good evening i'm charles clarke i'm the chair of the belmont play board welcome to the tuesday february fifth meeting of the planning board i call the meeting to order there will be two public hearings  this evening the first will be a continuation of of a project that's been underway for a bit twenty two holton road which is the second floor addition in the s r c district then we will address the the particular portions of the high school building that we we had talked about in a public meeting at the end of last week will address that at this point that then we will move to a discussion of potential zoning issues we have ten chill zoning changes for zones three and four at mclean  assignments we will take a look at neighborhood determinations for potential project and then we'll just conclude some business to begin so at this point we we continuing the public hearing for two thousand two hundred road ok so at this point i will turn this over to the vice chair steve pinkerton who i did not introduced i also did not introduce carl hagel and i did not introduce  just so that so the rest of the board can understand and so that the public can understand where we stand and how we got here so there was a back in september eighteenth was when it began appearing in the continue to try to make the property fit in with the neighborhood and that they were some thought that if they just brought the project down to the thirty percent and thirty percent percent threshold building department to show that indeed it was less than thirty percent thirty percent of the resulting structure not thirty percent of the existing structure now there is so there was just be clear there are two ways to interpret this the bible and i'm going to i want to read it to you if you don't mind jeffrey i'm going to you know put you off the hook for a second here the bible last says that if the building condition commissioner determines that such a proposed alteration or structural change to a to  conforming property increases the gross floor area of the non conforming structure by more than thirty percent then the proposed alteration of structural changes still require a special permit and that's what happened in this case is that there was a pos proposal the thirty percent rule was in effect both because the existing building was being increased by thirty percent and the resulting building would have been increased by thirty percent it came came before the board we tried to work with the applicant and when we could not reach when we reached an impasse that's right that way the applicant determined that they would take it back and try to reduce the size of the resulting building by thirty percent by taking out a garage that's an interesting interpretation but the alternate interpretation would be yes but you're trying to increase the size of the existing building by thirty percent and it's still a matter for review by the planning board and this is not yet clear to my understanding it in terms of what the correct approach is the problem with the resulting  rule interpretation is that in five years the op can can come back without with impunity and put the brush back on and end up with a house that's quite a bit bigger than what we'd have been allowed by the planning board had we been able to work with the neighbors your daughter's and and adjust the size of the building so that it more reasonably fit into the neighborhood so what that applicant is doing at this point is essentially it's still under planning board review right now but in the process the applicant has been meeting with the billing commissioner to try to put up a plan that's less than thirty percent as a result not in under public review it's it's not to have it none of this is happening in public and we haven't been apprised of this until just a few days ago to the full understanding this is just not been clear to us what was going on i kept getting conflict looking signals thinking that the applicant was actually going to be coming back to us with a revised plan and that apparently isn't the case so we have some concerns about this as a board and i would like  to see an interpretation by town council on which of these interpretations is correct and whether or not this is a proper way to proceed and i would hope that we as a board would be  in concert on this and ask that a building permit not be issued until we get some clarification it also occurs to me that if there is still a lack of clarity here we may want to go to town meeting this town meeting as part of our exercise with single residence be district input and clarification and in we should debate the issue among us and have a public hearing or add that to the public hearing for us or be to talk about interpretation of this very key component of the law so sorry to step all over you jeffrey but it is going i have been wound up about it and and thought i would do that  get his interpretation i concur i think it's i think it's reasonable to be conservative and prudent on this especially with the ramifications that it might have for other projects within that zon the concern here too is that we once again have a contingent of neighbors here thinking that we were going to have a continuation of public hearing and once again it's not going to happen and again this is the third time that this is just come up and this is just no way to treat the public it seems to me it's not fair i don't know has that has the apple kit asked for a when is our next meeting the twenty first when's the meeting after that  h i suggest that we continue the public hearing until march fifth to make sure that everything that the apple kid understands what you're doing and we understand what the apple kid he's doing and we have counsel on this it's a month when i see the number of continuances that that they have requested i see continuance on december eighteenth i see a continuance january eighth and now there's a continuance today let's continue the public hearing until march that in the meantime however i would like not to see i would i would hate to see a building permit issued for the building unless it is the same one that they came to us with but to draw i don't know i mean without our approval it's under our purview at this point if they want to withdraw the application it's interesting but given the fact that there's a it's an open pope it's here it's an open public hearing number one number two there's some confusion about the interpretation of the statute i would like to include in our whatever motion it task we we do not wish to see this go forward until we have clarification on this issue and in our interpretation is that it's still within the playing board and if anything else happens then there's a there's a conflict between the playing board in the building department which we would not like to see at this point thank you notes help me understand i obvious shortly a little bit of frustration on the process in agreement with what the planning board has indicated this is not blaming the planning board but the process is not playing out this should be an open and fair process the process began with an application where they secured a bunch of neighbor petitions on the representation that the what they were requesting would be no higher than the house actually between mine and theirs what they submitted was five feet tall the comparable that they used in the initial application included two poster child for the very reason why this bylaw was adopted in the first place the latest apparent and run with the building permit i agree i looked at it if you're adding thirty percent new space and then you're trying to compensate by taking off a garage that exists on every ranch in that area which this is you're not making it more conforming you're making it less comport you just doesn't make sense to me that you could and run  i wouldn't read it that way but this is critical there are fifteen plus ranches within one block of my house and if this is done on one of them i would be curious to see what it's going to look like when it's done on the other fourteen  because that's what we're going to get and it's going to be a complete working so to thank you and i applaud the planning board for you here tonight i wouldn't the size that there are actually two issues that the planning board has one is does it still require a special permit based on an interpretation of the by law and reasonable minds may or may not differ but that is one of the issues the second issue is does the community development if that's the right term people  jurisdiction to issue a permit when that property is already pending before this board that is a separate issue as to whether they could get away with this and i would suggest either of those is sufficient to say what's happening in front of community development shouldn't be permitted the resolutions that the board adopted one would be regarding interpretation i suppose