001e e e so Paul let me know okay okay stand by okay we're rolling and coming up in three two one all right thank you good good evening everyone I'm getting feedback here Paul is it do we want to um yeah I don't have anything here muted oh that's what's going on okay great thank you is that better okay right uh good evening everyone my name is Robert Sher I'm the current chair of the ashon select board welcome to the can you hear me all right no it's coming through the room hey Paul it's not coming through the room Bud back here all right can everybody hear me I've been called a loud mouth so okay um and um Welcome to our uh public forum on the 40b proposed 40b project the sanctuary at ashin
002Mills um and I just want to introduce kind of the process tonight and some general introductions so again my name is Rob Sher the other members of the select board are here uh Claudia Bennett Brandy Kinsman Joe manani uh um Yolanda Greaves will be joining us shortly of course Town manager Michael Herbert is up front here with Peter machic our planner um we have um a number of presentations here uh tonight we're going to start um we brought in Paul haby who will be following me at the microphone Paul is an attorney uh who's going to spend some time um telling talking about the 40b process and how it works which is it's a new process for most of us so um I think it's a good idea to go through that so that'll give
003you a good background on what you know how this process works and then as you know um uh Michael and his staff have been working very hard to set up a public comment portal and uh Michael's going to spend some time talking about the process and the Gathering of public information and what we've heard so far from the public and what they've uh put together that will um lead us into a presentation by um Jeff angler who was the um uh the the developer in this case who will talk about his project and uh uh Jeff has kindly agreed to listen to comments and take potentially questions um so and and following Jeff's um oh and I should say that Paul likes to have questions during his presentation so he helps that so feel free
004to um raise your hand and I think Michael are you going to try to repeat well you probably should repeat the question so um one of the issues we have people uh in the room um you they won't be able the technology won't necessarily pick up your question so that's why it'll be repeated and people at home on Zoom uh if you use the raiseed hand function uh we'll recognize you and uh allow you to make uh H take your question so um so following uh Jeff the developers presentation we will um be opening it up for questions and observations now um I do want to say you know we're here just a public forum we want to hear what people are thinking um and your questions but try to um I guess you know
005we're going to explain the 40b process and I know there's emotions and a lot of concerns and valid concerns but try to be as constructive and as um Direct in your questions as you can um we've had a you're going to hear about the input and I think it's if you agree like traffic is going a problem say say that but don't spend a lot of time repeating what we've already said about traffic issues for example if you got something new to add that's great um if you have a certain observation you want to go in the record with uh that's that's wonderful but just keep in mind we have a limited time and a number of people want to make comments so if I think you're kind of going on too long and repeating
006things I will have to ask you to to stop and move on okay so uh at some at when we get to uh the public question and answer period we will ask for raised hands I think both uh remotely and here um see you wants to talk and kind of do like a time limit based on the number of comments so um so anyway does that sound good to everybody everybody loves it okay great okay so so without further Ado I'm going to Michael did I miss anything that you want to talk about tonight um no the the only thing you know Rob when we get to the you know public comment question portion I think it's important for people to know like um so we have set up like Rob called a comment portal
007with a form that you can fill out with your comments so that's the official way that we're going to use to get comments to Mass housing so uh just want to reate that's great and I also want and you read it it says we're going to uh forward the entire text of what you say right so that's going to go unvarnished in the comments so keep that in mind when you write something so um anyway okay so they've they've been PG 13 so far that's great okay wonderful all right so Paul go ahead thank you um just let me get the PowerPoint set up here oh sorry did I Peter did I introduce you left about Peter match our to planner he doesn't want to be that's not it but he's helping us do things
008he Peter what happened that's the wrong power point there you go oh there you go you shouldn't have left me in charge of that while they're getting set up I do want to repeat something Joe just reminded if you if you're on zoom and want to speak please put your video on or um um because then we'd be more comfortable um recognizing you we've had a number of Zoom bomb incidents so we want to make sure that everybody's legit to the extent we can okay so I'd ask you please unless you've got a really strong reason uh put your um put put your your video on on Zoom when you when you want to speak okay and have a good name that identifies yourself that seems reasonable all right thank you all right sorry for
009that um so my name is Paul ay I am an attorney at blat brosi havy and Silverstein out of conquered Massachusetts I've been practicing in the 40b area for 23 years now I've represented both developers and municipalities I've rep represented municipalities as Town Council as special town councel and as a technical review consultant which is from a a um something that is sponsored by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership they provide funds for Boards of appeals to get representation um from 40b technical experts um so I've I've got a lot of experience representing municipalities a lot of experienc representing developers and uh basically 80 plus% of my practice over the last 23 years has been in the area of chapter 40b um so this is a PowerPoint presentation that has been developed through Massachusetts Housing Partnership um
010I've had some input into this um I have tried to make it a little bit more geared towards what we're doing tonight um but this was originally developed as a training for Boards of appeals so this is really looking at the board of appeals um role in the process um but that being said I'm happy to answer questions above and beyond whatever's on this presentation so hey Paul I'm sorry to interrupt but just uh before you go on what's on the screen here is not what's on the screen here helpful I'm just got to make sure that that here we go is it kicking in should we just put the PowerPoint up and I can do it from PowerPoint uh so people can uh share online while we're doing that I just um there's also
011there was a slight technical issue with the link at the Town manager's newsletter so if you're anybody who's uh you're in contact with who's have trouble getting on the zoom uh refer them to the the link that's in the agenda for this meeting on the town meeting website also should things get crowded we do have space available downstairs I think we're okay for now but we do have an overflow room downstairs okay lot of set folks sorry for the technical difficulties it wouldn't be a hybrid meeting or Zoom meeting we didn't have these Sor about there you go look good there you go okay right Peter where is my presentation on here so I have okay but I I can't see it I want to just there you go do one thing in terms of
012and Michael will address this as we go through there's a ZB process as part of this this is I do want to say that um this is I'm sorry I do want to say that this is a unique process to have a for like this for 40b um so we we thought it was important to U Get public input and to communicate and be as transparent as possible about this but there's a whole another process which Michael will talk about involving um uh the the zba the zoning board of appeals which is the regular review process for this so sorry go ahead thank you so the first slide addresses eligibility and submission requirements and this is um I think where you are at with regards to multiple applications that may be pending um they're in
013front of the subsidizing agency before an applicant is allowed to file a comprehensive permit with your board of appeals they first have to get a project eligibility letter from one of the four qualifying subsidizing agencies so those four uh sub subsidizing agencies are the executive office of Housing and livable communities Mass housing Mass Housing Partnership and mass development you can change you want to go back yeah St um so there are actually um some statutory safe harbors that a board can claim when there's an application that's filed in their Town um the most commonly known one is the 10% yearound housing unit minimum there's also the 1.5% total land area minimum um and then there's also the 3% of total land area zoned in the community for residential commercial or industrial use or 10 acres
014whichever is larger I will admit I have never seen that Safe Harbor claimed um I don't know what the process would be for establishing whether or not a municipality complies with it it seems unlikely that any municipality could comply with it because if they could then it would have been claimed um the statute has been on the books for more than 50 years now and I'm not aware of a single time where it's been app applied in addition PA I'm sorry just to ask you a question can you explain what Safe Harbor is yes um so I will actually get into this s a little f a little further in there is a process that a board of appeals has to has to follow um when there is a safe harbor that they can claim
015so I will get to that in in a short bit um but in addition to the statutory safe harbors there are a number of regulatory safe harbors so there's the housing production plan Safe Harbor so what that is is if a town adopts uh what is essentially an affordable housing plan and then creates affordable housing either 05% of your total year round housing units in one year you would get a one-year Safe Harbor and if you approve 1% of your total year round housing unit you get a 2-year Safe Harbor there's also the recent progress towards housing unit minimum so that is a 2% standard and it's based upon the 12 months preceding the filing of a comprehensive permit application so if the town is approved up to 2% of your total yearound housing units
016as affordable units in the the 12 months prior to the filing of an application the board can assert A Safe Harbor and so to clarify Safe Harbor basically will allow a board to either deny a project or approve it with conditions even if those conditions under the project uneconomic and that decision would not be able to be overturned by the housing appeals committee on an appeal there's also a large Project Safe Harbor so it's based upon the number of yearound housing units per Community um and I think it goes up to 300 units and then there's the related application safe harber so the related application safe harber was put in place to prevent developers from proposing a uh a standard development a 40a development and using chapter 40b as a way to threaten the municipality
017to allow them to to approve the 4A development that they've proposed this requires that a developer wait 12 months from the end of any process um approval process for not only housing but it could be a commercial development and Industrial Development um as long as that proposal didn't have a minimum of 10% affordable housing um if it had a minimum of 10 10% affordable housing then this Safe Harbor would not be applicable so then we get to just please so when you say related applications is that by the same develop or if it's two it doesn't matter town at the same time it's a no no it's a related application for construction on the same property oh okay thank you and and the goal is to prevent a developer from coming in with a standard
018you know 4A project and then during that process saying well if you don't approve this then we're going to go forward with a 40b okay well you can but you've got to withdraw your project and then wait one year which is what has which can be an issue because that that also means that if a developer gets a project that's approved and it gets appealed you have to wait until that appeal is resolved before that one-year Safe Harbor even starts running okay so it it is they has some teeth to it that Safe Harbor provision so there are um important submission requirements for 40b applications the first is that you have to look at the status of the developer are they a public agency so that would be a situation where if you had a
019local Housing Authority that was proposing a development um they could be a nonprofit or the most common type of application is filed by a limited dividend organization so that real all that really entails is a developer agreeing to limit the profit on their development consistent with the standards of the um subsidizing agency need to provide evidence of site control site control is actually a part of the process with the subsidizing agency when you go for project eligibility they will make a determination as to site control that determination is considered to be conclusive unless there are some issues with regard to site control that arise after the determination has been made and then the regulations have a process for board of appeals or the housing appeals committee or anyone um to refer it back to the
020subsidizing agency to make a determination as to whether or not that site control remains in place and then finally the applicant has to provide a copy of a project eligibility letter from a qualifying subsidizing agency uh other 40b application submittal requirements preliminary plans versus final plans so chapter 40b only requires a developer to submit preliminary development plans they do not have to be final detailed development plans and the purpose of this is to allow an applicant to come in really with a something in along the lines of a sketch design for the board to review and give their approval and then the final detailed plans would actually be submitted post approval uh those plans have to include existing site conditions in a locust map preliminary scaled architectural drawings a tabulation of proposed buildings by type
021size and ground coverage um if the developer is proposing a subdivision then you have to include a preliminary subdivision plan a preliminary utilities plan has to be submitted in a list of requested waivers so I think it's helpful to to discuss the waivers because this is um one of the main selling points of chapter 40b for developers is that the developer has the right to come in and request a waiver of any local Rule and requirement that prevents them from doing their development as proposed um chapter 40b allows the developer to come in and do that but they've got to provide you a list um when I'm representing a board on a 40b application 95% of the time um when I review a waiver list I find that it's incomplete I always ask a board
022of appeals to go back to the developer and request for them that they actually be more specific with their waiver requests and and the reason for that is at the end of the day if there's an appeal filed of the board's decision what's going to be looked at is whether or not that determination was arbitrary and capricious and if the board is unaware of the scope of the waivers that it is granted then that leaves them in a vulnerable vulnerable position as to whether or not their decision was arbitrarily capricious um I never encourage boards to Grant blanket waivers of local rules and requirements um local rules and requirements apply to local bylaws so if there is a local Wetlands bylaw a local Board of Health requirement that's more restrictive than Title 5 and things
