as many of you know has recused himself from these hearings and being a property owner in cushing square and roughly magick in its head travel plans and is unable to be here this evening however the three of us constitute a quorum and so we will move ahead of the we have one item on the agenda this evening which is the application of the of the tall application for some changes some modifications some of the special permit the order will proceed as follows i'll ask the applicant to make whatever presentation the applicant wishes to make then we will have some discussion amongst the board i will be presenting an analysis of the financial impact of the proposed changes before but before starting particularly for those of you who were at the early that the developer toll has held a number of info community meetings to inform so i just want to be clear on what is different how this meeting differs from the meetings the developer has been held in at the developer meetings and there's been at least one member of the planning board at all of those meetings the discussion has been wide ranging and covered topics ranging from general issues in the neighborhood to the history of the project to construction and construction issues to the particular changes being proposed tonight we are dealing with only one issue and that is the issue of modification to the special permit in saying that i don't mean to suggest that issues arising during construction are an important or that there isn't a place to hear general concerns about the neighborhood but that not this meeting this meeting we will be very tightly focused one might go so far as to say laser like in our focus on the changes being sought in the special permit and with that i'd like to ask one other difference you need to give at the develop first meetings you don't need to give your name at our meetings you do need to give your name and i'll take your question as soon as the applicant has presented perhaps all right maybe we could move yes at a project we look at it for it's you know it's vibrancy and it's the lifestyle and the community that's going to be created around the project and one of the things that's really important to us is yes we're going to have you know people living in this community are one of our main priorities is to make sure that the units that they're living in are attractive livable functional units and we spent a lot of time over the last number of months  really dissecting the units in this project and making sure that the layouts which were which we've modified from the previous unit layouts in the from the previous development to make sure that it's great to have a great location and a great community but if you don't have units that people want to really live in and enjoy it makes creating that community a lot harder so we spent a lot of time and with peter you know going through the units just by way of a quick example when we looked at the bedrooms to the side that's been the the light in the air into these corner units and put the living area in those areas so those are the type of you know livable changes that were making and that resulted in some modifications so overall the project has actually been reduced in the number of units we had been approved for one hundred fifteen units we've reduced our unit count to one hundred twelve units peter can get more into more detail on you know how the adjusted we also reduce the number of bedrooms overall by twelve so you know we have made some reduction xin in scale square footage is remained consistent with the approved plans and one other kind of larger modification was that we remove the roof deck from the winslow building again the driver for that was the community we've got three separate buildings here we really want this community in the residence within the community to come together in a lot of our communities what we'll do is we'll have the mailbox in a central location so everyone has to come to the central leasing area you know is engage with other members of the community is engaged with our staff and we felt that having is because of spatial require it's here our mailboxes by example are in individual buildings so we felt if we had a roof deck honest so an additional building you know people in the winslow building may never interact with people from the highland building or our staff so again these these modifications are really lifestyle and community changes as i mentioned when we made the modifications to the units on the insides it drove some changes that will require this this project was i think designed from or appears to been designed from the inside out so even if we took the original floor plans with the original exterior designs we wouldn't have the the windows for example would have lined up in modifications would have had to been made so as we develop the units on the interior we were able to are required to make some modifications to when to locations and elevations we feel we think and we hope and we feel that we've improved the elevations you know some of the modifications are very minor nature some others are a little bit larger for probably the biggest one is we had on the pomona building originally stucco had been proposed stucco is can be a tract of it does have to mean we're we're looking at this long term from a menace standpoint from a quality standpoint from a durability standpoint a lot of experience with stucco that we've had has been a couple of things one it's a little more susceptible to leaking which were a verse to and also it can stain especially lighter colors stucco can stain so you know you have the rain coming down it comes down especially around the corners of windows so we try to think through as much of this is we can  in those of the changes that are reflected in the plans that you see tonight in more detail we haven't changed the building heights the profiles were certainly very conscious of you know the screening along on the roofs and you know peter as was mentioned before we did present these plans and elevations they had been they have been developed a little bit further since our last meeting but we did present a few weeks ago to a community meeting where we talked about a number of  be presenting these as you know there's a hole in the ground out there now we're moving forward these changes have not really affected our ability to proceed with the project but they they are in static nature and and we do