there's the way this process has been managed and then there's the separate issue of planning for jurisdiction so i would suggest the process that the playing or follow those adopting the resolution to get this done get opinion of town council i may call them tomorrow myself and if that opinion doesn't come out that a special permit is required i would suit request and suggest a moratorium on building permits until clarification can be received from town meeting rather than saying yeah let's get this project underway or get a permit in and i think that we need to make sure that no permit issues by communicating with community development and i think that they should commit not to issue a permit for two reasons one they work for us like us and the planning board and second they'll be a pariah to about eighty percent of the town if they don't agree because that's the percentage that supports these kinds of limitations so thank you for listening to me thank you even if you didn't listen while i was talking just for being here i appreciate what you do thank you well let me just remember emphasize one point about the special permit process which is that when it you know there are all the numbers in there are the regulations how it fits in and doesn't fit the size of the shape and all that but one of the things that the special permit process does and was specifically put in place for not only this project but one we did the g r see as well is for the planing board in the end to make a determination whether a propose project has a beneficial or deleterious effect on the neighborhood in the town as a whole and that's that's our final judgment on these things i just want to make that point clear about the special permit process i to us thank you everybody the neighbors from twenty two for coming by we appreciate we appreciate your interest you are beginning to become regular laser at playing so welcome again to everybody thank you for coming and i also want to thank you especially for the working group meeting that we had the joint meeting last week and which i think retain a good decision and good compromise in a resolution about the placement of the wing of the building i know it was a lot of work from your point of view i think phase and we talked about circulation and parking and thank you for giving us some guidance and we are now off working on the resolution to those recommendations which will be part of our site plan site review landscape and fields and signage and such that will be back in april and may to discuss now we're here to discuss really the building itself the exterior the ality and that's wh going to present but first i'd like to say do we have some formal process we can take on the footprint it was a great recommendation in the long run no all joking aside to try and create some symmetry of open space along the pond the historic pond as steve references and we were able to achieve that with no increase and net square footage and no program impact and as a result we would like to get some i guess finale to that from your side to say that's the footprint yes go with it please go away and come back when you're done we're not going to leave today but we have a lot of people that need to work on those drawings you know was painful project budget we cannot change the project budget of two hundred ninety five million so we're ready to memorialize that and just wanted to know if you can so help us so my comment on that is thank you very much and we really appreciate your response i think steve i think steve has talked about this and this is one of the things that led when i was beginning to talk about the special permit process just before in terms of things everybody sees their project as the thing ok and it is the thing i understand that one of the things that the plane would do and was doing best it ought to do is look at things not only in terms of the project itself and the impact on the community and all that but take a larger look inside and take a look at the project in the context of the community and see pointed out that historic facts of the and all of that so that was part of what we did in terms of that and we're sort of it's sort of incumbent on us to keep those things in mind and  for the people that will be here later on will be talking about mclean will be talking about inclusionary zoning to inclusionary zoning doesn't pertain to a particular building but the mclean project well and the ramifications of that are beyond the specific project that's being proposed at this point and has an effect on the town as a whole and for and that will be a long term effect and for your project we hope that the high school will be there for fifty years and that and that it's useful life will be able to be extended beyond that so thank you now we can't take a formal vote on that because we can we can approve the whole thing what we can do is we can ask each of member of the planning board i'll ask each one what they think about this if they're for or against it so let me begin with carl who has who back in may this do you believe karl that that the changes in the compromise that was reached on this are reasonable and do use support the i think that  i spend a lot of time working with communities and building pads where five or ten feet is the difference between being generous and being too tight and i think what we've added is is a significant addition to the to say you've got all five members of the board says it's saying that the change that you made is good and the footprint of the building where agreeing with that so let's move on to the topic at hand tonight thank you members  aboard we then will try to die to go through a building design and really we want to gauge you in conversation and discussion and comet we had passed out a packet that is in front of you now and the purpose of tonight i think rick would be just to have a discussion and hear what you think about it and there was also touch and feel box that we probably bring up on the later to talk about maybe some of the i guess talk about the building design and really what we thought the focus tonight was going to be on the facades and the materiality of the building sort of what are the material choices how are they where they place on the building and get to get your feedback because course take you through the live model and some of the shots from the model itself and then have a discussion so we're going to keep our presentation rather brief and then really we want to listen to your thoughts tonight that's really the goal  of tonight's is that does that meet your expectations yes ok  on the roof there is part of the p v layout and we're going to kind of take a look at it in detail as well so this is just a general overall view we're going to talk about some of the drivers and some of our thinking behind why it is the way it  is and then we'll walk kind of quickly through the four basic elevations of the building and then as brooke mentioned we'll go to an actual three model where we can look at the building in perspective and walk completely around the building so you can kind of see what it feels and looks so so if so what what is our inspiration for the building we started with a very early discussion about the civic center of the town center these the building we're in and some of the buildings immediately around us he's beautiful cotta buildings with these really kind of interesting kind of horrors on the patterns in details to them so that became a discussion of how do we how do we make this building a part of this place in an extension of that civic center the other piece was kind of the history of the site itself the clay pit pond so the second image from the left is just a close up picture of some of the actual kind of cutting of the clay away from the pond when it was about making brick and then the laying out of the brick on the site on the left side those are black and white historic photos from the site and they create these interesting kind of patterns in geometry so that became another level of inspiration just kind of history in place as well as in the civic center in color and then that third image is you know this really interesting idea about kind of stratification and so forth and so that became a very early discussion force in  the design next to derek the other the other big one has been and these may look kind of abstract but this is the overall building shape and shown from different orientations and we've gone through and are working on a very thorough analysis of the energy performance of the building but one of the things we're going to talk about in terms of the elevations is why the windows look the way they do why it's got organized the way it is and it has a lot to do with a couple things really beautiful views to the south towards the water and towards the pond but also about harnessing daylight and harnessing energy so thinking about how we kind of