, they would still be there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ramsey. Just looking over a couple of my other notes in terms of thinking through this piece. So at this point, I think I'll hold off on any further questions. Rachel. Okay, great. Thanks, Melissa. So at this point, what I'd like to do is open up the floor for public comment. Once we have asked any member of the public who has joined us this evening to speak, we'll come back as a board and have some further discussion before we decide that or not, we'll be able to take a vote this evening. So at this time, any member of the public wishing to speak on this particular docket, please use the raise hand function, which is at the bottom of your screen. When I call on you, you'll have three minutes, up to three minutes to speak. And I ask that when I call on you, please address, please introduce yourself with your first last name and address. And we'll start with Julie Rio, and I apologize if I mispronounced your last name. I'm Julie Ryu. I live at 111 Sunnyside Ave in Arlington, which based on the Chase's presentation, they may not be happy to hear is a moderate to low income neighborhood. And I've just wanted to express that as much as Ms. Cabrera expressed that the Chase wants to be welcoming and embrace the community as wholly as possible, that statements like that what appeals to them about Arlington is the wealth of its citizens and six figure incomes. It doesn't make us feel that you're gonna be welcoming. And that statements like making reference to even in a low to moderate income community such as Dorchester, what you described as being really was basic customer service that it seemed that you wanted praise for providing basic customer service. So that was those things were a red flag for me. And so I'm troubled about what the presence of a company that seems to have thinly veiled contempt for some of us being in such a central location in Arlington. Thank you. Thank you, Julie. I would like to offer you the opportunity just for a quick response to that. If you're committed. Absolutely, Julie, I'm deeply sorry if I had offended you. I don't think I put enough eloquence to our story around our community branches. If you even Googled the Matapan branch opening, we have this format that is specifically tailored to giving as much resource and as much, support to the communities as possible. And I'm really proud of it. So I don't think I did it the justice it deserved. The community branches or even have a different floor plan layout so that we can have specific community driven events and financial literacy programs and all of these very unique offerings that honestly go above and beyond than what we'd be doing in an Arlington community. So I'd argue just the opposite and I just don't think I gave the statement or the description eloquence and for that, I apologize. Thank you, Brenda. I'm not sure that you understand that those people are also- Julie, Julie, I appreciate it. Time to speak, thank you. The next speaker this evening will be Jonathan Nyberg. Good evening, Jonathan Nyberg, 30 Lakeshore Drive. I'm a little late to this conversation but I thank you for all the different parties and the input. I just wanted three quick points. It's imperative that we in Arlington have viable tenants because without viable tenants, we don't have life. So if there's 20 people being employed by a restaurant that has no customers, it's the same as having zero employees. So I think it's imperative as we go forward for the next 10, 15 years and what's there not to like if we have a little baking center in the center of Arlington, it's great. I have a PO box. I bank at Citizens Bank. I go to the town hall. I am able to stop and do multiple things at one point in Arlington Center. I also have an account at Leader Bank. I love Leader Bank. They're up Mass Ave in the middle of nowhere. So I can't do any other things besides go to Leader Bank. So I just think it's imperative that we think the whole picture. The last thing that's important is by having a bank, one of the upsides to having a bank is we have extra parking at night on Mass Ave in the center of Arlington for all of our restaurants. So normally, if you have multiple restaurants we're competing for all that parking. So that's just another point positive negative but viable tenants in Arlington is imperative to the success and the energy of Arlington. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be Joanne Preston. Joanne. Can you hear me? Now we can. Thank you. Joanne Preston mystically drive. You don't have to go all the way to Sunnyside Avenue to find people who don't make six figures. I'm wondering and I say this seriously what programs and services will you offer the more than 100 low income seniors and disabled residents of Winslow Towers which is located directly behind your proposed bank. They're an important part of our community and they're right next door to this proposed bank. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Preston. Are there any other members of the public wishing to speak this evening? I see one more hand. James Fleming. Nope, am I... We can hear you. Sorry, I'm not in my normal location. James Fleming, 58 Oxford Street. It's frustrating to hear that Arlington is over banks. We don't really get to choose who comes into our community. If we're having trouble attracting restaurants that sounds like a town is doing something wrong problem. Not a property owner is trying to fill their space problem. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak this evening before I close public comment? Okay, at this time we will close public comment on this agenda item and I will turn it back over to the board for discussion. And to summarize what I've heard so far, I don't hear any specific concern with the proposed aesthetic or configuration of the bank proposal. The discussion really is around approving the use. I'm personally, I'd like to share in favor of this proposal, I think that we don't have specific metrics on how many restaurants, how many retail spaces, how many banks. I think that to echo what some others have shared that an occupied space from a national tenant who is looking to invest in the property and who has been responsive to our requests for livening the streetscape, providing views into the activity within the space is certainly preferable to a vacant storefront. That's my opinion. And I'd like to I'll run around and see where we are with this and if we're at a point where we can take a vote this evening and I'll remind the board members that we will need a unanimous vote to approve this this evening since only four of us, we need four votes and there were only four of us on the board when the application was opened. So I'll start with Jean. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I'd like to start to say that, start by saying that although there are no precise metrics, I think it's pretty clear that the zoning by law gives us the authority to deny a special permit if the requested use will cause an excess of that use that could be detrimental to the character of the neighborhood. After review, all of the special permit and EDR criteria and also we need to find that it's essential or desirable to the public convenience or welfare. So to me, the question really is whether it's an excessive use in this little neighborhood because that's how it's defined neighborhood and not the whole town. And I really wish that the bank had chosen to go into Arlington Heights or into East Arlington instead because I think that would have been a greater help to the community if it had done that. On the other hand, since we saw this the last time I walked around Belmont Center and Lexington Center they're not exactly comparable to Arlington in any way but both of them have more banks in a very short little area and we would have by adding this bank into the area. So while I wish they would have gone somewhere else, I'm not going to oppose issuing the special permit for this. Great, thank you for clarifications, Jean. Kim? Hi, I too echo what you said, Rachel and Jean and thank you for Jonathan for mentioning what you said. I couldn't have said it more eloquently than you did. I think we do need this here and I really think that having an empty store front is not the way to go. I wish the restaurant was still there because I used to go there a lot. But so said, I don't think this is a detriment to the area. I think it just puts a few more banks in one corner of the center of town where there's a lot of restaurants in the other corner of the center of town. I think that makes it. And I think it's, I would find it more convenient to go here than having this at the heights just because of traffic and parking. Yeah, I live in the heights. I would rather come down here and do my stuff here because I can do more than one thing. And I think that is the synergy that this adds to the area and I like that. So I'm very much in favor of this. Thank you, Ken. Melissa? Well, I think I stated my concern about moving forward on the special permit and as much as Jonathan states, a viable tenant is extremely important. I agree with that statement. I also have not seen where the community has desired a bank center along Mass Avenue and the concentration of bank uses really create dead zones for walkability, creates dead zones for social interaction as much as I've seen the new models, I've seen and walked into new models, Lexington, Belmont, downtown Boston and they might be also obviously paying rent but the lack of activation, the lack of vitality that's looked for from these types of uses. So the use itself can be in the center have we explored the second floor, other locations off Mass Ave, the desirability based on what we understand from the marketing is because there's a lot of cars going by. It's not to create the walkability, it's not to create any of the other elements we've talked about for Arlington Center. So with that, I'm not in support of the special permit. So Melissa, I'd actually like to play devil's advocate a bit when you talk about the activation of the space because I think depending on the time of day, you could say that about quite frankly, any use, whether it's a restaurant that is visited more in the evening, there are certainly dead times during the day when you don't have walkability and activation, just like there are times of day, whether it's the morning hours or the new time hour when the bank is going to be far more vibrant than a, in terms of the usage than a restaurant use. So I would ask that you consider the range of