want to show them to the to the community as well as to the board this evening so i'm just going to run through the the drawings that we submitted to the play department and i believe you have it's just and i don't mean to be too academic about this but i want to be as thorough as possible i've just simply taken what we're proposing and then below it as you go through these  what what was originally approved so the site plan is changed very very little we still have a stamp concrete plaza here we have this nice community and retail  gathering area in the back of the winslow winslow being the three story building the still functions much the same way with a very very large retail area a residential entry on the corner a loading area in this back corner and then finally the highland still you shape building with some retail along this horn road area here in the garage entry in exactly the same location it's always been in december of  thousand two thousand and fourteen and freudian slip we did come in with some modifications of highland we've kept to those in terms of the general circulation of the building but we've made some further modifications in just how we deal with the massing as you can imagine that that building has been a real struggle to try to get the massing right without it looking like an imposing building so all of those are in the in the cause of that the original  here the main thing that we've developed a little bit and it's still in process is how this how this roof that that is at the raid level that's a little bit above grade relative to back here has been developed and that's still in  process but we've always seen it as kind of a passive recreation area mostly just a green roof and we're proposing something similar i think in the end they'll build some more plantings out here than what i'm showing now but that's that's really the only the only thing that i think if you go through these that you'll see different between these two these two plans so that's the approved site plan from december of two thousand and fourteen just to remind you we did receive you know with starr the the original site special permit site plan review approval was in july of two thousand and thirteen so it's about a year and a half later that we came back with these changes so if any of those changes were approved then that's what i'm showing to you tonight as our reference and if we hadn't brought up some of those issues where they hadn't changed i will then go back to the original special permit that's where we had come in with this roof deck up here and i had house two stairways trellis in the like we had done some small changes the next year but the main thing i want to show is that as bill said we had we had sort of made these corners solid the concept here was to group everything toward the center and to create kind of small symmetries built over these retail entries in this case which is what we're proposing now we're moving out toward the corners to create these great corner spaces for the units which will and live in the street a bit more and and also just deal with the the building in a different way so this has much more  singular residential entry right here and these are residential bays up above the basis exactly the same is approve this really no change in that up here we're using the same materials namely  a fiber cement shingle and we still have cornices with brackets we just reduce them a little bit in order to highlight these corners better and of course we've removed as bill said we've removed the roof deck and all of that stuff up there we do have screening where we see this kind of gray box that screening which will be somewhat translucent for air to flow through but primarily will be you know it will be semi opaque so that so that the mechanical equipment is hidden behind that from the street level so that's building one these are some of the other elevations as you go around this is the willesden view same thing same theme moving around the building back side and this area here we did create we continue the arcade that we had on the parking lot side and brought it along the back as well so there's quite a  area here there were people can sit in the rain and go to a starbucks which we anticipate will be on this corner right here and any other uses that are in that building otherwise it's pretty much the same and this is the parking lot side with these with this arcade that walks underneath it where you can walk underneath the building to the back that was there before we've just added more columns kind of made it a little more interesting all right so moving on to the next building materials again these are the same materials that we've presented before and i i do want to mention that as you probably know to the board you know we are required to provide a mock up a large scale mock up and you know that's our intention in the next month month and a half to do that and to have that available for the public to see as well as for the board to see and get our approval from that i think we've settled on most of our materials and i would have brought more tonight but they're all at corporate headquarters right now getting approved but these are these are what we've submitted and i won't go into them unless you have some specific questions ok so now on to the  this building is is virtually the same in so many ways in terms of its layout you know we've we have gone to more corner units but we did make some adjustments and how do the long facades are treated and how the corners treated the corner before and i would be a little hard to go back to the plans for the corners before it was kind of a meeting at the corner and now we've squared it off so that it so that really only one facet is angled everything else orthogonal and it's just i think it just reads a little better visually we created some simpler symmetries in this area and what we've also done is if you remember we had a brick base and then we had stone in this area the stone goes all the way up to the upper reaches of the building to the parapet we still have that stone here but will be done is taken that stone and again this is actually we think an upgrade we've taken that stone along the whole base of the building and this is actual limestone it's approximately one one to two inches thick depending on its location and it's you know it's a nice quality material i do have some samples here if you want to feel the