capture that energy of the sun not only for the building but for the roof and for the photovoltaics on the roof but also how we capture daylight in really optimize day light for the classrooms two to really great things we have given we have a large again an east and west oriented building on the site and we can talk in more detail about this a little later but it just highlights part of the analysis and what we're going through in terms of thinking about the facades in the building and the energy load on the net zero kind of aspirations for the site so if we go to the next image so this is just a in piece of the building and i wanted to talk about a couple things first of all we're thinking about a base with an integrated punch window pattern and we were talking about a tissues material which is an extension of what we're thinking about that lower thirty inches of the building would be probably a stone or a granite which should be very durable and very hardy relative to snow stories on one half three stories on the other and integrated within that brick pattern which is largely brick is a horizontal window pattern the horizontal window pattern again comes from a pretty lengthy discussions in the beginning about what is the right pattern to really optimize daylight and really the optimizer views for the site and it really is one that's more horizontal and vertical the next piece then was which you see and we're going to look at some of these materials you'll see in the  broken ups and enters the space and so this is just a very simple isometric of a piece of the building showing those three materials in the rationale behind that so then if we go to the next series of drawings which will be the elevations so this is an elevation and facing the statement of a football field which is the west elevation and there may be a little hard to read but the piece projecting forward is this piece right here this is the theat become probably a much clearer kind of three dimensional and we walk around the we can actually see it but this this starts to give you just you know part of what we were looking that was a little bit of a detail of this piece so in this case we have an arcade along the one end of  high school and then the classrooms with the horizontal windows in the sunscreens and then more glass at the main entry and more glass at the stairways kind of at the end of the building and then this one story base is where the actual music wing there and so forth so that's the west elevation i would just add that you rarely see this building in an elevation like this because of the way the wings are the way the perspective is so it's not so unusual view not really when you see them  see that we're not we're unfolding it here but it's not the way you see and then we go to the next so this is the south elevation and so if everyone remembers there's a break in the center of the building so it's four stories on the left on the west half the three stories on the right half on the east which is the lower school so the upper school high school in the middle school and then the dining and central area of the building is has an outdoor terrace as well as an eyebrow which again shades that center kind of looking back towards the pond in the middle so this is the south elevation the distant flat group view from from concord ave and you can also see here that you don't really seen of that profile the pv which we'll look at in the section in a few minutes so if we go to the next few minutes this is the east side so now we're down to what is the three stories again that base detail and then two stories and then that fourth floor beyond stepping up this happens to be a screened area where we have some of the mechanical and the fourth the fourth floor beyond so looks like largely a three story building from the eastern approach of what is the lower school sides of the interest kind of right on this inside corner and the other stairway at the end of the circulation where it's a little more glass and has open views back to the outside towards the east and then the last fill of asian is this is along  elevation along the north side so from the railroad track looking back so this is the existing field house the existing theater so part of the four stories is on the right and then kind of coming up and forming part of that elevation which is to be a view which you'll see more in perspective from from the train side or from the rail side of the of the building so then if we want to go to the next drawing a quick roof plan and again we have a series of floor plans but this is this is just breaking that down a little bit so the four story pieces right here the high school on this side the middle school on this side  this is inside of a screened area from four to three the mechanical here is actually a well on the fourth floor which drops down so the p v array goes over that so none of this mechanical equipment breaks the profile  of the roof now we have a couple other areas we have a couple minor stacks from some of the science rooms elevator own overrun which is only about two or three feet so this is an overall roof plan standpoint it's not something that you can bring people out on to so this area right here has the potential to bring classroom out and for instance science other things to happen right in this area right here they could potentially grow light so it's possible that you know today there's the gardening planting areas that are down along the drive might might actually be located up in here the top of the story correct science if there's a so then the next thing we're going to look at is a section through the building here so you can see the profile of everything so if we so so this is a cross section through the building upon side is over here rail side is over here so here we're looking through the pool this happens to be the pool in the field house which isn't completely in the drawing that profile of the mechanical quickly that i was just driving so the fourth floor with that cut out or well with the p v spanning over that so because over the top and a few of the stacks from from the science rooms and then dining kind of at the center and here we did in this case we do have a terrace here an outdoor terrace and then a spell out to the landscape from the first floor and the plan right now is that we have approximately ninety thousand square feet of days and on the average we will be harvesting about a third of the annual energy from p v that the building needs so you know it's cyclical and i think over time when you're not using the building that still trying to determine the total number but somewhere around three hundred fifty wells plus or minus maybe twenty twenty five and those are five hundred feet deep going into rock we've installed three tests well so i think you may have seen that earlier or late last year to understand how the conductivity of the ground plays out so we could determine the number based on the energy that the building will need so that is that a important consideration i've worked with buildings that are basically so so much heat into the ground they raise the ground temperature and wiped out the air conditioning systems so we have a fantastic team with a lot of experience and  they're they're teaching us along the way the one thing we know is that you just can't take all the energy you need one season and put it in the ground and then take it back out again think of the ground as a battery storage you have to balance that and so i think you heard some chillers on the roof heat rejection we are predominantly a cooling dominant building which means that to balance the site change well field we will need to reject heat so that is the form of rejection that we're using heat and that's a closely monitored thing that will go on it's a great education and it's something that will be very very impressive as people come up and say why are we doing this experimental type just just a couple more quick things we also have a couple skylights on the roof which bring like deep in this space and then these double lines here that's at photovoltaic that's the profile of it so you can see a very low profile in terms of  so if we want to go to the next so is that the model next year yeah ok so just a couple quick things we took all the trees and people and benches and like all things we're working on a light pictures everything off the site so we can look strictly at the elevation so it may look a little bare but it will be a lot more a lot more lush with landscape there so right now you're just seeing the green plain in one of the trees or landscape immediately around the building so back to the overall view so now we just go down to the first view and we'll do a quick kind of walk around the building so as you come in off concord avenue and that approach of this is where the main entry for the high school this is arcade on the right side this one story base element