023of that nature the board of appeals sits in the board of the local boards grants those permits but the board of appeals does not Grant state level permits so the Conservation Commission retains all of its jurisdiction under the wetlands protection act the Board of Health retains all of its jurisdiction under Title Five The Building Commissioner retains all of his jurisdiction under the State Building Code so it's only local rules that can be waved as part of the 40b process um Paul just a so this is an affirmative a process that the developer will list specifically what they're requesting the wave of local rules is that is that what you just said in terms of the process and so the zba would look at those carefully and make a determination of whether we want to uphold
024the local rules so so when I'm representing a board of appeals at the end of the process process we will go through the waiver list one by one and the board of appeals will vote on each and every waiver request um this is sort of getting into what I'll be discussing later but the board of appeals has to keep in mind when it's reviewing the waiver request that a denial of a waiver that's going to render a project on economic will likely result in an appeal to the housing appeals committee and then they will have to be able to show an issue of local concern that outweighs the regional need for affordable housing that supports that waiver denial so it's a balancing test that board's going to have to do when it's making that determination
025thank you you can yes to the next one so noticing and conducting the required public hearing so there's a number of different figures on this screen you can skip to the next one so chapter 40b performance requirement deadlines so some of these deadlines lines are actually more aspirational than they are a strict requirement some of them however if a board fails to comply with them could result in a constructive approval so the first one is distribute the application to other local boards within seven days that's aspirational at no point are you ever even if the board never distributes applications to other boards uh it's not a basis for finding that the board's decision was uh improper or that uh a construction of approval would occur it's helpful for the board to distribute this to other
026boards as soon as it can because it's going to be looking for input the board of appeals again is sitting as all local boards on a comprehensive permit application but the board's going to want input from the other boards that generally would review this type of application so the sooner you get this information out to those boards the sooner you get that input and the quicker you get through this process and that will be become clear as to why that's important in a minute within 14 days of receiving the application you want to um file your notice of public hearing and you want to publish in a newspaper of General circulation in town and that is important because the next one is you have to open the public hearing within 30 days of the filing
027of the application I will note that is an ongoing question in terms of whether simply showing up um scheduling a public hearing showing up and saying we're continuing is sufficient to constitute the opening of a public hearing there's a couple of cases currently pending at the housing appeals committee that make the argument that that is not a public hearing that in order to have a actual public hearing there needs to be an ability for the project proponent to make a presentation and argue their case to the board um so I would not recommend a board ever do that they should always allow at least an initial presentation Safe Harbor notification so this we touched upon a little bit earlier there is a process in which within 15 days of opening the public hearing the board
028of appeals needs to provide written notification to the applicant if it is claiming any one of the either uh statutory or regulatory safe harbors failure to comply with this process means that the board loses its right to claim that Safe Harbor uh if the applicant uh disagrees with the board's assertion of safe har but they have the right to file an appeal um to the executive office of Housing and livable communities um within 15 days of the notification by the board the executive office of Housing and livable communities then has 30 days to provide their decision and that decision can be uh appealed by either side to the housing appeals Committee in an interlocutory appeal um if there is an interlocutory appeal with the the housing appeals committee that's automatically going to stay the local
029hearing um and it won't be you won't be able to proceed on it until that appeal has been resolved there's no appealing the decision of the housing appeals committee on the interlocutory appeal until it's been remanded back to the board the board has gone through the full hearing process has issued a decision that decision is then appealed to the housing appeals committee housing appeals committee yet again issues a decision and then that safe haror issue can be part of an appeal to either Superior Court or land Court uh once the board has opened the public hearing it has 180 days to close the public hearing and this process is going to move very quickly um and failure to comply with this process and close the public hearing within 180 days can result in a constructive
030approval again something the board wants to make very very sure it doesn't happen in its process it can be extended by agreement of of the applicant and the board that is actually a very common um situation applicants will quite frequently agree to extensions of the 180-day period because it can be difficult to get through all of the information that's necessary to get through in one of these hearing processes and it may be that there just isn't enough time and the applicant is going to run the risk if they refuse to extend that hearing of a board issuing a decision that basically states that they didn't have sufficient information so that's going to be an ongoing question throughout the process um but what the board of appeals should do when they're reviewing a comprehensive permit application
031is make sure that they are moving as quickly as they can um they're retaining peerreview Consultants they're identifying all of the issues that need to be identified in review um and that they're holding public hearings as frequently as they possibly can once the public hearing has closed did someone have a question no no once the public hearing is closed the board has 40 days uh to deliberate which has to be done in public but it cannot accept any more testimony from the applicant or from the public during that deliberation process um and then it has to render its decision and file it with the town clerk within that 40-day period once the decision has been filed uh the appeal process the appeal route is is 20 days um and I'll get to the different types
032of appeals that can be filed from the board's decision scheduling a site visit um so it's fairly common in planning board hearings Conservation Commission hearings even board of appeals hearings that a site visit is scheduled so that the board members can get a sense as to exactly um you know what they're faced with um it's helpful to have certain issues marked you know it's nice to have the the proposed roadway marked location of buildings marked if we're talking about particularly tall buildings you may actually ask the applicant to do a balloon test so that you know people can actually judge what the height of the building will be when they do that site walk um it should be done early in the process um and yes certainly yeah so if you're talking about one of
033the pending applications my understanding is nothing has been filed yet so and the process again as I stated at the beginning is you have to obtain a project eligibility letter from a qualifying subsidizing agency so I think that that's where they are in the process right now an application with uh for a comprehensive permit with the board of appeals cannot be filed until the applic until the applicant has that project eligibility letter in hand so we're not at that stage yet uh again so a site visit it helps the the board of appeals understand the site and the the neighborhood existing conditions the proposed site plan and building design and it also helps them look you know they they can as part of a site visit with the permission of a budding Property Owners you
034can go onto a budding properties and take a view as to how you know they are going to be impacted by The Proposal retaining peer review Consultants so this is very important um the the board of appeals has the right to require the applicant to fund um what's known as a chapter 44 section 53g account to allow for the board to retain outside Consultants independent Consultants to review materials that are submitted by the applicant so that can include civil engineering traffic architecture and in circum certain circumstances Financial peer rreview um the board of appeals cannot have a peer review consultant review studies that were not prepared on behalf of the applicant and it cannot require cannot have a peerreview consultant prepare their own studies um if a board of appeals or a town wants separate
035studies to be performed they certainly have the right to pay for those studies themselves but they can't require the applicant to pay for them as part of this process all written records and reports uh are to be made part of the record yes sir does that include enironmental yes yep Paul sorry to ask a question so you have on the list here Financial peer reviews yes are you talking about like a fiscal impact analysis or an analysis of the developers proor it's it's a proor review um and there are specific standards that have to be followed before you're allowed to conduct a proformer review um and what that requires is the board of appeals would have to have completed all peer review and have prep have prepared and submitted to the applicant a draft decision
036that contains all conditions and waiver decisions and if the applicant after reviewing that draft decision indic Ates to the board that they believe it renders the project uneconomic the board of appeals can then engage a consultant to review a proor a provided by the applicant got and because but you have to make sure you leave enough time in the process to to get there because if at the last meeting the board says here's a draft decision um if you don't like it then we're going to require a peer review well the applicant's not required to extend the 180-day period to allow that so if you if you're thinking at the beginning that at some point you may want to do do a financial peer review then you got to make sure you get through the
037process quickly enough to to be in a position where you can do that the other thing I wanted to point out in terms of a fiscal impact analysis is I recommend that boards never require those um because the main driving factor in the fiscal impact analysis is school impacts and the board of appeals should never be looking at impacts on schools when we're doing an affordable housing development because that's a great way to back yourself into a fair housing action okay so I I never recommend that and and frankly they're not helpful because I don't think you're going to find two Consultants who are going to agree and the Public's never going to agree um in particular on you know the school age the number of school age children okay and I think it's important
038to note so when you talk about reviewing the the pro forma so there are certain for lack of a better term profit limits that developers have with relation to 40b projects right so I you wouldn't really be looking at the profit limitations instead you would be looking at the uneconomic thresholds so basically on a home ownership development the threshold is 15% return on total cost and on a rental development it's tied to the 10-year treasury yield I think it's 4 and a half points above the 10e treasury rail is that right Jeff yes all right so so those are the minimum economic thresholds so what the board is going to want to do if they conduct a financial peer review is determine whether or not the decision that they're imposing puts the development below those
039thresholds gotcha um my recommendations to boards first of all I I I don't find Financial peerreview generally to be helpful my recommendations to boards are if you want to include conditions on on a development and and a developer is objecting to them make sure that you believe believe that those conditions are supported by genuine issues of local concern and then if they are it doesn't matter whether they render the project uneconomic or not okay makes it thank you Paul I think we had I see Anna's question but Joan did you still have a question from the town cannot require the developer to pay for their peer rreview Consultants to do independent studies the town absolutely has the right to pay for their own independent studies and I just want repe repeat questions so that people
040at home can yeah just just a note of that should have been doing that go ahead Anna and um good evening Paul um I apologize for my late arrival I'm a planning board member but this question is more as so as I understand the presentation is about the obligations of the zild appeals deadlines can and cannot for example we have AUD scho imp that would notate for them micone so let me just know we do we do have a microphone available looks like we just got it um but and I'm sorry go ahead so but um the microphone of my understanding will not uh is is not uh audible to people on Zoom um is that right Paul it's low yeah okay but go ahead Anna this will record your V your question for posterity
041so repeat no I think you can just keep going get get to the question so as I understand there's limitations on the zoning board of appeals and what they're allowed to do and I think you mentioned that because of the fair housing laws they're not allowed to do a school impact study so as I understand that this that phase the the zoning board of appeals phase comes later and right now we're in the pre-let phase where basically we as a community could in theory negotiate with the applicant do our own studies and work with the applicant to kind of dis discuss conditions prior to the zoning board of appeals is that correct and will you be doing those negotiations and is the community allowed to do studies on school impacts during this phase so I
042I I'm going to boil that question down to is the community allowed to do studies on school impacts and again my recommendation is that the community does not do that type of of a study because again it's it's a great way for a community to back its way into a fair housing claim um there's no specific Prohibition in the regulations in the statute against the municipality conducting a fiscal impact study or School impact study um however the HC has years of uh decisional law indicating that's not an appropriate item for the for a board of appeals to review and would not be a legitimate reason for either denying or conditioning so if there's no real benefit to a municipality to to do that type of study I would suggest that you avoid it because there
043is a legitimate downside again which is the potential for a fair housing action okay thank you and I I do want to note that we are intending to have our Town Council represent us in this process right Michael so that's correct we have who has experience in the 40b process so and and who I used to work for I guess yeah go ahead sure I guess I don't what's more important a school imps of so the the question is what is more important than a school impact in terms of development um health and safety I think is probably more important than School impact but leaving that aside again it's not a legitimate basis for issuing a decision under chapter 40b if if there's an impact to the schools the housing appeals committee has stated over
044and over again that that is an issue for the the municipality to address that they would basically have to come up with whatever funding is necessary to ensure that those new new students are educated in the same manner as every other resident in the town is that you can't deny the creation of affordable housing just because it's going to increase your school impacts is there any so I I don't know what impact will or will not occur as a result of this development uh I am here to discuss chapter 40b very generally um but I don't know specifically what impacts would or you know would not occur I can tell you that right there have been studies that have been conducted and essentially the more the more bedrooms in a unit the more likely it's