weight of it it's it's the real thing u above this is the area that bill was talking about where we had stucco before so we've what we've done here is we're proposing a brick tile so this is this is real brick you know just as you see that sample over there on the floor right here but and it's crowded  but it sits on a substrate that holds it to the wall rather than sitting on its own bed and but it is a heavy weight materials extremely durable because it is brick and we would put some horizontal striping in that to create a little bit of visual effect similar to what we had before with some of the tiles that we had and then we've come up with this idea of these large bays which i think are a little more residential in quality and less grand than these big the transom window systems that we had here before this upper level here is still somewhat similar we've kind of been a more like an attic and without these doors that i think make it look more like a fourth floor and here we've  tried to recess these small base back from the main bays and create a little little bit more like a a man step back really no change in our screening up above this was just barely shown here but that's what we have appear and then moving around that building same thing this is the roadside that's our fourth floor we put a nice  corner rather than just wrapping windows around it so this bay will complement the bay that is on the winslow at the same location and kind of mark the entry into the site with these two with these two large base let into the the limestone up in here create and i think it seems more appropriate for a commercial center to have a clock again this is the side facing the parking lot again we have an arcade underneath here i think you can see how that reads you walk underneath there this is this recessed area in the you in order to make the building look less massive we change materials in there to a fiber cement and then we come back out with the brick face the brick tile out at the at the road road face same thing on the top level bringing that attic around we did fill in some of these in here because this is honestly this is the think we just were looking at that a little more seriously programatic leans didn't make it even if he had been windows they probably just would have been you know opaque doubt so i think we see this is a place for plants to grow and vines to grow into a grid there screen trellis and you know we've used the contrast of the bays with the brick i think pretty effectively to create some small sent points along the building this bay works with the bay around the corner to create it again a gateway right there at that location these are also a step back quite dramatically that has not changed at all we always we had agreed through the original process of the step backs and had done quite a bit of work so we've left that as it was again the materials using kind of a twenty or russet colored brick with a darker almost black brick to create these these finally the the highland so the lower picture is that we spent a lot quite a bit of time in december of two thousand and fourteen obtaining approval for you for these changes the original drawings that were approved for the special permit had the entry here at the corner that was the original eric design and we just couldn't make that work with the floor plans once we got into the floor plan so we had asked to move the the entry down to the lower level up here if you enter here you have to go down to get to the first level residential it was always problematic so we've also created some nice common space in here and there's also the marketing offices for the whole complex as well as the entry into an underground what we hope will be a fitness center for this part of the commercial space everything can just feed off this one one location here what we've done is actually downplayed this entry here because we want this to be really the main thing that you see as you come in from watertown the tower here we've increased the amount of brick in here and brought it up into this element here so that it kind of follows the staggering effect of stepping effect of the building as it comes down we struggle quite a bit with this roof line you can see how the mass of this man's heart is when you compare it to what we ended up with so what we're doing here is actually creating sort of  again a change of materials this is sort of like it's hard to see in the scale but it's like a board and batten material and then above that there's a there's a small shed roof especially right up in here so this has its own and then what we did is in order to reduce you know this this mass and here we we went we we still have a mansard here and then we stepped it down to kind of like a flat roof with a small parapet and you can see the effect is actually somewhat significant in how the building reads and then finally go back to the the mansard shed roof there so it's it's it's really just you know playing with those roof lines and trying to get a better proportion between wall and roof and not making this thing so heavy and you know given that the steepness of the site even though you you know we decrease the amount of parapet here compared to that you really won't see these things because you're quite down below them quite far down below them you see them in the studio elevation like this but you know when you're down looking at an angle about it you won't see them windows also on this building we  see they're very minimal trim on these we've really kind of turned them much more residential with large and wide trim on them more robust corner boards making it feel like a real residential building same thing on this is the belmont street again using that idea of a corner bay to anchor the end of the building we did have that originally but it's just another variation on it and you can see the the tower instead of it being kind of like a big cut out like almost commercial like look you know we have been much more layered and residential like in that area and we kind of lighten the pitch of that roof to create a little bit of vis play with double angle and this is the backside which the one red residents of course will see and again we are stepping this down this is actually another step here we've reduced the effective mass at the roof edge if you look you can see mediately how much that is reduced and again it's mostly just a visual effect but it's an