there's a clear story here which lets some daylight into the taller spaces of what are the band rooms and practice rooms and then we also have some classrooms over here and this is one of the stairwells at the end of that long street in the middle we also have a similar stare at the end and so there are vertical jaden devices for that so you can see the stair on the inside into some of the openness and transparency but largely a brick building with that precast and stone base with glass kind of at the end of the stairs into the main entries is the kind of fundamental organisation of that and if we go to the next step you saw a little bit of a closer in view just kind of looking at the corner of what we were describing as the west elevation so again this is you know of the four stories high school land and then you can also start to see some of the horizontal sun trading devices which in this case wrap down on the vertical because they also are part of shading that west suns comes around so that's kind of the west elevation and if we go to the next here and then this is another part of the classrooms on the high school in the back of the stairway here on the corner and then if we go back around to the front and i'm just going to do kind of a quick walk around so then from concord avenue  one of the things you notice may have remembered from the bird's eye there's multiple paths coming in from multiple directions almost like spokes i think bringing you in towards the building so this is one of those primary paths and we're looking at the end of one of the high school classroom bars of the high school does this and then comes out of here you can see it stepping back down to three stories over here that stair on the right side and then we have this very generous open arcade so as one enters from multiple directions and the weather is not so great out you can kind of pass under cover to the front entry of the building so this is south and west elevation from directly from concord ave this elevation here is almost  directly kind of parallel to concord avenue actually minute we move around to the pond side so moving up close and so by the way this model has all those adjustments made to the wing shift and all that that we talked about so part of that you know space that we picked up was from here to here so so then this is starting to look at the south side and you can see that stepping from four to three the roof coming over the center where dining spills out that looks like you're working to mitigate the flooding that's going to happen yes yes it's yeah i can remember the actual finish for elevation but it is built up i think it's a couple feet higher than i could i just respond to that so we asked our design consultant team to reach out and look at fifty year flood one hundred year flood in five hundred year flood i think and cambridge has done a lot of work and when our pond actually floods it actually hydraulically connects over land to cambridge and so cambridge is numbers are numbers at that point so the team took that information and added some resiliency to that and determined that we needed to raise the floor elevation from the existing by no more than i think to feel i think was actually this is building will be accessible even if the pond those come up a bit and then so just program magically a couple things i mean the classrooms are the or the horizontal pieces so it's here we have the admin wing with offices dining view that view from the east side so here the building is now down to three stories so it gives and the nice thing about that it gives a different scale for the middle school brings it down an extra story and so there are a series of outdoor terr as well and the intent is to have slide doors that kind of slide open almost like a garage door but more horizontal so all the artsy is going to open up the outdoor space as well and then over here in the middle school another stairwell which you can see here a kind of covered area on the end of the building and then if we go around to the next view derek then moving around to the entry side so this is all north facing glass where the library is  there's a canopy a pretty deep canopy actually this is a building which you can't quite read on it but it gives covering for the entry just like we had the arcade on the other side here we have a fairly deep can be in covering for the for the middle school entry as well and if we want to go back out to the next so this is the distant view approaching kind of from these we can see the whole building this screen mechanical area kind of coming over is this area so that steps back  and then again more so what we've done is we've developed a very similar language for the whole building and just change the scale as we've kind of moved around the building from from four to three and then if we keep going  close a view one of the things we've had a lot of discussion about is what is the back of the north side feel like so this starts to kind of show that we're moving on the back and kind of connection on the back of the building the field house and jim are here and the end back to this space between in the back of the middle school wing and the right side with the gym is and we actually have two basketball courts back here a great looks looks small in the mall but when you look at it in real life the kind of with the height it's kind of a pretty sizable space in the back as well so we have very usable kind of outdoor space in between the gym in the middle school as well and then it helps with the scale comes down to three stories here as well i think that might be the last one  one more so one more pulling back a little bit and looking back down towards the east between the permian the left and the right and then i think the next few is the last view so that's kind of a quick performance glass and then in and then in most cases where we have we have radiant heat along the perimeter where we have right glass right and then right right right and then in and then the space is occupied on the on the ground floor so maybe a little create a little bit of a horizontal texture the bricks here the buildings here which are historic you know the the grout one of the actually very damp there will be a stain here so part of the way to play off of that is make the grout color a little i think one of the other samples we're looking at some of you give me is what we call flash where they burn the book a little more and it will give it a little bit a little more of a variation might add some brains to it or i might add in some sometimes you see a little bit of  mock ups which will do but in a public bid project which might be different than the bradford we actually would have a lot of issues if we waited or dismayed decisions on the break after the bid and after the mock up or if we did a mock up next month with one mason and then ended up going public bid would another that again we can't tell them which direct to get specifically so the process will be that we as a group need to select the materials before we go out to bit the end of the or you can specification right and then you know there's still a mock up there's still the tails and there's still some variations that could be tweaked but there are things that are very difficult of a process to change this this is actually actually the same material but this is the finish so if you look at this finish from here this is this is a little bit of a rough texture but it's still fairly resistant to something like this is really it's almost like a home in more polished and so it's very resistant so what rick is responding to is a as or so almost a requirement from the building committee that materials have a have a level the other complement to this was an arm was at stone base and so we thought we had an eighteen to thirty inch stone base these are all have to be ground these are we would be looking at you know what would be the right know the sidewall so the idea to with the base under what would be the seeming tish's panel would we would use a complimentary probably some stone in some of the site walls with we have that outdoor  and then an evaluation of the rooftop equipment and their opinion is that it meets the bylaws and what you've been looking for want to review that to make sure it's accurate  your and your interpretation of the requirements but a big change from other buildings is that there is no rooftop equipment above the roof yeah it's been purposely reduced for both massing height of the building and also noice it was one of the first things bill the committee was focused on is making sure that that was well taken care of it's it's quite a ways from houses but it's still in a neighborhood surrounded by houses and there are no emissions and there so there's no fossil fuels in this building user thing so again there is a generator but that's not part of the whole thing it's exercised once in a while and outside