my name is charles clarke i am the chair of the belmont planning board i welcome you to the tuesday january fifteenth two thousand and nine hundred meeting of the belmont board before i get into our agenda let me introduce to you members of the my left the distinguished gentleman who sitting down is geoffrey miller who is the town where i call the meeting to order we will begin this evening with the continued public hearing for the belmont high school project at this point we're discussing the design inside plan review application so we're taking a look at the site circulation the curb cuts in the parking that that will be the parameters are valid discussion this evening residential district in an extension of the school that mclean at this point will be seeing basic presentations on that and will have a basic discussion of that we'll also continue our analysis of the single before for that and will have other things which are updates potential cases played with projects and that will be it for this evening and it should be plenty and at this point jeffrey the public hearing in high school is open yet at this point so should we with this the applicant have responses to questions from last time he wish to make a statement at this but thank you it's all here david warner who will or may be able to speak to some questions of their perspectives specific will sit here so you did leave us with a few pieces of homework one was asking you asked us about the true it's to and from the site  both currently as the high school exists today and with our future file design with the seven through twelve and we could speak for that but you received that information it was presented to you in a single sheet summary page and then and then secondly you asked us about but you asked us what can the concord out of us found fronting for the property of the high school accommodate for parking with other things considered such as turning lanes and and drop off lanes and such and we gave you that in a written brief that talked about anywhere from forty to sixty cars estimated again if these are on striped you don't have that control so it depends how people park and secondly if you're only talking about in front of the pond that's the maybe forty count and if you're considering in front of  field then you're looking and the ice rink you know you're probably adding about another twenty so that was the range and then finally you did ask a question but it wasn't something we had resources to find at the time which is what what did the hockey youth association consider for their parking scenario when they looked at a proposed ice rink west of paris field and i don't know if you were able to find that information but i full tilt now everywhere they could park i don't know if so so it's pretty aggressive so the question is you know if i just put it in context we were talking about if we are looking at our design with some spaces west of harris field would that translate to the potential our of p that may occur if an ice rink which is not part of our high school project is out to bid and i thought that maybe john could speak to  that scenario as it's not confirmed but certainly under discussion sure illusional sure my name is john pham the proud superintendent of the belmont schools thank you for having me we have had recent discussions with the bo that would either be at the incinerator site or the high school site i think what the joint forces would like to do is open up this to a conversation with the town to get some feedback as to what people stocks are in both  sites and in take that feedback and then make steps towards identifying a site that we think would be best serving the community and in the function of providing a replacement of the rink that we all know is in dire need of replacement is pretty of the of the high school campus so my john my on just standing is that aside from the locational issues that there are other potential  legal uses the issues with the incinerator site in terms of the lease that might be proposed in that so the probability is probably on the higher rather than the lower side that will be on  out of that but still it will have an impact on this well i you know i think right now we show in the current drawings and i'm going to speak on behalf of two groups because this project does not have to do with the belmont high school building committee so i'll speak a superintendent then i'll look at the number of the let me the building committee say drawings currently with wakefield those coming down show some parking on that side of the of the campus if in fact as i put my head on the superintendent talk about the rink we would put that out to bid in we we would do so in a way that we would have to include in the r p any specifics that we would have around parking in a modest box that we thought should be part of that part of that process i would lean to show what it could look like i think when we get down to a more detailed process we would have we have a lot of work to do if you want that ring to move forward and have it be on the high school site we believe the traffic flow coming in on and off target out is important a safe a safe loop in and out of parking that would be helpful so if that were to happen how would that interact with the high school students and later on in time i think it would be an actual off's alternative for students to be able to utilize during the day if in fact the spaces where he lives by the folks who are using the rink space during the day and the reason why i say students with access it is because when we pull the school in the new plan around the corner include anything up at the ranks of anything if any any parking built by the rank that is able to be shared or you know put an easement in place with those with the school that would be gravy for that be or could recall that not our concern or one of our concerns i think will steven kuhr talk about this is the congestion and in terms of the parking and circulation in terms of parking terms of have conquered have i think i'm not i don't think we should try to claim all the spaces like forty to sixty that are out there but i think i think it's reasonable to acknowledge to expect that that's going to be used by students now that it's closer to the school buildings closer to campus it's got the more desirable and i think if you took those if you're able to take those spaces and i was thinking twenty twenty five spaces we'll take a look with the town take those out of the the park and plan on campus maybe that would let you know it would let you potentially loosen up the site design a little bit if there's any choke points or places where you couldn't get quite the landscaping that maybe you wanted to get him to the could try to designate the parking on concord avenue for either for student purposes or for school purposes brantley but you wouldn't i don't know if you would have to use the public park bill you have just a couple of things one i want to just circle back to the four thirty that i heard cited that is a number that we elaborated on last time we had that is inclusive of all parking spaces on the site including west of paris field and we count so it is west and east and  no i only wear one half were to but when john and i talk about the ice rink we would want to somewhat encumber that ice rink parcel with the requirement of a certain amount of parking that is designated for the high school that's which i was trying to say and maybe supplemented by more that they need during the you know talk about the days the hours of use that those spots would take and if they would need more they'd have to demonstrate that in their response to the proposal and if they're doing things in the evening as a non issue the high school thing is  the like or if they're doing things i know kids do it anyway when i was a kid they used to go play hockey four in the morning i think they still didn't you know but again the spaces are news at that time so this is a this is a good dialogue that we have to have so that we're not building so much parking that is underutilized but we know that the concern is parking that's not on the campus for the counts that we gave may very likely spill into the neighborhood so it is suggesting which is allocate a certain amount of spots  maybe you're telling the building committee that here is what we say for a total on campus and an allocation and maybe we come back to you with how that utilized rather than you know whether it's student services you know how we have to talk that through there's a school committee in a school department discussion that figured out how they're best used allocated beyond this because again you talked about things like maybe or people have talked about things like permitting fees you know all that and senior police they have a right to a parking space maybe they don't maybe there are other records there are more important than that so that's our concern and that and that that has to do with not only the circulation in the number of cars on campus that also has to do with parking and that has to do with safety issues as well so those are concerns of ours and it has pointed out now we also have in terms of the sighting per se we i think we are i think we all understand that the curb cuts are with the curb cuts are we are also i just want a little  me more than anybody else i think because i looked at the plans and i'm like put my glasses on and off and everything is underwood underwood is going to go in to get injured and become an entrance or is that a day but if if i'm coming down concord westbound i mean eastbound yes ok i may elect to turn at the golden before i go all the way down and go into the hinge or neighborhood to then look back in and get into the campus depends on neighborhood because you're not doing these loops all the way around and the idea was to get the traffic off the streets as soon as possible rather than circulating through yeah i don't think that at least from my point of view that that had been clear in terms of the pass by that golden access point and having the signal there with a protected left is going to be much safer much easier for them to make that turn there you know there may be a few individuals coming up from the neighborhood who would end up wanting to make a have recommended and the town is commenced on hiring a consultant to look at the entire neighborhood bounded by underwood to brighton and from hit enter to concord ave to look at the traffic flows through that neighborhood whatever is going on there now is not necessarily what we might decide on later as far as traffic flows for instance the direction could change on underwood so that we won't have those left turns anymore given that the new high school drive is going to be down at the bottom trowbridge now that would also eliminate people coming down under wouldn't having to take a left to get into the campus but that's all up in the air because we're waiting on commencing and responding to a study of the entire neighborhood by a traffic consultant so and i'm a member of the high school traffic working group my comment would be