045going to have a negative fiscal impact the bedrooms per unit the more likely it's going to have to have a positive fiscal impact and just one of the things just to remind people just just want to remind people we're going at this point we're talking to Paul about the 40b the legal 40b process so we can have an understanding of how it works um I don't there's no questions on Zoom are there any further questions of Paul Paul you completed your presentation no sorry I'm jumping the gun the rest question well he he he prefers to do prefers if um a town like ash it's overrun with the both existing and on they've been okay for development what is 40b is why can't we just say no to 40b isn't that Milton's doing what yeah
046can you let me just I can repeat the question I can repeat his question so the gentleman's concerned about the amount of apartments that have been built in nation he's just basically asking why can't we say no to 40b so I think that's but he was referring to he was referring to the the NBTA Community zoning which is a different discussion so to the gentleman who he I know he's um waiting for the microphone sir so you're it's two different things that we're talking about right there's the the NBTA Community zoning that's one discussion and that is not related to this 40b discussion right now it's a different thing that we have to discuss as a community and what I would state is there have been in the 50 plus years that chapter 40b has
047been in place dozens and dozens of local decisions that have denied comprehensive permit applications and the municipality success rate in having those denials upheld held on appeal to the housing appeals committee is very very low the housing appeals committee was created by the legislature to be a a a body of an executive agency that is tasked with assisting in the creating of affordable housing they are a de developer friendly venue by Design so if if the town simply wants to say no we're not going to approve this 40b development or any 40b developments very likely it's going to be appealed to the housing appeals committee and the housing appeals committee is going to overturn the board's decision unless the board is able to point to a legitimate issue of local concern that supports their decision
048to deny so you can't just say we're going to deny because we have too much rental housing or too much affordable housing in town if you're under the 10% if you don't meet any of the safe harbers you're subject to 40b and any decision that you make on a comprehensive permit application is subject to appeal to the housing appeals committee can you itemize you said I don't want toe that's better is this on I don't know it's on can you give you you say unless the the local appeals boards or whatever their title is uh can identify specific harms to the community I'm going to get to that I'm going to get to the issues of local concern that can support uh as I understand it in the planning board process normally the developer as
049they approach the board there's a number of studies that are done storm water studies traffic studies and various other kinds of studies I think that the applicant generally does those and I think pays for them and the town has an engineer that reviews them is that the same as this or are we saying that the developer doesn't have to do those studies and impacts and so on no we're saying that this is the same they have to do those studies and the board of appeals can retain a peer review consultant to review those studies welcome pass to the back left corner can you pass the microphone back just leave it on okay question does that include impact fees for impact on sewer and water so if there are already established um requirements regarding impact fees
050then those are applicable to chapter 40b developments a developer can request a waiver of local fees I have never seen a housing appeals committee decision that has required a municipality to wave local fees in order to make a project economic just U Ash why you get the microphone yeah get the microphone first like you mentioned that um things like the building Cod apply that good question that is a very good question uh so the question is whether or not the stretch code would apply um I wish I had a definitive answer for you on that I know that I I know of at least one 40b development that was looking for a waiver of the requirements of the stretch code and that waiver request went to the State Building Code board of appeals um because
051the State Building Code board of appeals has the right to wave provisions of the State Building Code it did not go to the board of appeals as part of the 40b application there is an argument that could be made that since it's a local optin that that's a local requirement um but I have never seen a decision on that question just Paul just to clarify you're talk you're referring to the local opin which we passed at town meeting right and is the state uh stretch code without the optin is that basically enforcable question if I can just sharpen that question just a little bit Rob Ashlin has greed Community status so we follow the stretch code the optin is a separate question not the optin doesn't even apply to Jan so the the the stretch
052code itself is the base code as far as ashin is concerned would that still apply because that's not an opt-in code it's by by Dent of us bringing a green community that that that's the code that applies to ashin I I think the the answer is still the same I mean the the participation as a green Community is a local opt-in process if I had to to guess how that question would be answered if it was was ever taken to the housing appeals committee I I would lean on the side of that it can be waved that it's going to be determined to be part of the state provision rather than the local provision but again there is no decisional law to provide any instruction on that could you just clarify what is that code
053those who so the stretch code is a is a it's a local opt-in provision of the State Building Code that has greater energy saving uh components to it and Ashland has apparently adopted the stretch code so it's any development that moves forward in ashin would theoretically be subject to that rather than the the minimum State building code standards is applicable in municipalities that have not adopted this the stretch code all right I think I'm going to skip this next slide because this is really board of appeals I I just had to jump to a a question online U Mark D you have your hand up so please I'm going to ask you to unmute and ask your question question hey thank you about the son 49 haon Road and um that in Str code and
054what I formulated for this town the form basic is work is working fine now but um I'm going to ask for the when the end the legislator going over these laws going over the talk and discussion debate and whatever you do why can't the the state house actually see what the service is it's going to hurt if you overrun with more with more residents and what would happen with the town if the citizen percentage overgrows Municipal Services can that be answered I I guess I I'm not quite clear on what the question is is the question can can can a board of appeals deny a 40b development if it's going to have a negative impact on Municipal Services no I'm saying in the legis the state house where this is authored okay they don't see
055each Town buing municipalities and service the responders fire police DPW but they let the developers want overbuild how can why would that be all right in the upend or form based why is that going to be okay if can't expand Municipal Services Paul do you think Michael you want to well I I I think and Mark correct me if I'm wrong so there's a concern that Mark has expressed that with these developments it's going to basically require more in Municipal Services than it brings in in tax revenue and why don't people at the state level uh why do they why do they allow that to happen we don't know what they do with this that's basically it and why do they have why why do they let it happen and yet and saying oh it's
056in the it's in the name of progress and for affordable housing it won't be afford if you bring the many people in and then you have all the people walking and and mark thank you um Paul I don't know if you had anything specific you could respond to that kind of a general policy question which uh I think I can't say why the legislature does what it does yeah so none of us can so yeah so thank you Mark go go ahead Paul right if there AR well there is another question well could you just articulate um the difference between what's called the friendly 40b project and a I guess a non-friendly 40b just so people understand the benefit behind working with a developer in order to get the affordable housing count above the 10%
057threshold with projects that that are put together versus being forced to accept projects that are I don't know if the term is an aggressive 40b um I think that you know your expertise would would sh some benefit on that we need to have everybody identify themselves well that's probably a good idea sorry Steve regalar one of the Architects yes great thank you Steve so generally speaking friendly 40b has been shorthand for a local initiative project 40b development so that is one of the the options for a developer to move forward with a project eligibility letter that actually requires local support of the development it requires your select board to actually sign the the application to the subsidizing agency um it allows your select board to be a signatory to the regulatory agreement at the end
058of the process that's always been the shorthand for friendly 40b but I don't think that that's necessarily completely accurate um you certainly can have 40b applications where an applicant is is very accommodating and works with the municipality um I'll give you an example I I represented the board of appeals and Groveland a few years back uh a developer came in with a 40b application that was actually above the large project um Safe Harbor threshold in representing the board I advised them to provide a safe harbor notification to the developer the developer I think had missed the fact that the safe the large project threshold was exceeded they immediately said well we're going to reduce the number of units and the board of appeals said well we don't want you to reduce the number of units
059because this is going to get us over 10% and the board of appeals said you know we've asserted our Safe Harbor but we want to work with you and unless we identify specific issues of local concern through our review process our intent would be to issue an approval to allow this and to get us over the 10% you know that was a a Mass housing project um but that was a friendly 40b you're welcome all right negotiation in work sessions we have that up there I will tell you that that chapter 40b developments come in all shapes and sizes that that is a 40b development yeah so negotiation with developers is possible um I I think it's a rare chapter 40b development that goes out the door from the board of appeals the same way
060it came in um the board of appeals is allowed to have work sessions with developers and that can be with a member of the board of appeals or it could be with local staff I'm representing a board right now that has had I I I've got to say probably at least a dozen work sessions with the applicant the applicant's engineers Architects the board's peerreview consultants and what it does it helps address a lot of the technical questions that come up throughout the process that take a lot of time you know in the public hearing to go through this helps eliminate that and allows the board to actually get to questions more quickly in in the the public hearing and it allows the public more time to actually provide their input because we're not waiting for
061three hours for a developer to make a presentation on very technical issues neighbors can and should be invited to these work sessions all discussions during the work session are advisory in nature no decisions can be made so you can't be where a developer comes in and says all right we're going to agree to reduce this project by 20% the board can say well that's wonderful you know present that as a plan at a public hearing we can't tell you yes or no as part of a work session and again these have to comply with the open meeting law so depending on the number of board members that will limit the number of of participants from the the board so if you have a three-person board you can only have one person participate because you can't
062have a quorum without violating the open meeting law um I always recommend you don't have more than one person anyways because I think it it it makes a bad look and has the potential to result in serial Communications which could still wind up open meeting law violation next slide so this goes to the questions that the board of appeals is going to need to address during the the local process and what they need to do is ba is balance the regional affordable housing need with issues of local concern and the issues of local concern are health safety environmental design open space planning or other local concerns um I can give you some examples of local concerns that have been successful in upholding um local denials um certain Traffic Safety um decisions where you've got a
063very very long deadend road um and you've got reverse curves on the roadway coming in that has led to a a denial being upheld um on the other hand long Dead End Road alone hasn't been enough to have a decision uph a denial upheld yes uh Trisha Kendall 6 re Bena Road um just on that list what does the plan planning component mean I understand the I think the other ones but what why is planning on that list what does that mean so there there are circumstances in which local planning concerns have been sufficient to uphold a denial um there was one from down the cape I think it was Barnstable but I not 100% sure now um where they had an area in their downtown area that was specifically identified for a particular type
064of development Vel M developer came in was looking to do a 40b and the town was able to show that it was there was a very legitimate local concern with regards to the type of development that they wanted there and that the town had been progressing had had a plan for the development of affordable housing and was making progress on complying with that plan um so there are certain circumstances again where planning can concerns have been upheld again there are also circumstances where planning concerns have been raised and have been found to be insufficient so it's very very fact specific the housing appeals committee has a three-part test that it implements to determine whether a particular planning concern is legitimate um and then if it is legitimate then they have to balance it against the
065regional need for affordable housing next slide holding deliberation sessions I believe I touched on this already so once the public hearing is closed no more uh input can be taken by the board um the board has to deliberate in public um so what you will do is you'll just schedule a deliberation session um it will review most likely a draft decision as part of that deliberation session um and and it also review the requested waivers I will say this is not a requirement a board of appeals can actually review a draft decision and essentially deliberate while the public hearing is still open presuming that you're you know within the 180-day period as potentially extended I find that to be the better approach because that allows you to to receive input from the developer so that
066if the board is proposing conditions that you know may render the project uneconomic they get the feedback from the developer to let them know it also allows the public the ability to comment on the proposed conditions um so that the board gets that feedback as well Drafting and issuing the comprehensive permit decision the board of appeals has three decision Alternatives denial approval as submitted and I literally have never seen a project approved as submitted or approval with conditions next slide so approval with conditions the conditions should not make the project uneconomic uh conditions and or requirements must be consistent with local needs um and there's a provision in the regulations that states the board may not reduce the number of units for reasons other than evidence of local concerns within the board's purview again so