important one before just to kind of simplify the building a little bit we did actually flatten the building a little bit on on the syrian here too that was a lot of kind of ins and outs and we felt like that really wasn't working it actually made too many little pieces and so we try to clean that up a little bit so that's and then again same materials as we had before and i say full bed brick at the base this is a kind of borden baton that's painted two tones and a five percent meant clapboard  and then a metal roof up in this area here and that's actually it i'm happy to go into floor plans or be like but i think you know you can see the effect of that they're making before i turn to members of the board   feet size mass dimension density and so on and then work out where you can be design elements and then there's always been some question as to how far we want to go into the smaller design elements so with that yeah so i think big picture i think  building to build that than it was before not that it was easy building to build so in general on on that i think you've done a good job and i think that's five probably have some individual questions question i have though if you the same square footage you've reduced the number of units you give reduced the studio's in two bedrooms and you've increased right one bedrooms which is clearly what the market ten percent ten percent i think we're at the same ratio we were all it was twelve so how many are we going to get now twelve we're going to get twelve now because we're going to round up is that how it works yes yes so we'll have twelve affordable units and so in terms of for those people at home that we're interested in because one of the big issues that came up with this and we had at the time that this was going through with affordable housing what the question was so the number of i think i think it was a question about it in that about how the units how we got to for fewer units but keep the same size yeah yeah i'm interested in that so you want to elaborate on well you know one of the things that the previous plans did not have is they had the units but they didn't have it when really tailored to the market and you know one of the things that we found in that and told us asked us to look at it is having plus units in other words units with an interior study y with these large floor plates that we have you know with a fairly deep it's it's it just makes sense to do them so we've we've great almost all the ones a lot of the ones and almost all the jews have to have an interior room that is suitable for an you know study or player to look at what the impact of the change in the size mix of the apartments would be in terms of school children and in terms of fiscal impact using the same ratio of students per one bedroom to room and studio this plan produces rough approximately nine students fewer disagree and as soon as i find the right one someone else is talking i'll return to the search for my phone and turn it off i apologize to all of you  it out of pocket cost per student we won't know precisely till we vote the town the school budget at town meeting next week but they're about thirteen thousand dollars so you can do the arithmetic and this is generates approximately one hundred seventeen thousand dollars of additional fiscal benefits to the time the major copy out and i this is a follow up in two ch the town so there is provision in the special permit for a review of the and down the road but i think anything that you can say to give comfort on this point that these aren't actually two bedroom plus doesn't equal three bedroom would be very helpful to me at least because you know from increased students follows increased pressure on the school is increased  mention when we look at the market so again we look at the market will get the functionality the units you know in some businesses we took you know to one bedroom units that were side by side that really didn't function well and turned him into a studio in a one bedroom others three units for awkward and these units are these units are very deep so you have areas that you can't put  target market etc now we're looking to a demographic that's one of the empty nester phase of their lives and they have a significant amount of value for that study to have an extra area that they can set aside you know we're in a lot of the studies that we have we are actually including bookcases that are built in so that these you know these units are going to function as studies you know that's again that's what the market's looking for  demanding most of the studies that we have work on them studies but a lot of them have you know really three walls are wide open you know as you walk into the entrance of the apartment you know to your right or to your left there's a p in the air exactly what the mix was going to be you know in terms of like young professionals and the thought was that there was an untapped market in terms of the empty nesters and people lived in belmont that had houses and were looking to get out and i was his per se because you know either retiring or the children and they want to mean in belmont are you seeing that as more of an emerging market than we did at that point absolutely i mean  i think you know looking back at the previous developer you know the plans the previous developer they had three buildings with three distinct interior design concepts right to target different markets we've got a one theme throughout the entire project as far as you know the type of flooring the type of cabinets the type we're not you know we don't have you know quote unquote  empty nester building and then a millennial building and then you know something else we've got you know a consistent classic brand development here that makes i think but i think you're absolutely right units is we want them to feel you know if when if and when people are downsizing you know they want to walk in there they're moving into a much smaller space you're assuming they're moving into a smaller space from a single family home so it may be an adjustment  this is speculative but it may be an adjustment to move down anyway so you know one of the things we nor mention the corner units before when you open the door from the core door when you open there's a diagonal path that goes right to blast wall window walls so you feel the light and air and you feel like the space is not crowded and cramped it feels brighton