and i it's not easy to hear everything but it sounded as though there was some discussion about a dedicated left turn that go street the high school traffic working group has made a motion to not have a dedicated left hand turn there and as far as we know the selectmen have adopted that so very concerned about having the median strip interrupted  and having a natural resources along they are taken down in order to get a left hand lane and we so i'm hoping that you take that into consideration the think you are can take a look at the effects of things but for us it's the curb cuts it's the curb cuts and how the traffic is flowing in and out of the campus on that so we also have  west side in in the main entrance into the high school an enormous oval and yet we're crowding up against the town halfway around the pond and  i had a long conversation with bob kennedy who said shifting either the southwest wing or the whole building in the age of autocad is really a no brainer but it's it's startling that we have half a football field on the west of the high school and yet we're crowding up against the pond and that seems like  unfortunate choice at this point it's great that you're he's continuing to add some insight so the age of autocad is like i said sometimes for design teams push the block button and everything changes but as in reality that's not what happens the building has been opposition to based on a locked asset that we're keeping which is the field house and little gym and everything is tied into that it is a layout that is tight to the building and it can't get any tighter so can't move any further south i mean north and it is about it's narrow as it can get through that middle area because it's just for a point of clarity for ourselves and for the audience could use your laser and point the fieldhouse on this in the feature that carl is talking the pond is the pond high school is something else and there's also room to landscape between the high school and the fire access road so respond to you and then  we'll show you some images the most and it's interesting because bob kennedy had a comment in regards to the perception of the entrance as your travel and concord street and we reacted to that actual comment which was there was no perception of an entrance concord street because it was lost among the different arms or wings of the building so there was a lot of work that came and provided different again we're not presenting to about the building right now but i will tell you that this entrance now is prominent in the way it's been treated and as a result of that we did look at moving this five or ten feet and what happens is it starts to squeeze and we lose that i'm sorry we have to jump through a couple of other silly thing or so we heard we heard you we heard your concerns the last time we met so we took those comments that you had and we specifically address them in the landscape plan so if you look at the prior the prior plan if we go back to where we were in s t see a lot of hard surfaces you see that we have limited the extent of the more organic nature of that pond edge so it felt fairly compressed there so to tell me what prevents from moving that wing so i can feet i don't think the average person driving or walking down concord avenue could tell the difference between where it is proposed today and where it would be if it were moved fifteen feet further to the west and it changes nothing about the function of the high school it does so we go it compresse fifteen feet there is a there are two corridors who come together and whether they come together at this point or fifteen feet to the further west doesn't change the educational program a bit there's pro much in here graeme in the corner of those at the intersection of the north and south academics going forward i'm sorry because we were going to present four plans for building design but i think now is the time to show you the  what you're saying would have a significant impact on the educational program and the layout of the building if i understand your i think we're asking is to take the down the middle cord or and draw will take a saw and cut the building i do this for him so when you extend this entry which would be you know right in front of the actual on a tour in space now you're extending every single floor plan by fifteen by thirty feet at least of some of those for it which we cannot exceed what we have now both square footage right now by by a foreigner we i don't are you what you're saying will not decrease the area between this south side of the north wing and the north side of the south wing or  it's simply sliding this whole section over and on the upper floors it changes which are on which side of the corridor but it doesn't change the ball you or the square footage by sliding and you know you take it you take the existing square footage and slide it well i would say we're not prepared to respond to this on the spot because there's been so much study and analysis and if you go to the image where you can see the space between the building in the pond we'd like to show you what that looks like now so if we go to the perspective the part the on the ground perspective the standing on the ground eye level perspective so this is the space that you are expressing concern about between the south side of the academic wing the high school academic wing and the edge of the pond i don't think you've ever seen this firsthand and w look at this perspective we see a very generous path a lot of pedestrian access a lot of green space a lot of trees and quite a beautiful experience for the ok so right now the concern is that the space between the pond and the building is i would assume you think it's too tight but when we look at this perspective we see a lot of generous  is a lot of that station a lot of green i think this is one of the cases where the perspective is not as helpful to understand as the site plan what the end of the truth is the truth is that it is very close to the pond and it's closer than what is than than what is there today qur'an i don't see why we have to make i think that's a false choice we should we have this big oval to the west of that waiting and and it's not useful space it doesn't contribute and i think the argument that people driving down conquered avenue need to have a sense of of entrance is is  you and show you what i mean in more detail i don't think they were asking for any additional square footage in doing here and i think that we've changed the the academic world i hear that either on the main floor or the upper floors i think we use so if yes so at the end of this meeting if we find that we have difficulty with the programming that we already have difficulty with trying to make work in the square footage or difficulty in square footage period to stay within our four hundred forty five thousand one hundred square feet requirement where do we go do we do we keep working on it do we do we hold up our hands and say i guess we did the best we can i have to say that this project has been a lot of well this is the best we can do given all the tensions that are pulling on it we are also pushing forward on a schedule that and that's not your challenge i get it but i want to resolve this sooner later and we're not back here for another month so that's a challenge week in carl you want to let me up on this sure i'd rather and i think there are several other pot and then the path and the pond so right now this is you know this is rough dimensions the distance at the west side  south way the most western point is about eighty seven feet between the corner of the building in the pond edge in the end the middle is about seventy five and towards the center at the cafeteria sort of  at the end so those are rough dimensions the pond edges it's not a perfect circle so we are making every effort to embrace the pond create a natural space for the pedestrians and bikes between the building and the pond while maintaining light ventilation and proper views between this academic wing the southern academic wing and the northern academic wing coupled with the very complex exercise of fitting this program into this building maintaining the gross square footage so we have a lot of obstacles and challenges and variables we're working with to get to this in addition it was and if david wants to talk about the turning radius at that point i think it's important so we have the challenges of program of light of circulation of all of these things views because as you compress the as you can press this southern academic wing with the northern academic wing your combat pressing the distances between them we need to look at we need to say is there a square i can answer on the spot because i have to study it we this is a team of a hundred people that have worked on this project so there's a lot of challenges that we're looking at but we want to make sure we haven't increased the square footage we haven't disturbed the educational program we haven't obstructed views and we haven't reduced ventilation so those are the things we'll look at in addition to david looking at the circulation for the bus driving up and if you can david in we'll we'll discuss that early next we will be enough of a billboard any time preferably early in the morning i guess to to be clear what i what what what if it looks like that could be done is to snip off that south west wing and slide it to fifteen or twenty feet and both on the ground floor and on the upper floors you rearrange the space you move a couple  classrooms on the on the second through fourth four and on the ground floor it does affect the big loop in front of the of the of the high school but i don't think that's nearly as important to most of the residents of the town th having a space where the the walkway around the pond is clearly separated and moved away from the high school it moves away from it instead of saying ten or fifteen feet is nice and that's all we can do think i can change but if you are not available on wednesday then i'll try to change it so wednesday we have our regular scheduled building committee meeting which we could take this up there but i really think that would be better to say it's we'd rather yes introduce yourself when you have a climate mary kennedy tell meeting member of precinct three wife of architect robert kennedy town meeting member precinct three we attended several meetings and discussed that  entrance off of concord have and perkins and well made the reference rez revisions with that i believe bob's question he is not here he's in florida his question and probably discussion with you carl may have been with with cad or revenue whatever modeling you're using can you pick the building up in its entirety the structure and move it not a piece of the wing or anything i see the somehow there has to be and my heart's beating fast for perkins and will because i can imagine that schematic design to have a change like this is going to have significant impact on your team is find a footage that is a compromise somewhere in between that won't impact the progress of the drawings well i don't know it's