and I see recording Pam. Beautiful. So I think we're all set. I think I can call the meeting to order. So welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting for July 1st 2020 based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions in the open meeting law GL chapter 30a section 20 and signed Thursday March 12th 2020 this planning board meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Christine Graham Mullen and as chair of the Amherst Planning Board I am calling this meeting to order at 6 34. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken as normal. I will now now take a roll. I'm doing it already. Roll call board members as you hear your name called unmute yourself and answer affirmatively and then please place yourself back on mute. Michael Burt whistle. Present. Maria Chow. Maria are you there? I am sorry. No problem. Hello. Jack Jemsik. Present. David Levenstein. Here. Doug Marshall. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. Okay. Board members if technical difficulties arise we may need to pause temporarily to rectify the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do have technical issues please let Sean or Pam know discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed and the minutes will know if a disconnection has occurred. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment and I will see you raised hand and call upon you to speak. After speaking remember to re-mute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment period and other appropriate times throughout the meeting. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment during any of the public comment periods you must join the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing link. This link is shown on the slide and can be entered into a search engine by typing https colon backslash backslash amorce mass dot zoom dot us backslash j backslash nine seven five three six four four five seven five one. The link can also be found on the meeting agenda which is located on the town website in two different places. One is through the calendar listing for this meeting from the home page and find the link within the event details. A second way is to go through the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda link. On the agenda there will be a link towards the top of the page where it states virtual meeting. You please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raised hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called upon please identify yourself using your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If these guidelines are not complied with or the speaker exceeds their allotted time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. Included on tonight's agenda item three is the site plan review public hearings. Scheduled to continue from June third board meeting will be the common school paving application followed by Amherst Media's SPR application to construct a new home office building. Moving forward this slide will now show the agenda. Again note the virtual meeting zoom link. Thank you. So at this time we're going to move to item one which is minutes and we received through our email the minutes from March fourth. They're the second time coming to us and at this point I assume everybody has them. Yes can you hear me? Barely you're quiet. Yeah I I don't know where I went. I seem to have. You're here Pam. Nope I can't see anything.  You probably just all I see is the little thing at the top that says your screen sharing is paused. Okay got it. We're good. Good job. Okay so we're gonna have the agenda come up eventually and board members we are evaluating the March fourth minutes so I see David Levinstein's hand is up but I also see Chris's so I'm gonna call on Chris first and then David. Chris you have something to say? I just wanted to say that the minutes that you have before you are have actually been seen twice already. I forget what the first time was but anyway it was a good month ago. Yeah it was several months ago so what happened was Janet McGowan submitted edits and then those were circulated and then other people submitted edits and I took all of the edits and combined them into the document that had Janet McGowan's edits in it so the things that I added are shown by track changes and it should be pretty clear where those are. I just wanted to make that statement. Thank you Chris. David? I'd like to say something about the minutes but I moved to approve the minutes and then for a brief comment. Second. Great thank you. So I think a lot. I'm sorry if you seconded. Michael. I'm sorry David. Michael I think. Thank you. So if I may. Yes David please. A lot of effort has been gone into writing and reviewing and revising and reviewing again these minutes and I think that it seems like some of that's been misdirected effort in my opinion. I think that the following kind of guidelines should guide the planning board in the discussions about these minutes is that we really should review the minutes for it to correct inaccuracies, to remove statements of opinion and to edit your own comments not to put words into somebody else's mouth. I think that that's really crossing a bright line at that point. And I don't think we need to discuss this much further so I'd like to move to approve these minutes and get on to the business at hand. Thank you. Okay thanks. I see one other hand and if there are any other comments we're in the discussion on the minutes raise your hand. I acknowledge Janet McGowan. Hi. Thank you. Thank you Christine for these corrections. I support all the corrections. The only two ones I'd like to leave in are the ones the deletion on page 13 and 15 and they both involve priorities and for the consultants like issues that Mr. Moore felt that the consultants would be need for and on page 13 I put down parking downtown signage 40R transition zone in IZ. Mr. Moore didn't say that it was on a slide so I omitted that and and then I also would leave the deletion from page 15 where Mr. Marshall is talking about the need to have discussions with the community about downtown if we want to extend the town time this you know five-story buildings and all the stuff and the reason I think that's really important is you know our discussion about the zoning by-law update was really rich and so there's a lot of good stuff in there but I know that these issues are really important issues to many members of the community and I think that it shouldn't be lost that we see the need for a discussion about downtown we need that need for consultants to help us we need consultants for the 40R for inclusionary zoning transition zones with the BL those are long-standing issues and it looks like in the zoning by-law update we're going to address those and so it's not my opinion it's not putting words in people's map but I do think the richness of our discussion and those are super important issues to many members of our community so I thought those were important to put in and so that would be I agree with the minutes and the corrections and just to leave those two deletions in perhaps pointing out that it wasn't Mr. Mara's statement but it was his slide that's it thank you I David is your hand up yeah okay yeah I move to approve the minutes as revised by Chris and distributed by Chris Brestrup earlier this week thank you okay I don't see any other hands raised so at this time we can take a vote I have to do a roll call it's in one second that second one second okay that was done is there more discussion Shannon is your hand up or you just it's not lower or oh can't hear you your volume's off okay I don't see any other hands so I think we're ready to move forward with this motion okay so I still don't see hands okay so uh Michael Burt whistle Maria Jack David approve Doug Janet approve and I also approve Christine so um that's unanimous we've approved the March 4th minutes for the planning board thank you um at this time I will move to item two public comment period uh ham do we see anyone at this time who wants to raise their hand and so I I do see uh I see one I see one and I just want to make clear again that this is only to speak on things that are not on our agenda tonight because we will have other public comment then so if you'd like to speak on something that's not being addressed tonight on our agenda feel free to have your time so Pam is there okay I just see that hand is now disappeared I see no other hands and the phone call I don't know who that is um if they star nine are we good I'm not seeing a star nine okay total one phone call listener so I'm not sure who that is um well if they didn't start nine then I assume they're not wanting to speak now here's Michael Lou okay because we're going to need Michael Lou next okay yes we do okay I still don't see any hands okay I do not either so at this time I will move on from item two public comment period we'll move to item three which we have one it was set for 632 and I have 645 now so I think we can move right to that um and I will read okay in accordance with the provisions of ngl chapter 40a this public hearing continued from june 3rd 2020 has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR 2020-10 the common school 521 south pleasant street request site plan approval to repay the existing driveway and pave and reconfigure the existing gravel parking and turnaround drop-off area including the emergency drive walkways and other site improvements map 17a-78 rn zoning district um I'll just look for a show of hands from the board members are there any disclosures um any board meter numbers need to I'm not seeing any hands I'll keep watching um and the next we'll move to um we have Michael Lu who has come back uh again welcome I see you're there can we hear hi can you hear me yes we can welcome hi do you have anything you want to show I do I have um I'm hoping this will be can be short and sweet I have one graphic to show okay um and are you Pam do you have him as a co-host he is a he is a panelist so he should be able to share his screen great okay um okay first of all yeah this I'm Michael Lu with the Berkshire design group um back for the common school project to uh repave the driveway and pave the turnaround area um hopefully y'all remember what we had proposed before what the issue that came up last time was the um we discovered that there was is a deed restriction on the main parcel of the common school um that up for um basically for a maximum of 25 coverage on the lot um it seems like in I think it was 2002 or three or somewhere back in there um the school engaged with the town uh or I should say the town approved of a change in the deed restriction from 25 to 30 percent and they had initiated the process uh to change the the restriction in the deed um and paperwork was filled out but for some reason this was was dropped or never followed through it had to go to the state the state has not yet um endorsed the plan so this process has to um continue now um and basically on on a longer parallel track if you will to this project but we have come up with a plan which I'll show you shortly that uh complies with the 25 percent lot coverage um because that's technically what we need to um you know to have to comply with current um legal documents um so if you will let me share let's see um okay I've I've put up a plan graphic um can you all see that yes so basically a black and white plan with the property highlighted in red um and I'm gonna start this so this plan brings the lot coverage to 24.9 percent on this sort of I have yeah I have a um we had submitted an entire set of revised plans you know with the with the permeable paving basically and that's the purple areas are shown um where the permeable paving would be proposed um we had come to an agreement with the town that the uh for the permeable paving that 50 percent of this area could be counted as green space and the rest would be this is the concrete um open block system so the rest of it would be basically imper impervious with the with the concrete um so with these areas and in the green you'll see here the the elimination of these uh six parking spaces along the driveway and returning that to green space brings the the lot coverage down to 24.9 percent um and and then so that that's the plan and this the proposal that the school would like the town to entertain is that the the school is willing to do the the the 18 parking spaces here at the turnaround as permeable paving the fire and emergency access drive here as permeable paving and they would like to have a three-year window to do this permeable paving if it's necessary meaning that if they can execute the paperwork for the change in the deed restriction then they won't have to do this drive this really elongated driveway apron which is in excess of 100 feet from the property line to the to the basically that first parking lot to the right um. Did you repeat that time? Three a three a three-year window or a condition that if the basically if the deed restriction cannot be executed within three years then they will have to construct the re or basically I should say reconstruct this as permeable paving. The proposal is to do that um with with the condition of approval from the planning board that this be allowed to be repaved as you know asphalt but they would have to go back in and put permeable paving if they could not execute the paperwork in three years and the reason that we're asking for three years is because I understand I've been told that the um by Kevin Campbell the school's consultant that there is going to be a change in leadership at the school so there's just going to be a transition period for the the administration and board there and that this would just give them a little extra time so that this you know didn't wouldn't fall through the cracks and that if they had to do it in a shorter period or um what David Zomac had suggested in an email with communication today is that a that be a two-year window to get it done. The school's asking for a little bit more leeway in upping that one more year to three years they had initially through a five-year time period to Dave Zomac and Dave came back with a two-year so I guess we're trying to negotiate for you know the three-year. I don't know I don't think Kevin is on the meeting tonight um I don't I didn't see him shown there but I expected that he would be joining the meeting I don't know if he's- Kevin Campbell is there I think can you move him over Pam? You might be able to provide more information on that um transition period if you're interested um but basically this plan satisfies the current legal requirements for the lot at less than 25 percent we're at 24.9 um but you know if they can execute the paperwork then obviously this the the coverage will go up a little bit with the driveway being asphalt but the school's still willing to do the permeable paving up around the at the parking spaces and the fire lane um the fire lane or the emergency access is something that's going to be hopefully rarely used um so it makes sense to do that as permeable and keep it in in a green if you will a quote-unquote green condition and the parking spaces um I think that the school realizes that that's a that's a further you know method of having some green infrastructure there which is an advantageous and a positive thing for the site in terms of drainage green space you know open space etc um does mr. Campbell want to add anything to this about the time period being requested I'm not seeing his hand go up he is there but can you hear me there you go yes thank you sorry like Kevin hey Mike um I only wanted to to share a little bit of the just a teeny bit more about the logic for why three years actually matters versus versus two years