hello hello i'm charles clarke i'm the chair of the belmont plained what i welcome you to the thursday february st two thousand nine hundred meeting of the board before i go and any further i should introduce you to the members of the board so welcome everybody this evening so i call the meeting to order this evening the st item on our agenda will be a public hearing on the chapel building for belmont hill school this is the design and site pla n review process after that we will be discussing three potential zoning amendments the st one has to do with the mclean zones three dollars and four dollars which three is proposed for residential development and four is proposed for a school for mclean these would involve changes in there's also single residence be sunning district which changes are proposed and then where where looking at the inclusionary housing by law to make some changes in that  me be clear at this point this is a we are discussing this and this is primarily a board discussion on the zoning amendments there the members of the working group will report to the other members of the board  where they are in terms of the proposals on those and then we will make a decision the board is a whole will make decision if we go to the public hearing process and begin the zoning amendment process so this is very much a procedural procedural review at this point the specifics of any of the zoning we will talk about in the public we'll follow that with some internal business talking about potential cases and such and then we have some minutes to review and then we will close off so by constructing more than two thousand five hundred square feet of additions and associated cited improvements at three hundred and fifty dollars prospect street located in a single residence a zoning district i would like does the apple can say here i assume do you have a presentation to make yes that would be absolutely fine why don't you bring the microphone up this way introduce yourself and walk us  school david in our don't and jeff why men are the landscape architects and the civil engineer for from stan tech and they have a long track record on the campus so they know they know the site quite well  interesting about this particular building is it was built in eight hundred and forty in west thompson connecticut and moved to the site and bought one thousand nine hundred and sixty block stock and barrel and it's there are some additions currently there are some additions to the building they were done in order to resolve the issues they were built about one thousand nine hundred and ninety but really the building is in its original condition on the interior for the most part and the exterior are charge was to address an issue that the school's been dealing with for quite a long time which is their primary use of this building is for weekly and more than once a week but weekly all school meetings and they can't fit all of the student body and the faculty in the building at one time so when they have an all school meeting the faculty has to be outside and in addition they also use the chapel for their fall and spring music musical concerts which attract families parents grandparents and the stage that's there now is about the size of your table and so it doesn't accommodate the musical groups  so our charge was to increase the footprint of the building so that we could increase the seating capacity from about three hundred and fifty two dollars we're bringing it up to about six hundred dollars the seating occurs on the ground level and also in a mezzanine above there's also a basement to the building which has a multipurpose room that we would be renovating so the building right now is about eight thousand two hundred and seventy five square feet it's going to all told with the basement will be thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars i believe grow square feet the footprint addition is a little bit just a shade over tw hundred square feet there's a we are going to increase the seating capacity so they can fit their entire school community there on a weekly basis we're also increasing the size of the stage platform so they can actually put their relatively small but sizable school orchestra on it for their concerts as well as jazz band and other things and we're also addressing code compliance and  accessibility issues so we are providing a new entrance which will be fully accessible at that entrance there will be an elevator that takes you down to the basement where you will find all accessible  brand new accessible that's rooms and in addition in the strict part of the building we're making some incremental changes to satisfy compliance for us so i would say that we have been in front of the massachusetts architectural access board and we recently received favorable ruling on all of the variances that we requested we requested not to change the a strict entrance which on the slide is actually facing north because it's a beautiful iconic piece of architecture its dimensions are very very limited and making changes there would be very difficult we did win that variance we also  were approved for a variance not to make the mezzanine accessible for for two reasons very difficult to get the elevator up there are three reasons difficult to get the elevator up there there's not a square foot of the mezzanine terms of floor space that's accessible suite have to reconstruct the mezzanine and lastly the sightlines from the mezzanine to the current platform and to the future platform are extremely limited the building has extremely poor go it's be it's you know it was funny is that if the it was the west thompson methodist church if they ever expanded this is probably how they were and are charges to try to do all of this without making it look like anything ever happened so you'll see in a minute the architectural details have no architectural ego at all we're basically replicating what's there which was our charge so these are some existing conditions photographed you can see this a pathway there that is used for maintenance vehicles to get from the sheds to the i think field we're going to that's the footprint of our building the pathway but we're going to reinstate a new pathway  the lower left is the view from the west side and that is you can see there's a grove of pine trees along the slope between the building and the fields and then on the lower right there's another view direct on view of the back of the building that's that one thousand nine hundred and ninety s edition that we're removing keep going for the next one these are our renderings they're actually a lot more pretty than this these are they're