a working session what you mean by find the footage well karl karl saying ten to fifteen feet would eight does that number without only impacting the plan of changing it throughout the floors ok because you're you're on a deadline you're trying to meet that and just see what could be done doing that but clearly you're saying now that you simply cannot pick the whole structure up and  in the over sixty thousand square feet of renovated space in the building where regulated by the train tracks the rugby field the parking the circulation the bus drop off the but s tree and i got it and i got it you've been there and there are a lot of forces we have homework and we'll come back with some information to help this conversation that and i should say i mean we understand th is is a difficult site and it becomes more difficult because i mean it's constrained by the pond it's constrained by you know it's competes constrained by the track it's also constrained by the existing building that you want to keep in place so we understand that ok we're just we're doing our job as the planning board and so we have questions that we think are necessary to ask and it's part of public process and it's that it is long is you know we respectfully request that you understand all the variables in the end going to be probably a technical yes you know technically you're going to see and you know what i don't know the answer right now i understand that in fairness to you in the process let us determine through the analysis the technical answer is it on tuesday then we will have much c yeah yeah that is technically ground floor and the upper floors so that i could work with that as well between now and what will send it to geoffrey tomorrow morning this is the advantage and the disadvantage of having a distinguish landscape player there isn't a button yet i think it might be they're working on it function thirty seven or if we push it you know the wind shifts fifteen twenty feet but we was a lot of work is what i'm getting at but we're willing to look into that if that's go so now it has to do with with issues in terms of parking right we'd like to get as many of the spaces we have concerns i think steve has concerns about the parking especially the parking and towards decide by the track there but i continue to have the same concerns that i had nine months ago six months ago and i think and and to be patient with us we brought these things up a long time ago and we sort of codified our our concerns and we got a some response back this summer but that doesn't seem to have been any interest and really moving on some of these things and that's i think where you're hearing some frustration we just haven't seen any any real response to the kinds of things physically on the on the plans and we understand how complicated this is and we know that it's a hard process and it's but it's there are so many people involved and it's been a you've done work all of you have been it's just that we put our comments into the to the hopper at some point and i suppose we should have just kept coming to the meetings or something like that to follow up on them because we you know it's i think the frustration is we haven't really seen the result so in fairness to that response yes we've been at a lot more building committee meetings so yeah and you and you were willing were patient and willing to talk to you about that so that's why we're here now exactly so as far as parking goes you know what my concerns are i mean think is is is is really going to be completely impractical i can think of a couple of potential things to do include what i'd like to know is how much of the parking plan do we need to prove tonight versus something that could be held off until later at one when some of the questions that are unanswered about parking become clear so for you to get permission to go forward how much do we have to approve i know you have to get the utilities in you need to know where the roadways go i guess what i'm thinking about is when we finalize how many parking spaces might be available at the red ice rink somewhere along the line somebody can make a decision about that and i don't know when but does this that necessarily impact what we're doing on the on the other roadway unconquered have when we figure out how many could be captured there could that mean that we could subtract some along that long strip because as you know what i'm seeing is cars going through there while people are trying to park and particularly if the spaces aren't numbered and that would be a condition that i'd like to see is that the spaces be assigned and numbered so that people aren't wandering that doesn't help us on tell meeting night i'm going to have to i would say that most town meeting members are going to have to arrive on the site somewhere around six o'clock just to get a parking space if they're going to do that because it's going to be extremely complicated i think getting in there but we're talking about when you see content you're going to understand it's all right all the nice i mean the nice thing about this plan is that  kids often people trying to park and all of this thing is happening and it's spilling out into the streets if anything goes wrong it's going to go wrong if one kid bumps is his car into somebody's fender when he's arriving and  ensues while they try to sort out who's at fault nobody's going to get through to drop their kids off you know it's just it's going to be a you know a daily challenge to get through all of that and that's that's my concern  were major conflict the major one to the most traveled route for drop off is going to be at the middle school that roadway is going to be the busiest roadway and that's the one that's got parking on both sides perpendicular i know about the diagonal i get it i get it but i just you know in conscience like i just i have a hard time understanding how that's going to work out  that in a metaphor it's going to be every day at what time does the middle school begin eight o'clock every day at eight o'clock it's going to be high time every day it's going to be high time and that has to be something and the impact it's going to have on that on the surrounding neighborhood is going to reprove phenomenal and that's the one thing that can be controlled on site or could be controlled onsite that could have some alleviation there so you know superintendent john i don't want to put you on the spot but you're always on the spot so it is of that or that the superintendent at some point was going to determine how many parking spaces there were going to be you know for students at the school  exactly where the spaces were going to be allocated in that and that from our point of view is a parking plan and is the barn where we would let the party at some point go forward and we would conditional our approval on the submission of a parking plan with the details and the specifics about how the spaces are going to be used with the proviso that if we didn't think that was effective that we could negotiate changes in that that wouldn't physically change that's just the number of parking spaces it would change the utilization of the parking spaces so yes and that's typical of this of the things that we condition so let me sign let me so what we're looking for let's go back for us to come back with a sigh plan design which we owe you and that would be a discussion right now is currently planned for april and may we're asking for your right we don't we're not asking you to approve the layout in striping in signage right now we haven't given you all that john has been doing a lot of work and he still has work to do superintend fail so right now we want to start with what's the right count the bylaws are going to say a number that no wants to talk about because everyone's going to take your gas so this will permit right so so it's just  we sort of presented a rationale and we've talked about alternatives and you're absolutely right the more we take off the site the more flexibility we have although we can't stop those that likely will be off the  students from parking somewhere else so that's a that's just a respectful understanding of that let's talk about the ice rink that's a project we don't control this guy doesn't control although he's probably got the most control over it  so we have a three hundred million dollar project that's moving ahead we at least from my engineering perspective i like to work with the things i know which is what you can tell us we could we could speculate but i think the approach best for this project would be to identify the appropriate number we feel suitable for that site inclusive of west of harris field and then ask that that be condition as part of that site when they are of p is developed so that we don't lose that control and their site plan review has to be part of that plan anyway so you'll have that coming back to you you won't lose that control and you have it for the legacy but we don't have that ability we don't have it this month we won't have it in the summer but like i mean this is something that could be really who knows how long and so we would need to move our drawings forward with something that works for belmont right now based on that with the understanding that we're going to have that continued dialogue if the ice rink comes back so let me ask you bill and i think it is raise the question if we move some of the parking on to we dedicate that on to concord ave and we can live with the hours in the neighborhoods to reduce the impact on the neighbors but if we put some of that parking in concord what's the that if we go to four hundred then you can figure out how to make that work for you a little bit it's like flexible saying but the four hundred doesn't include any hockey parking record the rest just for the high school right so but but but but there seems to be a hockey because right now that program doesn't run concurrently with school this year it did brooke and just this that's what that if we say four hundred includes west of paris field as well so that i think think about taking out another like another ten spaces would just be that the provision of the tunnel is going to create a lot more pedestrian and people coming in coming through to school that way would that you know would that reduce another go but four hundred is better than thirty yeah and i get that i mean that's what we're getting and i forgot to comment on one thing could i just that you're so so why does the parking look linear and it's not a lot like it is today we did study that and we owe you a dialog and maybe some diagrams but what happens is we lose a field at least one soccer field and if that's the better solution for belmont overall then i suppose that's where we're heading but that's where we thought this was this linear solution was was better with a contiguous field we are able to utilize that by the way there's no more fields than there are today this is a bigger school we've actually are impacting the playing fields as it is now but that's a balance and that's a discussion we have to have steve and the horse but but and this is why