allison chair of the planning board and i would like to call this meeting to order at seven pm on wednesday april sixth i'd like to take a moment as is our usual practice to introduce my colleagues wheeler we have a full agenda this meeting and this evening and i'd like to take a moment just to run through it and explain what we're going to be doing the first item is a consideration of a request for modification of the extension previously collect granted for the for cushing village of the special permit for pushing village  we have we had extended this previously and under this idea we will first be hearing from mr lovett who will just briefly introduce the extremely likely successor love it to just hit the highlights this time and to respond to any questions from the board while the selectmen courteously asked us if we had questions we said no  this is our second chance at mr donahue rev representative smith legacy partners well then sprees in the specifics of the modification and questions from the  board and we will deliberate and vote i will what i'm about to say is well known to everyone on the board and i but i just i want to repeat it so there is no possible from fusion and i want to repeat it because already granted modification to its terms these special permit as approved by this board is going to be taken over as approved there will be no changes and in due course i will ask mr love it and mr donahue to just we all agree that there is the special permit will not be opened again the project is the project following that request they will be coming to outline a review process that they think is more appropriate for a project of their that size than our usual review process they assure me that you've heard this before as the longest sitting member of the board and i said to them we would be happy to hear their view of how we are to proceed and then we would deliberate and they said they understood point is approaching final i believe and we have then apart from routine items we have then what the historic district commission is going to be sending an article to extend the demolition delay for historic houses we had a discussion of this earlier and agreed that if we did not take a formal poll and would not to we had an article before us that it was the sense of the meeting that we would support it but it is now back to us in final form so we need to have a formal vote and then we will have  finally a discussion of our finally a discussion of the report that we propose to send geoffrey has done a draft i've looked at it of the report we plan to send town meeting members on single rest see and consider whether we feel it appropriate to make any changes so that we can get it out in a timely fashion and then we have we'll have committee updates roughly terrific honor for us as a company we have over the last i taped probably five to ten years started to explore and begun in earnest exploring the the apartment business in in that we've concentrated our in our market from from washington d c up to boston the markets in those markets of proven to be terrific for us we're very excited about those and continuing our growth currently we have a project that we are completing in westborough massachusetts which is two hundred forty nine units were about to start another project in need house which is about three hundred ninety units we're very excited about the cushing village project and our involvement in that would think this is really going to be a landmark project for us in the market and then we're going to decision which encompasses the proposal that we would have for the modification of those benchmarks it does not modify the outside date for the use of the special permit that remains december third two thousand and sixteen is the outside date by that time what the law says is substantially use of the permit must have been commenced and therefore that is a requirement that is the love it is aware of under massachusetts law what we have proposed is some intermediate benchmarks basically which tie in from now until that time we have suggested that a requirement would be that we close obviously on the missile parking lot in accordance with the terms of the purchase and sale agreement that was modified on  march twenty second by the board of selectmen that calls for closing on or after august twenty sixth of two thousand and sixteen we further propose provided for benchmarks of within forty five days of the acquisition an application for the demolition permit will be submitted to the town for all of the structures and an application for at least one of the foundation permits for one of the three buildings will be filed in within thirty days of receiving the demolition permit demolition will  start obviously for the work's going to be necessary to get from demolition to substantial use but trying to get that specific schedule now would be somewhat unfair to miss the love and the team at toll without having a contractor on board it really an opportunity to figure out how it's all going to get staged in that period of time so it's a it's a small period of time i think that toll brings because of its public nature and it's past the credibility to allow this board to be just i don't have a question but i have a comment just i think that the board i was speaking for myself and all that other board members chime in i found it useful to have the ongoing communication over the past six months and i would obviously you're in a diligence period and once hopefully the agreement you close i would encourage you although i don't you know i don't think it's  environment a requirement that we would impose this evening but i would encourage after the closings that we find a way to keep those lines of communication open both for the sake of the residents of  sing square and the town as a whole in the planning board just to be apprised of your progress you know rather than waiting potentially for a deadline to arrive and then determine whether or not know the appropriate progress has been made so just a comment mr lovett really happy to happy to speak to that and we met with their community development group department today and had a very productive meeting so i think keeping the lines of communication open with the town i think the details of how we do that we can work on but we certainly see those as valuable and important as we build our relationship with the town and again our objective is to and market touched upon this you know there's going to be a lot going on sort of behind the scenes for lack of better term over the next few months i