of the building that the science of that is wonderful and that they you could actually do that to reflect and you've showed us the materials  you've talked about the noise issues so i don't think we need to make any decisions about any of this this evening it seems to be of a piece it seems from my point of view that where you are on this at this point looks good to me i don't know the rest of the board caro's you know there is you know so i do have one should tell the thing which is just that's from my experience at the overhangs are have roofs that actually drain internally back so they're not draining over the front so they're pitched back and i'm also a fan of the granite  so is it is that they are are we you did say that this looks good we are scheduled to come back in a month to respond to your comments on this particular presentation if we have additional comments we will communicate them  so we will see you in a month i wonder when we what do we discuss site until later so so they rescheduled the book right so we're scheduled to discuss the site and our april and may meetings which would mean that i would we would like to reach out to you as the ways on and and jeffrey in a second here in march i didn't hear any substantial comments on materials today but i'm here arms and some more significant this point in terms of the general cladding of the building yeah but we don't know what the your particular things are so we can't say yes i think this was so good portion of the fire access road is how wide is that right now is it twenty twenty twenty feet at the building only not not be on the building but could any of that be in purple reinforced impervious material as well that's not up to  the extra eight feet is really just there for the out riggers and put it down so they don't correct but but he has made it very clear that it needs to be cleared from snow at all times so that in fact reinforced earth needs to be polished as he did let us do that outside the limits of the building here with you know some of this capable surface and then deal with the out riggers one adult at the parameters of the you know beginning building on the west east it was pretty clear so that's not a point you know when we would love to go make it smaller but it's not our decision but there might be other comments like that so a lot of those so at the moment the public hearing notice the building materials in when decisions need to be made on the i know the board there are members of the board that we're going to concerned about that and want to be part of that conversation and so when he when he looking at doing that  get into more detail of that actual material if if that is what you'd like to see in a month we could come back with that when do you have when do you have to get it you said you i heard you say it has to be finalized when you go to bed that's correct but jeffrey we would like to close the public hearing and get your decision on this well before we go out to bid in december so we are goal was to work through this process and this meeting and march fifth were scheduled to come to some decision just like you did on the others that allows us to go and there's a documentation fine we'll keep you timely so we'll see you back in a month i know it and and we'll make decisions on them come back in march fifth two would selection materials the i mean we have public here that may want to weigh in on that i don't know and if that was quickly enough we'll be prepared to give you an overview of it you know and we won't have all the trees pointed out with all the calipers and all the ok thank you this charles clarke chair the playing board we're we're back in session at this point we're at the point now where we're beginning to talk about potential zoning amendments we have three things that are up at this point we have the mcclane zones three and four which from our point of view would be separate articles that come to town meeting  the single residents be zoning district and the inclusionary housing zoning bylaw the mclean zoning districts in the single family b of already had presentations we haven't had a presentation on the inclusionary zoning by law at this point one of the things that one of the things that's concerning the planning board at this point in time is the the progress towards  town meeting jeff are you have a slide right there to walk us through your town meetings now go ahead jeffrey so it all starts with when does town meeting start to meeting begins monday april twenty ninth so for any zoning amendment to be heard on april twenty ninth has to be the a draft of the basically two regularly scheduled meetings now march fifth i mean sorry fed beef if every twenty first if the planning board is going to go for the zoning amendment to public hearings there are two regularly scheduled meetings already placed march fifth in the nineteenth but the planning board is not limited to having meetings at that point in time the playing board can schedule public hearings or meetings at any point in time they want to and  point is that there is a very short period of time left before we get when the one closes in when time meeting is held jeffrey i have a suggestion for how maybe we can go forward with given the timeframe on this and the fact that we've just had we've had presentations from on mclean and we've had presentations on the single residen but no extensive discussion of that and our response to that my suggestion at this point if we're going to have a hopes of making town meeting that we need to break into working groups the planning board needs to form a working group for each of these but let me just deal with maclean first so who would like to be on a on the working group to deal with the mclean zones residents be ok who would you like i can put you can i get somebody else for the working group for the mclean karl would you be able to interview me it's a question yeah i don't know it at this point that for the single residence be you would be the likely one on the tagalong yeah so it will tag along on that and for the inclusionary zoning to hear any any suggestions motion from the board that we constitute those working groups as just discussed second on favor thank you very much so now that we've done that since i do know that we have people here that are for that wish to discuss mclean and the single residence bees so many districts if there anybody who would like to talk we're going to have the zoning make their full presentation because they haven't done their presentation after this but because people have come to speak about mclean if you have comments that you'd like us to hear as we go into our working groups which will be public groups come to the microphone and talk i know you sir have a comment as well let's bring in mike from please introduce yourself  harmon long time time the member about to retire from that job but also more importantly for this purpose a resident of the woodlands to condominium resin and metals land in the woodland to neighborhood is welcome to the fact that something is going on in our backyard and we have a number of concerns obviously screening is an important concern i have a little limited  the interest of my own in this that excess and but let me step back i did want to say one thing about this proposal on in principle it's a big improvement over what the current zoning is  which definitely would have resulted in overloading of the district with this i think four hundred eighty eight units were removed for the for the continuing care community which never fortune never get off the ground so i think  in principle i think this is a big improvement in the matters that it's the matter the particulars which i think are really important we had a neighborhood of tremendous interest in screening i think joe newburgh is here he's been talking probably about that because he has his own concerns and i have a little bit of concern about something that maybe my particular interests and views cape i think that the  people would have welcomed up to the development and never happened that it radically changed the view from waverley of belmont hill because i think it was the buildings were so high that they would have gone above the  trees but i want to speak particularly about a particular concern which is snow removal north and which developed our neighborhood in as well as the proposed development going forward  places maximized the number of units that could be a townhouse units a good place in our new relatively small tight neighborhood in fact they were they added two at the and we have a we have we have a serious problem of snow removal because there's no place to put it and we have to emergency exits one from meadows lane where i live and one from south cottage and w configuration of our very or or or condominium and obviously it's necessary to keep those emergency exits open if they're going to during or after after snowstorm