i'm wondering about what we can prove now and what we can prove later if we dedicated that strip there to faculty that are going to be who are going to be arriving earlier for the day that takes a lot of stress out flexibility of having the the numbered spaces indoor group spaces to clearly reduce the confusion of all the drivers and we have had a lot of talk and good conversation at a high school traffic working group about how to make the and bike friendly but i think there's a lot of different what i would call base hits state that make up this getting runs across home plate we're meeting with walk boston to try to talk about how we can get students safely to  school through walking past so encourage more walking and biking obviously the underpass we would go a long way in reducing the amount of traffic on site pulling students off campus in cars or at least having a space that's more dedicated to students and having  staff on one side would really give us of the ability to reduce confusion on a on a narrow pathway that goes two way across both sides of the of the campus so we really feel comfortable talking about those issues that are really important to us and we think that the design over time has really helped us with that but we're actually open to two more conversation we see students you know with axe going across car could safely coming down through the neighborhood  golden if we can you know achieve the underpass we have less folks driving around in to the community that way so where our goal is to reduce conflicts between cars and people cars and cars cars and bikes on campus and off campus so that those are heavy dialogues that we are actually joined together on and one of the best ways to do that and that could mean also race tables and healthy striping in and assign parking in parking groups and reducing students on the lot we can create you know comfortable parking for the neighborhood that start on the site jimmy i e not in the neighborhoods but identified oclock average the spot so i think we're all using those tools in the best way we  we want to see a parking play and at some point there's going to be a conditional thing we would really like and i think steve's comment on the linear parking as sort of coming in before and that be allocated to the  right in front of the school that is enough for us to get to know that that was what the forty to sixty that was already considered yes so that was fun so in terms of things so like the parking the actual parking play in parks where where things are oriented in all of that we want to see a final parking plan so we're going to conditional we're going to condition our approval there's a conditional approval anyway because we'll deliver on the whole thing at the end right  pieces of the psi plan what we're basically doing is we're saying we're happy with this go ahead with this we'll do the incremental thing when we get to the end of we're all in agreement then we'll vote on the whole thing so this all this will come to us at that point so at this point so we can move forward in terms of this just for one day and i know you've been meeting all day so let me move this along in terms of the curb cuts in terms of the flow we're ok on that so we'll let you go ahead to weigh her ok that's what i want to ask we're ok we're ok with that the number of parking spaces four hundred were ok with that ok so you get that much got a lot of work to do ok the building you know what you mean on that on tuesday we're not going to talk but that this point so at this point i think we've dealt with the things we have to deal with i move forward at this point everybody everybody i'm i'm sure where we're going to open up the public hearing we're going to start a public hearing on potential zoning or limits meeting it's not a public hearing is the introduction of the concept that mclean in their developer is putting forward to redevelop zones three and four which as you might recall were zoned  been a development of the market has changed and the owners in the potential developer have concepts that they want to put forward in terms of that so i will open up the meeting to mclean and the developer at this point if you want to come forward at the table here in make your presentation ok if they want to come closer if they want to move closer to the table would you like to come up to or you can come up know you can come up it's ok for you if you can come up and you can move the chairs closer to the table to hear us the the issue is that the microphones that we have are not the amplifying microphones there for the people that are on t v they're watching us at home so bring a chair come forward don't be shy it's fine it's fine come forward you can come to the table you can come looking closer it's important to hear and to participate you know come forward this as loud if not louder than anybody else will but i will encourage other people to talk and i don't you know do the best we can ok thank you please introduce yourself and go ahead and speak loudly all right so good evening my name's michele goujon i'm the executive vice president chief operating officer at mclean hospital and pleased to say i've been involved with this project from the very beginning so to come back and be able to talk with you about the exciting opportunities we see now for zone three and four is really a treat and it's nice to see all of you and some very familiar faces out in the audience so so far so good on hearing ok so you're i was on the board when this all first was serving with caro twenty years ago high school yes encouraged they will be here when you come back twenty years from now yes so in order just to give a little bit of history because i many of you were here when this all began others have come as we're in the task force a collaborative effort that we enjoyed working with for a number of years that resulted in a memorandum of agreement signed with the town and with a lot of supporting documents proved by a two thirds vote also a town wide referendum and at the beginning of all of that we had very high hopes that we would be proceeding with all of the development areas at the same time there were developers involved for the cluster residential housing northland which did go successfully forward to be built zone three we also had a developer involved unfortunately that fell apart in two thousand and nine and for his own four unfortunately no tenant ever came forward for the back room so what we're here to talk about today is zone three and zone four so in the mean time what we did accomplish with the town where the benefits there were delivered to belmont even though those zones and their development had to be  expanded tax base for those and approximately two million annually from the northland development a new town cemetery and one hundred acres of open space is protected by a conservation restriction you can see all of the green that's on the map there that is the open space and the brown lines are the public trail system that go through the open space we also had a transfer of land for forty units of affordable housing down in zone six which is at the southern end of the map there the blue area and a new road from pleasant street was built pretty much to access the affordable housing in zone six because own three and four did not go forward so if i do this is own six down here and i want to get a very religious down here and this is the road i'm referring to the comes up and links the zones so one of the reasons that we representing mclean are coming forward as well as to talk about zone three which jack dolly will do shortly is because we wanted to be able to answer the questions what else is going to go on up there because the two development sites as you can see three in four are linked by the road up from pleasant street so we wanted to be able to speak to what would be going on in zone four and also be able to think about what the changes would need to be potentially in any of the existing zoning and some of the traffic agreements so if i go forward to the next slide thank you this is the zone for proposal for the mixed use plan and what you can see here this is the face of zone five which is where mclean hospital zone ends and what we're looking at four here which comes up this is the road that comes up would be to build a child and adolescent academic and residential building there would be about seventy five thousand eighty six thousand square feet allowing us to then also successfully be able to develop in a second phase an r and d facility we do believe a smaller facility may be able to go successfully forward and we very much would like the opportunity to be able  to pull together our academic and residential child and adolescent programs at this point they're distributed throughout the campus and that's not the most efficient way to deliver that sort of care so we'd still be able to do this under one hundred fifty thousand square foot on slope that is the in the allowable zoning for the r and d questions or with the r and d be a mclean operation or you'd be looking for a third party company tenant to come in and so we're open about that mean part of the timeframe let me just speak to that because you're raising a very important part about this in order to go forward with the child not a lesson campus we have to fundraise for that that is clearly an item that the hospital cannot afford but we believe that this will be an attractive opportunity and we'll be able to do that so that will take some time but also then beyond that we will start to also think through what the opportunities might be the whole hundred fifty thousand foot structure was originally zoned clearly for whatever reason didn't fit the need for a  single tenant to come in and there was good work done by the developer to try to do that so at this point we're looking at something that might be smaller than might actually leverage nicely with the child academic research that will be in the building as well and be a more successful opportunity but it would be a delayed implementation because we wouldn't be able to fund that right out right at the beginning but we wanted to share with you because part of what we'll do this does require a parking structure we'll be able to use some of that and we can do it in stages so that where the parking might be that's open will be where the research building will then come when it's able to be built and then we'd have the extra at the deck to be able to enhance it for that purpose so the idea would be we could be able to think through with you what would this would require in terms of the zone for a need for the road access as well as the any traffic that might come from it it turns out it's fairly close to what has already been estimated but we want to talk  some about that and we would need an expansion of the used to be able to to do that so i think that gets an introduction at least where we are on the zone four and leads us up to an opportunity for zone three well it's community there would have the full range of independent living assisted living and nursing skilled nursing beds to continue moving to