area and that's what we're striving for because we recognize that that's what people are going to be design well i have a question by the names first do the three existing names disappear and the pole project becomes the bradford  your branding company interior design company etc to go look at the project look at the demographics that is being attracted and come up with you know a series of names that we then vet internally and you know choose ultimately want to because the story behind it or just because we like the name there's how it looks so you know and this is the bradford has been selected  we are still no admitted that selection were kind of working through the buildings we will have to differentiate the buildings at some level whether they stay as names currently or those names change we are we're still debating that some some design questions and this is a question i think really probably for peter quinn what what was the characteristic of the windows in the approved site plan and they show up as divided lights over full lower lights what what what what were they in the original approval and roposal there are one over one in they highland i'm sorry and in the winslow we do have a divided light in these with transoms above that's very similar to what was approved if we actually have more transoms now and then in the highland submission that we had to make it does appear that there is a substantial reduction in the square footage of windows if you compare the if you compare any of the  paired i'm looking at the ammonia and it looks like there's there been a reduction of at least a third of the square footage of windows and going from that what was approved of what is know i think you know we in the original poem owner there was quite a bit of windows that had transoms above them but honestly when you match these up to the floor plans they didn't work very well you know they were they were missed balance so you know that's that's the main thing is that these windows now work with the floor plans and they're appropriately sized for the floor areas that we have i think it's you know when you're designing from the outside in as this was originally done you're you know you it's very easy to put a lot of windows in but to actually get them to work with a floor plan is another matter we've actually increased the size the vertical height of these windows making them bigger than them but they are here that these look bigger than they are but now they actually are bigger it's going it may have something to do with the fact that this is that brick tile in this area one of the i didn't mean to you know that's that's all i mean the the one piece of the design changes that i have a hard time visualizing with it is the borden battened on the highland i you're as you all know there's a lot of work trying to figure out trying to so you try to reduce the sense of nothing with the roofing and this just feels like a short elevation has gone from a true pyramid to a pyramid with a flared base right now it looks a little i think i think it doesn't i think it's a little less strong design element it looks one one last question i feel i feel like that blank area on the backside of the pomona is unfortunate i think it's it's substantially larger if you compare it with the approved site plan and we just go to that i think you're talking about this i'm talking about over here whether we're going to talk or blank rectangles i think there needs something needs to be done to make that a little bit more people friendly yeah actually we were intending to assign that to the landscape architect when he revises you know the small things in the in the landscape plan but i think what we're thinking is that these these get a you know kind of like  samples to indicate the quality but we we you know if we were to meet again i moved certainly can bring all those samples back there just in pennsylvania right now yes i would like to see the samples and it also occurred to me you know you mentioned much wider corner boards yeah than the i mean it well i guess and carl's questions about the windows and it just i mean i wonder if we at some point are going to have conversations about some of some of the material details you know with respect to the to the windows and some of the siding materials that would be helpful when we if we have a meeting and we can see even materials and you can go straight there that would probably be useful rather notes trying to conceptualize it's really hard it is hard you know we i mean that the mock up that we would make would you have a piece of window drammen all that in there so you really get a feel for the building in the texture and that isn't required it is yeah i'm not sure yet and we would certainly anticipate holding that meeting i had i had one design question ok which really which perhaps if we're going to have a materials meeting where we have cups and we can i am probably a little less inclined than my colleagues to provide i have suggestions as to architectural details but i read so if i turn to page fourteen of the original cushing village decision under two building only high quality exterior exterior material should be used for each of the buildings  and my in as i did consult with the former chair of the planning board who remembers all of these hearings in considerable detail and according the the concern was that one doesn't want materials that world will weather badly and the concern in particular with the brick tile which is the phrase used in the river in the application we were presented with  brick tile which was called out as a specific concern now from my perspective that could be addressed by information your ability of the  brick is it so my understanding yes there's two different kinds of bricks some bricks are porous and some are water struck with no that's that's a finish that's just how the brick is manufactured so you think you could have a water screw up finish on a on a on a on a brick tile it's just the thickness of it know they're there just like regular bricks they just don't have the full bed that a brick has you would never notice the difference from the exterior and we're just concerned about the weight and the cost of doing that we're going from stucco to this thing this thinner brick tile but you know what would be called a full bred brick in other words they sit on their own mortar bed as opposed to being attached the wall directly pointed it