types of activation and uses that each different type of use can bring again at different day parts because I think focusing on one as more preferable does a disservice to the varying types of users that each type brings, Ken. Also, I don't seem to be picking on you, Melissa. But I'd like to piggyback on what Rachel said. If you look at Mass Ave, not all of Mass Ave is walkable with this restaurant on every single street. There are nodes along Mass Ave that develops that way. So there are areas like in front of the church or in front of the city hall or in front of residential, we have residential on Mass Ave that doesn't do that too. I know we're trying to encourage that, but I think Arlington as a town is not quite there as a city. And we're not going to get those walk abilities from one part to another part along Mass Ave. And that's, I think that's one of the quaintness about Arlington that we like. And a lot of people are pushing for that, saying, hey, we don't want New York City on a long Mass Ave. And having that life on certain areas and nodes, that's good. And I think having this fixation or having it all the way through, I'm not sure that's what you're meaningless about. I'm just saying what I'm hearing is the way to stay that way. So I'd like you to look at it that way too, okay? Thank you. Thanks, Ken. And again, Mr. Ramsey, I think I understand exactly what you're trying to do. And it's very hard for me to, in terms of looking at this comprehensively, I understand the benefits that this proposal's coming to, but I just don't see them outweighing. I have a lot of confidence that the demand, the market, you will find a tenant that is not a bank. And I'm confident in Arlington and I'm confident in this market. I mean, with Chase pushing forward on 50 other spaces and really striving to move into Arlington and looking at their own market demographics, obviously they're looking at certain income ranges. So in terms of demand and desirability, I think that parcel itself will find another tenant. So this is, I understand where Rachel and Ken are coming from, but I'm trying to look out for the whole mass avalanche state committed to the goals that we have set out in our master plan and from what I've heard from the community. So it looks like Mr. Ramsey would like to respond. So please, please go ahead. Melissa, this is, we are helping other tenants survive right now. And if the bank doesn't move in, even if you were to approve this today, the bank would not be in until September, October, Brooke, I'm not sure what it would be. It will be years before this space is rented. I don't share your confidence. I believe in Arlington completely. And as I said, in a perfect world, maybe we could pick and choose. That is not the case right now. Things are getting worse and it's not just Arlington Center. And what we need is to have these places rented. And we're fighting the fight with all of our tenants. And I don't, I'm not a public person. I didn't want to come on here and say, we're doing this or that. We're not looking for metals. We're not looking for handouts. But I remember listening to the August and Steve Revlick saying he was so happy to see the bank is going to move in. And I think he's exactly right. And I think the places we have up the street, the coffee shops and things, they need the bank. They need people coming into the bank. And I just think we're being unrealistic in my opinion. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Hi, may I say something, Rachel? I'm actually going to go to Jean first, Bob, and then I'll come back to you if that was okay. Jean. So I want to start by saying I completely respect Melissa's opinion on this and where she's coming from. And for me, the real issue is, is this one more bank somehow tip this area so it won't work anymore. So that it meets the criteria for the special permit. And we can disagree about that, but after I've looked at some other places, and unlike Ken, I walk on messier a lot. And it's not the prettiest ball of art, but I walk on it a lot. And I guess I just feel like this bank doesn't tip it into that territory. Maybe if next week another bank wanted to come in, we would say that's one bank too many, but I don't think this bank is that one bank too many. Thank you, Jean. Bob, our next step will be to call a vote. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to take them. You mentioned that you had something else to look at. Is there any interest on the part of Melissa to maybe hear any more information or receive any further information, which I cannot produce this evening, of course, that I could get to her that might bring about a situation where she might ponder a change in her position. Melissa, are you open to that at this point? Are you open to my trying to do that? Awesome. I think if we're looking at the 3,800 square feet of bank, I think it would have to be a revised proposal on the storefront. I mean, I think the space in the corner in terms of the amount of square footage, given to what seems like a lot of empty office spaces, if it was revised, I'd probably consider that at that point. Revised to what extent again? So I understand, Melissa, that you would like. So I'm not sure if this is possible. So in terms of looking at the footprint of Chase in that space, is it possible to split that the storefront at all or look at a different configuration that looks at, you know, again, having a bank is not the issue. It's that when we are looking at the concentration and that corner, prominent corner in Arlington Center, Mr. Ramsey, you have a great property there. It's a landmark of sorts for the community. And I think once the bank is in, it's in for about 20 years, 10 years easily with probably two five-year options, 20 years. So I'll be 67. I thought you could go with that. No, the subject.  And if we're okay with that, which I haven't seen and I've looked for people, I've reached out to at least people within my precinct. I've reached out and talked to people about this. And I have, and part of where my confidence in this position is, is I just have not, other than maybe John on this call, I've not received an embrace or a direction for the center as a banking district. So I think, and I know that sounds extreme, but what Jean said is that this is one, almost 4,000 square feet, and that's at almost 1,000 feet larger than our average retail space. And once that's gone for 20 years off the market, then, you know, that's our choice, then there'll be a more interest. So I am concerned about that slippery slope as well. So, Melissa, to answer Bob's question, is there anything, I think that goes in the opposite direction, is there anything that he could provide that would, so the answer is no. Is that what I'm hearing? I mean, I guess, this sounds extreme at this point, but I think if there was some way to, you know, do it, you know, the improvement to the space that allows for a smaller footprint, I think that was something I would consider, but, you know, I feel like I'm being pressed right now to kind of come up with a concept in response for that. You know, is it half the space? I don't know. So I feel like I have to, you know, be realistic with you and be honest. How about if we didn't do a smaller footprint that did something to break up the exterior facing on Mass Ave, the exterior of the building? That's what I thought you were alluding to earlier. Not at this point, Bob. So at this point, I think we need to, we need to, it seems like we've gone as far as we can this evening. So we're going to need to call for a vote. I, from what I heard for those in favor of the proposal in terms of crafting a motion, I didn't hear any additional special conditions that would need to be included in a motion in favor of approving the stock. I have one. I would just want to make to confer with the staff on the inside indoor bicycle parking. Okay. So is there a motion to approve docket three, six, six, five with the condition of confirming the adherence of the indoor bike rack with the bicycle parking requirements of the town? Rachel, we have one, the owner wanting to, do you want to, one minute while he makes the comments. Yeah, this will be our last comment. And then we have a long agenda. So we do need to move on tonight. Based on what Melissa said, I was just wondering whether Brooke, Bob and I should talk about this. Satisfying the requirements. And see if we could satisfy Melissa's different square footage. This is not something we've discussed. So Jenny, I'm going to throw that out to you in modifying the proposal in that, in that to that degree, would they need to come back with this different proposal or would they be able to modify to that degree? I'm happy if that's the case. Right. It's at this point, the four gates to take a vote on the application that is before them tonight. And if there's an interest in having a repetitive petition, which, you know, Bob, an essay can be in touch with me and we can talk about what that might look like. It could be to reduce the square footage. It could be to address some of the other things that were raised this evening. And we can talk about that separately as a revised petition in the future. But I don't think that that would be relevant to the discussion this evening or continued to reduce the scale. I think you're moving on into the future. And so we can talk about that separately. I understand there might be a lot of questions about it, but that is the answer. It sounds like a different proposal. So Richard, what I'm hearing is that the vote would go ahead tonight and you would lose. And you would not be continued and you would not come back with a different proposal within the framework of the petition that you filed. And instead, you would have to file a, or the applicant would have to file a new petition. Is that what I'm hearing, Jenny? Basically. That is a repetitive petition, yes, under 48. It has to be different than what you filed currently if, of course, the board hasn't voted yet, but if it is- But the question would be whether a modification of the square feet would be substantially different than what had been proposed earlier. And Query, would I still be behind the eight ball in terms of being prevented from coming back before the board for two years? That's my concern. So if there's an inkling of the possibility of having a discussion about this matter within the framework of the petition that was filed, then maybe we need to do that first and ask for a continuance and come back with something. If Melissa still has problems with it, then that is at that point. But