the continuum of care concept which was exactly that which was very popular at that time and we went forward in this was all going well until the capital markets crashed and then unfortunately the developer was unable to proceed there was great interest in it and that was a very unfortunate set of events for all involved since then we waited a while for the market to come back and then went back out looking to see what developer interest there might be and what we by and large found that no one came forward wanted to build a full continuum of care anymore that they were looking for a segments of the care and that was pretty much it so that's why we ended up rethinking how we might be able to do this because we weren't able to get interest from anyone willing to do the full continuum in the space that we had with the restrictions so fortunately for us and i think jack ali i am the president owner of a company called northland residential and we are one of the three developers that work with mclean beginning in one nine hundred ninety seven and coming forward on the mclean hospital campus and i purchased three of the parcels the residential parcels known as zone one a one b and two in two thousand and five following the permitting exercise that we went through  and sub and have subsequently built out of those three zones into one hundred eleven units of senior directed housing i have been close to mclean hospital michelle and steve  for probably the last ten years both as it relates to my residential zones the build out of those rooms for the completion of the historic structures in the residential zones and company i've been with the company for thirty four years and we are developers of housing throughout new england for sale housing predominantly and we have a light touch in the for rent and we are not in avalon we are not a hanover residential builder and we do it for our own account our core business is creating what we call empty nester senior directed  housing what that means is the employment of not only a land plan but also a housing plan through floor plans and open spaces in community spaces that are attractive to residen fifty five years of age or older in an independent living fashion we do not provide any services in the form of meals care cleaning  other than to continue normal grounds care grass cutting window washing snowplowing the provision of insurance and such so we differentiate ourselves from an assisted living type developer or a c c r see type of developer which provides a spectrum of services in addition to housing we have i have done this for the company since one thousand nine hundred two i've developed over a thousand units of this type of housing and in my experience and i have some stats which i'll leave with the board if it proves out that it is attractive to seniors that are looking to live independently the statistics today are in assisted living is that the typical assisted living client moves in somewhere between eighty three years of age and eighty five years of age they're staying either in their home or in some type type of private home whether it be a condominium type of setting in a kind of medium community here in new england or in florida until such time as they actually need services we have we see a huge demand for this type of housing  we know statistically that it does not attract families with kids there are three kids living in the woodlands right now two of them are babies maybe they'll be in the school system at such some point in time but they do not statistically in our experience across a wealth of data create a problem for us for  little bit of history here the woodlands that belmont hill was one hundred twenty one townhouses located in three different zones the site planning started in two thousand i actually signed the purchase and sale agreement with michel on december thirty first one nine hundred ninety nine  we went through the permian exercise two thousand through two thousand and five there were some appeals along that way and we started commenced the development of those zones in two thousand and five and we completed them in two thousand and thirteen that we can we develop one hundred eleven new town houses and we run invaded three existing buildings south cottage up and house in the stables building in ten additional units they were designed and attracted a demographic of an empty nester active adult they averaged about a million two per sale and they present to the woodlands presently generates about two plus million dollars and annual reoccurring tax revenues that excludes any building permit or i and i or other construction related fees that i paid along the way presently somewhere in excess of two million dollars comes in from those one hundred twenty one units there's something less than five school age children it's actually lower than that in the last count and generate minimal traffic impacts what we find is this clientele in this demographic owns another home somewhere or two they go to new hampshire they go to the cape or they go to florida or all of the above and so they're not in these houses three hundred sixty five days of years so impact income i can't speak to i can say that most of our sales do not come with a mortgage requirement and i would say most of our buyers are somewhere either semi retired retired or within i would say two to three years of retirement very much so yes you know our our community here and this is relevant as i want to see as they migrate to zone three attracted residence large number of residents clearly not one hundred twenty one of them from belmont but a large number of residents from belmont winchester lexington his far west as concord kasia only even further west than that but for the most part it was on north of route two and west it also attracted a number of families that didn't live in the area but whose kids lived in the area and they wanted to be close to grandkids now on on the hill those those uses included residential affordable housing residential and affordable housing for residential zones scuse me these are the residential zones you for will housing zone is here in mclean institutional district on top of the hill zone for as michelle spoke about zone three the senior living district over one hundred acres of open space the town cemetery the town ball field  walking passes michelle aligned the rock meadow complex and community garden center over here in the residential zones are accessed uniquely off of mill street there is no connection between the residential zones and pleasant street and zone four and five or five these two zones are access or to be accessed uniquely off of a pleasant street interchange or lighted interchange here in a road that has been million dollars in recurring tax revenue at present the creation of forty affordable units in zone six as it's called creation one hundred acres of open space a town cemetery historic preservation of some very very important and and unique buildings some that have been done some are yet to be done traffic mitigation improvements  nineteen years ago and i want to go through this rather pedantically the design on three parcel known as the senior living subdistrict within the mclean district is a twelve point eight three acre parcel land again it's outlined in blue here it contains at present two existing buildings one being the chapel the second being what is known as the  admin or office building both of those buildings are governed by one ask one document within the memorandum of agreement that document being the historic preservation agreement that document further describes what buildings must be retained in re used the state of the chapel building is a retained and reuse structure the office building slash administration building is not a retain or reuse building it can be but it is not required to be its own three is bordered by zone to the woodlands of delmon hill over here the mclean hospital subdistrict to the top of the page up  to the northwest public open space to the south and southeast of the waverly woods affordable housing project and zone fo again to the north east it is accessed by an existing road that was built by partners in mclean hospital that comes up where my pen is my light is rather known as olmsted drive that road is built it has all utilities sewer water gas drainage and electric in place at present and it is serviced by a if i recall correctly michel intersection at at pleasant street the parcel at present is semi wooded and partially cleared you can kind of this is a winner for ariel so it's hard to see but the sewer line is a sewer line that was put in along the along the perimeter here that's that's semi cleared it's fairly densely wooded and in here and semi wooded in here there's an open field area right here there's a little open parking lot in this area north and west to east scuse me next line again going back what was the last what was the program that was approved by the planning board and the town seventeen years ago in december brook dale the project was originally proposed by air or sea known as american retirement communities out of brentwood tennessee which was subsequently bach that bought by brooke dale senior living out of the probably somewhere else and they permitted a seven building six story six hundred thousand square foot c c r sea complex c r c standing for  continuum care retirement community their permit allowed for for upwards of four hundred eighty two units six hundred thousand square feet and a mixed use campus consisting of upwards not upwards of four hundred fifty parking spaces in an underground ground garage that was pretty much under this what i called transformer man of a building forget how they got into the building with the parking garage but the little bit of surface spacing spaces over here over here and over here it was x the density of this project four hundred eighty two units on twelve point eight three acres translates into a density of thirty eight units to the acre it's a lot of units to the acre pleasant it's access via pleasant street via the new driveway this business is effectively a hospitality business for seniors and requires a fairly significant staffing level a level of service providers has a full service kitchen and dining room there certainly are nurses and nurses aides cleaning maintenance staff and maintenance staff ministre have staff management staff  fairly large inflow and outflow of staff three times a day on different shifts most of the residents didn't leave because of the make up of the residents most likely being eighty plus years of age which is the demographic that goes into into folks like this at places like this the bylaw required that of that affordable units be provided in zone three or the senior living subdistrict it required thirty units thirty units as as a percent of the total number units is this is translates into a ratio of six point two five percent and as a percent of the non nursing bed count would translate into a ratio of nine percent those thirty units would be made available to income eligible tenants or residents in the income eligibility level