067that gets back to that list of issues of local concern that can support a board's either denial or imp I of conditions that render a project uneconomic um this is saying that even if you're not rendering the project uneconomic you can't just arbitrarily reduce the number of units you've got to have a legitimate issue of local concern that supports that reduction Paul real quick um so issues of like local concerns um what kind of bar is set for that like what kind of bar does the municipality have to meet to basically show that and if you don't mind when you answer if you could answer out to the audience because the microphone doesn't pick it up y um I I can say it's a high bar uh again the housing appeals committee is a forum
068that is designed to facilitate the uh creation of affordable housing the number of decisions by the housing appeals committee upholding a denial are are very very small the vast majority more than 90 90% probably more than 95% of appeals of denials result in a decision in favor of the developer presuming they get to that point a fair amount of appeals get resolved prior to a decision you know um applicant in the board can agree to mediate that mediation can result in changes to an application um a remand back to the board and the board can issue a decision that is consistent with what the the mediation process resulted in Jeff thank you for the record Jeff angler um I I had a slightly I could be off base interpretation of Michael's question um I think
069you're speaking of local concerns that the town used to deny a permit I have lots of comprehensive permits that have 70 80 90 100 local concerns that are ident identified in the permit that are acceptable to we as the developer that we adhere to so it's not a zero sum it's a local concern that we're going to apply and it's going to force that developer to deny no it's lots of things these are concerns of Board of Health of the building department of engineering that are reasonable and make their way into a decision that's acceptable to we as an app as a developer so there's different kind of criteria relative to a local concern that's kind of a deal Crusher and forces a developer to appeal as opposed to local concerns that make their way
070into the permit that are reasonable and not ridiculously financially penal that just a you know collaborative process so thank you and if I can expand on that um there is a a benefit to a board to approve a decision with conditions as opposed to denial um and this is a trend in recent housing appeals committee decisions even when there there are you know 80 100 conditions and an applicant appeals you know 60 of them um only the conditions that the applicant appeals are being stricken so all of the remaining conditions are being left in place I will tell you that when the housing appeals committee issues a decision on a denial they have a standard set of conditions and it's like six or seven conditions and that's it so there is a benefit to a
071board even if all of its more stringent conditions get eliminated because they render the project uneconomic a number of base level conditions would still be there um also with regards to conditions that a board can or cannot impose I will say that generally speaking applicants are are willing to accept conditions that may actually go beyond the the authority of a board to impose so there's a decision um that I was involved in from asbery back in um zoning board of appeals of Amesbury versus housing appeals committee that decision lays out exactly what the role of a board of appeals is in a comprehensive permit application and that states that the board of appeals is stepping into the shoes of all other local boards and that is the limit of the board of appeals jurisdiction on
072a a comprehensive perit application so if you don't have a local rule or requirement that was generally imposed by a different local board the board of appeals can't just step up and impose that as condition that being said it's not at all uncommon for boards to issue decisions with conditions that overreach a little bit and as long as the entirety of the decision is not so objectionable that the applicant feels a right to appeal they'll accept those conditions so again there is a substantial benefit to a board to issue a decision uh with conditions rather than to just simply outright deny an approval you you would really need to be able to strongly identify a significant issue of local concern with support from you know the decade of decisional at the housing appeals committee that
073says this is you know something that you can deny an application on absent that it's a much better strategy strategy to approve with conditions uh appeal of decision so appeals by the applicant we've we've gone over this now at nauseum are made to the housing appeals committee that's a developer friendly Forum by Design appeals for Agri parties other than the developer go to the Superior Court or to the land Court um it's it's an interesting scenario when you've got those dual appeals when you've got a permit that's been appealed by the developer to the housing appeals committee but also by a group of abutters to the land court or the Superior Court um probably about 10 or 15 years ago the Supreme Judicial Court actually resolved the the contradiction in the statute and determined that
074the abutter appeal will automatically be stayed in the superior court or land Court until the housing appeals committee process has been completed and essentially once the housing appeals committee process has been completed it's more likely than not going to result in a change to the decision that was originally issued and that's going to render the other appeal Moot and it will just be dismissed and then any appeal of the housing appeals committee decision would have to be taken so and this is something that's more of interest to the board of appeals than perhaps the general public but once they issue a comprehensive permit they're not done with the process um so managing the comprehensive permit there are regulatory agreements deed writers monitoring agreements that have to be executed by the developer and the subsidizing agency
075um and that is all done as part of the final approval of process with the subsidizing agency any decision that the board issued should have a condition that prevents the commencement of construction until final approval by the subsidizing agency has been issued the applicant is going to be required to do a lottery plan and an affirmative fair housing marketing plan um they're going to have to provide information regarding the income asset and first time buyer status for the affordable units um pursuant to the comprehensive permit regulations a comprehensive permit will lapse after 3 years unless the board provides a longer period which I've never seen happen um but that can be extended By Request of the applicant and that extension is by regulation determined to be insubstantial transfer of the comprehensive permit it used to
076be the board of appeals had a role in the process of the transfer of the comprehensive permit now they're only entitled to notification subsidizing agency has the exclusive jurisdiction over the transfer the transfer of the comprehensive permit um and then then inspections during construction and that' be something that would be addressed as part of the board's comprehensive permit decision as to who does those inspections during the construction process so that's the end of the presentation happy to take any additional questions Larry D young 106 Sudbury Road um in the during the construction process in the order of conditions if a if a developer uh crosses the line of the condition and does something he shouldn't um how is that resolved so that is within the jurisdiction of the Building Commissioner it's the same as a
077violation of any any sub permit subdivision approval special permit approval if if they're not in compliance with the permit that is issued that's a zoning violation it's enforced by your zoning enforcement officer which is the building commission and and is it is sometimes this a question of a fine or sometimes a question of doing it the way they were supposed to it could be either go way yes sir you had a question did I don't know hold on and get the microphone please thank you get the microphone thank you uh I'm not sure if you can offer any insight or experience to surrounding towns dealing with uh these types of applications such as southb Sherborn uh and some of these other uh quote unquote uh exclusive types of communities how do they uh deal with
078these because from my experience when I look at those communities they're not they're not having these developers come in so Sherborn definitely is having these developers come in because I represent several of them uh I have one developer in Sherbon that has one project that was just appealed to the housing appeals committee has two other projects pending and two other projects on their way also represented multiple other developers in Sherborne sbor um I think is over 10% now I believe so um but you know they' they've had their share of application too I actually represented and and I very very infrequently do this but I represented an a butter to a 40b development in Southboro and we had one of the very few um decisions ever that overturned a local decision under 40b and a
079followup to that question is uh if we hit the 10% and that I would imagine is the majority of uh the developers uh approach um but if this particular developer hits that 10% threshold are we done so that that the answer to that question is both yes and no so first of all the way that the regulations work uh comprehensive permit development is countable on your subsidized housing inventory as soon as the decision is filed with the town clerk's office okay however that permit um comes off all those units come off of your Shi if a building permit is not pulled within one year of the issuance of decision so then you're open again and then once a building permit is issued the units come back on yeah so so that's one thing second thing
080is every 10 years a new census comes out your total number of yearound housing units goes up theoretically if you were just over the 10% you could fall back below it again and finally there was a time when developments were not required to be affordable in perpetuity so there are a number of developments out there that potentially have expiring um use restrictions so if you have any of those on your subsidized housing inventory and they expire theoretically you could drop back below the 10% uh excuse me uh to planer Peter met we we have one hand up online uh under iPhone uh I am going to ask you to unmute and ask your question be careful identify yourself I can't turn on video thank you so I'm interested to know what towns have stopped 40b
081in their community and what was the reasons or the waivers for that can you please uh introduce yourself I'm sorry sure this is Amy okay Amy hey Amy hey so Paul maybe a brief uh summation of um how so so the question was What towns have stopped 40b and the the answer to that question is no towns have stopped 40b there have been towns that have been successful in denying specific 40b applications those are very dependent on issues relating to the site and there can be a number of different reasons you know there can be an identified health or safety reason there could be a planning reason that supports the denial um there could also be um an issue with regards to um site control there was a a decision from the housing appeals committee
082that got overturned in gron more than 10 years ago at this point which basically the housing appeals committee issued a decision requiring uh developer to be allowed to clear um branches that were obstructing site distance from their project entrance on municipally owned property and the Superior Court which was upheld by the appeals court determined that the only town meeting had the right to basically Grant an easement in this case it would be a view easement to a party that was not something that could be done through the chapter VB process and that decision was overturned so there are a number of different ways in which 40b projects have been successfully um denied but the ones that have been denied and overturned greatly outnumber the ones that have been successfully denied yes as an example Milton
083can you Milton has can you identify yourself please Faith Roby uh 12 F Crossing Ashland um Milton oh no no no Milton Milton so they they're they're the the the the people in Milton voted against the 40b that they were supposed to get correct that that I think we're talking about the NBTA communities was that a whole different thing completely different thing yes maybe I I could explain a little bit so yes there are two completely different things so 40b is a law that has been on the book since 1969 and and it essentially allows developers to seek and receive waivers from existing zoning you know a municipalities existing zoning in order to do projects so the NBTA communities law is more recent it's been within the last two years and what that requires communities
084to do is Zone to allow dents residential as of right so you know one is one basically requires a community to Zone a certain way and then 40b is a way to basically circumvent existing zoning I I hope that makes sense and we are also subject to MBTA law as well so that's the confusion I think there's been a lot of discussion in the community about the MBTA uh zoning law so and the legitimacy of chapter 40b has been established since 1973 by the Supreme Judicial Court in the case of uh Handover versus housing appeals committee hey yeah all right does that wrap up any questions I guess not okay sorry uh so so in effect what I heard was that as a town we would be in a better place to look at the
085merits of each application because we have to meet a certain limit and then really work with the developer to try and get as many of those accommodations as we can that that are in the interest of the town right rather than just trying to fight this thing because if it's not this project it'll be another project that that you would effectively still have to meet the 40b law it's not like you can fight the 40b law cor correct uh so what I would say is you know presuming this does eventually go to an application to the zoning board of appeals the zoning board of appeals should review the project it should identify the issues of local concern that that they believe are are in place they should work with the developer to try to address
086those issues of local concern they should issue a decision that does address those issues issues of local concern and hopefully that means that you've got a decision that puts you over your 10% and you don't have to accept any more 40b developments well as long as you remain over the 10% there's no fixed time there I said I mean if if you get up to 11% or 12% you not going to fall back down below 10% on the next decennial census so I mean that's going to leave you over 10% for quite a long time I think in all due respect the the problem with getting to 10 or 12% with what we're looking at right now is the implications for what it does to this community that that that is correct I mean that's
087what you know what yeah that I mean that is more of a concern you know for you as a select board really than it is for the board of appeals that's a little bit beyond their purview in in reviewing a 40b application certainly is you know something that you should consider and identify when you're making your response to the subsidizing agency correct absolutely Paul I think my question was kind of off of your point which is um it seems like your presentation is excellent for the zoning board of appeals but there's this whole element of this that happens before we even get there which is the negotiation with developer and it sounds like the developer in the room asked a question or made a point earlier the gentleman two seats in front of me that
088hey there are ways to work with the developer during this phase that can work well for everyone this can essentially be like a a friendly 40b where you focus on those unique elements for this particular project it's smack in the middle of downtown it's got this prominence it has a rich history it's got environmental concerns it's got planning elements as a planning board member not speaking on behalf of the planning board there are key elements to this project that are very much tied to our planning as a community so um I really appreciate your presentation I did want to kind of comment that it seems like there's a big component here which is sort of an opportunity to work actively with a developer during this phase before we even get to your presentation and and