if we go ahead and have it voted down at this point and I come back with a new petition and there's a consensus that the new petition is not enough different than the initial petition, I'm out of luck for two years. I can't do that. So respectfully, I'm suggesting that maybe it makes better sense if the board, and again, I need four votes. So I'm still behind the eight ball, okay? Whether the board might consider letting me focus on Melissa's comments, see if I can come back with something that satisfies her. Rachel. Jenny, please go ahead. As you know, the board discussed this in prior hearings with this applicant and specifically talked about potentially reducing the size, which would have been amenable to many of the board members at that time during prior conversations. I think we are getting into speculating about what the future might bring as well as talking strategy with an applicant. I'm not sure that that is appropriate. I am giving, I have given you my opinion about what I think would be the best course of action and I'd be happy to follow up with this applicant depending upon the outcome. I would still be asking that the board consider continuing the matter and let me come back with a plan that we could present and see whether in fact it meets with the approval of Melissa. I was not involved in this at the outset. So I was not involved at the point when any discussions occurred about reducing the square feet. I'm now involved and I could be proactive with my client. So I'm asking that the matter be continued and that a vote not be taken this evening. So I will honor that request and see if there is a motion to continue the hearing. If we do continue this hearing, Rachel, I wanna put out there that if maybe I'm wrong but right now it's just a little bit on a 4,000 square feet. Once it gets below 2,000 square feet, it's as of right. Right. Everybody's clear about that, right? Yes. So reducing this in half, then it doesn't do anything for us. We lose all our abilities to regulate anything from storefronts to parking to anything else. So it would have to be somewhere between a bridge between the 4,000 and the 2,000. So that's right. Okay. I just wanna understand before I vote, that's all. Great. So I mean, we could decide not to continue the hearing. So that's why I'm asking is there any support from the board to continue the hearing if there's no motion, then we will move to a vote. So is there a motion from the board to continue the hearing? All motion to continue the hearing. Is there a second? I'll second that. You'll second that? Yes, I will. Okay. So we'll take a vote to see if we will continue the hearing. And again, we do need four votes. To continue the hearing. So we'll start with Ken. Yes. Jean. I hate to say this, but I respect Jenny's opinion on this. I am gonna vote no. I think we should have a vote on the permit. I think that the applicants should come back with a different proposal. And if they're under the square footage, they don't even need a special permit. So I'm gonna vote no on continuance. Okay. Melissa. I'm voting to continue it. Okay. And I am going to vote to continue it, but the request fails. So we will now need to vote to see if there is a motion to, we'll need to take a final vote on this hearing. And as we started to craft the motion prior, we would like to see if there's a motion to approve docket three, six, six, five with the condition that the applicant confirm the specification for the interior bike parking to ensure that it conforms with the town of Arlington bike parking requirements. So is there a motion to approve docket three, six, six, five? I would still move that. I'll second that. Great. Thank you. We'll take a roll call vote for approval. Starting with Ken. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. And I'm a yes. So unfortunately, the approval does not carry. So I would ask that you please follow up with Jenny about next steps. And I thank everyone for their, for their work and for coming in to speak with us this evening. Thank you. That closes agenda item number two. So we'll now move to agenda item number three, which is the review and adoption of the housing plan. I'm going to turn this over to Jenny to update us on the changes that were made to the housing plan between the last time that it was presented and the way that the comments that have been submitted by the public and the board and quite a few other bodies have been incorporated. So I'll hand it over to Jenny. Hey, Rachel. So first I want to say that the point of this housing plan is that it's a tool to maintain and increase affordability as well as market rate housing. It is also a great analysis of local housing needs and trends opportunities and challenges that we're facing in the community. And it establishes clear goals for the next five years that can inform both our work as a board, as well as many other efforts that we're currently engaged in, including the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is going to be working on an action plan. It will inform Community Development Block Grant allocations, Community Preservation Act allocations. It also is informed by the Fair Housing Action Plan. And it is fully compliant with the Housing Production Plan guidelines as published by the Department of Housing and Community Development. The purpose of the plan is to address unmet housing needs, which are very well outlined in the plan. It is also to influence the type, amount, and location of mixed income and affordable housing. It's also to help us meet the 10% required year-round housing goal for 40B, which is a production goal and it outlines a production goal in the plan. And then lastly, it is a tool to potentially prevent unwanted 40B development by having a certified plan, which is actually what we have right now as a result of the housing production plan that was adopted that was relevant for the prior five years. So I think that there's much to be said about the important elements of this plan. I'm very pleased with the outcome. I'm extremely proud of all of the comments that we've received and the ability to address as many as we possibly could through the process. We did, the last time the plan was presented, which was November 29th, was when it was published in a draft format. We received many comments about all different facets of the plan, but we did not actually receive a lot of feedback on the priorities or on the goals or the strategies. We did receive a lot of edits and those were incorporated, but we actually had been seeking feedback specifically on what to prioritize, how to weigh different things and also to get a sense of if we were missing things from the plan, what else might be included? So that was what we addressed since that time up until now. And then I mentioned to the board separately that a couple of you have provided some minor edits, Gene and Steve specifically. And so we also were able to incorporate those into an amended document, as well as some additional comments that we received to address the housing authority statements that have been made or additions to the plan that might help to better understand the housing authority portfolio. So with that, I think that that's sort of just the comprehensive look at what's the purpose of the plan, how we plan to use it, what we think is viable about it and how we've addressed the comments that you've received since November. Tonight is the second evening of your discussion about this. I realized there's been a lag in time, but the next step in the process is if you, if this board adopts the plan this evening, the next step is to move on to the select board where they also have to adopt the plan before the fully local, locally adopted plan is then submitted to the Department of Housing and Community Development for approval, which then makes it an official approved plan. So I'm glad to answer any questions about the process, about any of the comments that were received specifically or about the next steps. I also just wanna take a moment and really sincerely thank Kelly Linema for all of her work assuring this process through many different changes over the course of the past year and appreciate her follow through throughout this process. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny and thank you, Kelly. I appreciate the outreach and all of the different, all of the different ways that you work to engage the public in the different stakeholder groups throughout this process as well. So I'll open it up to the board members for any final questions or comments for Jenny and Kelly starting with Jean. Yeah, I appreciate all the changes that were made on the draft that we saw last time and I'll say any further comments until after the public comments. Thank you. Great, thank you, Jean. Ken. Yeah, I do have just a quick question. Adopting this plan by us at Modent Adopters Plan, the plan is just a plan. We still have to take this plan, implement zoning changes, which then the town reviews and approves, right? Correct. Oh, Jenny, if you want to just address that so that everyone who's joining us this evening is clear. Yes, there are many actions outlined in the plan and they each require follow-up individually and for zoning amendments or any recommendation related to zoning, it would go through a process where we go through with most zoning amendments where we have a discussion, sometimes with the zoning bylaw working group, sometimes just with the redevelopment board, other entities and we vet it before anything is filed as a warrant article and then it goes through a whole process before it actually gets to town meeting through public hearings and then of course it has to be adopted and passed by town meeting. Okay, I just been reached, people have been reaching out to me saying that by us passing this, it makes it into the law, which I believe is untrue. Okay, that's basically the way I for now, I will ask, refer to later too. Great, thank you, Ken. And I appreciate you bringing that up that this is, this presents a menu of options for many different groups, including the select board, the redevelopment board. As Jenny mentioned, there's any bylaw working group, so many different groups to select from and combine into what makes the most sense for the town going forward. Melissa, any questions? No, I mean, I think the housing production plan has obviously kind of addressed different issues that had come up from this group. And then I feel like it offers, I see it more as a handbook, a guidebook to provide the community with strategies that are thoughtful and rooted in our goals for affordable housing, so yes. Thank you, Melissa. Steve. Thank you, Madam Chair. Like Mr. Benson, I'd like to extend my thanks to staff and the consultants for taking the time to go through and incorporate comments. I may have more to say later, but I'll wait for the public comment period to end. Great, thank you, Steve. So at this point, I would like to open the floor up to public comment on the housing production plan. Please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen. I will call on you. Once I do, please note that you will have up to three minutes to speak. Please announce yourself by first, last name and address. And we will start with John Warden. Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. John Warden, Jason Street and a longtime resident of the town and a member of the zoning bylaw working group. And I want to say it outset that if I raise my hand again, it's not because I want to speak again, but Patricia Warden, my wife is sitting here beside me. We both wish to speak. It doesn't seem to be an avenue where we both could get our names on the list. So I guess I'll have to raise my hand again, but it won't be me, it'll be her. I have her pushed the button. You know what? Actually, why don't we, John, after you're finished, we'll just move right on to Patricia. Oh, very good. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I expressed my general feelings about this plan in the previous hearing, that if this plan were adopted and implemented, it would destroy the town as we know it. And the changes that have been made do not convince me otherwise. But I'm just gonna, I know that to general, I know you folks probably all love the whole thing as a whole, but there are many, many parts of it, which are just inappropriate and I think ridiculous. Now, one of them I found on page, page 85, number five is, I'll read in case you don't have that telephone book. I guess telephone book size doesn't mean that very much anymore if nobody looks at them except me. It says, induct a special racial impact study to determine whether Arlington's existing residential zoning has a disproportionate impact upon black, indigenous and people of color, et cetera. The other groups protected by the third housing act. Third housing act.  If they've got the money, they're the same, they have the same opportunity as persons of white to rent, buy, lease, whatever. So to have some study and sort of play a racial card in the midst of this plan to suggest that zoning is keeping these folks out of Arlington is ridiculous. And it's an insult to the town. Now, let me say, we've owned two houses in Arlington, both in pretty nice neighborhoods, Kensington Park and Jason Street. And in each case, we have had black neighbors next door or houses all the way in these neighborhoods. They had no trouble buying a house in Arlington and nothing, the single family zoning did not prevent them from doing that. And so I don't know what this study is about. And if you say that, well, these people in those categories may not have the same amount of money as other people, which may or may not be the case. And the question is, what about keeping instead of encouraging the destruction of small affordable single family houses with the vehicles and knock it down even as we speak? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Patricia Warden, why don't we go ahead and have you speak next while we're unmuted. Thank you. Can you hear me? We can, thank you. If you would please introduce yourself. Yes, Patricia Warden, President Tate and Jason Street. Unfortunately, this draft plan does provide a blueprint to enable enrichment of developers and disregard for those most in need of housing, those of very low income, significant disregard for the environment and the adequacy of our school system and infrastructure. In many instances, the plan lacks veracity. It recommends harnessing market forces for the benefit of those who thrive on inequality. It is not in compliance with the master plan, which in page 88 specifies that we need only affordable housing and senior housing. This plan favors housing choices for the wealthy and at the expense of moderate and little income families. It also fails to justify the state requirements for the plan itself. I have served for several years on the housing policy implementation committee. I have attended every meeting in its entirety during my service, the draft housing plan has many inaccuracies, misconceptions and lack adequate research on probable outcomes on some of its suggestions. However, in order to speak for only three minutes, I will restrict my remarks to the summary of strategies starting in page 85. And I do want to say thank God for, as Mr. Al pointed out, it's just a plan. It does not have to be enacted. Number two on page 85 says adopt zoning to comply with the MBTA community's law. This item should be eliminated completely from the strategies because the MBTA community in East Arlington, which stretches from the Airworth area to part of Mass Avenue to Thornton and Magnolia Park and almost to Hardy School, already is in compliance with the law. As regards density, its density is greater than 16 units per acre. The law requires only 15 units per acre. Last year, the area's density compliance was achieved mainly in areas of many iconic two-family houses, which was not acceptable under the law, which required that the density should be achieved in multi-family buildings and they defined multi-family to exclude two families. However, and at that point, the planning department then wanted to rezone the area to enable dense apartments by changing dimensional regulations and replacing the restaurants, businesses, enabling, replacing restaurants, businesses, CVS, et cetera, and two families in the area. But since then. Thank you. You're in time. It has come into compliance because 8 p.m. of 2021 enacted an ADU allowing two families to add to ADU so it's now compliant as being zoned for four families. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Steven B. Thank you, Steven Blagdon Hutchinson Road. As I sent you earlier, the zoning map is inadequate in detail to allow for informed decision making regarding proposed zoning by law changes. The housing plan should be postponed until a revised zoning map correcting all the non-residential parcels and the residential zone is created. This could result in over 1.5% affordable and eliminate the need for this plan. The amount of editorializing obvious point of view and facts used is surprising in what should be an objective presentation of data and alternatives for decision makers and community members. Unless the town specified a document of this type, I'd suggest a rewrite maintaining objectivity. Most ominous of the proposals eliminating single-family zoning. As I sent you earlier, the maps 2.2 and 1 show high correlation between families with children and single-family zoning. The natural desire for a home and yard to raise a family will lead to young families choosing other towns to live in. This danger and associated community-wide effects and other negative effects should be weighed with great care. I was an Arlington resident for 30 years. I currently live in California. California has already eliminated single-family zoning. I am on the planning commission in the city I live in and have worked on ordinances by-law zoning map changes to implement the elimination. So I am speaking to you from the future or further down the road and able to warn you of hazards ahead. Affordable is elusive. Economic decline or high interest rates can lower prices but also reduce qualified buyers. Increasing supply to the extent that lowest prices is unlikely would lower everyone's property value and equity and has developers building in a market of falling prices which isn't going to happen. Requiring developers to have a certain percentage affordable leads to higher prices on the rest to subsidize those displacing buyers who could have afforded the market rate houses. Similarly, tax subsidies increase living costs for everyone else. So I am speaking to you from the future or further down the road. I am speaking to you from the future or further down the road. I am displacing buyers at the margin of affordability. Did the apparent ed game behind these enlightened housing plan goals get out of the gate prematurely at the select board meeting tonight. The part of town which is touted as the poster child for transit oriented development, car free living and targeted by state requirements for the development of the city. I am speaking to you from the future or further down the road and I am speaking to you from the future or further down the lifting of the overnight parking ban, laying the groundwork for developers, more tear downs, multi-family housing and profit generating parking spaces at the loss of quality of life. The board presentation uses Cambridge, Summable and Medford as cities to emulate having no parking ban. I am speaking to you from the future or further down the road. I am speaking to you from the future or further down the road. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next speaker this evening will be Carl Wagner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me okay? I can. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Carl Wagner. I live on Edge Hill Road in Arlington and I grew up here actually and spent a lot of time elsewhere and then came back. I hope everybody heard the last speaker. What are we doing? And if it's a radical change, first of all, have other places done it and did it work the way we expected? Steven's telling us it didn't. The other thing that really seems unfair to me is that people moved in to rental units or to houses or apartments that they purchased here. Expecting Arlington to be this nice town of housing diversity. I used to think it was 45% made up of multi-family. But it turns out it's actually 60 plus percent made up of multi-family with something like in the 30s of single family. And single family isn't only for millionaires. As you can see in Arlington, single family represents especially in Arlington, the first community after you get out of the urban communities where people can have a little bit of space. And actually it's cheaper than all the towns that surround us except for Medford. So we're offering a combination of types of living already. I think I really want to point out to people that's wrong with the current housing production plan and which I hope that the ARB will refuse to say yes on tonight is that the housing production plan says we should get rid of single family zone. We should introduce multi-family units in single family to help something. So I think it was December 23rd when the consultant was present at this consultant produced documents that he was sharing. And when pressed, the consultant said the reason we're doing that is to make housing choice, not really affordability. That was the thing, housing choice. Well, housing choice for whom? For higher income people. In other words, in the beginning director rate said that this housing production plan is supposed to give us housing quantity and it's supposed to give us affordability. The plan will not give affordability. So I think we're going to have multiple things you can read on the web about that. So go and see that on Facebook, et cetera. But it will give housing choice and quantity for higher incomes. In other words, people who don't live here already. We talk about trying to be anti-racist. We talk about trying to be inclusive to people who don't yet live here or people who are on fixed or lower incomes. How can we be raising the average cost of a house or an apartment by offering more choice for higher paying people in more expensive units?  