was at a level of one hundred twenty percent of area median income such units could also be phased in as the project was being built out  o not all thirty not the first thirty units or beds needed to be made available to those to those that population but in some ratio of non market market rate beds to affordable beds they would be phased in yes these are all ownership units of some this was a rental model ok i believe there is no yes but this is what we're looking at here this was a rental thinking this was a rental model if i remember correctly i was in my project so i might be getting a little bit beyond my right ear paper so that's what was approved and you know i'll come developer in the area that is quite successful would be benchmark senior living out of wall fam right now and benchmark is not a c c r c developer a benchmark typically looks for communities  that are approximately eighty five to ninety five units in size and consists of a mix of independent assisted and memory impairment memory impairment somewhere in the fifty to fifty five age group and coming up so the plan that we have come up with michel proposed is a proposed use and density and afford as excuse me add a proposed use at a proposed density affordability level and traffic such that it comports with the zoning very very well it also  comports with a sub document of the memorandum of agreement known as the traffic mitigation and management agreement which we call the t m and a those are a lot of words and it's hopefully at a subsequent meeting with this board w get into the details of how this use does comport with those two documents nonetheless we are desirous and needing some amendment to senior the language contained in the senior living sub district by law i have outlined that in a further slide my plan proposes one hundred four senior directed independent living residential units that means non age restricted that means units that are designed and common area facilities that is to be attractive to that same demographic that you've experienced in the three zones of the woodlands our plan calls for thirty four woodland style two to three bedroom townhouse units that's these small erb buildings here these are that's a two unit duplex unit building rather and that's a three unit or tri plex  building these are the same scale of tri plexus and duplexes which a built in zone one a one b and one b i didn't do any duplexes that i recall in zone two i did try  plexus predominantly so there's thirty four of those we're utilizing almost dead drive in its present layout and we run a new road in as as i am outlining and then circle it back up and then i propose two flats style buildings with parking under it would be parking under each of these buildings accessed here and access here these would be four storey elevat dildo with i forget i think i think this one has seven or eight units per floor and this has nine units for four but these this these are two bedroom and one bedroom style units one bedroom with a den and or two bedroom style units elevated access to common a common rooms on each floor for community gathering a meetings and activities of that that nature the we would also retain and reuse the chapel building that is right in here and put a duplex structure in this little corner pipe  corner of the campus of the parcel right over here overlooking up on ball the density of this plan compared to the density of the plan that i showed you a moment ago if we can go back for two seconds and i'll go back the other way thank you the density of this plan is eight units to the acre approximately five times less than that which was approved originally the building height here of these townhouses two and a half stories proximity thirty six feet and the flats buildings is a four story above an underground parking garage the height of the brook till building i think approached i probably skipped over that the building height of this at its tallest point was sixty seven feet this was a five story building for the most part but i believe there's one spot where it was a six story building so we're considerably from a scale and massing perspective smaller and allows for more green space both within the campus or the parcel this is something less than than half the half of that we're calling for two units to parking spaces in a two car garage over each of the townhouse units and one and a half spaces in an underground garage for a flat style unit and then we need some guest spaces here and some other places by our current projections if we use the same i'll call it real estate tax take from the woodlands this project would generate some more order of magnitude one point four million dollars in reoccurring annual tax revenues not including building permit fees and i feel and other construction potentially generate excess upwards of twenty five million dollars and bonding capacity this plan further proposes to mimic the ratio that is outlined in the existing by law for  hundred four it would generate nine affordable units that would be phased in during the build out of the project at the at at an one hundred twenty percent am i so i'll take a breath from myself and then i'll go on this is a side by side plan comparison obviously we have the freedom commons bring forth with the support of the the board and the town would yield one hundred four senior directed independent living units on that same twelve point eight three acres  this is a bit of an eye test it's really for the for the we have a hearing test and i tested it i apologize this but what this was instructive to us these three columns on the right are referencing a one b and two to sort of give folks a flavor for how many units and how big was the acreage and what was the density per unit and what was the number of parking spaces and such and this is sort of a down the road document when we get into the weeds we juxtapose that historic northland residential districts with the proposed plan and the allowed scuse  amend the senior living cell subdistrict by law and very modestly and i haven't we have a red line which we have ground through and shared with planning  staff that reflects where we think relief and or amendment is required but it really amounts to a fine tuning of the saying the subdistrict by law allowing an expansion and clarification the language to be expanded and clarified to permit a non assisted living slash the c r c type of use on the property that that the allowed use can consist of old town homes and flat style product that some of the de mentioned all requirements be tweaked and i know tweak is not a great word but be adjusted for unit size composition parking for example the bylaws says only one parking spot per unit is permitted  promulgating the plan that i have before you would need to be adjusted again minor adjustments to parking location layout to add specificity on the inclusionary housing requirement and then the other documents  steve help me aria is reciprocal easement agreement that's that's a that's a document that provides easements between parcels across parcels and governs maintenance sharing costs across the parcels site c c i am refers to construction coordination input to implementation and management that needs to be revised because book bill sr livingston no longer exists anymore and the signature of that document my project is compliant with the existing me per permit that was issued in two thousand more one and closed out in two thousand and seven my project is also compliant with the historic agreement and my project as proposed requires no conservation commission review or approval so with that my next side is really a summary i'm a proven developer on the client campus i have a consistent product type in a market proven land use it's a significantly reduced reduced scale of project from four hundred eighty two units to one hundred four density high traffic all those implications it's a mixed use diversity of housing type townhouse and flats we would produce be consistent with  zoning and produce affordable housing to comp complimentary affordable housing that the mclean campus and district has already provided to the town in the form of forty units at waverly woods  generate substantial recurring tax revenue and generate some nonrecurring permit fees and print storage preservation and low traffic volumes so i guess all i'll stop talking and allow the discussion to pursue i think we would like the next steps to be to come back before the board and take a deep dive into the zoning amendment itself and the red line red line markup that we give back to michel's that of course for it to do either of these things you need to come to the planning would we have to we have to alter the zoning we have to go through a public process we have to alter designing to make these ha n we will look at the red line suggestions that you have in terms of heart of our process we will hear from the public on this and if we can come to some kind of agreement on each of these we will go forward into public to the town meeting and with the town meeting and jeffrey as it may enable the first of may if when the twenty nine and if we can come to agreement and on this we will go to town meeting on the twenty ninth and try to get zoning relief to go forward with with these the the general presentations are interesting but the devil is in the details and all these things so thank you for that let me open up i'm going to let the public talk but does the board have any comments or would you like to hear from the public  i think we have a lot of we have a lot of people here some of them have been through this process twenty years ago in terms of what mclean did at that point and were involved in the zoning  have some questions related to that others have some questions not so much about the past but about the future and what government is doing so i invite you to come to the microphone introduce yourself and talk about your comments comments suggestions what you think is important has been hit we understand that this is the first time that any of you have seen the details of this and is the first reaction mr paulson fred paulson the precinct one town meeting member i do really appreciate jack dolly's explanation and so forth through the project but i guess i'd like to i was going to say this at the end but i want to state at the beginning that this is not  normal cushing square or waverly square type situation because of the memorandum of agreement that was a document that was worked on extensively it was a strong citizen group i think you all remember julie record we went to the matter went to the town meeting and it was not going to be approved we then  n that meeting for several months and finally did work out an agreement but it was a hotly contested situation the agreement itself is a recorded instrument it runs with the land and eight changes are amendments to that agreement have to be approved by the town meeting and for those for that aspect of it my feeling is that this is more like a puzzle and you have a number of aspects of this you have the issue of traffic control conservation maintenance payments