which first of all we really appreciate that the town will even consider an extension at all um but real quickly I had responded very late in the day today to say the common school has been in an interim leadership position for the last two years and it has just set up a transitional leadership team that will carry it through the next two years while they eventually move to a more permanent leadership situation again so that just two years puts us on the cusp from my perspective of them them at that right at that moment shifting into this rather again transitional I don't want to say unstable but but uncertain moment and one more year would put it on the plate of a new head of school new leadership and something that that that would guarantee its its success if necessary the second thing and maybe more near and dear to my heart is we're undergoing a million dollar or so renovation right now of the school's classrooms and the school's been raising this money over many many years and we are spending every single penny of it and the apron at the front is roughly going to cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of six thousand dollars or so and deferring it deferring it is significant and what I'm just looking for is a chance for the school to sort of recover from the renovation project to stabilize and to have enough time to start raising funds again should it have to you know we not get the amendment and it have to do the apron so I know none of those are are good reasons from a zoning perspective or a planning perspective but from an operational perspective they would go a long way an extra year for the school thank you thank you um michael do you have anything else to add or can I open it up to um first miss bestreff and then the planning board members I think that's um if we talked about other aspects of the project last time the rain garden being added and so forth and improved ADA access safety with the fire access lane that the fire department has always wanted um so yeah I think at this you know I think we're ready to open it up and listen to any comments uh questions from the board okay thank you I'm going to recognize Chris Bester first and then I see Jack and David uh Chris are you there I'm not here I am here and I wanted to say that the plan um even um with even without this request from tonight yeah meets the zoning requirements because the zoning requirements allow up to 30% um of the lot to be covered uh within pervious material so it's really the deed restriction that we're talking about tonight I just wanted to clarify that thank you that helps um jack yes I was just wondering the the project is uh originally accommodating a repaving effort uh is that correct Mike yes yep so what are you repaving the entire drive yes if you in it's present with if you recall the paving ends right about here right now at the end where these parking spaces are so we're we want to repave this drive and then pave this what is currently a gravel parking uh gravel turnaround and gravel parking spaces so that's going to better define where cars are are parked formally so that you know one car doesn't take up two spaces etc on the gravel and then the gravel moves around every year with maintenance and plowing and so forth um so that's kind of in pervious area on the site has actually kind of expanded over the years I think unfortunately um so this is going to better define you know what's vehicle versus what's green or pedestrian so yeah so my question is uh would you continue with the repavement in the areas that are uh they could turn to the you know permeable pavers there or would you not do those areas uh with the risk that they you might have to pull up the you know right so if I and Kevin if you're there correct me if I'm wrong but the schools uh willing to commit to putting permeable pavers in these purple areas here the parking spaces and the fire lane and deferring this area you know given that three-year time limit to try to execute that the the change in the deed restriction you know with the state um this would be if this if they can do this this construction season this would all be asphalt in the in the front part of the driveway but if for some reason they can't execute it then yeah they're going to have to bite the bullet and and cut this pavement out and install the permeable paving but they've made a commitment to do it here up at the um turnaround and with the realization that that's a betterment to the project overall the the dilemma is that the apron portion as we're calling it at the front of the drive is is the most decayed portion of the asphalt it's the worst section of all it's completely pothold so we have no choice but to improve it in the meantime um right and just looking at you know what other areas could possibly accommodate it it it just didn't make sense to do permeable anywhere else and unfortunately with the driveway there you know it requires that long of a distance from the property line basically almost to the to the opening of the uh that first parking lot on the right you know to be permeable to get that coverage percentage down below 25 percent now hopefully we don't have to you know we can the paperwork can be executed and and everything's going to be fine and dandy and well under the 30 percent that zoning allows plus the D restriction would be modified or amended to 30 percent um if that's the case then you know where then the site would be well under um the 30 percent and i might add that i went back and did a calculation that if everything was asphalt if there were no purple areas and we kept the six uh parking the paid parking spaces here along the driveway the coverage would be 28.9 percent so even if it was completely all paved with asphalt we'd still be under the 30 percent however we have this this you know this deed restriction of 25 percent now that is really putting you know a crimp in in the plans but you know overall i think we're still going to get a better project if the school is willing to do the permeable up in this area thank you thanks i see uh david now and then next will be dug uh hi mike hi kevin um i'm sympathetic with the operational concerns and uh and the goals of the project for sure but but i'm still trying to track track the logic of your presentation mike and here i think is my question so you're saying that as proposed with the permeable pavers and the the change in the to the to the taking out some pavement putting in some grass and green space there on it'll fall it'll be under 25 percent of what would be in pervious surface of the lot of the total lot 20 25 percent of the lot that's outlined in red a lot that is outlined in red under this proposal yeah be now um uh uh be now sorry i'm looking at a different string a screen um uncut it would be covered that would and preventing any uh the growth of any vegetation right so the as proposed here this driveway is under 25 percent of of a covered surface preventing the growth of vegetation but then so and that's the total lot area yeah so then you're also saying that for the that apron that that last little bit that connects to the street which is currently paved if that were paved which you'd like your you're asking us to approve that would bring the lot coverage still under closer to it would increase the lot coverage to 30 to closer to 30 percent of the lot is that is that no it would it would push it over the 25 but we we'd still be yeah we would still be under 30 percent right so as proposed your proposal is to actually not reduce the impervious surface but is to increase the impervious surface however a portion of that will be permeable pavers no is that right no go ahead kevin if you have a comment no a portion of that is sure the the parking spaces and the the area for the fire truck access are permeable pavers and that allows you to do the calculation of either 24.9 or somewhat more than 25 but less than 30 yes is it am i tracking that am i following what the presentation is what the proposal is yes i think so basically this plan that you see on the screen puts the red area which is described in the deed in compliance with the deed restriction of 25 percent if however the zoning allows 30 and yes if the deed can be amended within three years then we can we don't have to do the apron quote unquote out front at the beginning of the driveway but you're correct if we if that area is paved it will push the coverage of the red area over 25 now if they build it you have that number michael you know i don't i'm sorry 26.2 when okay 20 and you want to do that paving now because operationally it makes more sense right so you want to yeah that's part of the presentation tonight is to do that paving on the on the apron what we're calling what i'm we're calling the apron the last little bit to the road yep that that's that makes most sense to you if we if we don't approve the paving of that then you the more expensive option is to do the permeable pavers but that's the less preferable option from your point of view that's right that's exactly right exactly so the here's my confusion so thank you for thank you for helping me follow for walking me through that a little bit more easily for me as i read i'm reading i'm now looking at the deed okay and the deed reads in part so subject also to a conservation restrictions and then it cites cites the mass general law in favor of the town of amherst granted it by the grantor hint here in requiring that at least 75 percent of the surface area of said premises shall always be maintained uncovered by any structure or pavement and in a condition suitable for the growth of vegetation so i and that's where you get that 25 figure 25 you know right i i believe yes however i read the deed now and and that seems to me to be referring to 75 percent of the whole lot needs to be needs to remain remain open to vegetation which to my mind would include the buildings whereas your and i don't know how that figures into your the driveway and parking lot calculation we didn't talk about the buildings but all the structures on the site plus all the current what's currently paved and gravel because the town considers gravel as impervious and the buildings all together um i can't i think the coverage on the lot currently is already at 20 i think it's 28.2 or 28.3 percent you're already in non-compliance already with the deed restriction so so you're including in your calculation the the amount of the the the area that the buildings yes and other structures yes prevent the growth of vegetation on the slot correct okay thank you very much i'm sorry i'm so slow on the uptake here but thank you very much i didn't mention it earlier i might have we might have talked about that um at the last meeting i don't quite remember but yep it i'm glad we can clarify that so if what we heard from mr. um campbell is if you do what you're proposing here it will be at 26.2 with the hope that within your asking for three years that the deed would be adjusted to to allow a higher amount and you could just leave it the way it is but if that is not possible then at that time you'll go into the apron area and turn it to impervious exactly okay so that's what they're proposing i'm gonna go Doug is next and then i see janet mcgallon so Doug thank you my first question is for maybe for chris breastrup um what is the duration of a planning board approval typically oh do you want me to answer that um christine yeah oh yes he's directing it to you so go for it a plan the duration of the planning board approval is really um into the future there's no you know cut off um what we what we normally say is a site plan review approval is um good for three years or excuse me for two years um but if you start doing the work that is described within the application and you continually work on it then it can last longer than that but um i think what you're asking is would the site plan review approval allow a three-year duration to complete the work described and i think if it's specifically spelled out in the conditions it would allow that but you're saying that if work starts within two years we wouldn't even need to put it as a condition because as long as the work keeps moving along nobody's going to object i think you would need to put it as a condition because it's um deviating from what uh the applicant actually wants to do the applicant actually wants to pave that right hand portion of the driveway um and you are allowing him to explore whether or not he has to in fact um created as an as a pervious area and if he does not have to create it as a pervious area then he'll just leave the pavement there so you're allowing him you know three years to kind of figure that out okay thank you so my second question is for mr. Campbell um you cited the two years of interim leadership as a reason for the extension say from two years that mr. Zomek was proposing to what you are requesting um i assume during the next two years this interim leadership team would be actively working on resolving this question with this state and that you wouldn't just wait two years for the new leader to arrive and have dump it on his or her plate oh on i mean on the contrary we you know it's in our best interest to make this go away as quickly as possible okay thank you so yes thank you all right and then you also uh said that a couple of years in the future it might be a hardship for the school to have to come back and spend six thousand dollars to put in the remaining permeable pavers if you were unsuccessful with the state uh would you be willing to put up a bond now to ensure that the money is available to do that i didn't say it would be a hardship in the future i said it would be a hardship now and it might be a hardship you know i i simply wanted to ensure that it didn't become a hardship and it didn't become an issue of sorts and i i'd hate to have to over complicate this with with a bond but i'm not sure how to you know well i guess the question sort of behind my question is say three years goes by and you've not been successful with the state how do we compel you to complete the work and you know as shown i guess that's for you to tell you to tell me so can i throw it back to chris bestra if we put this in as a condition chris what happens if a condition does not get fulfilled um then someone can complain and the building commissioner will um issue an enforcement order and he can um he can slap a fee of i think it's three hundred dollars a day for someone out of compliance with um approval so um so that could be a remedy no further questions that's a good incentive i mean i would say for what it's worth is that the school is out of compliance at the moment and um in terms of best faith we're proposing we're already bringing it down from 28 plus to 26.2 percent to a goal of 24.9 so we sure are headed in the right direction um of of trying our best to to become in compliance after such a long period of time thank you i recognize janet and then next will be michael thank you i think i have three quick questions um for for the common school folks or mr lou um can you just tell me what the process is for advising a deed restriction with the state um what the probability of getting approval is and then do you need the town support since the town holds the conservation restriction uh kevin i you probably have some more insight into this but the town has already well given its approval back in whatever it was 2002 2003 the paperwork was already started luckily that was found um but it went to i and i don't know for what reasons but it did go to the state but they never signed off on on the um the amendment to that deed restriction so i don't i don't know what the process is i'm not familiar with that but it has to go to the secretary i think the