of they could be useful the benefit of our of our neighborhood i would i would suggest that this is getting a little into the weeds at this point where we're still in the overview and we haven't decided if the proposed zoning is reasonable or not at this point if we are in favor of that or we're not at this point may suggest that you write a letter to the planning board and so we have on file so when we get to that point we can make that part of the deed restriction thank you thank you and the other comments in general about this  so when the proposal came forward i'm familiar with the area i run up there a lot but i'm not a developer i can't like envision what the potential is and so i appreciated hearing what was being proposed but i of wanted to know like what's the denominator what could happen on that property what is the total number we could build and then kind of start with that because again kind of coming from my perspective from the affordable housing trust i know that we need more multi family units in town we certainly need more for seniors and the affordable discussion will happen in a different point i don't want to raise that yet but we know that with inclusionary zoning that would help with the total number for include for seniors  so anyway did what all of us do when we kind of want to know the answer to something i googled it and lo and behold they did find a report that was produced in march of twenty eighteen that has the schematic for this area that i imagine was  probably contracted to figure out you know what what the potential is so i do want to share with the town a visual that is in the report one hundred thirty eight page report on storm water and utility that shows that two hundred  ninety nine units are feasible and it has a really nice visual of what would be possible in the zone three so i imagine that somewhere along the line a developer probably considered this and then you know had to work through economic possibility and then what the potentiality would be for you know political what's politically palatable in the town but i just want to play anymore to take a look at this and know that that what might be possible is simmered could you write a letter to that effect and i ask you to wri a letter this time but but i wanted to raise a couple of issues in the first one is a question does the revised them away because mclean is proposing an amendment to the memorandum of agreement is through us right right i get that but that things affect one another and the planning board did site plan review last time and presumably all the site plan re project that would come to us would be a new say play which would go through the process ok thank you i appreciate that clarification of i've heard of a lot of the things that people you know are proposing the if it's affordable issues the energy issues and and in general you know those are all good things to be thinking about i specifically wanted to raise the issue of transportation because there it would be nice if we could have shuttle bus that runs from the mcclane land to say alewife and you know i have it i've looked at i looked into that many years ago but i haven't looked into it lately and exactly what it would involve and certainly not with this new configuration in mind but i asked that as you think about you you think about reducing traffic controlling traffic by there was an article in the paper in the last couple of weeks that northland is is working with one seventy eight business council which provides shuttle buses  in this whole region it's based in waltham or weston i think and and they tend to do them in cooperation with multiple developments that is there's a housing development coming up there's  a office building coming up it makes sense for the bus to the same bus to serve both of those and ideally about six more places and so it  you know it's a comprehensive fish and then north london specifically working with the one twenty eight business council on a development in someplace like needham or something like that but you know it could be it would be useful to pull them in to see if some of those issues can be addressed at this point before ten meeting gets to well i i think i think that's an interesting idea any development  any large skilled development that would be put in place would have to have a traffic is a geisha program and that would be a good component of that that's pretty far down the line at this point but it's good to raise it i wanted to raise it but also you're talking about actually bringing this up in the end of april a town meeting which that remains to be seen it strikes me as a fantasy too but but and he case if if if we're going to talk about it we should be including thank you very much joe hi i'm joe newburgh i live it sixteen south cottage road i was at one time almost a century ago actually the late ninety's chairman of the planning board when the original mclane zoning proposal was proposed i never thought i'd end up living there which is to have ok i do yeah thank you look in general i think this is a good thing if it's done right and whatever the thing is that's you know a decent developer and a good place to do something good for the town in the end but as i think  chairman said earlier in the program you know everything has to be viewed in the context in which it's being placed in the development area and there has already been a very major development next door to this for the benefit of the hospital and the developer same developer of sixty two residences more than half of which actually abut the bowl and the bowl is a sound in light tunnel for everything that's going on in the northeast quadrant of the proposed development area and the the traffic from the homestead drive that will result but also the sound the light the light pollution if you will potential and so these things to be done right and i bring this up now because it's not so easy to do these things right to be done right there has to be a lot of attention to screening both on the bowl side which is still owned by mclean hospital as well as three and four which of course still is too but will be transferred presumably to develop and i don't know how you can you know dad and sue mentioned which was news to me the memorandum of understanding might be under or under revision which was news to me because we didn't get notice of the hearing last time  i think you should address or at least seek to address or consider addressing because i can't really tell you what you should do landscaping pla and maintenance and perhaps an endowment for continued maintenance certainly at least in escrow because what happened and the right or obligation to have that both on the bowl side were large disappeared and it's all good maintenance i'm not complaining about what the clean does but you have to replace things too and especially now when the sightline unsound line is is very impacted on a lot of things and so they'll be more details about this issue you know get further on but i raise it now because i think if there's going to be a reason there should be some conditions on the rezoning if there's going to be  modification of the memorandum of understanding this is now a time to do it because mclain should have it not heavy burdens but some you know reasonable obligations on the on the screening end particularly which is the biggest concern to me charlie's raised other concerns about you know snow storage we have a good neighbor we'd like to keep it a good neighbor we'd love to see a great develop but i would predict only speaking for myself i want to make that clear but i'd love to see a great development there but i'd like it to happen quickly not poor some stop and start and restart you know all the things i said in the letter which i which you know i did right and so thank you for listening a more formal conversation about this but i did want to speak to the need for affordable homes we know that housing is very expensive here in belmont and home prices have increased by more than forty percent since two thousand  people across all incomes are being impacted those with the lowest incomes are being hit hardest and that's actually where obama has the greatest deficit of affordable housing i have a letter that write i have several suggestions for could consider doing together to increase affordability and do something that would make both the abettors happy and meet the town's needs one it is an idea that i discussed last time when they made their presentation the idea of a local initiative program it's also known as a friendly forty b they do exist friendly forty b s and this is where the town would work with mclean to have twenty to twenty five percent of whatever is developed be affordable to households that are eighty percent or below the area median income the reason why is twenty twenty five percent is it's twenty five percent at eighty percent median income or there could be