And the real estate prices will go up too. And the real estate taxes will go up too. I ask you to go back and only accept the housing production plan that meets the master plan, which really, really did have different goals that are laudable. I also ask you to realize that this plan has not been produced and approved by any democracy in Arlington. The town meeting hasn't approved it. And the housing production, implementation committee group that was tasked with producing it hasn't approved it. It is simply a work by a consultant. Thank you very much. Our next speaker will be Annie LaCorte. Sorry, didn't mean to start slow. So my name is Annie LaCorte. I live at 48 Chatham street in what is now precinct 13 or will be once the maps are approved. I am fully in support of the housing production plan. I feel that it has the right goals and is applying the right strategies. I've also lived in Arlington for 30 years and I have seen this town change a lot. One of the things that I loved about Arlington when I first moved here was that I felt like my kids would be going to school with kids from families all across the economic spectrum and they would see in front of them many examples of different ways that they could decide to live their life. Not just as a trained professional going to college or whatever, but whatever their heart desired. I'd like to preserve that kind of economic diversity in Arlington and I think that takes a variety of housing strategies. That includes producing more affordable housing. It includes producing more multifamily rental housing for people for whom a home purchase in a town like Arlington is a stretch, but who could benefit from living in a community that offers the kind of advantages that we offer. And I think it also includes providing housing in the area that I think we're fast losing housing in, which is what we call the missing middle. Start our homes smaller homes at a lower price point. We can't control what's happening. In the market right now we can't prevent developers from doing what they're doing across the street from me, which is knocking down modest homes and building McMansions. What we can do is we can change our zoning to encourage the development of a variety of housing types at a variety of housing price points. And I think it's really important that this plan does this. Hopefully we can make those kinds of changes in a way that is fair to everyone. Current residents, property owners, and the people we hope to encourage to live here. I think that's enough. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Joanne Preston. Joanne. Joanne Preston. Joanne, are you able to unmute? Here we go. Thank you. Starting now. Joanne Preston, Mystic Lake Drive. Town meeting member precinct non commissioner of the Arlington Housing Authority. I attended the first two, I guess. Hearings open meetings of this plan. And I was quite surprised to see there was no. In this comprehensive plan. No mention of the Arlington Housing Authority. The Arlington Housing Authority has furnished affordable housing to low income residents since 1950. And currently is the largest entity of affordable housing. With over 800 residents. It has increased its holdings over the years. And most recently by buying small houses. Condominiums and adding additional units. For low income residents with physical. Disabilities. So after, after that, I was asked by Kelly and Jenny. To submit my comments on the draft plan. I submitted 10 pages of needed additions for visions and suggestions. Referencing the appropriate page numbers by the deadline. Took me a full week. None were addressed by the consultant. And the plan. That's now under review. Nothing. Jenny rate last Friday, which is sort of copy to you. Certainly her responses was suggested. Some additions. Copies of data I cited and made some responses. Which needed further clarification. For example, she responded. Number one about the introduction. We can add more. To the description. Of the Arlington Housing Authority. Yet is not in the graph under review. Another one in the final plan. Page 20, page 28 in the draft. None. Of the Arlington Housing Authority is included in the calculations. Of multifamily units in Arlington. Tenants in the Arlington Housing Authority are residents of Arlington. And their home should be included to give a correct estimate. Of Arlington Housing Authority. And their home should be included to give a correct estimate. Of Arlington residents living in multifamily units. Another one strategy 10. In the final draft page. 75. And the. Earlier draft CPA funds for small houses. For the development. Disabled. We already do that. We have a house. For that. And we'd like to do more of it. So. The Arlington Housing Authority is not. In the list of possible entities that could do this. So Jenny wrote, we can add the Arlington Housing Authority. In helping implement the strategy. But it's not in the plan. That's under review by you. The Arlington Housing Authority. Is that the Arlington Housing Authority does. Is that the Arlington Housing Authority does. Is that the Arlington Housing Authority does. Do we have any fiscal additions and corrections. Regarding the Arlington Housing Authority. Can we fully consider. Five year plan. We referenced again and again for funding.  Affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I did incorporate quite a few of those comments. Jenny, if you just wanted to address Joanne's comments, and then I'll turn it back to a public comment. Absolutely reply. Yes. Go ahead, Jenny. Okay. No, that, that. Yes, I provided the board. A little bit earlier today with a draft. That included some edits, minor edits from Jean and Steve. And I also included edits that related to everything that you just pointed out that I said in my correspondence with you, we would make sure to update or make some corrections. So that whatever is discussed this evening for adoption would be as amended. To incorporate. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Karen Kelleher. Thanks very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Karen Kelleher beacon street. I have been on the housing plan implementation committee and was recently elected chair of the new affordable housing trust fund. I wanted to just draw attention to the framework for the housing production plan. I think there is a tremendous amount of demographic and data that can, that both points out the challenges we face in creating affordable housing. The limits of what we currently have in our inventory. And the path forward for creating more affordable housing. There are many, many potential strategies we could follow that are laid out here, but those organizing principles are kind of the core of this report. I think first it identifies three key areas where we have challenges. One is that we have little housing affordable to lower moderate income or even middle income. Income households, even though 29% of our current households are low or moderate income. So we're, our housing stock right now doesn't need the needs of the people who live here, which causes tremendous cost burden and housing insecurity for our current population. We also, a second problem we're facing is that we have little racial or ethnic diversity and declining class diversity in Arlington demographics and the information in the report. And then finally, a lack of adequate housing choices to support diverse housing needs. That would include small units for single person households, reasonably priced homes for young families and accessible housing for people with disabilities. The inventory is just not adequate to the needs. They also include demographic, excuse me, comparative data that shows that our affordable housing production and our inventory is not keeping pace with many, many of the communities that we commonly compare ourselves to. And there are many in the Commonwealth who are creating more proportional to the amount of housing stock that they have. We are simply not doing our share of creating affordable housing in our community to be carrying our weight for our region. What are they, there are three sets of problems and those three problems lead to strategies to address those things and create more of those things we're lacking. And there are three organizing principles laid out. They include funding. Affordable housing is really, it's a math problem doesn't work, right? The sources and uses don't balance and subsidy is necessary to make housing in our community affordable to people with low and moderate income housing. So we are going to have to step up and I want to applaud the town for committing or beginning to commit significant ARPA resources to affordable housing, both supporting our existing portfolio, including the AHA's portfolio and creating additional affordable housing. The second is regulatory reform and I think that's where we get in our way about things because it involves change. There are many strategies here, but if we don't in some way tackle some kind of regulatory reform that makes it possible to create affordable housing in our community, we will struggle to create affordable housing. And the third is leadership. I think that's a great question. Thank you for your time. I'll just finish my sentence in it and ask that the board take, take on the leadership challenge posed by the plan. Thank you. Thank you. Before we move to the next speaker, I'll just let everyone know that I'm