secretary of environmental affairs because this is a conservation restriction so technically it has to go to the state to get uh to be changed or amended and for whatever reason that process was just not completed there we have we have kevin correct me if i'm wrong but i think we have some signed paperwork from the town already um that um you know that shows that this process was initiated i just don't know the history you know from back then of why it was kind of put aside do you do you have any idea of whether it's likely just to be approved or not because part of me is just you know i'm feeling very flexible about your quest but i'm wondering if it's just here to spend the six thousand dollars now and just move on but i mean is it likely to be approved doesn't anyone know i we can't we mean we can't we're going we're we're the little bit we know as we've done our research here and we've been working as closely as possible with Dave Zomek on this is uh we're we're proceeding based on a couple of things one is the existence of of evidence of the town's support for this uh and and recorded and um and then conversations with Dave as part of this proposal perhaps the one thing we're leaving out is that the proposal um puts forth that that that the school would submit application with the town's support um so that is what we're we're hoping and assuming will happen and continue to happen and three it's um while we don't know the outcome all of the previous documentation which was significant between the school and the state but ended up never being signed i mean one letter after the other back and forth back and forth in 2002 all of it led to the belief that this was going to be signed um i'm not a lawyer but the the state on the state's end the state's position was why do you need an amendment to do this that was the if you read the text of all the letters they said over and over again why do you need an amendment to do this we think this he didn't say it's a matter of right they did not see this as as um that maybe we were somebody was over complicating this at the time and then it just fell off the map nobody at the common school remembers from back then why it just ended but it did um so that's a long way of saying um we have a fair amount of belief that this is worth pursuing and that and that it wouldn't take a long period of time to get an answer one way or another okay that's all i want to know thank you chris bestrip i see your hand up yeah i wanted to let everyone know that i did speak with james omec today and he confirmed the fact that the town is in support of this application to the state he also had mentioned to me previously that um he believes that the person who was supposed to sign the document whatever the document is um either moved his office or left his office and that's why it was never signed there wasn't the objection on the part of the state it's just that they never followed through on their end so that's just what i wanted to share with the with the planning board thank you i recognize michael burt whistle thank you in talking and talking through the question of a 25 percent coverage and a 30 percent coverage uh which is apparently what the zoning requirement is for 30 for a 30 percent and this since this falls well below the 30 percent why are we concerned with the deed if if as a planning board our responsibility for site plan review is to make sure the zoning bylaw is is upheld uh why are we even concerned with this deed restriction that seems to be a matter between other parties and that seems to me we should simply approve the project as it's proposed because it meets the 30 percent requirement chris do you have any i'm not really sure i i don't really know what to say to that you know that's kind of my that was my feeling about a month ago and since then um you know there has been a lot of conversations so i i don't really know exactly what to say to that was legal counsel asked no but i guess what i would say at this point is why don't you just approve what is being proposed and hope that um the school can manage to to revise the deed restriction and if they can't then the plan that's in front of you now is what will be built okay michael do you have anything else no he's good so i don't uh do you so i don't see any uh new hands going up i see um two members going coming about again i'm going to answer those and then we're going to open it up to public comment um so janet and then i see david um i was just going to move so move christine's um idea but i i think we should listen to the public first um david and then i see jack i'm responding to uh chris breast strips um suggestion the thing that that i'm sort of wrestling with whether i should be or not i don't know but um is that is that the proposal asked the planning board to approve something that we know to be violating the deed sure it means the zoning law zoning zoning by law but but we're and then and then we're and then we're approving as i understand it and it's a little confusing to me still i'm not quite sure why it's so confusing to me where what we're approving is the paving of the greater surface which makes a lot of sense but with the promise that if if the deed can't be um revised to allow for a larger covered surface if the deed cannot be revised in three years they'll dig that up which makes no sense or and they'll put in permeable pavers which still we're kicking the question about whether permeable pavers is meets you know is is is not is a structure is not covering the surface we're kind of punting that now i'm willing to punt that i don't what but um i i just find that we're we're being asked to approve something that per that is giving the school what it makes sense what it wants with but maybe they'll dig it up it'll never get dug up so we're effectively approving something that we know to be contrary to the current deed even though it might be better than what's the current state well sure it'll be better than the current state that's why they want to do the improved project that that's all i'm i'm i'm troubled by that i don't know if anyone else is that's it thank you i see jack and then doug jack oh i'm sorry i was wondering technical question from mike what what factor is applied to the permeable pavers is it is it zero percent pavement or 50 pavement or is i'm just wondering about that i'm sorry could you repeat the first part i didn't quite hear okay um the permeable pavers it's not a hundred percent pavement is it zero percent pavement or does it contribute thank you 50 we're we've been we've with we've talked to dave zomek and i guess we're agreeing that 50 it's about a 50 percent open call it an openness ratio if you will okay so that you can get grass to grow within those voids and i this um these pavers are used at nine research drive if you're familiar with that um i worked there i worked there okay um that's exactly what we're using on the parking for the parking spaces and there there is vegetation i don't know what they planted there um it might be some kind of fescue or something but you're talking 15 research drive is it 15 or nine yeah right sorry i'm thinking of yeah 15 is the next building i was thinking of the first one yeah 15 research drive sorry um but that is what they're using at that site too and i went by there just to make sure and there is vegetation growing in those voids it's it's not lush green grass um but you know i think that would take a lot you know a lot more work to for with fertilizers and what have you i think they've chosen some other type of um of like i'm saying like i think of fescue that requires less maintenance you know less watering fertilizing etc something that's a little bit more green although not really the color green well i i'm sure that i'm in the minority but i've seen just grass work pretty good as parking you know emergency parking you know you know most of the time uh hicker ridge had overload when they were a function of golf course had an overflow parking lot there um and you know it's you know i'm just wondering if that isn't a consideration just to get you know cut through all this uh consider you know just lawn as as you know like where the fire is that's never been a road anyway so i mean we all want fire protection there but i think if it's just lawn that's leveled and graded properly we'll get you to the same place um anyway there's just some thoughts there Doug yeah i was gonna just suggest i assume we need a drawing to go with whatever approval we have and that the drawing before us is not adequate and that we ought to have a note around the apron area that says this area shall be permeable pavement completed within three years unless you know uh not required by the deed in which case it'll be asphalt i think we'll have that in the conditions if that's what goes i think we can add that note on the plans um as i mentioned we did submit a full set of um black and white site plans with this project i just thought this would be a lot obviously a lot easier to to use as a presentation tool the the plan you see in front of you i'm just i'm just saying that i think somehow we need i think it would be useful and maybe i'm the only one but i think it would be useful to have some plan of graphic a graphic depiction of the alternate reality that might be the final result so Doug we can put that in the conditions and refer to a plan it's however we write up the conditions so when we look at conditions we can we can refer to a plan um anything else uh Doug or i'm gonna move to public comment i think he's uh okay so at this point i'm looking at attendees and if anyone is here to speak on a comment or a question regarding this project please raise your hand uh pam i'm just going to double check with you in case there's any on the phone um so i see one hand at this point and i just when i call on you please say your name and your address and um and welcome so i see one hand and i'll call on kevin noonan and i think you're allowed to talk if you yes i can welcome i appreciate it thank you uh my name is kevin noonan and i live at 36 jeffrey lane and if you look at the the posed purple spur for the emergency access road my property is right in the middle where this little spur off of that spur is uh begins our property begins there there is a proposal that we only learned about last time you met that they want to move the dumpster there first of all we don't know why it would be preferable to move the dumpster closer to the children's parking a children's playground but our other concern mine and the my neighbors on either side of me is that it's going to bring rodents and and we've had bear in the neighborhood it's going to attract more wildlife to that spot there's going to be odor there's really no reason to put the dumpster there rather than where it is i think that the justification that mr. loon used last time was that they had to give up one parking spot but the if you know the first parking lot on the right just after that area of the apron which we're referring to almost never gets used and when it when there is an event it's rarely full plus the old hitch hop hitchcock center there's parking spaces in front of that that are rarely used so it just seems to us that to be an impudent idea and we're also concerned about what might be stored around the dumpster currently where the dumpster is now they store the material to treat the the asphalt the existing asphalt for snow during the cold weather and they also have some other recycling there we're just concerned that there's going to be noise when the truck and the truck is going to come up that emergency access road and probably crush those non-permeable i mean those permeable favors because as we all know any anyone who has a dumpster it's they leave ruts wherever they go and of course they always say they're not responsible for that so we appreciate that the we appreciate the common schools in neighbor with but there for 30 years this is not an envy situation we want them to stay we really value what they do we're a little disappointed that didn't communicate with us because we had been asking for the last month to talk with someone but there's in our minds no need to put a dumpster right at the edge of our property when it can stay where it is or be moved down to where the if you notice just beyond that apron you refer to there's a barn and there's no reason the dumpster couldn't be put there if they need the space so uh you know we're just concerned and then recently there was somebody had discharged deeter paint or something in that area so we're worried that this is going to become an industrial area and you know there's i think mr lew referred to there's nothing but roots there well the previous administrator of the common school not not the current one on the guys of uh under the guys of safety felt that the trees needed to come down because they might be diseased and when they came down there was really no evidence that they were but nothing has been replanted and so that's why there's nothing about roots and the ground has eroded there so um you know i know that mr lew was referring to this as an improvement over what's there and that that would be true now but it would it would appear that someone should have replaced the trees that had been cut down before there was also a tree at the at the beginning of the driveway which was removed i think because it blocked the site of the drivers and there was nothing wrong with that tree either so there's about 18 trees they're now missing and are affecting the watershed in our opinion so anyway our primary concern is that please don't put the dumpster right on our property line when it when you have other options and we're asking the committee to please ask them to amend this this proposal so that the dumpster does not go there thank you thank you um at this time i see no other hands um so i'll come back to board members um i just have one question um so we're looking at a property in the red line does the dumpster need to stay on the property for that or could it go on to the other properties just wondering i i don't know if i can provide a full answer for that but where the dumpsters currently sit as you know is right here uh on it would be on your left side as you get to the end of the paved drive um right in this area um if we were to put the dumpster dumpsters back there we would you know we would lose at least one space which is not the end of the world um but it is it has been troublesome and an inconvenience to get refuse and recyclables and so forth out to that location because they have to come from the buildings and somehow you know get get the items down across the gravel drive etc um to this location uh the reason we put it here uh off of the emergency road is that um since there is a quote unquote you know semi paved drive there it made sense to allow the dumpster truck to use that as well and pick up the refuse and recyclables uh here it's a much easier path or much easier um task to get the refuse and recyclables from the buildings down this walk and over to the dumpsters rather than having to you know cross over the gravel area and in this case if it was back here the you know they'd still have to you know whatever cross over the the pave the pavement um there there might be a couple or one or two other areas to consider I I guess I'd have to um I'd have to have a discussion with Kevin at a minimum about about those locations but um I don't you know Kevin do you have any thoughts about that do we do are we can we make a commitment that we can not put the dumpster location here up against or closer to the property uh to the neighbor's property um do we need time to look at that or think when we need time to look at it I don't want to I can't