all the saturated here but you can see that the building the addition will be at the south side of the building behind the the original block of the of the chapel and then  doorways are so narrow that they can't get equipment in and out of the front entrance very easily so the music faculty now will have a nice big single wide single door that they can bring a quick men in a musical instruments in along with the boys to stage their concerts the view on the upper right is from the athletic fields you can see that we really are being respectful of the original roof line and the original detailing of the windows in fact are actually replicating sketch of what the interior will look like you can see that we have a kind of an expanded stage with a little bit of a stage alcove behind it with some tall windows and this is a more detailed view you can is proposing some landscape improvements at our new entrance and that's because this area right now is not actually very pedestrian friendly there's a kind of a walkway roadway that runs north make our new entrance user friendly and there will be some we organization of this parking lot of think we're actually adding a space or two and in all of this you can see if you squint on the upper left hand side of that parking lot there's the handicapped accessible parking space and that actually is about half the distance to the x the existing non compliant entrance so the accessibility  is much enhanced and i'm going to turn it over to david here because he really knows more about the details of the site plan slide and so taking the language of the pathways with the brick edging out of that door or off that entrance area and sort of heading north we we wanted to eliminate the oranges indicating elimination of four parking spaces and to add those four parking spaces back in the yellow represents adding those forced parking spaces back in the circulation in this part of campus in terms of  vehicular there's an entrance that comes in along the property line behind the science building and then loops around this this function you can see the angled parking this really functions as a one way circle so people it's in it's only really used by staff and and faculty of the public generally doesn't use this entrance they do take deliveries into this yard here so we're restricting the parking lots that are along the top side of the lot there just to reinforce that circulation so you come in he can angle into a spot and then circulate and go around you can see that the addition and scott mentioned the pathway along the back so again for maintenance vehicles renovations or additions the pathways you can see that's sort of the extent of the of the landscape work is the end of that pathway in the front of the building as scott said we're really not doing anything except for replacing the two trees that flank the entrance today they're just they're just sand cherries that are really you know very little older than twenty years old and just sort of starting to decline so they're going to we've been talking about doing that for a couple of years now  and then and then just along the back we're just continuing quote sort of the language of plant material that's that comes out of more we called the chop a lawn area over the heads hill which is really just the from the chapel since simple simple shade tree really showing the true limits of the work so because we're placing a new transformer we've been working with belmont light currently the existing transformers on the other side of that driveway i'll point  i can see down behind the chapel there is that sort of dogleg of of landscaping limit a work area there is a drainage in him through the infiltration system going in there basically we're taking all the roof run off from the new building in kind of infiltrating it in the ground behind the building that's the way that the way the stormwater works and we are placing a new condenser unit  questions before we open it up to i mean we'll have a discussion after each other any particular questions about presentation was ok to do so i'll open this up to the public would you give me a favor would you move t down down down down rate there that's great that's great thank you are there any a butter's or any neighbors or any interested parties that would like to comment on this backside of the building and it just seems like such a wide roadway right up against the bell thing that did did you think about another yeah i think it's a it's a little bit it's a little bit deceiving i think it looks lot wider than it really is it's only ten feet wide so the pathways that looks like it's like yeah twenty but that's a that's a function of the pathways that come into the entrance are fairly narrow  so the one that heads north is only five feet wide the one that comes in from the from what would be the west is only like six feet wide so just again the scale of the campus and everything you know to t nothing new i think i'd like to make sure we have that of the acoustical analysis for the chiller on hand thank you i mean my comments are it's i think it's well thought out had more applications that with this complete is there any other discussion on the board hearing none the need to close the public hearing i move we closed the public motion an affirmative motion to approve the chapel building for the belmont hill school as presented in with the standard qualifications that accrue to style apartment buildings in place excuse me excuse me if you're if you're speaking could you speak outside some place so mclain is  changing the zoning to allow a development of approximately one hundred and twenty two thousand one hundred and twenty five units approximately thirty four dollars of those would be townhouse type which is what we see in the wood ds at this point the remainder of those would be in a garden or flats apartment building the developer has been responsive to the questions that we have had in our interest to include additional affordable housing units in the project at this point i believe we're someplace in the range of one thousand dollars affordable housing units in my opinion i think we should go we should begin the public hearing process on this and to begin to discuss this formally to to move to move  to putting it on the warrant and moving towards a discussion of it and to see if it goes to town meeting in the spring or if it will involve a longer discussion  we need to vote no no ok so the consensus is that so this is very much from a procedural point of view the discussion for people that are there for th who have questions about this will take place during the public hearings so from just a