actually going to close the speaker list after the last hand raised, which is Eileen Cahill. She'll be the last speaker for this evening. Thank you so much for those who are who didn't raise their hand before that announcement. You're more than welcome to speak at the end of our meeting when we have open forum. So the next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam chair, Don Seltzer Irving street. I've written to the sport in detail with my concerns regarding this plan to quickly summarize. Barrett planning group has overstated the extent of single family homes in Arlington. We are actually 61% multi family and only 39% single family. This puts us near the bottom and single family housing among comparable communities. Second, it is not correct that more than 60% of our land can only be used for single family homes. Our one districts are in fact used for all of our schools, playgrounds and athletic fields, town hall to fire stations, Robbins library and other municipal buildings. Our churches are all zoned R1 and even our cemeteries are R1. Additionally, many hundreds of two family homes, duplexes and apartment buildings can be found in the R1 district. The other observation that I made to the board is that we also have many hundreds of single family homes located in our R2 district. They can and are being torn down and rebuilt as two family or duplexes by right. I have tracked these tear downs for the last several years and the data is overwhelming. In nearly every instance, the replacements are luxury duplex condos for which each unit is more expensive than the single family that was torn down. Not one developer has chosen to take advantage of the lower land cost per unit to build anything remotely more affordable. Elsewhere, including correspondence to the select board, I have written about this plan's failure to adequately analyze the impact on infrastructure, particularly school enrollment. For this, some have attacked me as being anti-family or anti-schooling. The state, through the department of housing and community development, requires that this sort of analysis be part of an acceptable housing plan. Responsible planning requires that we anticipate future school enrollment and plan for how to manage it, particularly if we're going to need more classrooms. I challenged this plan's simple reliance on the 2015 McKibben forecast. That forecast has proven to be so badly off in its basic exemption about Arlington's total population growth that it would be irresponsible to accept its other findings without conducting a closer review. This proposed plan has many good elements, but also has a few that should be cut out, particularly the rezoning of R0 and R1 districts. That has nothing to do with, can I just finish my sentence, please? Just finish the sentence, please, thank you. That has nothing to do with affordable housing and is beyond the scope of what the state asks for an affordable housing plan. Thank you. Thank you. I actually like Kelly, I know that you worked closely with the, the consultant who drafted the report to, if you could respond at all to some of the, the questions about the statistics that were quoted, that would be helpful. Sure. So in the report it says that single-family homes make up 44% of Arlington's housing stock. That data is actually pulled from 2019 ACS figures. I believe Don is referring to probably our assessors database. So when you look at our ACS figures from 2019, we have, according to the 2019 ACS, 38.4% of Arlington's housing stock is single-family detached and 5.6% is single-family attached, the sum of which is 44%. Regarding the 60% figure, I think you need to think about that within the context. So the, the plan says that the town currently has 19 residential and non-residential zoning districts, often with complicated dimensional regulations. Over 60% of the town falls within its lowest density residential districts, R0 and R1, with minimum lot sizes of 9,000 and 6,000 square feet, respectively. In both districts, the economic, the only economic use permitted by the town is a detached single-family dwelling. My interpretation of economic use there means what can be built by rights. So we're not referring to the land use code. We're not referring to what actually, what may occupy the land, which Don is correct. In some cases in an R1 or an R0, you could have a school or a church that sits on an R1 or an R0 property. But it does refer to what could be built by right on that land and what could be built by right on that land is a single-family home. So using the assessor's database, there's approximately 2372 acres of land in Arlington and of those 2372 acres, 1673 of them are in the R0 and R1. So this means that actually, upward of 70% of Arlington's total land area. And then you could slice and dice it. Looking at assessor's data, you could say it's a proportion of land area. It's a proportion of number of parcels. You could slice and dice it in a lot of different ways. But if you look at it this way, just from pure acre standpoint, we have about 75% of our total land area dedicated to single-family housing. So that's just to clarify some of that, some of those statistics. Very helpful. Thank you, Kelly. But I just, but I just quickly had one additional number. We are all set. Thank you. You've had your time to speak this evening. The next speaker will be Christian Klein. Good evening. My name is Christian Klein, resident 54 Newport street. Tom meeting member precinct 10 and on the zoning board of appeals. I just wanted to. Thank everyone for all the work that has gone into this report. And to thank everyone who has spent a lot of time. Reading it. And those who are opposed to it, those who are for it. Just the level of effort that it shows. From all sides. I really do appreciate it. I did want to just sort of raise a couple of points. This is a very important document. A housing production plan. Provide is one of the routes that allows. Local zoning board of appeals to have some level of control over the comprehensive permit process. And so it's the prior. The prior plan is has. Has expired or is in the process of expiring. It's very important that we renew this. All the. Recommendations that this is. Makes need to be approved by mostly through town meeting. And so this is just a plan. This is a guide for how we're going to get to where we need to be. We need more affordable housing. I really thank this color for all her comments. This is not an easy thing to do. If you look at the table towards the end of the report, there's a column that's the level of difficulty. And there's nothing that says simple. There's nothing that says. Mostly simple. Everything is challenging or. You know, some level of difficulty. So it's a, this is a really complicated issue. I'm glad that the. The Airbnb is taking this on. I think the planning department, they're, they're part in it. The only piece I have, I really wish that we could preserve two family housing as two families and not as split condos. I think it was a. The reason that I live in town, the reason I could afford to live in town is I have a two family house and I can rent out the unit. And it opens a level of opportunity for people that. I hate to see disappear from town. Through the condolization of these types of buildings. So if there's any way to preserve that, that would be a wonderful thing. But otherwise, thank you for time. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be. Thank you very much. Winnell Evans orchard place. And very, very briefly, I want to thank the ARB for the three articles that you are considering this year. I support them all and we'll be happy to vote to pass them when they come before town meeting. Thank you all so all for your work on the update to the housing production plan. There's much in here to support. Especially the implementation goals that recommend tapping various funding sources for improvements to existing housing authority properties. Identifying community development corporations to help us create more attainable housing. And increasing the commitment of CPA funds that go to affordable housing. I'm particularly interested in the idea of developing Russell Common. And find this really worth pursuing. The plan also leans on recommendations to allow much denser neighborhoods. However, more multi-unit buildings and much taller buildings up to five stories in some areas at market rates. But there's no statistical backup to show how or if this will actually help to control prices. These are enormous changes to implement without solid data to prove their worth. We are the 12th densest community in the Commonwealth out of 351. And as our master plan notes, we have already done a very good job at creating and maintaining housing choice. The plan found that quote Arlington is unique among Boston's inner suburbs for its diverse housing stock. If we look at Somerville and Duke, I think we're going to be able to see the difference in housing. I think we're going to be able to see the difference in housing stock unquote. If we look at Somerville and Cambridge, both of which have allowed infill development and are now the first and third densest communities in Massachusetts. We don't see a corresponding drop or even leveling of prices quite the opposite. Both places have become more expensive and more dense at the same time. In fact, much research points to the upward pressures that increased market rate density can have on prices as well as the disappointing results of density bonuses. Research from the London School of Economics, the Federal Reserve, the Cato Institute, MIT, and from journalists in communities where up zoning and density bonuses have been tried, including Austin, Charlotte, Seattle, Denver, and even Minneapolis, the poster child for up zoning, support this. The urban displacement project at Berkeley found that quote, subsidized housing has double the impact of market rate development on affordability. Further, the effectiveness of market rate housing in mitigating displacement seems to diminish as more market rate housing is built in a subsequent decade. This result suggests that over time, the construction of market rate housing may have a catalytic effect on a neighborhood, increasing its attractiveness to upper income residents rather than a protective effect of filtering unquote. So just as we have enacted some recommendations of the other of the master plan and allowed others to fade, I hope we'll focus on the recommendations of the housing production plan that focus on creating and enhancing subsidies for affordable housing specifically and allow those that recommend up zoning and density bonuses to fade. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Jonathan Nyberg. Hi, Jonathan Nyberg 30 Lakeshore or drive. First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to this committee for the hundreds of hours that you guys have spent and the other people on this meeting, trying to make Arlington a better place. I also want to piggyback any reports. Comments. I think she said it very well and agree that. We have diversity. There is change, but. It's just, just want to reiterate what she said. The second thing is that he just in Arlington, we only have a limited amount of supply of land. In any housing projects, single family, two family, one of the major costs is land. So I think we really have to look on how we're going to use that land if we want to develop more housing. Whether it's a single family, two family, four family. The land prices, your constant variable. So I think that's a big piece of our housing market. And the last thing I just wanted to say is. I hope our fear of change. Doesn't cripple our ability to move forward as a community. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening will be Jennifer Seuss. Hi, Jennifer Seuss at teal street. Also a timing member from precinct three. I appreciate all the work that's been done on the housing production plan. There's a lot of great ideas. I especially love the idea of trying to do something with the Russell common, which I know is sometimes. Sort of a little side point, but I think that's a great idea. And I think there's less support for it. I want to say that any good housing direction plan, which this is has to be clear eyed about what our current trends are. And our current trends are that we are losing. Economic diversity. We are losing age diversity, especially people under the age of 35 and over the age of 65. And that we are not going to stay put. So, so, so the options before us are our current trends. Where because the only thing available by right are single or two family houses. And because developers like everybody are trying to make money, which is not a problem. They like, I also try to make money. The, the things that get built are, are bigger single or two family houses. And if we want to change that, what we have to do is to change our zoning. I also want to say that changing the zoning. I understand the anxiety around that is not sufficient for getting the kind of keeping the kind of community that we love. But it is a necessary condition. And so I like a lot of the really practical ideas that are in this report for how we can slowly gradually over time. This we're not adopting anything full sweep. Make some tweaks to our zoning to preserve what we love that Arlington. And direct the time type of development. That we want to see that's in line with. The kind of community that we want in our values, frankly. So I appreciate your work on this. And. Yeah, that's it. Thanks. Great. Thank you. And the last speaker for this section of the meeting. We'll be Eileen Cahill. Hi, good evening. I am Eileen Cahill. I live at 48 Dixon Ave in Arlington. And I'm a lifelong resident. I'm a professional civil engineer. And I have big questions on how the. Current. Failing infrastructure of the town or the old infrastructure of the town would be support. When able to be handle able to handle the increased flow. Say for sewer, we design a sewer. By the number of bedrooms. So if you're changing the zoning for the town. That's from our, you assume three bedrooms per. House for typical house. So how would you. Account for that increased. Demand on the system. And I know that the town has spent. Millions repairing their aging sewer system. Then the same thing with water. What about fire flows? Are we able to handle that? Are there any dead ends in the town's water system? And the roads, we have. A lot of. Traffic. On the road. We have a lot of. Traffic on these small roads that were not designed for cars, two cars per house. These things I want considered. And the schools. We know that there is stress on the school system. We've been rebuilding schools. And we want to. We want to make sure that. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you everyone who spoke this evening. So anyone who joined the speaker. List after I closed it. You're more than welcome to share your thoughts during agenda. Item number eight, which is open forum. So at this time, I'd like to turn it back to the board. I'm going to turn it back to the board. I'm going to turn it back to the board. I'm going to turn it back to the board. I'm going to turn it back to the board. And I'm going to turn it back to the board. Are we vote on. Adoption of the, of the plan. And I think I'll turn it first back over to. It was on Jean and Steve who wanted to. Wait until after public comment before voicing your opinion. So I'll turn it over to Jean first. Thank you. I'll be brief. Because I know we're running. We're running out of time. We're running out of time. So I'm just going to say. So I think. That the plan is necessary for the town. It's a good plan. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is. And as has been said. Implementation of many pieces will require votes. Meeting. Or votes of the select board or. Combinations. Of things. And I think it's a plan that can make the town proud. Thank you, Jean. Steve, any thoughts? Yes, I do. One of the first, I just want to note that. You know, I think there are two, there are really two issues that we are facing with on the housing side. One is obviously affordable affordability. The other is a quantity issue. And I think that's one of the issues that we're facing. Basically under built for the last two decades or so. And this is, you know, it's a, it's not quite the same thing as the affordability issue, but it exacerbates it. I, one of the written comments submitted to us kind of caught my attention. It was submitted by Jordan Weinstein. And it contains a set of tables, which I haven't verified this information, but it tells us that the, the single family homes in the R2 district were taken down and replaced with two family split condominiums. Now, to just preface this, the, during the first half of 2021. The median sale price of a home, single family home in Arlington was $960,000. I've been, you know, actually tracking real estate sales since for the second half and yeah new homes are around I can see a million buck or used homes for about a million bucks give or take. Now, of these converted, you know, these new condos these in duplexes or two families of the 25 sale prices that are listed 10 or above the median, and 15 are actually below it, which to me that's really wild. What do you think of the average, you know, single family home that sold currently selling, you know, it's 70 to 100 years old 60 to 100 years old. It sells for $960,000 and to see that, you know, actually allowing duplexes to replace single family homes can give you new units which will have a, you know, need less maintenance and have lower operating costs are about the same.  I'm very supportive of this, and I mean, we're going to have a lot of policy discussions about it. And I look forward to that. Great. Thank you, Steve. Can any, any final comments or questions before we move to a vote for adoption? No, not this time. Thank you. Great. Melissa, any questions or other comments. Melissa. Melissa, sorry, any, any final thoughts or questions. I apologize for that. I need a court extension court. No, I think this is part of the democratic process. I mean, we at this point in time we are approving kind of looking to approve a plan, not one element of it. And so, in terms of the, the handbook itself, I think it's been, you know, it gives us a lot of strategies to consider to move forward through this process. So. Okay. Thank you. Let's see. So I would like to see if there is a motion from the board to adopt the housing production, the updated housing production plan. As amended that we received today from Jenny. Madam chair, I move adoption of the amended housing production plan. Second. I'll second. Great. We'll take a roll call vote starting with kin. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yeah. Steve. Yes. I'm the yes as well. Thank you again to everyone who shared their thoughts with us this evening. And as we mentioned, there will be lots of opportunity for discussion as we work through the process of identifying which of these strategies move into the implementation phase. Thank you. And thank you again to the to Kelly and Jennifer and everyone at Barrett for all of their hard work. Okay, that closes item number three. We're now going to move to agenda item number four, which is the review of the zoning warrant articles for 2020 annual town meeting. I'm going to turn it over to Jenny, who has several items drafted to review with the board. Thank you. Well, the board has my memo in the packet. So I guess I would, I want based on the time, I think I'll check to see if there are any questions about the items that we have listed to file. And then, because I know that we wanted to also give some time to Christian to talk about his amendments, which we were able to get posted with the agenda today. And he is also here. Does anybody have a question about any of the items on the list that the board would file from my memo, which includes enhanced business districts, street trees and solar energy systems and then of course the administrative amendments. I can bring that up if you want me to, by the way. Okay, great. Ken, would you like to start? Any questions for Jenny? Oops, wait, sorry. This was descriptions. One second. Go ahead, Ken. No, I have no questions. I just wouldn't mind just bring it up to so everybody can see it. Yeah. Okay. So I'll move on to Jean then any questions for Jenny. No. Melissa. Yeah. Steve. No questions. Okay. Well, there we go. So we do have to vote those to be bored. Yeah, you need to vote on them, but there is one. I'm sorry. I thought I probably closed it at some point tonight. So let me just reopen it. I think we can look at it together because there is one minor amendment that Doug Heim noted. And so these will all still be reviewed and discussed prior obviously to the right. This, this is just what goes into the warrant itself, but yes, you'll as part of all of your, you know, discussions. Next Monday night, you'll talk about the motion, which would be the actual amendment to the zoning. And then of course you'll have your public hearings, which would start the first Monday in March. So I'll just quickly run through them. So this