make a commitment especially if we're going to jeopardize I don't approval in any way because then that would that would completely jeopardize our time frame but um Mr Noonan if it would be of any I mean well two things one um not being somebody who works directly at the school but nevertheless I apologize that you've been trying to speak to somebody over there and nobody's gotten back to you but two one of the parts of the plan that doesn't show up on here is that that the dumpster area unlike as it is now would be enclosed all right there would be a you know a fence enclosure around it especially on the back side of the property um so that and it would it would be it would be enclosed on the front as well so bears would not be able to get in there but also you would not be able to see the dumpsters from the from the rear of the property so that's that's one thought um the other thought is is we we we surely would look at alternative options I don't further away suggesting the barn the barn location which if I'm assuming this is the structure Mr Noonan was referring to I mean that's like you know double the distance of what they're doing now to haul um you know whatever carts or whatever down the road is I think they'd need to get some carts and or something impossible for the students to empty trash or recycling or anything and there is a hill that's just far away I think um I'm gonna recognize um Christine Bestrup and then go back to the board members I see Maria has her hand up I just wanted one quick question where the dumpsters proposed right now and the red line I was at the site visit but I can't remember what kind of fence or is there a fence what what runs along those properties current oh it's weird right now I mean there is screening uh there is vegetation but you you know you can see through the trees to to the neighbors um some of the neighbors have more vegetation than others along the backs of their lots um but there's not a fence there there's no there's no I think there's one neighbor that has fence right see that simply right okay this neighbor has the neighbors that put up fences the school does not have a fence on that property line correct okay thank you we are proposing some evergreen screening around the back of that dumpster location as well that's good to know that's what those little circles are they're plantings yes thank you so I'm going to recognize Chris Bestrup and then I see Maria's hand press so I wanted to suggest that you could create a condition that would deal with this you could say that you would approve the plan as it is shown in this in this drawing and then have the applicant come back to you prior to actually paving the parking lot in the driveway to show where the dumpster might be relocated and if it's not possible to relocate it they could make that statement at that time have them come back to you at a public meeting and perhaps at that same meeting they could come back to you with a revised plan showing the note that mr. Marshall talked about putting on that area down at the apron of the driveway about you know stating exactly what was going to occur there and when so that's just a thought does that sound reasonable mr. Lou mr. Campbell I think so yeah yeah it'll give us a little bit of time to discuss you know what we can do with the dumpster I have a couple ideas but you know obviously I like to get right Kevin that way we could move ahead with this but then you just have to come back before you start before we start or before we're finished Chris yeah that's what I thought um I'm gonna recognize Maria well um no I yeah I just thought my hand um I wanted to mention it's not shown on this drawing you're looking at but on one of the drawings it looks like the dumpster is actually about four feet lower than the adjacent property so not only will it have trees right dancing they're talking about it's actually sunken down quite a bit so I'm pretty comfortable with the location because of the access for the trucks the proximity to the students and staff being able to get to the the dumpster and you know wherever it's located along that um north property it's going to be next to an adjacent property you know a neighbor and so you know because the school sounds like they're being good neighbors I assume that they're going to you know take the proper precautions of a good neighborhood with their um dumpster and also I just wanted to go ahead and move that we approve the plan with the conditions that Miss Brestrup just mentioned about um possibly locating the dumpster although um I'm actually fine with it as is but it sounds like there was um discussion leading to having that as a condition as well as the condition Mr. Marshall mentioned about noting the permeable permeable paving possibly coming if the deed restriction is not revised in the three-year time period so I think that was a motion and that would be also closing the public hearing um is there a second to that you're second okay I hear Doug for a second may I say something yes Chris did I did send you some possible conditions in an email today they're pretty minor but you might want to take a look at them before you actually vote I was gonna go through those I have them in front of me thank you Chris for that reminder um I do want to go back to Mr. Lu um Maria brought up a great point I had forgotten about that you had talked about this is the last time he came to us about lowering that um a hammerhead area and how low would that go so would that set the dumpster down yes it would um the and the the reason why it's lowering well the approach to that area is pretty steep and the fire department has said when they tried to drive a truck there sometimes they can't even get up that initial incline so they required that the emergency drive be at a five percent maximum slope if we do that it requires um I believe that the road is cut down approximately two feet lower than worth what the existing ground is so there's going to be a an embankment if you will cut around that dumpster area to be able to you know just have it cut into the hillside so to speak so it will be lower um in grade than what then then the elevation at the property line and I didn't check it but I appreciate you're looking at that Maria if it's about four feet I guess you know that that's we'll take that bit of information and and and run with it so we have about a four foot gray difference from where the dumpster is to the property line so would there be a retaining wall on that L that's not on the drawing but we'd be losing some of the uh we probably have to thin out some of the trees right at the face or you know right at the tree line now but we are again we're trying to add the evergreens in there um to have a more solid screen uh visually to the name for the neighbors um if it's to remain in that location so I I can't remember exactly I know there is a hill and you're cutting into it so we're saying somewhere between two and four feet you'd be cutting into that putting a retaining wall and then putting evergreen on top of that there's no there's no retaining wall we're just cut bank embankment um so how many feet two or four because wouldn't four have an erosion no not necessarily you know we we can still do a two to one slope there and that's easily managed you know with vegetation okay that's sure if you plant things that will help hold it um okay at chris your hand is up do you have any comments on this right no I'll lower that um so at this point I'm going to ask are there any other comments from the board um if not I'm going to go through the conditions I we did receive them today um late in the day um but there are there's four of them um I don't know if you have them Pam I'll just so so Mike I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you to to stop sharing your screen and I can share mine okay thank you there is that all right is that set yes thank you so the first one was the driveway and parking area shall be built uh substantially in accordance with the plan submitted to the planning board on whatever date that is um and that's standard okay so the second one the driveway and parking shall be management plan um and approved on with the exception that the six parking spaces along the driveway will be returned to grass which I think the new plans we have show that they're back to grass yes the third one landscaping um planting plan continually that looks pretty standard and the third fourth one okay applicant shall work with the town to seek relief the state from the deed restriction limiting the amount of impervious surface 25 percent if this relief is not granted by the state the applicant shall install permeable plan uh uh paving at the entry drive or the apron as we've been referring to it as shown on the plan entitled overall site plan option two uh reduction of the impervious dated june 10th 2020 within two years of construction seasons of the date of this site plan approval so maria you made the motion uh it was unclear whether you were proposing two years or three years um in your motion sorry I can match the conditions what it says written well these are draft so we can change these conditions to whatever we want so I have you in the seat now um this is and we get you can we could do three and then debate or we can do two you know and have people talk but um speaking about three years as the what was presented as the preferred time period the applicant would prefer three they originally proposed five and it was countered by the town for two and now they're coming back asking for three okay uh I feel like our discussion it as three um please correct me if I'm not speaking correctly well I will look so if if you're saying the motion contains three we're still in the discussion part um of the motion so if we just put it out there right now as three and then if any of the other board members have a comment or an issue we'd like it to be two they can raise their hands um also any other board members can raise their hands if there's additional conditions they want to include um and Miss Besser please if you've got anything else to add um Chris I see your hand so did you want to add a condition about coming back to show um potential other location alternate location of the dumpster or do you want to just let that be we leave it as it's shown um and we keep the condition as number the number four condition as three years um as well as conditions one through three if those are um clear enough so that's the new motion is leave the dumpster as is um have the four conditions and have the um applicant come back in three years or do the work within three years yes do that and hopefully they'll hear from about their deed before then okay uh Chris your hand is up is do you want to make a finding that this um proposal meets the relevant requirements of the section 11.24 of the zoning bylaw and you're talking about all sections that I can't remember what that part is or is that uh 30 percent that section is the section that we normally go through on a big project we'll go through it line by line and say whether it does or does not meet that particular criteria it's the list of um of site plan review criteria and normally on a smaller project or a more simple project you just make a blanket statement that it meets the require the relevant requirements rather than going through those items step by step because you've gone through them and you know okay yes then of course included um I'm seeing no other hands so at this time um we have a motion on the table we have conditions and a finding um and we'll take a vote I do see Doug's hand just came up yeah I thought I'd second Maria's motion great thank you all right I see no other hands um Chris I'm going to put your hand down I don't think yep okay so at this time I will do a roll call for the motion um lost my list though I know Michael's on it first Michael yes Maria approve David approve Jack move um Janet approve and myself approve did I forget anyone Doug approve thank you so that's unanimous we have seven so I thank our applicants for coming thank you very much thank you all right thank you I I can I know you all worked really hard I never thought uh just some repaving a driver would be so hard either did we sure but thank you thank you for your good night so we're going to move on here to our agenda we're going to move on to the next site plan review um this is it is now 751 and in accordance with the provisions of MGL chapter 48 this public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and it's being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR 2020-11 Amherst community television DBA Amherst media corner of gray street and main street request site plan review approval to construct a new building and associated site improvements for Amherst media a 501c3 educational institution under section 3.330 point zero of the zoning bylaw bn zoning district map 14b parcels 250 and 251 so first I'll just ask uh are there any board disclosures raise your hand if anyone wants to make a disclosure statement I'll give that a second um and then we will move to the applicants um I'm seeing no hands so I'm going to introduce we have I know bucky sparkle here representing the applicant he's the engineer um yes would you want me to give a history of the sure first or do you want to introduce everybody first um let me just identify who's here for them um and then yeah just um I was gonna say raise your hand chris and I won't forget about you um just so I'll just ask mr sparkle who else do you see um who else is here for the applicants all right well this evening we have you're a little quiet so yeah no this is good this is what we work out okay I'll uh raise my voice as best I can normally this works just fine is that better yeah you're a little quiet is everyone else can you hear him okay yeah I get some so-so so just a little quiet speak up I I'll do my best to speak up I know I'm going to be speaking a while tonight I don't want to burn out I know it's also possible to adjust volume on your end so I'm hopefully we can keep this together but uh to answer the question about who is available tonight um Jim Lesko the executive director of Amherst media we have board member Ed Severance is here Bill Gillan the lead architect from Gillan Collaborative Architects is on the line and uh I'm not seeing any other names from the team on the screen it is possible we have John Krifka as well as attorney Michael Pill our legal counsel may or may not be waiting in the wings this evening um lucky I could not see those people or I could not see those names in the attendees so it's possible they may not be here tonight there were various things happening in their lives that okay they feel that representation is adequate okay I think we have some don't we Pam I see Bill Gillan and I have moved Bill Gillan in as an attendee and Ed Severance and Jim Lesko so it was um attorney Pill and John Krifka that I could not see okay all right so thank you for coming um at this time I'll just ask if Miss Bestrup director of planning would like to give us an introduction or a summary because this did come to us like a year ago yes I just thought I would give a little bit of a history on this project um it's been a long time coming so I'm Chris Brestrup planning director and um the property was formerly all one property which included the Henry Hills house the two front properties on which the Amherst media project is going to is proposed to be built and three single family home properties along Gray Street that was all one big property the Henry Hills house was formerly used as the Amherst boys club some people will remember that in 2007 and 2008 um it was the property was subsequently purchased by two LLCs um I think at least one of