procedural point of view the playing board will move forward to have a public hearing so this one will the st would be to well that's a question for the board ok so there are several options and it really depends on the board's schedule down and how they choose to move  on these three issues i'm going to be talking about scheduling with respect to all freeze only issues not just the mcclane i would suggest to the board that one night of public hearing is not sufficient to deal with these three issues that you at least i would suggest at least need to nights if not more well i would write so so what is spelled out here on the four on the screen as well as was in your pack et was the possibility of having meetings marked twelve march th or thirty six that being said there's no magic reason why those meetings need those public hearings need to be held on a tuesday they could be held anywhere between march th and the end of the week of march th could i make this oh yes please my thought on this  would be i think i think the mclean hearings will be long and extended and i would suggest for the meeting on the th that we do to single residenc developer will make a presentation and then they'll be the discussion after that now steve did you want to summarize where we are with the s r b and what your recommendation we've just met just before this meeting and discussed sort of proposed changes i think there's general agreement that we'd like to see is a separate section for s r  gamed sometimes and misinterpreted and but in that same vein we given recent conversations around town are looking at inserting two words into the sentence that says if the building condition commissioner determines the such proposed alteration or structural change increases the ghost gross floor area of the non conforming structure inserting two words in the existing or proposed non conforming structure because i mean it gets as was pointed out at our meeting it's kind of hard to increase the gross flurry of non conforming structure that doesn't exist and yet that seems to be where people are going so it would do i think we'd like to see that language and that those two words should also i think i'm proposing that they go into the s r c section as well but again that's something we should talk about because it isn't included in  explicit statement it's mostly just to just tighten up the language to make it very clear that we are not talking about new buildings we're talking about existing buildings and always happen  so that said before s or b there is general agreement that the the language that governs how the planning board may that the conditions under which the planning board may grant a special permit that's in here under sections four dollars and five dollars talking about in general harmony with a neighborhood etc that s r b needs a language that talks about dealing with differences in height  shadowing for one thing exposed floor height for example in some cases you end up with the wood situations where neighbors are living in their backyards there are four stories facing them even though that building in from the front looks like a two and a half story in the back because of the topography it looks like four stories and that needs to be a consideration in the planning was no specific numerical guideline there it's very difficult to do is going to have to be done in the special permit process as a would they would there's agreement they would like to include that in the b regulations and the same with the front step back and the s r c the front set back is determined as the average of the homes in a line rather can be but that's that's the kind of thing we can address generally speaking in the you know in the harmony with neighborhood in this case i think we need more specific language about looking at the sheer exposure as in not st for example  d that isn't because of the topography but you can't you know in all cases say that well it should be thirty feet or or twenty i mean it where there's going to have to be some some accommodation on the part of the board and we certainly don't want to prevent people from building you know expanded houses we just don't want that again we have to respect the brit rights of the about hers and we're trying to balance that and that kind of language allows us to get in and make that balancing determination rather than having a specific number to work so i by overdevelopment so good so any any questions on that so i recommend that we put that on the one that we when we open the public hearing we were talking about that that's  with about fifty five dollars distinct changes to the existing by law that we would like to recommend now firstly we'd like currently the percentage of affordable housing units required for a particular development is determined by the size of that development by the number of units and it so currently six if you have six to twelve housing units ten percent of the units must be affordable dollars to forty dollars housing units is twelve percent and then more than forty housing units is fifteen percent of our group thinks it's appropriate to to lower some of those thresholds so that twelve percent would kick  sort of a special exception to this rule for mixed use projects that would allow for mixed use residential developments that have ten or more new housing units that they that they only provide ten percent of their housing units as as affordable we think that i think there might have been a well intentioned exception at one point to encourage mixed use development but we we we we recommend getting rid of it at this point  currently i would like to move on to the topic of of payments in lieu of actually creating new affordable housing units that's an option that developers have on the for sale for sale prices are on the for sale projects that they can accommodate their required affordable units on site they have the the option to request providing a monetary contribution to the town instead t of those calculations and one procedural piece the procedural pieces that currently a developer would make that request in front of the zoning board and we feel that that request might be better heard in front of the planning board the next change is how we actually calculate that payment the language in the the by law is a little beggar open to open to a variety of interpretations so we would like to to clarify that we don't actually have it written out at this point but what we would like to do is to clarify that the payment the required payment in lieu of in the of actually building the units will be calculated calculated by taking five percent of the for sale better than the