think valuable to keep everybody in on to some sort of schedule perhaps monthly that would be very helpful because then we could post them and people would know when to go to the website for me to look for them and so on we we do look forward to it but i think that maybe once we get out of our due diligence and we read it we understand we appreciate the difficulties of posting updates on an to review this and since his review was brief i will read it in its entirety this looks fine to me i think linking the decisions to closing instead of actual dates is a good idea do so that i could keep track of what that all really means i did the milestones picking up on what was done in the last time so that there are dates when things are to occur on or before this is something that can be a responsibility of community development any day plan past the forty five day submission will depend on community developing turning around those just ready to go and if there are no other questions or comments i'd like to ask for a motion out i guess think it's several things to discuss under that heading the first is the current draft of the  easier stand in from the perspective of me as a resident of the town was it me so i was hoping to get have that finished today but for this afternoon but didn't get a chance to do it but it will be i'm hoping tomorrow i'll be able to send a draft around and certainly a good narrative flow is very helpful in our presentation yes you know we had a really great conversation this morning about how to make it so it's easy to understand prior powerpoint presentation and just really actually keep it almost piece basically a blank slide if you will with really no design no color just so that it doesn't distract from any of the content or the pictures you know the words in the pictures speak for themselves yes i think pretty cute that the the site the slide on height for example where you have a vivid red a vivid green and then a burnt orange order ye meeting currently we are scheduled for we have a public hearing on single rest and see the final public hearing before a town meeting scheduled on the twelfth that's a will need to make some decisions about how this is best presented at a town meeting i think last time joe and i did the presentation but raffi had been one of the sponsors of the general residence district and so to the extent this is part of the same way of looking at the town and thinking about the character of the town could be the introduction introductory parts might be done by you or barber since you are now vice chair a presenter of such quality that your firm fly fuel around the country to present so there are many alternatives so many options so between now the my only thought is yes it's a talented board there are many options  chance for town meeting to at one time or another do not worry gentlemen there will be a full time meeting it is good for people to see all of us at one time or another so  all are welcome i believe that we can we will of course be prepared for any questions i believe we can to some extent anticipate the questions i believe you all all are welcome all would be helpful but i believe jeffrey and i could handle it if we need to and then the fourteenth is the league of women voters warren  briefing so there will be some discussion of that as many of us pretty everyone those who are town meeting members would be good to be there but we'll certainly need to care and be prepared to answer questions about our own article newly elected town read member so at this point we may want to rethink this a little and if we are going to do some kind of educational event committee or some kind of briefing members is is easier than doing a briefing for some broader group so we need to think about what that i thought think it could be useful but we need to think a little bit more about what it might be right and we should also ask the citizen representatives if they will be able to make the meeting on the twelfth grade good and if called upon prepared to say a few words right any other  right the historic district commission all right any comments discussion questions i'm just a comment i'm in support of their extension and they've got seventy percent of the work completed and it would be probably prudent to wait that they have the survey completed in its entirety for before they can come up with a draft a year however during the year period of the extension i think we need to look more carefully at it i think we need to look at two things i think we need to look at the length of the delay whether twelve months is a reasonable add some sort of incentive to keep the building in place it's basically the way it reads is that he'll meet with them and try to arrange something i think this is an issue for this kind of thing and that there has to be some sort of incentive for a person that has this property is planning to redevelop it to not knock it down and maybe do some other things those are things that need to be talked about afterwards i think it needs to be pushed forward through at this point but i think we need to afterwards talk with them about that how to make the most efficient demolition delay of water that we can that will achieve the results that we want anything it's what everybody you know forgetting about demolition delays that it's just that it's a delay so i'm certain we should have a conversation about like i'm just not what it does to be very frank with you i think it sets incentives are probably the more meaningful discussion and that i think that we could actually get they don't like the  happened in the town stop a nicer and we have a huge one up the street that wasn't a subject to any delays sometimes i think delays can be a problem so i think incentives are more like a solution you need to you need to make you need to give incentives so that people preserve a three and i think the whole point one of the points we talked about the demolition delay was love was that was to give time for developer wouldn't just go in and not the building down and just go on his way and build the next one to be able to negotiate something and if you don't have any six months doesn't do very much there's no leverage on that especially the way the market is course they know it doesn't do  right with that and say and i will certainly talk to the co chairs of the historic district commission and convey this but with that do i have a motion  inform the historic district commission that you plan to stand unanimously in recommendation of their motion yes good all right and now on to our letter to  and