which was associated with Barry Roberts and subsequently Jerry Godera bought the property and subdivided it into six parcels so we had the one parcel containing the Hills house the three along Gray Street and the two frontage lots that we're talking about tonight in 2013 town meeting rezoned the two frontage lots on Main Street along with other parcels along the north side of Main Street from RG to uh which is general residence to BN neighborhood business this was done to create a small village center in this part of town the property on the other side of Main Street had already been rezoned to business village center at around that same time so Mr. Godera and others moved the homes that are along Gray Street from other locations in town to create a new streetscape along the west side of Gray Street formally that had been lawn area and a lot of trees and brush the Henry Hills house was renovated and it's now owned by new owners and I believe it's operated as both a single family home and a bed and breakfast but they may be able to create correct that later if that's not the case at the time of the rezoning Mr. Godera had been discussing the two frontage lots with Amherst media so this was back in 2013 who needed to recognize that they needed a new home Mr. Godera showed town meeting a plan for the Amherst media building which was located at the southeast corner of the two lots with the parking lot for the new building to be located on the western portion of the two lots so that was shown to town meeting back in 2013 at the end of 2013 Amherst media which was then known as Amherst community television purchased the property and they've been working on developing the property as their new home since that time in 2019 Amherst media submitted a site plan review application for a new building that was to be located on the western portion of these two lots and it received a lot of criticism from the planning board from the public and eventually from the local historic district commission Amherst media withdrew their site plan review application in the summer of 2019 so that was about a year ago and then they began a lengthy conversation with the local historic district commission about a new building designed by a local architect for these two lots so after months of public hearings with the local historic district commission the commission issued a certificate of appropriateness for the design that you will see tonight so i just thought that information would be helpful to you in your review thank you thank you that's helpful um so at this point i'll turn it over to mr. sparkle who is going to um give us a presentation is there anything you'd like to share on your screen christine can i just interrupt one yeah did you ask for the board disclosures i think i did okay were there any i'm sorry i missed no there weren't no there weren't and um so we'll have the uh applicants presentation and then we'll get into the site visit and stuff okay thanks bucky you should be all set to share your screen as a panelist i cannot hear you at all yep you're muted or oh i can barely hear you you're really quiet is that any better a little better i might be having a microphone troubles here today i apologize normally zoom and my system worked just great i did uh just move my office so maybe i dropped my microphone i will speak as loudly as i can um and i'm sorry that tonight's the night that i'm finding out i have a microphone issue that's okay while you're speaking we can all up our volumes too to better hear you okay hopefully this works out um can i verify do you do you see the screen with my logo on it yes all right great all right i see what appears to be your first slide yes it is uh first of uh several i'll warn you now there's quite a bit of information to cover on this project a lot of details that have been considered now for a couple years and have been through multiple versions of public processes so we've already done a little bit of discussion regarding the application team myself namers media we have jim lesko here executive director at severance as well as their supporting our supporting personnel architect who is more than supporting is really the the lead on this project in terms of site design and building design feeling collective architects and uh a legal council of michael pill who may or may not be here this evening it's already been stated that amherst media is a 501 c3 nonprofit educational institutions been operating at amherst since 1977 been performing public service on that entire time and this evening and for this project the goal is a permanent home an office supporting the educational mission and community services that it strikes a balance between the interests of the local historic area and the needs of a modern basically technology enterprise which really is what amherst media is and before i dive a little further into my presentation i do want to give jim lesko an opportunity to chime in and unmute himself i know he has a statement he'd like to present to the board before i continue so jim if you're available please go ahead a good evening madam chair and planning board members amherst media is architectural and site plans to build our new media facility on a gray street property has significantly evolved since we were last before you on march 20th of 2019 since that time we have secured a certificate of appropriateness from the local historic district commission as christine has already stated our journey to this point in time has been shaded publicly by those opposed to anything being built upon this parcel of land this included the widely distributed thought that amherst media was offered sufficient money for our land and part of land be turned over to the town as a park we were to move into one of the schools and everyone would be satisfied to quickly clarify the amount offered for our land was 25 percent less than the properties assessed value the town expressed concern and doubt regarding the allocation of funds to maintain the donated parkland and finally the preliminary discussions with the school department raised some limited possibility that would require an addition to be built to attached high school regardless of being told in editorials that we should accept this offer if we really cared about the amherst community or else we should expect no financial support for our capital campaign it is obvious amherst media did not agree with either part of that argument now we are in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic the town's financial picture is very precarious the schools are trying to reorganize their classrooms and general facility space to accommodate the new state safety reopening mandate the proposals would not have been made everyone not have made everyone especially Amherst media satisfying we are here to offer an opportunity to the residents of Amherst to witness the construction of a new independent media center a center propped up on the shoulders of those residents and students staff and board members and most importantly viewers who for the past 44 years created captured and watched the political educational cultural history of this community it is within this building we see the publicly called for expansion of civic dialogue and interaction for all people the Amherst area and beyond to have the opportunity to be heard that has always been our mission and will continue to be so while the site plan you have tonight is not the same plan submitted by us last march this plan does however reflect the advice this body gave us the one piece of advice you gave that proved to be the most beneficial was quote to adhere closely to the recommendations made by the local historic district on quote the filing points for the recommendations the LHDC made to Amherst media and presented to you on march 20th 2019 one explore the possibility of placing the building on the east portion of the property two considering lowering the ridgeline of the building three examine alternative building forms that reflect the historic setting on the north side of the main street and four retain a professional registered architect suitable to design a building appropriate for the significant important property in Amherst the planning board reiterated the LHDC recommendations adding a desire for a 3d model lot size verification collaboration with Tom engineered explore alternative groundwater control and size and materials for all signage what was vehemently stressed by both yourselves and the LHDC was the need to and i quote secure a professional architect who can assist in looking at the project holistically with great sensitivity to the adjacent parcels and scenic view we followed your collective advice the level of professionalism in cooperation displayed by gilin collaborative and responding to LHDC commissioners and community input regarding the building's design was of the highest order we are equally appreciative of our site engineer bucky sparkle who overcame the numerous obstacles inherent to the property their expertise and high professional standards makes this submitted submit a worthy of public appreciation and support i'd like to now introduce you to again our site engineer back to bucky sparkle who will walk you through the submitted plans plans that reflect the LHDC certificate of reprogramminess and thank you for giving me this time thank you it's formal presentation time so in terms of an outline i'll get to the formal application request we'll do a little more background some of this has been covered so i can move quickly a little about the historic district commission process we'll talk about the site plan architecture content of the application there are a couple of waivers that we are looking for regarding parking and traffic and then we'll wrap it all up here tonight the formal request is that we are seeking site plan review approval under amherst bylaw section 3.330 non-profit educational institution we are requesting waivers from bylaws 7.004 point 103 11.22 i can't see it because there's stuff on my screen that has everybody's face on it you can probably read it and i can't that's funny oh wait 11.221 i figured out my technology and 11.2436 plus the planning board rules and regulations article 2 section 3b additional information item 6 the last three of those have to deal with traffic studies impact statements the first two of those have to do with with parking so i'll get into those details a little bit later we talked about some of the background i'll move quickly the lot was created by the previous owner of what is now the hendry hills house the zoning was changed in 2013 amherst media purchased it in 2013 after the zoning change there was a comment that the previous developer gedera presented a plan that was amherst media's proposal or something along those lines i want to be clear that that's not true that plan was not amherst media's plan that was a concoction of that owner and developer in fact if you look at the little tiny text on the side of that plan it says something like ssc building it was not for amherst media and that proposal was on the gray street side a three and a half story building so if people were happy with that back in the day we're proposing something much much smaller but i think that's just a minor misconception we did apply previously 2019 and brought in gillian collaborative architects who then spent several meetings going through the process of redesigning the site with the historic district commission and we earlier this year did receive a certificate of appropriateness jim already talked about these is do my job says we need to the board said hey get a get a more qualified architect we brought in gillian collaborative who if you're not aware is an architect bill gillian himself helped write the rules for the historic district the rules and regulations has been involved in many historic property projects in the town of amherst i don't think his offices are directly across the street from this project it has a vested interest in maintaining a beautiful view of henry hill's property and i don't think he could get a more perfect match for this project on this site in this town than gillian collaborative so i think it was a very lucky stroke that we were able to obtain them we did provide some 3d modeling for the historic district commission i'll show some screenshots from that basically we have adhered very closely to the historic district commission recommendations one of the strongest of which is move the building to the east which we have done the local historic district commission we had seven hearings with them between august and january that had a major impact on the site plan there were many versions of the building and the massing and the placement and juggling all the things that a building needs to have and the commission said you know you need to do a few things you know you definitely have to preserve the historic muscape so that was the primary thing we've done several things to change the building a little bit so that it fits both the residential character of the buildings on gray street because this is transitional property we have residential zoning and residential homes on one side of the lot the other side is business and there are businesses to the east and to the south so we wanted to have a facade that sort of reflected that and still be the character of historic buildings in order to put the building on the east side below part of the site we had to move the stormwater management system or portion of it just the infiltration to the uphill portion of the site so i have made water go uphill for this project and other things that the district commission said was we don't want any anything to block the view so we can't have any tall landscape features on the west side so we don't have any trees or similar plantings that would obfuscate the view and the commission did write a letter of support in addition to the certificate of appropriateness that letter was to the planning board and i'll just quote one sentence saying the commission approved the plans because the placement on the property makes the building consistent with the historic character of the district you'll find wording like that multiple times in the letter of support so we think we've done a really good job meeting the commission's requirements which were heavily based upon not just the commissioners opinions but a great degree of public input briefly uh the lot itself there was a question the lot size is 24,010 square feet according to our surveyors so just over a half and acre it's friendly vacant it's slopes to the southeast the parcel IDs have been stated for the record it is zoned neighborhood business historic district i also want to point out if you were to go to the master plan and look at the economic development uh the growth of existing businesses including creation of downtown business and mix you bucky uh you're cutting in and out oh no yeah i have a question jack you have something to ask what why maybe you should just call in with his phone and just use the audio on his phone is that possible and still share the screen yes you you stay where you are and add add another all right more technology here to get around my technology um and you sound okay but just it just started to start cutting up then okay it does not seem we're moving a wire yeah so you have a mic issue somewhere a short no wire i i guess i do you will need to mute his zoom microphone i will do that once i get us through thank you don't we can tell everyone who are the zoom experts now i thought i had this down all right so give me a second while i guess i talk to a computer and input the id can i just verify while i'm waiting it says three one three six two six six seven nine nine can you confirm