deeper affordability doing twenty percent of the development at fifty percent of their a media income so a lot of room to work with but really this would this would go above our inclusionary zoning policies and would really result in more affordable homes for belmont and we have so few opportunities to do this scale of the i think we should really take it seriously and think about how to maximize it if a lip isn't pursued i do think that mclean should include more affordable homes or northen that is required under our inclusionary zoning policy this is just another way to help belmont meet the great need here my third suggestion is that we include homes that are affordable to households with low and extremely low income so again you could do that under the lip or under our own current inclusionary zoning policy a one for one replacement as you know if you do you know it's at fifty percent of the area median income that could that would reduce by one unit the number of affordable units that would need to be on the site so that's another way to get at the deeper affordability i also think increasing density obviously paying attention to the landscaping would provide the ability to provide more homes more homes across incomes and again gets the deeper affordability and also maybe get to someone i've been hearing about the need for people who are above eighty  percent there's a big range of need in our town offering rental opportunities in addition to homeownership here in belmont the median income is sixty eight thousand dollars that is less than half of the homeowner income here in belmont which is one hundred of senior population has disabilities or many more people with disabilities in our community and we need more accessible housing so i hope that mclean really sees this opportunity and think about how to maximize affordability and shuttles i think are great idea do let's be really smart about how we do this development this is a very rare opportunity and i know it's been being talked about for so many years let's make it real this time into something that's affordable reaction to the initial proposals about the mcclain developing them calling and saw or read the resolution that was adopted last night the council on aging board expresses support for development of zone three of the mclean district as housing for middle income older adults with at least twenty percent of the to be affordable units at eighty percent am i or and that i was a general resolution again there's not a specific proposal so we are responding to and the belmont housing trust so this all kind of works together but i just want to reiterate that we were very concerned about middle income families and i think i spoke to it last time around  and if you use the example of bishops forest it meets the criteria of middle income there's the range there is somewhere between five hundred and eight hundred thousand so we were talking not only about affordability which judy touches on but also on meeting the needs of our middle income seniors who probably are going to sell their houses for one point one million but can't spend all of it on housing need some of that to live so having some housing available that that's more midrange thank you thank you be no golden bird and i've been involved in housing with the league of women voters and the housing trust and i'm terribly concerned about the lack of affordable us were mountain study and found places and they were like two former gasoline stations that kind of thing so with mclean owning one sixth of the land in town we really need their help in making some of this land useful for affordable housing the fact that there's a state mandate of ten percent were only six point seven percent as another factor twenty four point six percent of households are for fordable housing but there are only six point seven percent affordable in my own case i have lived along in the house we moved into when movers a family of four way back in one thousand nine hundred fifty six and i've been along there since nineteen seventy six but the options for me to go somewhere else are so limited that i'm staying there and hoping there is some solution whether it's for seniors or people in general so please mclean do and at that point i was involved with the development of the waverly woods forty units of affordable housing which is still something that i think the town should be very proud of i'm actually speaking for my friend patricia hawkins who asked me to read a letter that she wrote to the planning board and i will send it on to you it says to the planning board we lived at ten lincoln street in belmont for forty years we decided to sell our home to our son and look for a condominium or apartment in belmont more suitable to our needs as older adults after looking for just over a year we decided that it would be more affordable to buy a ranch house and wealth them it was our hope to remain in belmont but we could not find a home with minimum stairs adequate parking and entry or quiet environment we had hoped that the senior housing at mclean would be available although it will not be in time for us i hope you will continue design on part of the mclean land for senior housing and belmont anybody else wish to speak  representing myself i live in precinct five i have never been to a meeting like this listen to this yourself janet sand ok thank you what i had in the belmont citizen last week i saw the following from the president owner of northland it proves attractive to city seniors to look living to looking to live independently said he thinks it would attract retirees who want to live close to their grown children and grandchildren he said people who have purchased these kind of homes in the past usually do not require a mortgage and most likely have one or two other homes in new hampshire cape cod or florida that means that they wouldn't live in the bellman homes three sixty five days per year and the impact to traffic and services in belmont would be light these are the people who are building this and i think what we're hearing is that people as we are age would like to stay in belmont and are not going to go to our other homes for much of the year and also are going to end up having difficulty with things like two bedroom two or three storey townhouses i have nothing to say about how you're going to solve this problem but the important thing i think is to realize what people are saying it is a serious problem with some opportunity to do something before this comes out thank you you did very well and the b i don't think so we're done with maclean at this point so for the single resident be i don't think we needed anything i don't think that anybody is ellen here you know guess there are some folks here yes ok  we're going to form a working group on this you'll be invited to come to the working group if you have anything you want to say at this point it's fine ok thank you thought it was shorter than i am yeah ok so it just for those of us who haven't been through your kind of proposed working group structure i'm wondering if you could sort of lay out what you believe happens in the working group when it comes back to the planning board how things get written and voted in the time schedule that jeffrey so kindly put forth its magic thank you and the working group one on one or two of the members of the planning board will meet with staff and members of the public are invited and i assume that the interested parties will come and we will work through what we think the zoning ought to be what changes how we want to put it in place and we will help form what what the written zoning will be we will take that and present that as a product of our group to the planning board and the planning board will discuss that in toto and they'll make their to present a proposal on behalf of the housing trust to strengthen our inclusionary zoning policy i know we talk with you constantly about the need for affordability and i can not take the opportunity to say if you have the important statistics i won't go through a whole housing production plan but i just want to highlight a few a few reasons why we need to strengthen our inclusionary zoning policy so in belmont right now a household would need to earn one hundred twenty seven thousand dollars to afford the median housing cost of homeownership the median income in belmont is one hundred ten thousand dollars and forty six percent of our households earn less than one hundred thousand dollars almost a quarter of our residents are eligible for affordable housing meaning that they're below eighty percent of their i mean income and we know that over forty four percent of renters and over twenty eight percent of homeowners are cost burdened meaning that they're paying more than thirty percent of their income to their housing costs belmont currently needs only three hundred thirty seven more homes to hit that benchmark that the state sets