089that is is accurate um it's you do have the ability to work with a developer to shape the pro project before anything is filed however you also have the ability to work with the applicant after a comprehensive permit application is filed as I noted earlier I have not seen a application go out the door the way it came in in terms of when when it was filed with the board of appeals and when the board of appeals issue issues its decision so you know that is a process that can occur at any point even after the board of appeals issues its decision because again there could be a mediation that that has additional compromise so it's not all that common to have this negotiation before an application is filed with a board of appeals unless
090it is proceeding as a lip development in which case that that's a much more active role for the select board in shaping you know what is submitted with the subsidizing agency can you please explain a Lip lip is uh one of the methods in which an applicant can seek to obtain a project eligibility letter it's a local initiative project thank you um and reason a developer would go forward with a lip application is because the regulatory hurdles are a little lower um they're not required to go through subsidized iing Agency for the financing they're able to just Finance it on their own um and essentially what the subsidy is in that circumstance is the technical assistance that they would receive from the executive office of Housing and livable communities okay is that it Paul or
091anything is there that's it for my presentation yeah I just want to say um you know thank you for that presentation went a little over what we had planned um next time an attorney tells me as a half an hour presentation I will remember this um but I didn't say how much we had for question it was oh I there you are getting that that's a good comment um yes it was a very it's a very useful discussion and I think we got out a lot of uh good issues that answer a lot of questions so certainly thank you for that um anything else you want to add at the end here dare I say good luck with your process okay thank you Paul thank you um and I just do and H how's everybody
092holding up out there because we are a bit overtime Ash is good okay that's good uh we do have thank you Paul um as I said before we have a presentation from Michael Herbert the town manager that kind of summarize um the comments we've received so far maybe review the the portal and the process and then um uh Jeff inler who did ask a question earlier will also be making a presentation on the project um and he's brought his development team uh so we do have a few few more things to get through before we go to the general public comment period so please bear with us we're probably I would say an hour over time at this point so um but is everybody holding up all right is this a useful discussion we're interested
093in continuing yes Joel question will we have sufficient time to express ourselves I thought that was the meain purpose of this meeting that's my intention we may need to set time limits on points in in in in line with what I said earlier uh we'll ask for uh who intends to make a a statement and then set some time periods we we're talking you know a maximum of two or three minutes a piece so and I will remind people that we have a whole portal set up where you can write at length your um your points and those will go uh to Mass housing as part of this process so go ahead Michael yes what briefly the presentation was incredibly thorough yeah I don't care about the length of it it seemed much more appropriate
094to meet the public could have been welcome but it should have been a focus on the board of appeals and the mechanics of the process I think many of us came here topress ourselves I thought that was the primary purpose and we've gotten way off topic here and I just unfortunate that there wasn't more time provided over the last few weeks I know there were many other issues it's very unfortunate that I mean I wrote up a presentation it doesn't fit in two or three minutes and that's surprising Joel coming from you I appreciate the humor but I'm going to read the first Jo Jo another thing is you know I just want to explain like what we're doing is highly unusual for this process um this has not this project has not even been
095issued aite eligibility letter and um so basically what that means is the developer submits an application to the subsidizing agency which is Mass housing Mass housing in turn notifies us and gives us an opportunity to provide the select board to provide a comment letter and typically what happens is that the select board you know basically distributes the application out to boards and committees for them to provide comment what we've done is we've taken an extra step and basically put some of this material out to the public and given the public an opportunity to provide comment at this stage but really my main point is that you're going to have a whole zoning board of appeals hearing process in order to make comment make public comment and let your concerns be known and um you know
096basically you know address you know the issues that you see and that you have so really you know we were hoping that this forum was a good opportunity to educate you know because there's a lot of a lot of um misconceptions uh about 40b 40b is a very complex topic Paul probably scratched the surface of of what I mean do we even get into housing production plans and and things like that yeah I mean there's so many elements of this so I just want to reiterate to everybody that there is going to be a whole public hearing process with the zba that um will allow people to make uh make comments so so all right so that being said it actually Segways into what I wanted to cover um you know I had mentioned just
097a little bit earlier that we have put the materials out to to the public and allowed the public to provide comment and express their concerns uh mainly through a a comment form which again we're going to take and uh what we have done is basically uh taken those comments and tried to categorize them in buckets but then and we will submit that to Mass housing but we're also going to submit those comments as is so to you know basically let those um let those go through so um excuse me just one minute um so just you know this graph I I think is probably a little bit hard to read um but basically what it expresses is on the lower axes uh the number of times a concern was mentioned and on the left um
098it lists what those concerns are so you know I won't go through each of the individual numbers but I can tell you what I'll do is just kind of go through what these are from most mentioned to least mentioned so you know the first uh concern that was expressed is uh you know an increase in traffic um you know having 250 units and and basically the corresponding number of cars into downtown is a concern um school capacity uh is has also been mentioned as a concern and understandably so uh capacity of infrastructure like our water and sewer uh was third uh third most mentioned um the next one is it's kind of hard to you know codify but it's basically changing the feel of the community changing the small town feel and concerns about that
099and then next is doesn't fit the character uh of our community uh concerns about that um moving on the next concern was that it was too tall um Jeff will get into this but you know at its highest this is a a five-story building as viewed from the street um next is a concern about increase in crime and noise uh like quality of life issues like that um the next is basically needing more commercial space so I think this has 15,000 square feet of commercial space if I remember 18 all right I was off by three um you know and compared to the amount of residential units essentially that ratio uh there was also concern expressed about our Public Safety departments and their ability to uh handle this um this increase in people um additionally
100you know do we have the equipment that is going to be able to basically protect um you know a five or or six-story building if you're looking at it from the bottom um next was an increase in tax burden now this was interesting and kind of going through the comments I think there's a yeah I think there's some people that believe that because these are our partments they don't pay taxes um which is not the case so the owner of the of the property actually pays taxes and assuming you know basically the rent that is paid helps pay for that so they do pay taxes um what a more accurate concern is is do those taxes that you're bringing in offset the cost of services um next would be you know worried about uh preserving
101historical buildings I mean currently there are two you know Granite buildings that I believe were built in the 1860s um Joan yeah Janes nodding yes so uh so we'll go we'll keep it at the decade Joan um uh the third Granite building was actually rebuilt I think in the 19s or 20s um actually from Stone that was uh there previously um not enough parking um and I think spefic specifically not enough parking within the development um there were concerns expressed about a transient population and uh you know the the people that Apartments bring into town um there was worry about environmental impacts um specifically concerns around the impacts of the Niza plume um there were some concerns about adding more affordable units and what that means for the town and um there was concern at
102the bottom there was concern expressed about the current businesses at the Mill so those were the comments that we have received so far as of I think this morning right JB yeah as of this morning so if there was anything in the afternoon we didn't we didn't catch those um so some additional concerns and more specific concerns that we have received so far from boards and committees and staff um storm water concerns um and this this is in no particular order um you know there's we have a high water table downtown and you know basically is there going to be enough room to basically accommodate an effective storm water uh system given where the groundwater is uh regulations regarding the riverfront area I mean this is uh within you know uh I know at least
103100 ft of the Sudbury River um there Environ mental concerns um including you know well namely I think everybody you know who knows about Niza has concerns about the plume that runs underneath the property um as as well they should but there are also other chemical concerns there you know chemical spill spills or or something that happened there that um that we're also concerned about um sewer capacity uh both as as it relates to the physical infrastructure like for example we only have an 8 in sewer M um at that location it does transition at some point to a 12 in um you know our pumping stations can they handle the additional capacity but then we also have limits um imposed Upon Us by mass D in terms of how much we can transport and
104then we also have an intermunicipal agreement that's what an IMA is with Framingham that also has limitations on it as well um parking just a little bit more specifically you know enough parking on site I I can tell tell you that we have some direct experience now that some of these projects have been built um where we have seen the parking kind of spread from the development to on street parking and public uh Lots um next would be you know traffic um and con you know configuration of the traffic flow especially looking at where the entrances and exit are uh in relation to the light with Pleasant Street um engineering has specifically identified the milpond bridge and its condition and its ability to handle more traffic and then also for us uh you know the
105height of the building and the architectural architecture and scale um are concerns so that's really just kind of high level summary of of what we have so far this comment form is uh still it's still up and it will be up believe we originally said uh until tomorrow we're going to extend that to um to Friday May 10th so if you haven't had an opportunity to provide comment I would encourage you to do it through that form is that link on the town website it is it is so um so there's a section of the town website that has some of like the site plan you know the architectural renderings and that's where you can find the form as well it's also under news in the main if you go through the news yeah but
106I believe that might be broken now I think we have to check if it if it is we'll fix it but um the front page yeah exactly um so yeah that's about it I I don't yes an questioni slide espe was it attorney hisi about what is plan element that is really important talked about things like planning in the community character things like that looking ATS height of builds field all relate to that plan element and you actually them together they are the top concern this particular sheet and it seems like it might Beth for the s yeah yeah so this uh I mean we could certainly categorize it in different ways and by the way this is just from the public um so they didn't have the opportunity to to hear Paul's presentation before
107submitting this so and it's interesting Anna you know you know when they talk about planning what does that mean does it talk about some of the things that you're talking about does it talking is it talking about consistency with maybe a Town's master plan or comprehensive plan or consistency with the zoning that currently exists in place um you know I don't know those answers um so it would you know that's certainly something to explore so you I was going to keep it as brief as I can keep things brief as you know as much as possible um but yeah just wanted to give a summary of that and the reason we did this before the developer and and Jeff gave his Pres presentation is this is going to give him an opportunity to as he's
108doing his presentation perhaps address some of those concerns so sounds good I think we're thank you Michael um so Jeff if you're ready um to come up and uh present uh just a summary of the proposed development and any any comments you'd care to make about the questions that have come up um feel free um yeah Mr chairman and speak into the microphone uh Mr chairman and for uh members of the public for the record my name is Jeff angler I'm uh from the development team from strategic land Ventures uh we brought a whole presentation tonight but in terms of understanding where we are in the time and reading the room putting it to the board and the and the people in the audience if it's more we we can answer a lot of the
109questions that have been raised but if it's more productive to have people Express their concerns and I think this gentleman indicated that that's why he's here tonight sure we're happy here um well part of me is we don't know all the details so I personally would like to see what you're presenting obviously some of these are concerns that no matter what you decide to do they're going to be there but let's see what you have to offer and then we can go from there Fair and you know I think um be mindful of the time I think I'm going I'm going to fly through this so um so for the record Jeff angler I'm joined tonight by Matt MVA from bowler who's our landscape architect George Campbell from Campbell environmental who's our LSP Bill messenger
110and Steve Regal from Embark who our architectural team um so we're appreciative of uh the time that's given to us tonight I want to reemphasize um what we're doing tonight is a little bit unusual and it's a credit to this board in terms of we're having a public meeting very early in the process we don't even have a site letter from Mass housing at this point in time we just filed about four weeks ago but we did have several meetings with the town prior to filing trying to get some input on the general project some of the key concerns of the municipality some some of which have been Incorporated in the plan that we've submitted to Mass Housing and that you'll see tonight uh I want to emphasize a couple things just off the cuff