the number i'm to dial that number should work yes it is ringing and then she'll bring you on you'll have to start i'm gonna say star nine oh it tells me to let me try it again three one three six two six three one six two six six seven nine nine i'm somewhere between laughing and crying right now keep breathing it'll be fine and i think there's a secondary number which is six four six eight seven six nine nine two three yes okay i'll try that one next because the other one went to a message is it asking you would push star nine it says no one is available to answer the call so i'll try the six four six number um six four six eight seven six his voice is coming through pretty well now i know okay well i'll just leave that number on on my screen yes so if we'll let you know if it starts to get weird again and we'll try the other news i'm and i do apologize i i have no idea why the tech is leaving laying down tonight don't worry that's murphy's law that's what of course i have at least a zoom meeting a week this is the first time i've had this problem so all right i'll i'll keep going here um i had been speaking a bit um about the master plan and the village center and just emphasizing that the type of development before this land is is very much in line with what the master plan and the village center ideas are so let's start looking at a couple of plans then this is the existing site right now the darker green is the property later green is residences around gray street is to the east main street is to the south it's presently open the original site plan showed a retaining wall on the northern property of 14 gray street some fencing shed a little bit of pavement landscaping that was all moved about two weeks ago so this existing condition plan is a little out of date and as much as there is now even less on the property there's a blank slate with a couple of stumps you can also see on this plan where we did soils testing which is in particularly important at this point but it could be later looking at the proposed site plan the simplified version of it here so the building in yellow and the parking area in gray you have a retaining wall on the northern side and i'm going to zoom in a little bit just so we can see some of the detail here i think that makes it bigger for everyone so you can see the retaining wall that will be a fieldstone retaining wall and more of a goshen stone style designed to match the existing retaining wall that belongs to 14 gray street we have an emergency egress only on the east side which is why it doesn't have a continued sidewalk the main entrance from the parking lot is on the northern side of the building in this area and then we have the pedestrian entrance for the main street that will have the sort of front entrance through here the parking lot is effectively sunken and well hidden by the building to the south and we'll see there's landscaping and other features we can get into that and briefly going to the dimensional regulations well we have nearly twice the lot area we need we have more than twice the punchage that we need we have the setback that we need and this i'll take a pause a moment there had been a point raised that bucky it happened again then okay um is it better now it is yes are you touching a wire or something i i am not touching anything i have a mic that sits on my desk and i'm not touching it so uh i i'm not sure what else to tell you right now but just keep letting me know don't lean back and look up right as long as you stay leaning forward is there a wire running on the floor no it no okay i'm sorry i wish i i wish i had better information here just okay let me know when i go out but the the setback issue i think is important to bring up at this point and that is because part of the bylaw indicates that for an educational use or religious use that the setback would normally be doubled for most zoning districts we had some confusion around this and the building commissioner rob mora wrote a letter this afternoon that clarified that section 6.6 does not apply to this application um and that the setbacks as shown are appropriate for the project so we have what we need and um that may come up later in the meeting but the commissioner has determined that we're okay you've cut out bucky okay um now you're back in thanks for letting me know we'll just have to manage this i guess help us on the table lean forward all right i'll get i'll get as close as i can here maybe that'll make a difference but so building coverage we're just over half of what's allowed a lot coverage we're you know what bucky you're gone again okay let me try the phone number try the other one let me let me i'm ready okay dialing for dollars could be thunder enlightening it could be yeah that's okay now he's an east captain i am in leads i just moved oh well it looks clear there did i make a pen um one phone call in listener yes okay where are you are you 4004 yes all right i'm going to move you into the panelists all right and i'm going to mute my pc's speaker here oh i can't move him into a panelist but i can allow him to tap let's try that okay so now now i'm in now you need to mute your computer basically yeah mute my mic is that better yes yes okay because i do need to hear everybody else talk but then my phone picks up that same sound um so the next question is am i able to manipulate so do you see the site plan now yes yes okay and then dimension okay so here we go again um uh just to cut it short we need all the dimensional regulations all right moving down the line here this is a drainage and utility plan what we are looking at is a let's see the details most of the utilities run out of the north side of the building connected gray street so the sanitary is in green we have blue for water we are proposing a hypothetical gas service doubt we'll ever get to use it but we at least wanted on the plan in case we have that opportunity we have power and communications coming from the nearby utility pole over the northeast corner and then all of the orange is the storm water management system we have the detention tanks these 12 000 gallons of underground storage through here with control structure that would feed a new storm manhole on gray street this has been reviewed and approved by jason skeels and we have on the west side the infiltration system which is all of this area through here involves a collection tank we collect the roof water we put it in the settling tank we have a recharge volume and a pump and that's how we get it uphill and in this orange shaded area is a pressure distribution system that will then disperse the storm water over a three-day period at a rate of roughly five one hundredths of an inch per hour so that's how we get the water back into the ground in a very slow drip fashion also we do have site lights proposed and we have a lighting plan later but we have two poles one on the west side one on the east side the height of those light fixtures is 10 feet we also have a bollard over on the east side to make sure that these parking spaces are reasonably illuminated and under each doorway oh we also have a building mounted light a wall light here that illuminates this arching section of the parking lot and above each door there's a light i'll talk a little more about lighting later i'm going to back out so this is the architects elevation drawing with approximate colors that they put together for the presentation and seeing what would the building look like when you're not a bird and we did receive unanimous approval from the historic district commission in terms of the certificate of appropriateness for this building this is the main street side this is the business east side of the building it's a broad structure it's about 105 feet wide and it has a relatively modest roof line considering there's a television studio underneath it it's a 26 foot high to the peak from the finish floor level and it has a nice entrance area a lot of glass fenestration and a series of other windows also we do have a sign a pin mounted sign over the main door and over on the edge of the the building on that side toward gray street it's a greek revival style and it definitely blends the residential and commercial character of the neighborhood going back in time just a little bit hopefully i won't give anybody tremors here this was what we were originally proposing came from a different designer who was not an architect familiar with historic district principles it met amherst media's internal needs very well but we we definitely understand why the community just thought that maybe this wasn't the most appropriate building so the outline of the new building has been transposed in that orangeish color and you can see that it's it's a lower structure it's a more elegant structure in almost every regard if we do want to get into details of the architecture and elevations i'm i'm happy to do so the only one i really want to point out at this point is the gray street view and vista so this is the east end of the building along gray street and this structure has is the part that is to blend much more with the residential feel of gray street so the peak of the roof while it is 26 feet high it is also not it is lower than the building just up the street and the width of the building is about 55 feet which is less than the width of some of the buildings abutting it so in terms of scale and mass it is a more diminutive structure and has a much more residential feel the entrance is more like an old-time you know classic new england front porch entrance uh even though this is not actually an entrance i will say this is just an emergency exit but from an aesthetic standpoint it's a residential look and feel looking a little bit on the inside i might have to drag this just to give a sense that there there is a television studio and a control room and another small studio so that takes up a good third of the inside of the building there are several offices for various tasks we have a conference room break room you know it's a business lobby and entrance as well as a computer center that and this is part of the educational aspect of this business here and looking at some of the views this is part of the 3d modeling that we're able to provide to the local historic district commission and uh there there could be a lot of information that we can go through so i'm going to try and minimize where i might bring attention so i'm going to look at the bird's eye view for a moment and so main street and gray street are here this is the property in the slight pink coloration and this is the dimensional model of the building itself relative to all of the other buildings so all of these buildings are to scale and we're developed by a UMass architecture student on our behalf and to give a sense of where things are relative to everything else you can see that the building height just to the east are fairly significant and quite in line with is being proposed on gray street the building across the street at 401 main street is actually a story to maybe a story and a half taller than this building so the large when you're coming down up and down main street you'll notice that 401 main street will be the the largest bulkiest tallest structure in the rear here we have the emmer's women's club and the henry hills house at 38 gray street and from this aerial i want to point out that if uh what there's a talk about view scape so we the old building was way over here on the west side it was located relatively in front of the henry hills building so we've moved it to the east as far as we can place it and the setbacks have been fine tuned by the historic district commission they wanted to match main street and gray street and what was in the neighborhood so that's what we've got and as far as taking if you were to be walking or driving up main street the objects that prevent a clear view of what was this is all once open lawn we now have you know beautiful homes here and trees so it is impossible to see the henry hills building until you are roughly here if you were driving westward or walking westward you wouldn't be able to see that building till you got pretty much to the end of the proposed amherst media building so the the building as we're showing it is making very little impact on the view scape and the the primary open and dead on view of that gorgeous architectural feature is fully unobstructed by our proposal and if we want to get into some of the other details of what you can see from where we certainly can but i do want to keep moving this presentation along looking a little bit at the landscaping zoom in a bit again what we are proposing are a couple of larger trees on the east side we have a disease resistant elm a white oak tree various perennials and shrubbery around the building and the smaller trees here are more diminutive like there's a magnolia there's a weeping ketsura and a service berry that will provide a lot of color and as well as some food for wildlife and importantly on the west side we have a bank of they look like boxwoods that's what is stuck in my head and what did i do there sorry i'm trying to get the name of that particular tree is it's called a steed Japanese holly it is a broadleaf evergreen tree if you know what a boxwood looks like that's it's very similar it looks nothing like an arborvite and we're glad that's the case arborvites are not they're not my favorite and definitely not the architects favorite this was a landscape plan it does have my title block but the landscape layout was designed by hand by taylor davis landscaping so they're really the brain trust behind this i can answer rudimentary questions on it but i'd have to go back to the landscaper if we get into you know what one species need versus another i was just the drops person on this particular plan moving on to the lighting plan we i talked briefly about it first i'll zoom back into the site itself we do have a photometric plan of foot candles that's what all the chaotic numbers and crosses are all over the paved areas so we we had a lot of conversation with the light designer here who is by the way oh now the name is escaping me but is the same light designer that has designed virtually every light that the town of amherst has installed in the last decade all the downtown lights the historic lights they're very familiar with amherst and the preferences of the municipality as well as many projects in town so they're they were a really good source for this particular project and we're trying to balance you know historic areas usually there isn't a lot of bright light so we were really trying to minimize and get down to just what was needed to provide safety and make sure that we're not you know crossing lot lines with any illumination so we've been pretty successful in that we have just a little bit of light on the sidewalk which will help if there are pedestrians when vehicles are coming and going we've got a nice gradient in this green areas for the sweet spot of light attenuation we have on the northern neighbor which is was about most concern of ours being a resident the vast majority of these points are zero point zero there is an odd anomaly and we talked to the guy about the model that even though we have zeros here here here here here somehow past it we have a couple of point ones point one and i do want to point that out because the late designer says that the software itself will it's not a glitch but its margin of error is zero point one foot candles so it's his opinion that since there are zeros in front and zeros all around it that that's just sort of statistical whirling in the software and i do want to point out that that this is there's a trench drain here and this part of that property is a relatively steep slope it's not