is enhanced business districts. This is an amendment to section five district regulations. This is about activating ground floor uses, which seems relevant given the conversation about the bank. But also about other properties we've reviewed and eventually approved. The second one is titled street trees. I, I may and I think we'll keep this bylaw amendment called that but it is I just want to be clear it's about public shade trees, which is a certain type of tree. And that's what that's sort of the only thing that we need to change here is we need to also amend. We would like to add a definition that makes it clear that we're talking about public shade trees. So that that would be the only amendment to this particular article, based on feedback that I received from town council, which would be that it would be to see if the town will vote to amend the zoning bylaw to update and we would include definitions similar to what I've written here to definitions and section six for site development standards. So that's, that's the only change that's required here so that we can talk, make it clear that we're talking about public shade trees. The third one is the solar energy systems as I mentioned last time this was sort of a convergence of gene and a couple of members from the Clean Energy Future Committee but not formally from that committee, but a number of people wanting to work on making sure that we have a good, a good set of definitions about this but also the ability to talk about it through site development standards. The last one is a suite of really relatively minor administrative amendments that need to be made, which some of it is eliminating some redundancies that we found in the bylaw. And then another one is to keep it updated per the new 40 a section nine requirements related to housing choice provisions. I've put on here large additions because that was, as you know, you'll hear in your discussion with Christian that might be another article or multiple articles you also want to include on your suite that get filed. So I guess I would suggest, let's have the conversation with Christian next. Actually, let me pause. Are there any questions now about this document. I do have one question. And then I'll go back and see if anyone else know that you talked about them a little bit a little bit more. Specifically around the solar energy systems. I think you can answer this or you Jenny, regarding the specification to allow for and require is there, could you expand upon when you would potentially be looking to require the installation of solar energy systems. Do you want to speak to this. Yeah, I can do that so we pattern this and you haven't seen the actual proposed zoning amendment but we patterned it after a very similar water town ordinance, which requires solar on some roof so it would be building a lot more of you but there are, I think they're about five or six or seven exceptions to that so for example, if it's just a sign change, or if it's shaded or if it faces in the wrong direction. So there are a number of limitations on it. That's it. So you were just Jean, you were you were calling them exemptions. Yeah, yeah, they're about five or six exemptions from it so you could meet one of the exemptions. And if you don't and you're building a new building for you have to put it in. It's specifically for new buildings, not major and I mean I guess it would be hard to know what the scope is from the way this is. It could be for major renovations also but there's some one of the exemptions has to do with the roof, having the capacity if you're doing a major renovations to accept the solar. Yeah, I think I'm generally in favor of this one but I think I look forward to the discussion about specifically you know what the, what the breadth of leeway, we have in terms of the many many different types of proposals that come in front of us. I don't see with wanting to try and incentivize this but at the same time, not looking to create an undue burden. You know, there's somebody who's here tonight is from the Clean Energy Future Committee, and hope to someone in Watertown about how their ordinance is working if you want to. I'm happy waiting until we have the, you know, the broader discussion about about this. I just wanted to know a little bit more and I think you answered my question in terms of the specificity, and how, how broad this this may be which which I think will be a good discussion among the board.  I was going to say the same thing you're saying, Rachel. I'm in support of this, but it's the details that we want to get into that I don't want to argue about now we'll talk about now discuss now, but we can talk about this later when it comes up. For the purpose of the warrant article we could actually strike and require and have a good discussion about this I don't think it makes a difference. I think it does I would want to keep the word. Okay, I mean that some of them say require and some of them say allow so I mean I think, I think it's subject to interpretation here but I think allow for installation would allow it. I think what I talked about with the CFC members was it would be an actual requirement for some of them. For some of the buildings. Yeah. Can I suggest that we change this to to allow for or require. It's the end require that, you know, it just made me think that it was, it was the majority of this of the EDR. And the way I was reading it was that this was going to be a significant change and requirement for the majority of. And renovations. For example, the exemptions would mean for signs we wouldn't do it. If somebody's just filling a space in a building or use. We wouldn't do it. What I had drafted this would have said to require installation, blah blah blah blah with certain exceptions. We would figure out what the exceptions were later on. So would have said to require installation with certain exceptions. I'll ask the other board members what their thoughts are. Maybe starting with you can and then I'll go to Melissa and Steve. I sort of believe the same thing you're saying, Rachel, but I think it's still too early right now that we can make these changes. We're not adopting them now we're just putting a placeholder in for this warrant article, and all the texts, and all the finales will come later. Is that correct Jenny. Oh yeah, you're we're next week we're going to talk about the actual language. There's space in the. I understand what you're trying to do though I just wonder if jeans sort of was trying to insert, I think that with certain exceptions phrase into this warrant article which I think would be fine. Do you would that be something that you would be interested in doing right now or I think that would be fine to me if you know I trust you know you and Jean to work to work through what I would add with certain exceptions. After require. Oh review. Yeah. Melissa, any, any comments on on this one or any of the other articles that Jenny's gone through them. No, I'm comfortable with them as is where we are right now. Okay, great Steve. No comments. Okay. Great. I was going to say do you want to have, you could vote now on these to give me the permission to file them as warrant articles on behalf of the board or we can continue talking to Christian. Next, why don't we talk to Christian, and maybe what I'll do is just introduce that you know Christian has several potential warrant articles that he has drafted with the intention of. Discussing with us whether or not any of these are articles that redevelopment board would like to to take on. Under the request of the redevelopment board or if not Christian has an interest in pursuing these as a as a citizen petition. And had reached out to to see if that's something we could review on the agenda tonight. So Christian I'll turn it over to you if you wanted to go through. And I will leave it up to you as to whether you'd like to go through them one by one or as a full suite and then have us just discuss any questions or comments at the end. Thank you very much Rachel and thank you, and thank Jenny for the opportunity to present these here this evening. As chair of the zoning board of appeals. As we go through cases throughout the year there's numerous times where we realize their places in the zoning bylaw that aren't quite working as we anticipated or that are relying on interpretations that we feel should be a little more clear should be clarified in the process. And so we put together this list of six potential articles. Obviously the zoning board of appeals doesn't have the authority to put things on the warrant which is why I were the head come through the zoning bylaw working group and then to the ARB this evening. I'll just quickly touch on the main reasons for the the six. And then we can, if there's further questions on them I'm happy to entertain them. So the first one has to do with the rules and regulations for the zoning board of appeals. There is a section in the zoning bylaw that has rules and regulations for the zoning board of appeals. The board is the only group in town where requires a two thirds vote of town meeting to change our rules and regulations, which is not the way the laws intended to work. So what we're recommending is that is striking the, the local regulations. Which are further restrict the actions of the board, as they already are incorporated into our regular rules and regulations. And obviously we would still be bound by all other state law these are just specific local, local ordinances. The second is, again, looking at the question of half story the question has come up as to, it's 50, you have to be less than 50%, but less than 50% of what. So I had originally put forward some clarifications as to what that is and then in speaking with Jenny, we realized that the definition is becoming very regulatory. So, this is an attempt to change the definition ancient and add a regulation to clarify all these points and to make it work better within the framework of the zoning bylaw. The third one has to do with porches. Porch is basically is it it's, you know, a deck with a roof on and the interpretation of instruct in spectral services is that is enclosed. And so they do not see putting walls around it as a further enclosure, it's already enclosed by their interpretation. So we are looking to amend that so that a porch is not enclosed it's actually an open structure. And then. Yeah, so that's what that one is in regards to. And then also, there are certain things that can be constructed within the front yard setback by special permit with a vote of the zoning board of appeals. And then