has the same static is a thinner yes it's not a full brick but we think it achieves a nicer look and you know the way it's laid is you're laying it to an extent so to the way you really stuck where it's been installed in the field overall this is not an overall review it is not a discussion of the many other topics that one might raise under the heading of does anyone do we see any major issues here i mean i i think we basically seeing we're seeing the same project that we've approved change not much in terms of size if at all would second the concern about about i think what what's always said is it's as good as brick but there are clearly people who don't believe that who and and and this site plan decision was based on that fact it may be as good as brick it may last ten years or twenty years but this decision was that it was going to be real brick period and i hate to see us walk away from that microphone no one watching this at home can't hear a word you're saying and that tends to make the answer seem a little disconnected greetings lauren meyer  thirty nine ok ave co chair of the historic district commission i have a few questions a couple questions and a couple comments the first is it was a little confusing to me how we could still have the scs same square footage and yet have the several corners squared off so i wonder if i could pose that question what will the how did that square footage balance out perhaps on a percentage basis with the overall  you know square footage for the all three buildings it's a low percentage but still i think there is some push out of some of the angled and you know corners and things that were in the  approved plant this and that sort of leads me into us an architectural concern and that is that i know there's there was a lot of discussion over over many years about how to articulate these buildings so that they didn't feel as massive in a square with largely one in two story buildings and i think the loss of some of the windows and some of the big that exists and some of the buildings does take us backwards a little bit and so we're losing you know i understand that the flat you know i think the word flattening was used in my mind that's actually an you know not a desirable outcome because it makes it feel more like a big block and in particular i think it's the winslow building i felt that there was just much more  expanse of the fiberboard shingles and really we just you know felt very flat and broken and that to me felt like a kind of a flat  box less desirable than what had been approved i do think there are some improvements i think a lot of the things that came off of the roof and some of the articulation of the the highland building is better but i do agree with the comment that called brought up about some of the little details on that and i think that needs to be addressed i do think that the location of the municipal parking is an improvement last as i looked in crate detail at the actual floor plans and looked at the configuration of study and dance and i do think that you know most are sort of to put a desk going to chair great for young professionals for empty nesters not appropriate for bedrooms but i did feel that a number of the studies and dan's were large enough that enterprising family could put you know a bed in there and it could be a defacto a defacto bedroom the way to to minimize that is to just make a small architectural change that would diminish the number of fixed walls so that they become just sort of wider areas and are treated more with furniture than with walls but i certainly have what a family members who lived in expensive urban environments san francisco and new york in particular where kids were in closets so family it really wants to be and it's going to use one of these dark alcoves for you know to put a kid down for the evening so i you know i think overall the reduction in the number of units is great but i do think there could be some use of those studies about half i thought it could be a feasible kids kid's ro think but generally my biggest concern is related to massing and the lack of articulation of the facades and what happened to the square footage on the corners of that squared thank you thank you he i could just ask my we can essentially listen to some reasonable number of the comments and then ask you to respond to them as a group or you can respond to individual comments do you have a preference in that case you're up next we'll just hear mr lovett's response to the points just ra stay close and i may bring peter into this as well so i think on your first question i'm asking i'm sorry on square footage we did move the one of the corners the ones or building out the overall square footage is what we talked about being consistent with what was approved on a special permit you know as it is we do push and pull certain walls actually if you could go back peter to the  to the promoted building you know where as peter mentioned you know this this corner and the original elevation on the lower elevation right that wrapped around the building now we've pulled the building in and come back out you know to create more of a bay more of an articulation of the building but in doing so you're losing your you're losing some square footage there  think on some of the buildings i want to say on the the highland you know we increased roof deck sizes and we had to do a lot of pushing and pulling within these units we you know we moved to core parent or two relatively easy to point to not add and in decrease but when it all in fact on the watch we were very cognisant of you know keeping the square footage consistent with the approve plans you know i think horror intent i'll talk about amassing now and we believe we've achieved it relative to the massing is again understanding how important it is to the project in the community you know if you look you know even at this elevation you feel that we've actually reduced the scale of the building by you know dropping the mansard roof making a little cleaner you know we've still got a kind of looks like a townhouse set up as you walk down the street so the in you'll see you can see the shadow lines here in the think there's a lot of articulation on this building i don't think any of the articulation of this building changed  know and this is the building we we collectively put you know play the most amount of work into as far as trying to you know that roof in the