a place where people hanging out there's quite a bit of plantings and vegetation through here so even if somehow the software was right and it went from dark to light again from zero to zero point one there are plantings that really the light would never get there anyway and it's nowhere near the building so that was a lot to say that i think we're good at the lot lines there are three lights that we do want to keep on for safety around the clock at night and those are the three lights over the doors all the lights in the parking lot will be on photometric sensors and timers and they're designed to turn off at 9 30 p m embers media closes at six but you know sometimes people stay overlay at work so we wanted to make sure that people were able to get in and out safely and have a dark parking lot at a reasonable hour adjacent to a residential neighborhood so even all of these values out here and in the street they would all blank out at zero at 9 30 p m and take a moment to look at the signs a little bit need to back up here so the the way the information was presented to me it comes in two sorts so we have what are pin mounted signs and i pointed these out on the facade of the building above the door and on the east side several feet off the ground these are attached to the building with pins they're only four entire letters so they're fairly diminutive and just adequate to be able to read from the street but definitely not distance a more ornamental sign is proposed on the site oh i should point out where that is so let me go back to here so on the north side of the driveway entrance is the ornamental sign so this will be a sign that would have a stone facade such that it will reflect the stone walls along the back of the retaining wall and the neighbor stone wall so going back to that image you can see the hand drawn sketches here from the architect where it's it's you know an elegant and fairly stately sign with the embers media logo and a stone facade that would match the goshen stone at the top it has a slate cap if you look in the cross section has a two foot wide slate cap a little hood for a led light that would just just like the face of the sign it's shielded on three sides so you would have to be directly under the sign to get any light bleed off from that the ends it's it's going to be on the ends in the north side all look like that stone wall that is pre-existing and we are going to match looking into getting away from some of the visuals and getting into the application content we we do have to talk about a management plan so quickly there isn't going to be a dumpster on this site it's just going to be barrels that are hauled off to the side when it's time for pickup professionals are going to handle landscape and snow the operating hours are i think 10 a.m. dimension that or 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and that's important to remember when we get into the traffic and school school scenario discussions as far as employees there are three full-time employees plus interns of a varying number and they're in a usually a part-time state as far as sound and storage and deliveries they're very minimal and similarly noise dust odor and building maintenance are also minimal all right so a little bit into the i said i talked more about parking so this is this is part of it so we the facility has been around i wrote down 45 years i realized it's only 44 years so i do have an error in my presentation i apologize but for 44 years amherst media has been operating they're well aware of what their parking needs are that this is not a new building a new office a new shopping center where people are making a guess about what they're going to need their needs are very well understood there are just three staff and a couple of interns a couple of short-term visitors that come and go for brief periods of time after reviewing their use and photos from the blessing of satellites or curse there of satellites the i've never seen more than four cars in the parking lot the amherst media says that they rarely rarely get over five vehicles in the parking lot and when i look at various photos historic data the average number of cars in the parking lot is 2.5 and this is one of the reasons that we feel that our waiver requests to have fewer parking spaces because we are requesting a parking spaces versus but the bylaw would normally require for an office which is 15 parking spaces so it's a it's a big difference however we know we don't have more than five cars at a time on this property and we also are very concerned about the site layout and the aesthetics we can hide in a car parking lot behind the building and at the bottom of a four foot slope and and add a little bit of shrubbery to the west side and those cars are going to virtually vanish from the main street and the triangle street perspectives you will of course be able to see into the parking lot from the driveway entrance on gray street but that is not a well-traveled not a well-traveled street except unless you're a student we can get into that a bit more and another reason that there are so few cars in a building of this size four and a half thousand square feet is that many of the users of this building are students or interns and they walk from school they ride their bikes they take the bus and the bus stop pvta is at the corner of gray and gray and main street so it is right there and that's one of the reasons one of the several reasons that Amherst media is interested in this site particularly is that it provides excellent public access to bus routes it provides excellent proximity to the high schools to the middle school to Amherst college and a short bus ride from UMass and these are many many of the visitors to this facility so the location on main street is is excellent and also significantly reduces the parking requirements for Amherst media and i do want to point out i know off or on street parking is sacrosanct you know you can't use it and we're not planning on using it but i do want to talk about the fact that it exists and there are 25 almost completely vacant parking spaces 24-7 on gray street that are on the same block you don't have to cross the street to go between Amherst media and a vast quantity of potentially overflow parking we have eight parking spaces we rarely need more than five on average we need two and a half but in the very very statistically unusual occurrence where we would have a full parking lot then there is safe and convenient parking that is almost never occupied adjacent to this building and i also want to point out that residential use of of street parking you know for a party or birthdays these are evenings and these are weekends where all of a sudden you get a big surge of parking for several hours those residential use peak times are not when this commercial business would be operating you know monday through friday 10 to 6 is usually not when somebody has a big party so in the extra rare occasion where Amherst media would need extra parking and residents of gray street would need extra parking these two things are not going to occur at the same time by any reasonable probability so it's sort of a the fallback position i know we can't use it officially but i just want to point out that it is available and it is substantially underutilized i know i sent a letter to the town which showed several satellite photos and they were usually zero cars parked there sometimes two cars parked there so there's quite a bit of availability all right this details a little bit with the traffic impact statements as well as waiver requests three of the five waiver requests are about traffic studies impact statements we're talking about an office with about three full-time staff here that would be driving we're not this another retail establishment or church or restaurant facilities that generate up to 20 times more traffic per square foot than a business and what we're really talking about is the use that's going to generate about as much traffic as one and a half residences so if you were to talk about you know adding one or two homes to gray street it would be extremely surprising for somebody say oh we should do a traffic impact study and see what impact one or two homes will have on gray street because it's pretty common sense that it would have virtually no impact and I do want to point out that and this is very important that it is understood that there is sometimes quite chaotic traffic on gray street with buses and young drivers people coming and going to the schools up gray street that traffic is real and it happens but it does not happen when Amherst media would be generating traffic these events occur at different times of the day Amherst media opens at 10 a.m schools are already in session by then school is let out and traffic is gone by 6 p.m when Amherst media closes and that's three staffs that work there would not be traveling at the hours that the understandable chaos that the schools generate occurs excuse me other than the schools gray street is a is a very low volume dead-end road I think when roughly that I know there's cross streets but it doesn't feed a larger neighborhood beyond during the sidewalk yesterday I did point out that I personally didn't notice one single car during the time we all met on site and maybe people noticed other things but when it's not school it's a very very quiet street additionally Amherst media's driveway is only 83 feet from Main Street it will be the first driveway so visitors to Amherst media are going to be coming from Main Street almost exclusively just because that's the nature of traffic in that part of town so the vehicles that would be traveling to Amherst media would not go in front of a single other driveway they don't drive down anybody's in front of anybody's house so the impact on gray street is is very very small I did mention that many of the visitors they don't drive they take the bus they bike they walk and it's I would say a bit of a hardship to have the traffic impact study done to demonstrate what I think logically in common sense I'm demonstrating now that there's very little traffic being generated by Amherst media for the situation moving on to comments we received two letters from Berkshire design group BDG this is an engineering company I have a lot of respect for and in this particular case they have been hired in by one of the neighbors that has the financial ability to bring in legal counsel and another engineering firm to do their best to make as look as bad as possible and that's their their right to do but the letter that we received first was about stormwater it had 13 points in it I did respond and provided a letter to the board as well as that other engineer the town engineer got it jason skeels had zero comments relative to the berkshire design group comments he had a few very minor points the largest of which was that he would like to see a belt and suspenders approach to make darn well sure that there's no possibility of ice ever coming over the sidewalk so he would like us to add a bit of a cut-off drain a curtain drain on part of the property just up hill the sidewalk which we're going to add to the plan just as jason recommended berkshire design group also provided a letter with 17 points regarding the site plan the vast majority of which were very minor and I talked about those in a letter and I'm happy to go into them but I'm doing a lot of talking here if you have questions we'll do that there was one point which I already touched upon that berkshire design group brought up and that was section 6.6 of the zoning bylaw and this is when my mic was cutting out so maybe I didn't make my point but 6.6 would say that an educational use or religious use would have to have a double setback requirement if you were to have a large church or a research facility or a dorm this makes an awful lot of sense the building is proposed while it does function and is you know charted to be an educational facility its use is really an office and it is a very small building relative to to a church or university building so doubling the setback doesn't make sense but more importantly and this is a quote from the building commissioner who released a letter this afternoon he says that section 6.6 of the zoning bylaw does not apply and the additional setback is not required so that's why I'm confident that the site as design does meet all the dimensional requirements of the town I am necessarily have to talk about waivers a little bit here I'll try and move through this quickly bylaw 7.004 talks about parking spaces and how many spaces the the gist of it is we are we're looking for eight instead of 15 and bylaw 7.90 allows waivers by the board for safety aesthetic and site design reasons we have very strong aesthetic and site design reasons in this particular case being in historic district primarily to preserve the viewscape this is a critical motivation for the plan and virtually every aspect of it the viewscape of course to the emmerce women's club which is mostly obscured by its own vegetation which is gorgeous but you can't see the building very well but really the Henry Hills house we we want we don't want to put a parking lot in front of that or we don't want to force the building to the west just to have 15 parking spaces when we only use two and a half parking spaces on average so additionally the historic district commission had stipulations that we did want to hide the cars we did want to preserve the lawn and even though that lawn on the west of the property is not no longer belongs to 38 Gray street Henry Hills it does still feel like it is contiguous and historically it was contiguous with that property so we are able to preserve that continuity and historic significance by having a small parking lot and it does also minimize the impact on the neighborhood the parking lot does meet all the design standards meet or exceeds them and the spaces of the eight proposed spaces also exceeds the building needs we have 44 years of parking and the average we have two and a half cars there almost never more than five cars so eight spaces are even that's going to be more than necessary almost every single day every hour of every day so we have confidence that the parking lot is proposed is more than adequate bylaw 7.103 this talks about you can't normally by the bylaw park a car within eight feet of the building or drive a car within five feet of the building and in a pre-submitted meeting with Mike Roy the fire safety officer fire safety officer I think is his title at the fire department he indicated that that rule is because there's concern about if a car catches fire we do not want to ignite the building that it's next to this is makes an awful lot of sense but he also said that well you can use fire retardant materials in the construction where you are less than eight feet from a parking space where we are less than five feet from a parking space and that takes care of the concern so this is what we're proposing we're we are using intermittent paint and or fire engineered materials within those areas of the construction just to ensure the the protection of the building itself that is definitely in Amherst media's interest as well going down the list all of these bylaw 11.221.2436 and the planning board rule and regulation dot dot dot item six talking about traffic study traffic reports traffic statements and I've always spoken about this a fair amount we are generating 12 to perhaps 20 trips per day that is about the same as one and a half residences peak hours only to see two or three trips if you look at them the numbers of it the access is off a low volume road off of gray street you know so long as it's not during school hours which we are not and there's