111based on what we heard the door to have meaningful collaboration and discussion never shuts off could happen next week could happen in a month could happen during the public hearing process um that can go on at any point the way I describe it is we're a trained going down on the tracks but doesn't mean we can't take a detour or go in a slightly different uh Direction um with that said we have an objective we're really psyched about our plan and and the proposal but we recognize that everybody might not feel that way and we're certainly open to have some meaningful discussion and some of the key elements I also want to emphasize a few other things one there's a lot of discussion about well what are the local concerns where can we kind of
112you know what are the vulnerabilities of this project and I'm not saying this project is perfect I'm not what I am saying is our team is outstanding what I am saying is we've done a lot of these projects what I am saying is I've permitted over 5,000 units of affordable housing under 40b and even before any discussion we had with the town we go through the project in its entirety to look for issues that could come up during the public hearing process so that we can address them and have answers to them that's not to say we know all the answers tonight we don't but generally on the failsafe issues that may quote unquote trip up a project I can stand before you tonight and say with a high degree of confidence we're pretty we're
113confident that we can satisfy all the state requirements under 40b so I think that's an important understanding to say this is not our first rodeo with that said we've been very happy to have discussions with the town we'll continue to do so I've done friendly 4bs that were very unfriendly and I've done conventional 40 BS that were very collaborative and very uh uh Community was involved and ended up really successfully so I wouldn't get too hung up on this nomenclature or description of friendly or unfriendly because it can go in any number of ways based on input and we here and what's important I can also say and then I'll fly quickly the issues that were raised tonight in terms of what the community concerns are not one of those issues is something that we
114haven't seen before in one way shape or form on virtually every project all right one of the things that we like about this particular opportunity very different than a lot of our projects there's something already there the site is fully Disturbed people talk about environmental concerns in storm water what we're going to be doing is exponentially better than what is going on right now what is flowing into the ground how storm water is being treated environmental considerations there's no treatment of anything going in the ground right now any of the civil engineering environmental considerations so we like when sites are totally paved like this site is at least the development area as opposed to going into pristine Woods that are untouched and we're doing clearings and bringing in all sorts of different things so that's
115one of the reasons and we also obviously love the location we think it can be a real Catalyst and stimulation of downtown commercial retail residential it's close to the uh mass transit location so when the state is evaluating the site there's lots of things that the state likes and then lastly and then I'll kind of fly through OB by the way anybody that reads articles knows that Eastern Massachusetts in particular is in a housing crisis and it's not a crisis in Framingham it's not a crisis in Ashland it's not a crisis in Southboro it's not a crisis in Newton it is a crisis in the entire Eastern Massachusetts which is why it has such an emphasis on um the state legislature the governor and all sorts of things there are major mandates coming to build
116more housing so the concerns that are raised tonight if that was how and that has been how municipalities have governed real estate development which in my opinion is why the state is in the situation it's in right now is because nobody think wants to have why why should our town be responsible for development everybody thinks that for the most part so with that said let me fly through this really quickly uh once again we're strategic land Ventures we've done and I'm just going to fly through oh you're in control of it all right I'll tell you I'll tell I'll tell you when to flip so we've done um I've been in business in multif family residential mixed income development for about 20 years we started strategic land Ventures with my partner Justin Krebs about five
117years ago um and since that time we've done a bunch of projects which we'll share with you tonight uh project in situ two projects in Winchester that are recently opened a project uh in in Framingham that included a renovation of a a historic Mill next slide um a couple other projects one right on the brook the brook line um Austin line uh a project in Bridgewater which is not quite analogous to what we're doing because that's really more student housing it's pretty much right on the Bridgewater State campus and designed more for students and and then there's a project in Medway that we did in in combination with toll residential they actually completed the buildout next slide please we just recently were approved on a friendly 40b in downtown Walpole 142 uh unit project and
118that is um um six levels as well uh next slide uh this is a project in in Manchester by the sea in all cander uh it's been I've been involved in I don't know 140 BS it's the most contentious project I've ever been involved with and it's currently under appeal we spent a year trying to do something friendly with the town and uh I won't go into details but we're at the HC right now and I have every confidence that we're going to be successful but that town and its Infinite Wisdom did deny the project not an approval with conditions so we've been through the testimony in that project and by the time we filed here in Ashland God willing if we get a site letter that that may have been adjudicated or not but
119we're very we're very uh um excited about that uh another Phase 2 project to the other Framingham project that the town liked uh the first phase so much they encouraged uh a second phase uh next slide next slide and then one of the things I think in this slide is a little bit oh you skipped over but it doesn't matter we pride ourselves on doing nice communities I mean we've done project in situate SE a couple in Winchester uh one in downtown Walpole we're going to be doing we do nice quality high-end finishes we do nice Community spaces for the residents one of the key components to this project which is very unique to any 40b I have ever been involved with and as a credit to uh some of the folks sitting up at
120this table is we have a commercial component to this project and we have a large um U area which will show you on the site that is for the greater Ashland Community benefit not for our residents exclusively it is on our land private property but as you'll see it's designed for the community in its entirety uh for a whole bunch of of outdoor uses so this project more than any of 40b all the ones we've showed ones I've permitted for other Developers this has a pretty sizable uh Community component commercial component both inside the building as well as outside the building um so with that said I'm going to turn it over to uh Bill who's going to walk through uh the preliminary design I'll be happy to answer questions at the end and and
121then the one one other thing I wanted to mention and and Mr Hy councelor havy mentioned this and you know I took some um read between the lines a little bit in the article that was recently written in the local paper kind of like this is a feta comple the design we don't have any input this is what it's going to look like at the end of the day I would say with all um Clarity and sincerity that's not true if there's input if there's things about the design I I mean I'm I'm talking like globally different but if there's something about the fenestration or the materials or the color or the design or something of those we we want to listen the as as councelor havy said I've never been involved with the project
122that when it was permitted looked exactly like what we submitted so it's there's opportunity to have comment there's opportunity to have input and we take that very seriously our team is excellent outstanding of what they do and we listen very closely that doesn't mean we can do everything or will do everything but when there's good ideas that we can incorporate um it's our uh objective to listen and to try to uh be the best community partner we can be so with that said if there's no other questions for me right now we'll turn it over we'll get into a little bit of the design and then uh we'll open it up for questions thank you Jeff and to the board appreciate the time and to everyone here uh I'm Phill meninger with Embark we The
123Architects on the job I'm here with Steve Regal as well I'm looking you to uh you can I'm going to fly through a couple of the uh early site contextual slides most of you I I I think are familiar with where the site is but this just outlines the red uh line of the site context um and it shows the existing building on the site that border flanks along Main Street next slide and this slide uh also just takes a axonometric view and it has a few blue little triangles and those are actually the uh existing shots of the site that we're going to look at next site so this is just one uh site uh shot from looking East you can see at the Mill building in the existing Tower there so this is
124a nice shot that uh will be very uh visible for people coming from the north the second is the site s sort of standing right in front of the two Mill buildings looking Northeast are the two existing yep and then a similar shot just looking a little bit more on the North angle you can see the two uh buildings here these are the two that the project is proposing to uh keep and uh restore next slide and then once again just looking Northeast the opposite way uh just at the two two buildings that we're looking to uh maintain next slide so here's just a nice little diagram we always in the beginning of our design process take a step back and look at some of the the site context and some of the advantages to
125the project and here the as Jeff mentioned the site really has a number of advantages um one being uh just a beautiful uh site next to the water so the the views off to the m Pond what an opportunity for any project um we have a very uh nice little outcropping of uh the river subb river running through off to uh the East which is a nice feature that um dumps into the pond and and uh and then there's also a nice wooded Fringe for privacy up along off to the East and to the South so that really kind of frames a beautiful site and then just the way that the large you know 4 acre kind of open uh parking lot and existing building spot sits that's um gets great daylighting that orange moon
126sh yellow moon-shaped uh symbol there is sort of the Sun Path rising in the East making its a way around uh to clockwise to the West so the project is going to get uh three of the facad is going to get a a significant amount of daylighting which is a great feature next slide please so here's the first floor plan and I just wanted to just talk quickly about how we you know what the how the building came about so really starting on the left side of the building you can see the the two existing buildings one is right here this is the uh the northernmost Mill and that's right now being proposed to be restored and fit out completely with a commercial retail public component and then they're buding M building don't your ah
127okay so the the two on the left that have the the the yellow tone are the two existing Mill buildings and they're both being fit out that's a combination of about 18,000 square feet of public benefit to the project interior space not including some of this exterior around 7,500 to 8,000 ft to the far north of this public Plaza benefit that sort of flanks right across from the mil Pond there a tremendous opportunity as we see it as Architects um to give back to the town and to really sculpt this um program with with Jeff and uh it could just be something that really energizes and activates this project especially as a Gateway opportunity oh let me see yeah that's great so there's a nice Gateway opportunity here as you come in um from the
128north so this is is the existing building we're going to um shell that restore it here we're going to Shell and restore this piece a nice opportunity for a community engaged um program here and then we strategically create a very large 150 fot opening on the site this does a couple things one it sets the massing of the building the M the taller part of the building back over 100 feet off of the sidewalk of Main Street that allows for daylighting to come flood into the site it keeps the height of the building away from Main Street number two it creates an an excellent and safe and convenient opportunity for an arrival point and an exit Point complete with drop off parking short-term parking deliveries packages and parking for this community and um leasing office
129space so that's great to get off of the street to get in is a great place to pick up Ubers and then right in the central of the Plan central is this is our main entrance right here so main entrance you're immediately the whole building opens up and you know really sets itself back you have a large 6,000 foot amenity space that's flanked on both sides by outdoor amenity space and then double loaded Corridor the reason why the building is shaped like this is really a two-part um strategy here one is that the building presents itself never holistically so as you drive by you never see the whole thing it keeps the massing of that building significantly down since it cuts around it also uh is strategic with the site it tries to keep the
130existing uh circulation and the parking around as it exists today with the main parking lot entrance in the back so surface parking around the around the back here and then the covered parking um underneath 80% almost um of the buildings parking is concealed from view you passer by as on Main Street won't even see it which is a nice advantage to this project so again how much parking is there so there's so the total parking is 390 unit uh 300 parking spaces it's 250 units but that 390 parking is considered a one:1 bedroom ratio on the project as well as an additional 50 spaces for retail that are kind of flex spaces that could also be used by residents on the off hours in that drop off area in the front with the temporary parking
131how many spaces is that uh that's about 15 to8 1 2 3 4 20 is does that include handicap paring spaces that does include handicap spaces and there also some in the in the in the garage as well Bill if I could also just point out if you look in front of the existing uh uh historic buildings we have in this scheme we have removed all of that asphalt parking in front of the building very inefficient very dangerous so in this scheme because we had the pull in we're now able to make that all the green space we're able to have a much safer access along Main Street and then Bill if you could also point out the town home entries and how those address yeah I'm gonna get to those summarize comments people won't
132be able to hear that sorry they can't hear just summarize the comments yeah so the the comment was that we as an added benefit the existing condition right here has a very close parking lot uh pull in right along the street here we've since filled that in with green space to give a nice front yard relief and a to really beautify this whole corner and and in turn we made it we moved the parking lot uh to the right here to create a a get off the street have uh a good relief off the street and get in and out safely safety is a primary concern for building drop off and for a shortterm where do that dump onto Main Street those that little front area right here yeah uh well Pleasant Street uh intersections
133about right here so so is it straight up Pleasant street from there or uh we slightly offset slightly offset I think Pleasant Street's about offset right by here we can look at that on this uh M your site plan after I think if you're coming down Pleasant Street that's to the left just for people at home yeah a little bit kind interesting I don't not sure how you access that get in or out yeah and the last slide will show that and then one last strategic uh element here is that we did eventually after the big break in the facade we did pick up alignment here so there's a strategy here to to set an alignment so it sets an alignment with Main Street it gives uh necessarily necessary relief um to so you don't