back and forth between the parties stormwater affordable housing and different types of development and my sense is that  would not be the way to go obviously the planning board has an important role but i think that these other factors given the background of this matter and the importance i think it's a i think we ought to go in that direction rather than simply take this up as a strictly zoning matter so i'm recommending that the town meeting and the board of selectmen with help from the planning board should decide and how to review the development use and the affordable housing issues and the payments back and forth and then the planning board can make its final decisions on the project  a town meeting member i serve on the council on aging i'm a member of the belmont housing trust and i'm the current chair of the belmont housing authority in my day job i'm a financial analyst i'm not here mr donnelly to tell you how to run your business however i just want to give you an idea of how i view it and i'm not sure if other people view it we talk about nine units for for affordable i'd like to see i think all of us who serve on those other committees would like to see things more affordable for most of us most people who leave belmont you know because they can afford it move outside of belmont i checked with a member of the garden club recently moved out to the wall him i don't know what those are called it's near the t j maxx in the c v s but it's that wall fam line bishops if and i asked what you know the average condominium buy in was for people who leave one point two million dollars house in belmont who are elderly who are looking at their last dollar it's easier for them to buy somewhere between five hundred and eight hundred thousand now i believe that will mess with your your numbers but i just say that as my observation and just to say if we are looking for a little looking to attract seniors who are empty nesters this is something that i think would would help so that's all my two cents  good evening roger colton i am town meeting member from precinct sachs and before i start nowadays i generally find myself talking about energy issues and my comments tonight have nothing whatsoever to do with the  committee would be good if they put solar on the roof i'm sure the energy committee would like to have any number of conversations with whatever development goes in there and before i start also for those who are interested the the final score the belmont watertown game tonight was dominant one hundred watertown seventy two so given those very important beginnings i'd actually like to ask if we could submit written comments to you because i have so many notes here that i don't want to take a lot of time but i do want to note a couple of things that we're going to her you and anybody else who is either in the audience tonight or is watching on t v or read about it in the paper to submit written commons through jeffrey wheeler address them sheila and send them to jeffrey to jeffrey and he will distribute them to the board that's with in a prior life time i chaired the belmont housing trust for a number of years and i chaired the housing trust at the time that the discussion of the air sea development was occurring after that  i chaired the housing work group for the preparation of the town's comprehensive plan and then i became involved at novice request with the council on aging research which led to  being designated age friendly community and i don't say that to credential myself but simply to indicate where where i'm coming from there are a couple of reactions i have number one is that there's nothing that i've seen or heard tonight that would indicate that this is a mixed use development for purposes of applying affordable housing requirements this is a housing development it's not a mixed use development that was developed in order to reinvigorate our business districts to put housing together with with retail and even though the term mixed use was used a number of times this is not a mixed use development number two in my opinion number two is that at the time the zoning for the air sea parcel was approved that of course was only a single element of a incredibly complex and interrelated set of agreements one of the reasons the affordable housing was set at the level it was was because the town was also receiving open space the town was receiving the one point three four acres that was developed for affordable housing and i don't think we can go in and change that agreement on all of the l or on any of the significant elements but then say the affordable housing percentage stays the same i don't think that's the way  this agreement should work or the changes to this agreement should work and i'll tell you from given the experience that i have had that i really are with the comprehensive plan the housing trust and the council an aging a nine percent percentage of affordable housing and setting the level of affordability at one hundred twenty percent area median income neither one of those would be acceptable in in my opinion the nine percent is too low the one hundred twenty percent is too high indeed you may remember that the planning board itself and car i don't remember if you were part of this or whether preceded your being on the planning board the planning board itself had originally sat in an affordability percentage lower than one hundred twenty percent saying that's what was necessary to meet the needs of belmont and the developer sued the town and lost things we found not to take off my housing trust hat and put on my comprehensive plan and my council and in had one of the things we found that is necessary for the town of is what was called life cycle housing or cradle to grave housing there is a need in belmont a crying need for places to allow aging people  to downsize and actually one difference between now and twenty years ago is i'm getting to the point strike that i have gotten to the point where that would be a consideration where and i think about downsizing and i'll tell you there are considerations of downsizing do not include the consideration of moving to a multi story three thousand square foot  townhouse that is not the downsizing opportunity or option that will serve the needs of the town of balad much so given those initial observations i do want to submit written my name is rachel heller i'm co chair of the housing trust and i applaud pretty much everything that roger said everything roger said particularly about the affordability and i want to thank you for the presentation today and the opportunity to comment it's exciting to see that housing development is being proposed we know that we need more homes here in belmont incomes are not keeping pace with our home prices and this is impacting our state's ability to grow our economy it's impacting quality of life here in belmont we know that over twenty eight percent of homeowners and over forty four percent of renters are considered cost burden when it comes to housing costs they are paying more and thirty percent of their income to their housing we know that a quarter of our population is actually eligible for affordable housing and that's at or below eighty percent of the area median income once we have the royal belmont and the bradford on board six point seven percent of our housing will be affordable this is three point three percent lower than the state's benchmark of ten percent affordability for every community and it's far below the need that we actually have the housing trust created a housing production plan over the last year with a lot of community input very appreciative of the planning board support the board of  support and the passage of that the plan highlighted needs particularly among seniors and also families with children for affordable housing we also highlighted strategies that included redeveloping underutilized parcels including south pleasant street thank you for the progress that the planning board in town meeting are making on rezoning that area and also for mclean tonight's proposal i think presents an opportunity for mclean and for the town i agree with everything roger said about this not being i can't see it being mixed use and i also the calm proposal raised a few concerns for me we need more affordable housing not as much market rate and i'm very concerned about the senior for wards the term senior designate is the senior directed i think we need to be very very careful about fair housing and how we are determining what we build here we do need more senior housing and we may want to have more age restricted housing to talk about housing that is attractive to seniors and won't be attractive to families and calling children a problem for a municipality i think is something that we should be very concerned about so let's be very careful in our language and how we describe things this isn't to say i'm against any development here i think again this creates an opportunity what i would propose instead is that we consider working together mclean and the town through the states local initiative program and we look at what we need belmont needs more affordable housing go in under local initiative program we get twenty five percent affordable housing all of the units count on the subsidized housing inventory that helps move forward in getting closer to meeting the ten percent benchmark that the state sets through chapter forty b doesn't mean that we're done with affordable housing it keeps belmont in control of the kind of development that happens so we can do more the things that we want to see in our housing production plan it means more development around transit more for debility we can do those things so we need to show that we're making progress on that housing production plan  i also think that tonight's proposal makes the case for why we need to strengthen our inclusionary zoning by law so we the housing trust does have a proposal that we have begun and we would like to bring up with the planning board to do a few things we should bring the fifteen percent right now that kicks in at forty units that should come down and kick in at twenty units and we shouldn't necessarily have this difference for mixed  let's have fifteen percent across the board kick in at twenty units regardless of the type of development we know we need more affordable housing there's only so many opportunities we have to produce housing we should really make sure that what we produce we maximize the amount of affordable homes  and there's many communities that are would be we would be in good company with if we if we got to that standard so i thank you for the opportunity to comment i will submit written comments as well and i am excited by the beginning of this conversation because i think that there is a lot that we can do together mclean wants to be able to sell this plan and do something with it the town needs more affordable housing let's put our heads together let's work on it together let's go to the state and really maximize the amount of affordable homes that we get out of it thank you commissioner at the belmont housing authority i will try not i