the users of the building unlike a lot of offices do use public transit and walk and bike quite regularly so it diminishes the the traffic trip generation look this one says wrap up so I do want to mention that you know the project does address all the bylaw requirements we have followed the board's recommendations from 2019 we do have the support of the local historic district commission not just with the certificate of appropriateness but with an additional letter of support and we have made significant improvements to the building and to the site from its original our original submittal more than a year ago and substantially diminished the neighborhood impact and I would like to close with kind of a hypothetical of what if I really believe that this project is going to succeed in the permitting process but I do want to provide information to a small degree to the planning board but in a larger sense to the general public and the reality of what we're looking at two viable buildable lots on main street these are prime real estate in the historic district and if embers media is not successful then what happens next what if they're not successful and the project is denied so the land is going to be sold that is the logical next step and because if embers media's project after going through the process it has is not approvable then really no local small business is going to be willing to step in and pick this up so if in this business district somebody wants to buy the two lots that are there and use them as a single developable lot it's in all likelihood going to be some corporate entity so they're going to have a non-local interest they're going to have deep pockets and they're going to already know the history of these meetings and be ready to propose something that they think is going to work and they're going to have the wherewithal to to work that through the permitting process assuming they meet the regulations and appropriateness everybody has to do that but what's really more likely is that it won't be sold to a business it it will be left as two lots and sold as two single-family residences in the historic district and in that case many of the the dissenting perspectives that I've heard about this project the the concerns are made much worse with two single-family homes going up here for several reasons one and from a technical standpoint single-family homes do not have to manage their storm water so there's going to be increased runoff from the site the ici walk condition will in all likelihood continue and the the mitigation that is being offered by this commercial development is going to vanish that one of these lots only has frontage on main street in the turning lane so for them to get in and out of their house they're going to have to go through a relatively tricky intersection well not intersection but the lane widening it's it'll be a dicey little area to be getting in and out of from a residential driveway but is absolutely permissible by the bylaw and putting you know the the homes that would go up on these sites they're they're not going to be small little capes not not with the prime real estate in a historic district they're going to be commensurate with the large and beautiful homes on gray street so you will see a two-story home with an attic probably on each of these properties one of which is smack dab in front of the Henry Hills house so that viewscape is going to vanish they're going to have trees eventually and much of what people are fighting for to preserve this view is is going to be utterly lost when somebody comes and built a house there because the house doesn't go in front of the planning board goes in front of the historic district commission that you just have to provide appropriateness very very hard for any municipality as i know the board knows to say well you can't build here because we just don't want anything there if it's a buildable lot and the proposal meets the bylaw requirements the the building is is virtually guaranteed it has to be appropriate but it's almost certain to go forward as two single family homes if a project like embers media doesn't go forward and embers media is locally oriented it's been community service for many years they're going to manage their stormwater they're going to manage the stormwater coming at them from uphill from the embers women's club and from the Henry Hills house and this project pushed down to the east and low side of the site is going to really preserve the view of the Henry Hills building so these are things that i want the board to keep in mind and really the public to keep in mind that from my perspective that the embers media proposal is just about the best thing that could possibly be put on this property i know many people say nothing should go there if you want a bunch of property and had somebody tell you you can't build on it that's that's a bit of a problem to say property owner rates are real and this has been slated for development for a number of years so this this is what we're doing we're trying to meet the community needs and move forward with this village district and ideas for the town so with that thank you for your time and dealing with the technical difficulties i've been managing here and i turn it over now to the board for questions comments we'll go back and forth a little bit i'll turn my volume up and hopefully if you get echoey let me know but thank you thank you mr sparkles no that was all very informative and to be expected a lot of information um we'll give you a break for a minute um and that might be a good time for us to do our site visit report and then we'll do questions um from the board uh jack jumpsick i think volunteered to do the site visit report are you can you do that jack yes um so yeah a group of us met there i think everybody uh except Doug and Maria um and they had outlined the footprint of the building with a string and had a survey tripod set up with the with the actually the survey uh stick ruler whatever that so we get an idea of not only the horizontal layout of the structure but as well as the height of the crust of the of the roof line and on different ends of the building too as well so that was uh it was a very good site visit in terms of seeing what had happened we observed that the drainage coming from the henry hills house was converted into an underground drain that connects to the to the sewer on gray street uh so we saw you know a disturbed area as a result of that that obviously looked like it probably remedied quite a bit with regard to the storm water uh or the surface water runoff that was coming off the uphill property we observed the new retaining wall on the abutting house to the north on gray street um and and then what else would we talk about anyway just just general background yeah i think that's that was basically a um chris do you have anything else to add in regard to questions that were asked or anything and will a report eventually be generated from that um i can write a report if you would like me to that would probably be a good idea i took a lot of notes during the site visit one thing that we did note was that um what mr sparkle said with regard to the view of the henry hills house there are some birch trees that currently block the view of the hills house until you get past the birch trees when you're coming from the east so the we observe that the west end of the building is going to be roughly where those birch trees are so you have to so you'd get past the building and you'd be able to see the hills house immediately past the new building if it does get built we talked about the fact that the western portion of the lot would be relatively the same as it is now i think it's going to be raised 10 inches and graded to meet the surrounding grade so we we sort of noted where that was going to be and we talked about what the entrance where the entrance drive would be over towards the east and we also talked about the fact that the town when it was constructing the turning lane onto triangle street encroached onto the samurse media property and that the town is going to obtain an easement for members media because of that encroachment i think that's it great um yeah the only other thing i want to add is it's great having this slide up right now that when we stood to the west of where the building is proposed that you can see the building is actually sunk a little bit into the hill you can kind of see that there um and as jack was referencing we actually had like a ruler showing the end of that building will be about 18 or 19 feet up and um chris talked about adding they're going to grade a little bit more right to that to the left there on the west side i think mr sparkle had said it was like 10 inches of dirt or something that would be spread over that area and raise it a little bit which will only hide this building even more and i think the peak the center part you can see there i think that was 26 feet correct me if i'm wrong mr sparkle or someone um i think that height was 26 which is equal or less than the next building that is to the north of it the residential house so that was a lot thanks jack um at this point i'm going to open up to questions for from the board um but i just want to clarify one thing we will be this hearing will be continued to our next planning board meeting uh which i believe i think is the 15th yeah for two weeks from now the 15th so we got a tremendous amount of documentation with this project that we've been all reading and going through and we will have time later to get into the weeds of different letters and reports that we have um tonight i would like to focus board questions on the presentation that happened and questions that can be um given to mr sparkle or the architect mr gillen um or even uh amherst media itself their representative so at this time i see one hand um and when i don't see any more hands in a bit if we don't have more questions for tonight then i will open it up for public comment and um so i see dug and then i have jack i don't actually have a question for anyone but i did want to take the opportunity at the start of this deliberation to state what i understand to be our role in this process and that is uh contrary to what a number of neighbors and maybe other people in the community uh think we are not in the position of prohibiting or stopping this project uh the owner of this property has the right to build on the property and we are here to review and help optimize the site plan for uh in consideration of the surrounding neighborhood so you know people don't like it you know this has come been been a project that's been coming for a number of years and uh unless the town or somebody else wants to buy the property and uh that something's going to be built here that's all i want thank you Doug uh just so to remind everyone that is what we're addressing tight word addressing a site plan review and not a special permit um so uh it jack you're next and then i uh michael's next um yes i i was just looking at a pdf and uh i lost it um anyway i thought that the presentation was excellent uh very thorough uh this design uh just i don't want to say it's flawless but it is so much improved and uh and uh quite impressive and i know the storm water was something you had to solve so i'm glad that you you figured something out uh in that regard and and i guess i had okay here i have the diagram it's your grading drainage and utilities plan sheet 414 and um you know i it appears that you addressed the comments by uh bursher design group which is fine and then you know the city engineer or town engineer did not have any comments subsequent to that um and i just i guess i'm just curious about the storm water the the water that's going up into the field is that all just uh water from the roof only all right i think i'm back online you are we can hear you um so the roof water the vast majority of that water is being collected um i think i'm getting it i can hang on let me there is a little echo i'll turn you down here um turn me down that's so odd most of the roof water is being collected and through gutters and brought in there's a little pipe back here i'm gonna zoom in a bit um a pipe back here that collects water from the roof and a pipe through here that collects water from the roof a gutter system um and uh that that water is considered clean as it it doesn't have any runoff from the earth it's not a metal roof uh we are also there's a catch basin down here so in addition to the roof area um which is i should say that there is a minimum of 65 percent of the impervious area that's being created that we capture that and insultrate that on an average annual basis the roof area is not sufficient to achieve 65 percent however uh if you were to look at the property so you can see that there's a slope you know these contours that run this way we have a slope coming at us from the Amherst swimming club and 38 Gray street that brings in two and a half acres of water into our system that flows over the ground and we're a half acre site so we are collecting two and a half acres of runoff and through this catch basin and then we are more than meeting our recharge requirement in fact we are going to be putting a huge volume of water back into the earth far more than is necessary just because we're going to be collecting it and in times where overflows which will occasionally happen the overflow will go through the pipe system through our detention system be detained in most circumstances and then go to the town's storm drain i'll point out that right now there's a catch basin uh on the street here and catch basins on the street here that are collecting the runoff from all of the what is now grass area so it goes directly to the town's drain system in this current condition including over the sidewalk which is part of that icy condition so we're grabbing that water we're putting it through a settling tank we're grabbing a volume of it we're pumping it into this it's not really a drain field it's it's an irrigation system in some ways it's a very specialized tubing with small emitters but we're going to be recharging with roof water as well as the currently unmitigated runoff from the 38 main and the Amherst women's club great well well thank you it looks like a very smart design i'm glad you were able to engineer something where you're able to move the building to the east and make use of the the free board above the water table over there on the on the west side for the infiltration that you needed to have so nice job i grew as an engineer on this particular design so uh it was good thank you for the compliment okay uh next is michael and then maria thank you i echo every what everyone's been saying uh particularly uh doug's point that uh we are here to improve the project if we can and not to uh to block it i i would i recall when i first moved to town and when i lived in the dickinson house for not 10 years uh that the hills house and the women's club both had huge lawns in front of them and there were no buildings on the side of gray street up to the women's club up to where the boys girls club was at that point and that was a beautiful landscape um and i wish that were still a beautiful landscape and it is not uh i think uh mr gillum and mr sparkler put together an excellent solution to uh the need for and the inevitability of a building on this site much as i would hate much as i hate to see a building on this site nonetheless there's going to be one and this is going to be a good one i think i do have one question relative to the studio usage and its relationship to the amount of parking that's provided um i don't know exactly what kind of studio production activities are planned uh i do know that uh when you have studio