lower the approved elevation is so in and of itself is so massive i mean i understand the intent of the mincer roof there but it's a massive roof and what we're trying to do is minimize for the i how that how that comes together and you know clean it it so the building flows more and your eye isn't chopped up and uncomfortable for lack of a better term in looking at that elevation so we've you know we've designed this or worked through th static you know in order to minimize the massing and the him potential imposition of the building i think we were successful in achieving that you know again under appreciate the board's comments in the post comments about the board  bad i think it doesn't it doesn't read as well as it intends to but i think it you know is a marked improvement overall from the original bill thank you but i cover everything w sapolsky more road i'm glad we're on this slide i just i hope it's evident to everybody this isn't good at the the lower elevation with the man's hard roof which i'm i remember struggling to keep earlier is a much more pleasant aspect than the one at the top which look it manages to look both flat and move has the effect of diminishing the ball because it divides the height into two pieces and the lower piece is far stronger and more forward because of the light color and the darker color on top makes it reseed and i don't know about anybody else is a static judgement of this but to me this is night and day the bottom one is more attractive and more appealing and looks smaller and far less industrial top one just looks like a factory ok my second comment has to do with the conformation within the apartments and the additions of the studies it was very hard twelve overall the buildings and in each case that in some of them one bedroom apartments two bedroom apartments three bedroom apartments each case that raises the number of bedrooms potentially by one and that is  very serious issue for belmont it's a serious issue for the parents we understand and for the fiscal situation and i just think we need a very firm count on from from th forth on how many studios there are that have four walls not just alcoves in the suggestion was made that removing that fourth wall might turn a lot of people like open floor plans that that might amulya rate the problem from our perspective and i also want to say that i think that overall in through all of these discussions there has been an over emphasis on the number of empty nesters who are going to move in here and it concept is a nice one we have represented that in the plans by having a number of studies that have three walls again we're we're looking at putting built ins of furniture into the extent in certain instances where people utilize a study for a study which is the intent you need privacy if you're working from home so there's a demand for it as a function as a study with four walls so you know we're trying to make sure we're hitting all the areas that green roof is very imposing and contradicts the intent which is to minimize instead of minimizing the this first and second floor it just creates an  a couple quick points i appreciate people have raised this issue of the board and that system and also the way the windows on the third floor of the highland look and in addition to them coming in with some samples i think it would be really useful for there to be detailed drawings in blowups that they send in a p d f format to give people a better sense of what these things are going to look like close up and another issue lauren focus a lot on flattening of the outer perimeter and i was also what i was getting a sense that some of the roof lines had been flattened as well in the end during the initial designs there had been an effort to try to have some variation in the roof lines to again break up the feeling of a single massive question is in their original plans there were up on the roof where the elevator would come out and so that was above what we see here so when they're saying that the height didn't  change if they removed that elevator shaft or whatever it's called and that height of that is gone are they now saying that the height of the building is up to that elevator shaft or to the original height of the building because clearly that's going to add a significant amount of height if they're going up to the height of that shafter or whatever it was called the other issue with the highland building they mention that there's going to be only a roof deck is going to be on this building and while i'm sure the residents of porn road appreciate not having a roof deck those of us in this area of the building do not appreciate having the only roof deck  so nobody can control who's going to live in this building there's talk about empty nesters and millennia no one's going to know until it's actually built in people come here and show you could have a whole bunch of young crazy people up there until all nights of the hour you can't control it they can be throwing things into our yards in our neighborhoods we want to open a window in the summer we're going to have to be hearing every crazy person doing anything that they want in addition to the other open area that's behind the highland building the grassy area so you have both gathering areas for three large buildings coming up into the residential area leaving cushing square  basically we're going to have every hundred twelve units worth of people all congregating behind us we have a stucco i've never seen staining on stucco if you maintain it and use  quality and maintain it in the you can spray it and it becomes like brand new and i know we're not discussing the the who's going to live here but just as a beneficiary of a belmont education i can certainly say that people will do anything to have their kids also be a beneficiary of it thank you again we look very carefully worked here fully than anyone has the florescent an yone will do afterwards the likely number of students to come out of this building on the for i think the question of who is going to use you are not changing the you were just eliminating one of them so you could perhaps clarify that but then speak to your first question the height issue thank you so the building height has not changed what has changes we've reduced the parapet height like for instance in this area i think we can see that immediately but the roof and how it steps down so you see how the actually we've added another