134have too much massing so nice break and then sets a nice rhythm of what we're looking at as a New England town uh townhouse style architecture which we'll show you in some views next slide thanks and I'm going to invite Matt up just to quickly we zoomed in real real quickly on the P Plaza and we can just touch on some of the look and feel and Architectural component sure thanks Bill uh Matt MVA with bowler uh landscape architect we're also the civil engineers on the project uh just really quickly this is the the front corner that that bill was talking about that we envision as a very public space uh that will be accessible by that curval linear walk that will be uh Ada accessible down uh pretty significant grade you know five or
135six feet to get down to that lower elevation uh but really provide access for the public public to uh a plaza space that would spill out from the retail that will be part of this redeveloped uh commercial space there so we see that as a place for food trucks to park uh possibly an outdoor fire feature um some Cafe seating uh decorative lighting and a real kind of statement and welcoming place at that corner of the building and I'll get into the uh the Open Spaces a little more um when I come back up thank you thank you mam next slide please thank you so this is just a shot of the garage uh the lower level so the garage again the the site topography plays uh a nice advantage in our mind on the
136way that the project Works we're continuing the main curb cut exist maintaining that we drop about a solid story so all um the parking the entrance of the parking here is tucked under the the entire building so you don't really see that and that is this is all uh covered parking so un under under this building there's about there 277 Steve parking spaces or 211 covered in this in this area right here and the advantage of putting it all the parking underneath is is it brings all the residential units above which gets them out of the 100-year flood plane and gives them the daylighting and the views that they U really deserve for the residents uh next slide please so this is the second floor plan so the second floor plan utilizes the right now
137currently the second floor of the existing Mill and it's a double loaded uh format which is the mo one of the most efficient layout we can get really maximizes the full perimeter of the building so a combination of Studios ones twos and threes uh we're about 65% right now ratio percentage on the studios and ones and then the using the utilizing the threes and the larger units at the corners um and then you can start to see the townhouse element uh shape a little bit differently along the front next slide please so then at the third floor we we don't as we're keeping the existing roof of the mill so this is the the the existing Second Story if you will of the mill so the building pulls back so the third story does not
138um touch this building and it peels back there so this is all the third story maintained is the same double loaded Corridor and then this is the existing uh northernmost Mill next slide again the peel backs and the step backs are super important here so then northernmost Mill a buding mill we pull this back another almost 100 ft creates a a beautiful um fourth floor amenity Deck with expansive views over the mil Pond to the to the north and to the west and then this is the fourth floor ele um part of the building right here so as we get taller the building gets smaller and it steps away from the street is really what we're trying to do and then next slide please and then the fifth floor we keep we we kept that
139line intact but we peel this back so that the piece that's along the form that's along U Main Street is only a four stor so the fifth Story the fivestory part of the building is 110 ft back from the edge of Main Street if we were looked at the street line and we're going to look at that in a section so this line right here is 110 ft back from the street at five stories and that's less than less than 60% of the full uh lineal foot footage of the first floor so it keeps getting smaller and smaller that is a a strategy to all allow light to come in and not overwhelm the street Frontage this is a little hard to read on the uh on this section but the intent here is just
140to do a quick study of height so this is a section that kind of cuts up through kind of cuts right through the dentistry and then jogs over and now goes up the courtyard so here's the dentist sort of the Gable two and a half Story three story element here's the existing Mill that we're looking at in elevation and here's our fivestory building back so again from the street to the building doesn't look like much here but it's it's 110 feet and here's our building you can see the site kind of sloped down that's the river that runs behind and then here are some of the neighborhoods in behind the building so if you were to kind of take datm points across we're not uh wildly out of context out of height context along the
141street because of the setback in our minds the existing two-story Mills in the front and that and um just a just the overall relief from that from that point next slide please and this is just a blowup of a little bit closer so here's the Dentistry building here you got Main Street and then here's that 110t building and then this is the uh one of the mill buildings in elevation this cut and cuts through Section so the the five story building in elevation um again trying to keep that as far away as possible and U keep the uh the dense the density tuck um off to the to the West uh next slide and so this is really right at Pleasant Street a view a perspective view looking uh at the project so you can
142see the one of the mill buildings and with the smoke the stack in the back and architecturally we started with sort of two components we started looking at how do we take a project that complements a light industrial Mill building of New England and also feels residential and and kind of compliment ments a u I would say a New England town home concept or Row House concept so we took both of those kind of ideas and we started with the big the main part of the building the big part of the building so we started with a regularized large window layout and a very clean and coherent form so just rectangular blocks that are clean a very orderly set of Windows something that is reminiscent of a light industrial era of a mill building that
143you'd see in New England with then we took a stab at creating a the street Frontage aligning the row house component with the Mills and working with a couple architecture features that we felt were relevant and would complement the New England roow house uh style and also complement and pay respect to some of the neighborhood the architecture of the neighborhood so by taking uh a gray brick for instance a light gray brick it doesn't it responds to the the stone and the granite on the Mills doesn't mimic it but pays respect to that we also you bring that back in some of the larger forms so a lot of the more durable Stones start to speak to some of the vernacular of the mill details of a uh in in response to the manard roof
144hints of that come back to the row house contemporary window Bays with individual entry Stoops create a a presence and a an entry point a privacy entry point along on the street but also help break down the massing on the street and bring a residential feel to that all those uh we feel are complement the residential design of the building and don't and don't overwhelm the massing of the building again this form right here is 110 ft back from the main street it's tough to say um see that here but that's the five St stories and you can see it step to four here so four stories here five stories here doesn't seem any taller because of the depth perception there and then four stories um next slide please and then finally this is a
145view looking Southeast so this right to the left is that open public uh Plaza that Matt described you can see the stack in the in the background so very highly vegetated we we see this as a a very activated area all year definitely in the spring summer and fall the mil M Pond is directly you know kind of behind us you can see the two existing Mills we're going to restore those keep those nice really activate those with new windows um indoor outdoor activity um throughout the uh the warm Seasons you can see just um a piece of the four story this is the roof deck that peels back and then the five-story way in the distance and then last to round that up you can see this alignment on the street Frontage this is
146the four-story sort of New England Row House element here so again for a pretty large building you don't see much of the building when you approach it from this view or from the other view you never really see the whole thing at once and that's part of the um concept architecturally on the massing and I think next slide that concludes the architectural component I'm going to introduce bring Matt up to speak on landscape thank you great thanks Bill I'll go really quickly here again Matt murva uh with bowler uh I'll just walk through some of the site things that uh that bill didn't cover here if you want to click to the next slide for me this is just a uh a plan showing the existing conditions and I only pop this up uh so
147that you can see what the massing of the building footprint is now it's that white area in the center uh surrounded by parking if you click to our next slide you'll see we're we're actually increasing the um the green area on site we're decreasing the the impervious area uh through through this project so we see that as a big net benefit um we are stepping back from the street as Bill already mentioned uh so the building is no closer uh than it is now it's actually further back in in most cases than it than it exists currently um we have access for the residents through that front auto Court there uh as as Bill had mentioned um and really what what we see as a the the public amenity here is that not just the
148public Plaza space on the corner there that builds on the great work the Town has done making good connections with sidewalks along Myrtle and Maine uh but really the whole green Frontage there we we've increased the Green Space along the front of of Main Street from about 6,000 square ft of lawn or or green area to about 27,000 Square ft of lawn or green area just in the front um from from here to here uh is that increase not even including what's going on in the back there uh if you click ahead we've already kind of discuss the parking just wanted to highlight that the bulk of our parking is covered uh and hidden from view under that Podium uh you know 21 covered spaces versus 179 on the surface so you're really not seeing
149a lot of the parking uh associated with this use uh next slide just touching on the grading quickly along uh Main Street and the pleasant Frontage there uh everything's at about elevation 194 just plus or minus and then we're sloping down ramping down to the parking area in the back and tucking the parking under so you're not seeing it from the street at about elevation 182 uh so there's more detail shown on these plans I'm not going to go through all of it but just from a grading and drainage standpoint uh there'll be improvements to what's out there today we're still going to be uh uh having the the grading and drainage function in in a lot of the same way it does today with uh with Tide Gates through the wall and um trying
150to infiltrate what we can but providing storage and pumping to um to eliminate the uh the storm water on site and get it back to where it was originally going uh but no different than it's uh it's currently configured uh next slide if you would just showing the utility routing obviously there were some um questions highlighted from the board uh that we went over earlier on capacity water sewer all of that's going to get worked out in in great detail as we take it through the process here of the comprehensive permit uh so we will get into that detail we know we're going to have to meet with the DPW and and talk through capacity uh We've shown some preliminary locations for connections to services on this plan but the the details of that will
151get finalized as we as we get into uh more deal detail through the process here their hand we're not taking questions yeah just I see there's a hand ra I'm sorry I see there's a hand rais will we will be taking questions following the presentation so if you could hold your questions for that and that includes questions of the developer and his team so and that actually concludes my presentation as well so uh glad to take questions at this point and let Jeff wrap up thanks very much Mr Mr chair question so we we appreciate the time we know we covered a lot of things pretty quickly happy to answer questions one thing I was remiss uh in not mentioning that certainly got a lot of attention uh this is a 250 unit rental project
152and under uh chapter 40b whether people think this is a good uh policy or not all 250 units count on the town subsidized housing inventory not just the affordable units so 250 units will go towards your Shi and will give the town great control over what was been discussed before future 40b developments so that's an important consideration also and and I would emphasize uh councelor Hy's uh guidance to the town about discussing school age children but is important to recognize we of the 250 units that we're proposing we have 188 Studios and one bedroom units okay that is a overwhelming majority of the building and if you go to other towns and look at their fiscal impact studies those do not generate any school age kids um and under chapter 40b we are required statutorily
153to do 10% three-bedroom units so we have 25 three-bedroom units here which were required to do under um under the statute so that's an important consideration when thinking about you know the number of people in the unit mix people people focus on density and if somebody if we came back and said hey guys guess what we're doing two we're doing 200 units and everybody cheers and we say yeah we're going to do 2004 bedroom units I mean that's a reduction of 50 units but I would put it to the town that that's much more impactful on the municipal services and I can say this because we've done it on other projects when we did lips and the like this project even considering the nominal number of schoolage kids from the one-bedroom units will be very
154fiscally positive for the town considering all fire all police all school age children these generate a lot of tax revenues believe me I know that having paying the tax bills on our other projects right now so it's a lot of tax revenue that the town fiscally can anticipate every year uh moving forward so with that said we don't have anything else to tonight and be happy answer questions before we get into public comment which we will have a long session any questions from the board go ahead a few uh thank you for the presentation Jeff I do have a couple of questions with respect to you if you could stay at the yeah probably just want to stay there for uh don't know a lot about your company um you made some presentations with some
155of the projects that you had and cently uh involved with I guess my first question would be uh is this a project that uh you're just building and then two or three years you'll be selling it to somebody else or is this going to be something is going to be on your Ledger for no that is not our model our in fact yeah the the the objective for for people unfamiliar there are a fair amount of development companies their model is to permit build and sell typically to a you know Life Insurance Company pension company uh private Equity that wants to hold these assets our model is to capitalize um refinance out our investors and then hold on our portfolios so that's our intention to be a a long-term Community neighbor in this case okay
156thank you the other question I had is and add to do with one of your um design uh the entry we on mtle Street kind of narrow you you have a grade going down uh on mle from Maine you have an entry way coming in is that going to be a one way because that that's a kind of a blind side coming out yeah our our expectation and and listen one of the things I it's of all my experience it's a favorite point of uh or discussion on all public hearings is traffic we have not presented a traffic study nor do we need to as part of the site approval process but we are almost completed with our full traffic study uh that will be submitted as part of our comprehensive permit application two unique