of every community having ten percent of its housing stock being affordable what that would also do for belmont by getting to the to the ten percent and having a housing production plan that would put belmont in even more control of how we do development in the future and how how we continue to create it for the housing that we need rather than having development happen to us if we can actually meet you know increase our housing production and show progress on our production plan that again puts us in more control at sea level so we are recommending we think the inclusionary zoning is a key piece of this is another piece of the puzzle is another way for us to add affordable units to our housing stock so currently the and as you know the requirement is for fifteen percent of units to be affordable when more than forty units are built we are proposing to lower this fifteen percent affordability down to developments of twenty development so depending on the size of the development that would be the percentage that they need to meet so to understand how this would impact the current developer or to get a sense of how this would impact of element if we look at something like the bradford under existing inclusionary zoning there are mixed use developments they do ten percent we have one hundred twelve homes being built and twelve of these will be affordable if that bradford were built under the inclusionary zoning policy that we're proposing there be seventeen affordable homes so be five more affordable homes for belmont if you look at the other development that's happening right now intra palo over at four ninety three and four ninety five to five o five those are under twenty units each and so nothing would actually change we would get one unit out of each of them so i think one of the things that we should all think about is that we need to make these changes so that we are really  taking the opportunity that development is happening we want to maximize affordability where we can we want to get more affordable units we want to increase the number of affordable homes particularly in mixed use developments because that is likely what we will see more of it was a recommendation of the housing production plan that we concentrate development along bus routes you know where the commuter rail stations are these numbers and shore development overall development remains feasible and it keeps us consistent with many of our neighbors i did provide a chart that showed what comparable communities are doing i also have a list with me of some of the other communities that are doing fifteen percent and even less than twenty units so fifteen percent affordability for six that's arlington and brookline new in right now is going through they just sit a big study to determine how to strengthen their inclusionary zoning policy they haven't made decisions yet linkin has fifteen percent on six or more units so it keeps us consistent with our neighbors but i also think that inclusionary zoning you need to be changing with the times so it's not something that we make this change now and we don't revisit it again in another year or two we want to make sure that we're always keeping current with the market and maximizing affordability and so these changes i think are modest changes that we should do we know development is happening if the mcclane development gets built let's have a strong inclusionary zoning policy and there's other proposals that could happen with the pleasant street rezoning that was that was done so i think it's important we take this opportunity and that we continue to look at it and think about ways to strengthen it further in the future  shoe speaks well my comment on this is and is that the the largest contributor to affordable housing in belmont the two major ones that happened aside from the town or the waverly woods project and the forty b project and two is forced on the town which gave the town the equipment it's twenty five but it's the the development self is owning was put in place to encourage mix use development what's interesting about that i was on the board it at that time but i was not involved in the negotiations on that even though i was representing to the housing trust at that time is that that was to encourage mixed use development so typically in mixed use thing you have retail on the first floor and you have apartments on the upper floors it actually gives a double break to the developer on that because because it gives them a break on the specifics of the the housing units that you build gives you a break on that and then in terms of the whole development it gives you a break as well because there's no component of that which effects the whole thing so you can build a building like the bradford there which is oh five sixty six you know square feet of residential space i mean of a commercial space the rents on the commercial space basically for a project like that they're probably in the forty dollars square foot range they may be higher than that those are probably higher on a on a per square foot net basis or their equivalent to what the residential czar so from so from that point of view it's a double benefit so  video site which became a bank was one of the sites that that we tried to get the big issues thing and so that's not what's that's not what's stopping the mixed use input so that's just my commentary thank you i appreciate it and i could find in my scan no other community that has that in place maybe that planning staff would know of of another community it's really hard to compare every community in the state all the policies are different and that's housing partnership is working on an analysis but it's going to take a while because every community is so different so we really just polled what was the basic affordability thresholds and i didn't see anyone who had the mixed use reduction i mean one of course the problems that keeps coming up is the lack of regional is it in any case so do we have comments from the board on this before you open up i just want to add one thing check so we didn't include in our chart on the previous slide we didn't include bonuses because that's another one where it's really difficult to compare apples to apples across town but i wonder if jeffrey you know with your history with any bonus as well variety different kinds of bonuses here and different and other towns and that would be an interesting thing to treated as traditionally been a more challenging place developed and the incentive is you actually get to develop but i think you know for a showing of putting our cards out there and wait we've done our housing production plan and we're saying this is what we expect out of  only because it's under special permit for a developer there's no guarantee he needs to know me that when they enter the game for when the into the game they know at the end they're going to get something but with a special permit good i think i think to look at it for us to see what are you know what's available i agree that the incentive is a big part of it i just think that my whatever it's been a year and a little bit that i've been on the planning board we realize just how how dense belmont is even and how unique a lot of arse our sites are and how they take i would be very nervous just to say if you build an extra fordable unit you can go thirty percent denser on there because suddenly there's something looming in someone's backyard and i think for the bigger projects i think the the from the forty b is really something that you said you suggested earlier but i think that's the way to go where you can really tailor an incentive to the site the in the group anybody else in common public do we have comments from the public all right judy yes sure as noted before northland has offered the city of newton shuttles to make it a transit oriented development that they're proposing for needham street there and again as maybe part of a friendly forty b we could ask northland to provide shuttles for what they're proposing or what eventually will be negotiated at mclean and that would deal with reducing the parking problems around waverly square people would not want to drive down to the square and they would be able to shuttle down to the train station the bus or possibly to  so twenty two clause is currently a two family and the owner wants to convert it to a one family do addition off the back and also do a dormer on the roof  their dormer has changed significantly their rear edition are still there but the door has they didn't respond to my concerns with the dormer that's encouraging so we have plenty of projects do we have any committee reports no no no committee report we don't have any hartford all the time he's he isn't around like he was before i would need somebody on that karl are you available to come in on that they be thursday morning usually but if i favor thank you everybody for one please turn off the microphone