will cut my comments short because i i would just try and reiterate really what both roger and rachel just said but i want to first of all mention the housing production plan that selectmen the planning board will just last spring and that document was one of the most important achievements i think the belmont made in all of twenty eighteen because it showed our commitment to affordable housing here in town and i think that as rachel said the potential to develop at mclean hopefully will sort of promote that those aspects of affordability i think there are right now again i'll  reiterate the comment that rachel made about in roger made about the fact that nine percent affordable units at one hundred twenty percent a very media income doesn't come compute to what we consider to be affordability at or below eighty percent of area median income right now there are a thousand cost burden seniors living in belmont and that number is expected to grow currently there is a four year waiting list at the belmont housing authority for senior housing there is a need for affordable housing affordable senior housing here in belmont and i think that we need to look at this proposal see this as an opportunity and try and figure out a way to increase and the likelihood of more affordable housing on this site thank you thank you  scally precinct to town meeting member i remember maclane we all worked on it we also it was a very hot and heavy time and one of the reasons it passed was because you had many types of housing i've grown a little older since then and i also realize a lot of people who now live jack dolly in your units are leaving because they have no place to go they wanted to go to the next step which you lexington and so on and even in the belmont papers three weeks ago they showed people with saying former belmont now living in wall him or whatever i really wish your company would think about it because we were excited you said there were going to be over four hundred eighty units that's wonderful what you're saying is forget the old people in belmont they can go someplace else and let's build these other units i don't think that's a very good idea so i liked what you did but i don't like what you're planning now i mean i'm just on the other hand i believe you mentioned was a design for check out whatever i think that's a great idea and that's the industrial park one is that the one i think that's a very good idea so thank you for allowing me to speak thank you for your presentation and oh yes i'm also on the council imaging and i was a former chairman and we do want to see more units for seniors thank you my name is dorothy stoneman i think what i the point that i want to make in support of all the previous speakers is even though i've never served on the town on the planning board i've met this is the first meeting i've ever attended one of the things that may have changed over the last seventeen years is that there's an emerging expanding demand among people who may have not been involved previously for more affordable housing and more affordable housing not only for seniors but also for families and maybe the one thing nobody else mentioned was maybe rental housing maybe section eight housing the housing which there's a ten year waiting list in the united states for people who are eligible for section eight housing to ever get access to the affordable housing that they need so i'm just here to support the people who've been fighting for affordable housing for many years  judy feinstein meeting member precinct five i just want to not repeat but second what roger and what rachel said and make a couple of small point it was the belmont housing trust that developed forty acres of affordable housing on the one point three port or use of the mclean package and that land was given to the town for that purpose and we were the first development that actually happened on that site we are ready and able to develop more it should the need arise should the opportunity arise the need is definitely there when other thing about waverly would the development that we did is that the density is twenty three units per acre and it's very nicely spread out on the site and not at all overly day and it would be perfectly possible for a development in three to be of greater density than what you are proposing and i guess the last thing to point out is that the units that you're calling affordable at one point you said they would account for the state subsidized housing inventory no they would not one hundred twenty percent is not does not meet the state definition so forget about it yeah what we need from this development and what we would really hope to work together with mclean north and about is a project that meets the hospital's needs the developers financial needs and the town's housing needs that's the most important part for us you bonnie freedman first i just wanted to comment that usually the building is unlocked when you're having a meeting i was outside for a while knocking because all the doors were locked and i cannot i could find every see males but i couldn't find phone number so i thought i'd make that public that the i thought the building during a public hearing is supposed to be unlocked just recently i mean i was watching at home and then i came for this yeah you know because i've never had this problem before when i  sorry so i may want to just support a lot of what rachel and roger and judy and gloria said i personally my husband and i feel deeply enough about affordable housing that we help fund professional help for the p i do believe there is a lot of interest in town that if there was land at a reasonable price we could easily raise money to build affordable housing but land at market price does not  is not easy to make it work that way so there's lots of interest with as everybody said it's so sad watching so many people have to leave belmont because they can't find housing that they can downsize to and i've sure we all know people who've had to do that and they keep moving to the neighboring towns and they can't be as involved in town if they aren't voters in town anymore so i would hope that especially the planning board would do as much as possible i'm to switch things up hi everybody i'm going to switch things around now briefly rather than neighborhood determinations i'm going to move to number five which is updated potential cases and potential playing board projects one of the potential playing port projects that sort of got lost on in the middle of things is inclusionary zoning you just i know the changes that your suggestion suggesting for the inclusionary zoning are specific and small could you just give us two minutes of the you want to come up to the table here introduce yourself and just basically tell us the specific changes that you're proposing and then you can do the more formal presentation on the fifth and then we can decide if it's going to fit on our schedule or not  chair of the housing trust thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly about inclusionary zoning the housing trust has been going through our crew clinton is owning policy and looking at neighboring communities to determine how we could best strengthen our policy particularly trying to get ahead of development opportunities that are coming inclusionary zoning only works if we have development that's happening and the perfect examinate was a perfect example so we have some modest changes that we are proposing largely around the percentages currently our policy is for six to twelve units to be of for ten percent to be affordable thirteen to forty units for twelve percent to be affordable and when you get to forty plus units for fifteen percent to be affordable we do have the reduction in affordability for mixed use where it brings it down to ten percent we're proposing is for six twelve you just remain the same at ten percent thirteen to twenty units be at twelve and a half percent and for that fifteen percent to kick in at twenty units we'd also like to strike the mixed use residential affordability restriction largely because most of the development we're likely to see here will be an excuse that's something that we've been advocating for something that came out of our housing production plan it's where development is most likely to happen around waverly square train so we think it's important that it really be everything else mine since we're since i'm on five i don't think we're going to go into committee reports the playing board projects we have lots of projects let's move back to for which of the neighborhood determinants i looked at them i'm fine how is everybody else on the neighborhood determining i think we're finally going to see did you want to go into more detail on the parts just the neighborhood and then yes yes right of the groups fourteen to sixteen king street do we have anybody that is interested in that that's close to me but i have a potential conflict i think i could do that role if you want to do that or i could do that if meeting we've done a review of building permits issued in a single residence be sense two thousand and fifteen we discovered that there were eighteen permits issued for seventeen different properties one property came in and received two separate building permits we've discovered that the the median to lay before the work was done was two thousand six hundred square feet which is below the neighborhood median t l a which is below the non conforming lot median t l a and it's below the average t l a for single family homes and throughout the town so i guess the point being that projects properties receiving building permits and there are b tend to be smaller single family homes than what you see throughout belmont and on on average they're adding less than three hundred square feet the median project was four hundred seventy one square feet the average was two hundred fifty square feet the at the end of the day we were left with a median t l a of twenty three hundred twenty three square feet so still in the ballpark of what's seen throughout belmont and what is exists in the s r b district you really get one really big project and that's the only one that actually would have come to us and are under thirty percent yeah so if we do that if we do thirty can easily you know roll into it and i drafted here yeah and i think too we can write into things the seller vs basement issue so that doesn't have to come up to us so we can write something on that that says you know if it's if it's you know not usable or any of this we're not going to count it for it which is basically what we backed into right pretty much in the two cases that i' slate we we and on the training we got them to scale back so that it wasn't looking like a third story going on so those are the those are probably the ones that are appropriate even if they're small or to have special permits y don't know if that's an issue for the board i don't know if that because of the likelihood that that is a time when a lot of people go away whether or not you still want to and we want to have your time not to have the meeting then that's what you could