again just by way of context it's my understanding that the citizen it's time to rectify this question to peg callan and it's my understanding that the citizens group also plans to send a letter of their own to all town meeting members and that you've arranged with the town clerk to do so is that correct could you go to the mike and  and with that i soon people have looked at this and we were looking for looking for comments suggestions corrections i have some minor corrections i don't think we need to discuss except for one which is at the bottom of the first you know we've gone back and forth on language over time of this as written what this letter tried to do was as briefly and clearly explain what the amendments were intended to do and what they said we considered but obviously we could have written more of a marketing letter so to speak and if any right then if there are any corrections barber you'll give your corrections your edits and if there are any edits to be given as you group meeting and happy to report that was very well attended six out of the seven residents have joined we had some good discussions and we also had homework assignments so we're going to be taking a look at the what we call our comparable communities benchmark list so we divvied that up to ask a common set of questions to begin the discussion of who's doing what what's the size and scale of the product i mean the size of the issue in their to convert the bar into additional living space similar to what was terrified of somerset street where it's not a it's not a it's not can be converted to a another home or a home office it's just going to be converted to expansion of the existing living space are going to put a sort of a family room on the first floor and like a gym on the second floor and a half bath inside is under the bar is this a historic know there's actually been well this is a this is a new one there's been two others i've actually come before the board five somerset which is right in the corner of somerset in pleasant street it's the big yellow a complex almost and then thirty shortly would be good to have a sense of the neighborhoods have been defined for some time oh yeah it was actually went on for quite a while i just i'm always i'm always hesitant about when to send stuff out because to someone as you may remember from past cases some analysis is required as one data is received so getting it out sooner rather than later would is there going to be an article that town meeting on this topic not that i've heard that there's going to be it hasn't been officially has been filed yet need to carefully think we need to just think through the have i am disappointed that we cannot have this case on the twenty six but we need to be we need to think through if there's an article we hear the case it's it will be good to try to find out where that exactly where that article stands yes yes and part of it was also to sort of  would be my understanding is it would be calling a special time meeting which this is a different set of timelines right in a typical zoning article so that  one point you know that the time meaning is going to be second and the first monday in june and that there was some talk about trying to coincide the same time those also are occurring the may fo baseball here because because we kind of buried the lead mix my metaphors what would the hearing be about and what would the potential for an article be about specifically i don't know about the but but they don't provide me with sufficient depth to have that's why i'm presuming out here yes and i just want to remind you is that i'm recused and i think when i'm yes set out in the hallway joe joined me right here you are will need to figure out a schedule that works for your group because you may with attendance for that you know that was my question and i was trying to understand what the implications because i was hung on your phrase about doing this in the right process i think you say right if there had been if it had been likely that this would be in the mess it was really my question was really a question of can this possibly be on the may second warrant and if it can't be on the may second war then we should just go ahead and hold the hear that was my question and yes this is this is one of the issues and which we need we will need everyone here because two we have two people who are two board members who although there was a reference to to parking in there and i gather the thing is in the absence of the discussion of it it was assumed not to be inclusive will that be coming to us it's some point is that a a number also on right planning board projects it has it has now been suggested a number of times that we should again turn our attention to the issue of a revitalization of the town's lawyers when hopefully cushing square is now under way provided they complete their due diligence successfully and so on that we should return to that now to some extent because the selectmen set up the economic development advisory committee that is a little bit murky but it has been suggested often enough that we may want to look at that as well as taking another look at those particular portions of the comprehensive plan that deal with that the minutes that we have in hand  all right are there any changes in the minutes of march fifteenth chuck you will think all right and now we turn to the rather brief minutes at the first half of our meeting and the one held singularly rather unfeelingly on the twenty second of march any changes if not may have a motion to approve move to prove the minutes of march twenty second second in favor  do that's what you want to send an email or to people i don't know i mean i'm we're here we're here yeah i think we might we we the if we move it to the tenth we lose karl we can know i might tuesday commitment it goes from october to the end of april but i can understand it manager of continuing to meet on our regular schedule i think that i think i would prefer i mean i think when we say we meet the first and third tuesday of every month we should make an effort to meet the first and third q state to every and there is going to come from and i just need you mean if if the only reason the people had if for some reason there were conflicts but it's easier for people not to have conflicts if we are always meet on the first and the third because then they know when a conflict would happen and the fact that we'll be a little those of us who are out of town meeting members w of us will be a little punchy by the fourth well that happens we'll do our best ok