retail value if you will of of all of the units in the project of one hundred percent of the units within the project some of the vagueness arises from does that five percent apply just to the market rate units or or does it apply to the full thing so we will clarify that so that it's not open to mixed interpretation and by using the three percent number again it was another incentive for mixed use development that was well intentioned at its time but we'd rather see it standardised at five percent that's great any questions on th i i think that's great and it will go to the public hearing on that so so the mclean items s r p in the inclusionary zoning will all go to public hearing at this point so that that that pushing of it is done so we're all set and we will save public discussion of any of these items when we get to the public hearing when the specific presentations have been made by the advocates meeting i'll go slightly out of water here jeffrey in terms of things who were back at this point and who i guess who was who has been an associate member of the the playing board and is moving on from the the board which increased regret from us because made some great contributions and we heard on the committee that you run so but we understand that you work has changed it's hard and i understand it did you have a few words you'd like to say first of all i they can move forward their formal special permit application process forward did we prove this last time the neighborhood gets that we should do it again one it's the the architecture is unique the homeowner is also the architect and it's she's she's stylistically it's different this will be the st time that this board has sort of had this when you're when you're discussing how does it fit in harmony with the neighborhood are we talking architecture are we talking mass and box so we talk mass and both st ok so is there is it going to be like humongous or is it going to be a little bit bigger so i ran the preliminary neighborhood analysis just today to see how it fits and the t l a is actually in the neighborhood of what the board has considered in the past but it's similar in of and have you got a response from them in terms of that they've yes so this case is unique in the sense that it started back in you know the summer and so the board we've learned some new things we've had some new experiences in the past couple months of this this project began before the th their also they've been in process for a while they had originally would have had a variance based on some of their design choices and so they've they've gone for the c p a and they've resolved that issue so they think you know we'll see if we get but in sizes the thing to yeah i think until we just took just a quick question is the angle coming because it was one contractor who laid out a big chunk of this neighborhood do we know anything issue i mean that we have found on these things the driving issue is size balkan especially in the context of the neighborhood those are the driving issues  there are a lot of things that are sort of process at the moment but it's one of the only yes what additions and stuff similar projects that you know that were coming into the season where they want to get their permits and they've got their law in calculations again self and so on so i thought that that would depending on what the status of that application is that that might also be a good time to talk about that because it to actually in many respects dovetail together because it's really is what is not informing how do you determine what's existing in what's proposed and then how do you do the calculations which is very much what the conversation twenty one dollars it's about because i think that's hopefully  yeah so he says they need a special permit from us and ok so he's basically told them that they need to come to us and that they kind know we're right that one yeah and and i think more clarification rather than less are going forward is good because it will inform other applicants absolutely make it clear you know make it clear for them do it do we do we have any comm  st meeting in several years was quite enlightening yes i had no idea what the level of detail that we would be talking about and  think the next meeting is news a week from thursday are they talking about the police station you know the a lot of the conversation was about the library oh really what would i have just elected an architect but the library has selected an architect and i think i think in general they feel that there were i was surprised at how they planning to scrape the building is that where they are at this point i don't i don't think the architect has been given a charge i should ask them i didn't i didn't  mean the architect that they have there was able to come up with a set was a solution that worked and that was really so significantly less expensive than any other thing that had been that we can fund construction is it is it is it appropriate to have even though it's under construction to have the the  go through site plan review that's a good question at one point one point the board had decided that town projects should go through site plan review as well as private erogenous and then we had  funding and trying to make sure that we can shoehorn you know x number of projects into this it's got to be interesting as you can see because it's got a budget the same size more or less as the couple budget committee and sort of an ex officio you know version and so we're starting to talk about how do we look at town projects versus citizen input projects and are they different or it i mean this provides an opportunity for citizens to have input into what the town does and it's better it's worked very well in that regard and so it's nice to have but but it it seems clear that that needs we need to be considering it to be that the church is property it's not clear enough that it's the town's property and we don't want to make a move move that it looks like the town's making a grab for this piece of property you know by declaring it so so so essentially the application been resubmitted so that it's it's from the church talking about restoration of that clock but from a church state  theater right have that this is an act honoring that action is one that the one that got us got this whole thing i mean that's the poster child for right is because it was extended to an act of church and in this case we're really not dealing with a religious piece of property  two thousand and eighteen january two thousand and nineteen january th two thousand and nineteen february th two thousand and nineteen that we approve those with