step here but there wasn't one before in this plan and this elevation it just it had straight across so we've stepped it down further back we have screening around the mechanical which is a good thirty feet from the edge of the building up in this area here in the original plan we had to have a system and house stairway that came up and we found that we don't need this so we reduced that height in both of these plans the elevator had houses actually behind the screening see don't you don't see that there's no there's no change in the elevator there's no change in the building height it's just articulation at the edges that's changed g mooney oak ave the question regarding the change for the mechanical screening the roofline in the original we don't see in the mechanical and with the new proposal there's a notation for the screening that such back which shows nice clouds in the background but no actual mechanical units so it's a little bit misleading from a visual standpoint because i see the screen there but i don't see any units behind it so i guess i'm asking are there actually going to mechanical units that are visible behind what's designated as number ten as the screening for the mechanical may be given off by some of the sick women so some places we may need it opaque completely in some places it would be like a perforated metal but the idea is that you do have a sense that there's you know light behind it but specially you know ninety percent opaque as is the intention so would you see equipment behind it you would in this few but this is not a view that you can actually see when you're down on the street you don't actually see the screen so that's that's the idea i just wanted to represent that the risk creating there in this lower elevation screening is the parapet is the screening ok so that's just a different approach looking at the uses that don't have isometrics it is difficult to see exactly what the intent of the redesigns are and as it is it is it possible hold off making decisions on those until you have a three d model of the original approved design and drawing third question and it's because you brought it up a few times yourself as there's been extensive studies done on the proposed number of children that will be in this but in this development first of all what is that number and secondly if that number is exceeded is there  some sort of additional payment to the town per student that's above that number thank you let me answer your last question first the answer to that  this was an actual count larger multifamily structures in belmont so in studio apartments we get no no affectively no children  in one bedroom apartments it is point zero six students her apartment and begin two bedroom apartments it's point for fo students per apartment then that is for market rate housing the numbers are somewhat higher for part of the house thank you but it sounds like that data may not really be reflected because if they have a lot of open space a two bedroom could easily as we all know be used as a three bedroom you know we've had bedrooms without a closet that you might have people in there so my question is should the town be putting a requirement and hey if you have greater than the market and what they're going after may or may be accurate but it may or may not be true for what we may see well one is a highly desirable town especially from school and that tax on the town is an extremely high tax as we know our high school would be we have to be rebuilt and it's getting out  renegotiation with a capital and students would not in any reasonable sense of the word be a small not a modification of special permit it would be to say let's say let's start this all over  again and we're not not certainly why do you think from a residential point of view that is a question that the c s a and other neighbors have been asking since the inception of this project that its effect should have a requirement yes many of them did have dense but i do want to just point out that the original special permit plans did not show the interior layouts it's not a requirement of the special permit so what we did when chris dark matter proved was that we went through the plans of estimated how many to see how many ones one plus and so forth and there's a record of that which i attached to the narrative that was submitted a week ago so we've reduced the number of bedrooms by twelve we have increased some of the plus units as i mentioned it's hard to argue that somehow or another we've created more students by actually reducing the number of bedrooms you can see that this does make my head mean the point is well ta know there are no other questions it's better not be yes new delhi in belarus i'm just wondering why you are building real brick walls i went down i looked at the t d bank it was a real brick wall foodies building is a real brick wall fire stations are real brick so be nice to stay in harmony and balance with what's already there term for for a residential building in a commercial building of this scale and concerns about green it's been leaks and in the such we didn't feel it was the best fit podium of full brick it has a lot of construction of patients it's it's a harder construction it's harder to construct it's it's just not as cost effective to do so what we think that the brick tile does is achieve a significant improvement on the aesthetic of the facade we don't we're going to breaking it up with phase  it's not a value engineering it's value engineering compared to putting full brick but compared to stucco again it's it's it's an improvement from from our standpoint thank you you were just opening the door for others that's very good if you if there are no other questions from those in attendance i'd like to take them a few minutes to come back to the board and let's just be sure clear on next have forgotten to do that a sufficient number of times that i certainly appreciate your calling my attention to the ch and now if i could return to the list here this is maybe a request i was appreciated having real paper drawings if i had had to speaking formally speaking is to decide whether or not additional information is needed review that information and then ultimately make a decision on what that final package event of changes is going to be helpful that's right that's even better it's fine to talk amongst yourselves but no one at home can hear you if you talk amongst yourselves