157things or not so unique things about the application in the site one there's a lot of traffic there already I mean it's a it's a commercial commercial property it's not fully leased out it could under under existing zoning there could be a lot more people there and businesses and are there now currently two there's two curb Cuts Li by and large we plan on using both points of egress as they are now we would be open to discussing usually it's a discussion with the fire department one of the nice things about this project is the fire department will have 360 degree access to the building which typically they're thrilled about um but we have seen in some cases you know one way in one way out or parts of the site that are um maybe
158one way I can say that the travel lanes are 24t between parking spaces which is quite generous um but we will need to look at you know and have preliminarily and it will show up on our uh traffic study in terms of sight distance sight lines but by and large the curb cut that we're proposing on Myrtle is is a curb cut that's used today okay with some enhancements I would hope there'd be some enhancements um your curb cut on Main Street you have the grade going down is that going to be the same grade or will it be raised a little bit because you're going to be turning traffic into two actually Four travel Lanes in that one area and right now it's difficult to get people out of there as it is now
159especially for the people that in the commercial space down there right now so if you have residential and they're going to be going to work same time everybody else goes to work you're looking at a major issue over there and I hope there will be some discussion with the town about maybe coordinating something with uh traffic New additional traffic lights or changing the traffic control uh segment in that area just to eliminate that because I can see people getting upset that they can't get out and they'll just that's typic front typically part of any process and we wouldn't expect anything less and I will guarantee you the town will have a retain a peerreview traffic consultant that will review everything that we do and it's a you know fairly kind of interactive process in terms
160of we like that we don't like that I mean most of it is based on accepted industry practices so same with civil engineering people are talking the same language it's like math um but it's absolutely something we look at and to answer your first question the grading more or less will be as it is today I won't say it's identical but as we've ated there's about a 12T difference between the front of the site on Main Street and the rear of the site so people have to get down there so effectively the the grade will be um not exact to what's out there today but it won't be that that different okay thank you and you said you you've already done a traffic study we're just about completed yes our traffic engineer is Jeff Dirk
161from Vasan Associates okay in my opinion he's the best traffic engineer in the state but I would anticipate you know um if the town has reviewed other projects special permits and the like um if it doesn't have a traffic consultant that it uses consistently I know your counselor will make recommendations and you know you guys can solicit bids uh to retain an expert that will it's because it's important for people to recognize what we submit it's not take our word for it don't look at it everything we say is exact the town has the right to review scrutinize critique evaluate everything that we're saying to make sure we're not for lack of a better description full of crap so all of that process will go on during the public hearing process including you know traffic
162and the munici uh departments will be involved we'll sit with fire because sometimes I'll be honest with you the fire department might want something different than what the Traffic Engineers are saying and we defer to the fire department because is they're really you know the the Arbiters of Life Safety considerations I wouldn't say that's the norm but sometimes there's some nuances like as as you said maybe a one way in or not or the like so it's not necessarily just the peer review it's also with Municipal input thank you questions from the board or the town manager I have um uh just three very specific ones so one in that first building that's commercial will it be two stories of commercial uh it remains to be seen one of the things that we people you
163know in talking to the town there was a seem to be kind of a an interest for like a conversion into kind of a brew pub or something along that lines so it might be two stories but it may be open in other words like this is not quite too but it's you know hu tall ceilings and the like so we haven't really programmed that out yet so I don't mean to be evasive we obviously don't have a tenant so we haven't really programmed it out okay second question how many units are on the fifth floor 37 okay we counted 36 or 37 okay and then my third question you were showing the townhouse type units in the front will there actually be entrances from the street into specific units yes those will be the
164only units in the building that actually have multiple entrance and we did that because we wanted to create kind of the old school you know front stoop if you will to those units so you actually can enter directly from Main Street but you can also enter into the back of your unit through the corridor but we wanted to kind of activate Main Street because that's really the only part of our entire building that's on Main Street if you will so it's while they're tow houses they're single level okay that's an important they're not there's not an internal staircase they're still um fully accessible you know ADA Compliant but they're single level but they do have direct access uh onto Main Street how many of those are there there's five stents so five front entry Stoops
165okay and then one last thing and because this is a huge discussion here in town is are you married or are you set on the actual colors and exteriors for those other buildings no not not even clothes I mean and and you know and I'll be honest with you there's a few things that we represented that I'm not crazy about in terms of colors so that's good to hear we we'll flesh that out you know and there's you know a lot of discussion on that um so because I know there was some concern about that so to answer your question no great or yes I forget how you that's okay I I get your we're at the same place okay sorry I just want to say so if you're going to ask questions we're going
166to ask that the microphone and people line up along this side of the wall I'll get to that in a minute if you have a question that's I just want to see if we can get to the people here because somebody's already dropped off we'll get to them we we're trying to finish up Michael did you have some questions yeah it's um so you know I think some of the the frustration you might be sensing is you know you talk about the regional need for housing and everything and I agree that that's a that's an issue but I think unlike a lot of communities that you've been in Ashland has already already built or permitted a significant amount of units so from 2010 to 2020 you know we went from 6,500 units to 7500 units
167we've got permitted or in construction right now in additional 500 units and with the 240b projects um that's an additional 500 units so it's actually an increase of like 33% if you add all of those together and that just leads me to this question and please don't get offended by it but I'm I'm going to ask Joe's question a different way because I can't tell you how many different developers I have asked if they are going to hold on to the projects and they say yes and then five years later they are they're gone so how many if can you tell me how many rental units have you built and how many do you still own we well I mean we're not an a long an old company and the development cycle is a long
168time so I can say of the rental units SLV is built We Own 100% of that okay so um I don't know how else to to put it than that also um nothing that has been said tonight I've found offensive or frustrating I mean honestly and we we look forward to public comment my experience so far in Ashland has been quite collaborative do I expect everybody to throw rose pedals and roll out the red carpet no I do not um but with by with that said I mean there's I think obviously unbiased but I think there's a great project to be had here we're starting out and I look forward to you know continuing the process and and getting the input of the Town great well thank you Jeff so um this starts our public
169comment period I want to thank you all for staying with us it's been a long night um I would just say so as as Yolanda started talking about so if you're on Zoom if you raise your hand we'll try to keep track and I'll rely on Peter to let me we'll alternate if you're in the room and want to speak we do have a microphone I suggest why don't you line up against the wall here with the person in front would speak first micone and have the microphone that'll give us an idea of how much comments uh we're looking at here and um so try to be um I see Joel's cutting he's cutting we caught you Joel look at him Jo go around the other way we're not going to use this microphone we're
170going to use the handheld yeah there's going to be handeld so Cliff will start Joel thought he was gonna find a way to get it first so so Joel just go over there behind Anna okay we'll we'll get to everybody believe me okay cson okay hold on a second just Cliff so we've got the microphone turned on just a reminder to keep your uh you can ask questions of uh the developer or you can address uh the board um please keep your questions concise and to the point be mindful that we've talked about a number of things if you want to refer to something that was said earlier and say that you want to emphasize that point fine but if I see you repeating things and going on uh I will ask you to cut
171it short and stop so so be concise and mindful of other people want to speak and I think uh Peter if you'll just remind me we'll we'll uh alternate between people in the room and people on Zoom okay go ahead Cliff okay Cliff Wilson 378 Elliott Street uh two quick questions number one does SLB currently own the property no okay oh I think that's a joke you should be at the microphone you can answer question yes if you feel comfortable standing there yes and we can all the questions don't need to go to uh Jeff they can be if you want to address us about general questions go ahead uh we have the proper under purchase and sale uh and the second question is assuming this all went through and all the permits are going
172and you're going to start tomorrow what type of a time period are we looking at for the Demolition and the building of the new structure good question um this is not compared to some of the other projects this has a little bit more complication we're talking about some renovation we're also talking about a site that has some environmental considerations that we need to really address so I would say um you know we're probably looking at from when we start to like when we're have a a our first certificate of occupancy 26 months something like that okay thank you um Peter you got just a note if people aren't comfortable standing for long periods of time just raise your hand and we'll let you go to the front of the line um but go ahead Peter
173you want someone from Zoom sure so the first person on Zoom is Helen Nicole Helen mcole I will ask you to uh come forth hi um I did try to put my video on but it's not letting me okay we'll take a word for it okay okay hel Cole for Elliot Circle um so I do have a lot of uh concerns but I'm going to focus uh tonight uh just on the historic um aspects of those buildings so you are actually taking down one and a half of those buildings it looks like uh they're the the two Granite buildings one looks like the facade of the front half will stay and then one one whole building will stay the previous um development that was supposed ly going into that same space was planning to reuse
174the granite the granite's um historic R the Mills are historic the downtown has a historic character um and a history of uh and culture with those Mills and I'm wondering if you are planning or what you are planning to do with that Granite because I'm hoping you're going to at least reuse it in that development great question I I would say we would love too I would also say you're asking a pretty um technical construction question and one that we will certainly uh be receptive to get input on but at one at this point in time I couldn't say definitive how we would plan to use that but I think we would be really excited um whether it was on our site or giving it to the town or whatever I mean I think there's
175some opportunities there but we recognize that it certainly has value um and we would be you know amendable discussing that uh with our architectural team with our contractors and the like so um stay tuned for that but it's a point that's noted and you know we can talk about that in more detail as we get a little bit more advanced okay thank you Larry D young Larry D young 106 Sudbury Road uh couple of questions one is the interior Court space what what is the material that is that is there that you're going to use to make that because it's elevated over the parking lot you want I have a second question yeah go ahead I'm not sure I know you talk you talk about absorption but there's not going to be any absorption there
176well yeah structurally so the question was what will a raised uh Courtyard be constructed with so there's a we haven't nailed down the construction um methods of the project it could be a concrete but it's probably going to be a concrete on metal deck that'll be recessed down from the the finished floor of the residences and there'll be a mix of materials on the surface right it could be a series of um adjustable P wood pavers or concrete pavers it could be some plant beds um some uh different mediums for um Pathways and and and Gathering so it's a it's a series of decks green grasses sods turfs all those components which are all built up above on a uh ele elevated deck okay so that's that's really now at this point in a design
177stage absolutely early design stage yeah thank you it's very concep the second question that I have is on the entire parcel of land that I've seen there's a large green area that goes easterly to along the river and I see absolutely no development there whatsoever uh what's going on with that why isn't that being used ex still wet yeah it may be wet it may have envir EX for the Overflow right yeah there there's some resource areas that we can't do anything in um one of the things that we actually would be interested in getting more information from from the town is there's our understanding that there's some sort of walkway or pathway back in that area that we would be amenable to kind of tying into if there was some way um we don't
178know a lot about that um so that would be something that would' be open to discussing with the town but basically the project that we've proposed is being confined to the area that has already been Disturbed and is impervious we are not expanding Beyond any of the paved area in fact I think as we've represented there'll be much less pavement when we're done than there is today so that's hopefully an explanation on why some of the areas that were shown which are within the site boundaries were not touching or developing so there's no way even to use that for possible Recreation well perhaps passive recreation in terms of integrating with if there is in fact a a pedestrian path or whatnot back there we would certainly be open to whatever kind of pass of recreation
179we can do that would not run a foul with uh d uh regulations or you know Riverfront or any of those considerations but we're open to discussing that with the town with 250 units you're going to get a lot of people that are going to want to spread out during the summer months okay thank you Larry um Peter is there anybody next on Zoom that we want yeah uh next up is Leah Suarez Leah I am asking you to unmute please step forward hi Leah Suarez of 25 Valley Road um I just had a question um related to what Mr manani said earlier um I noticed there's several driveways going in and out of your complex if I'm parked at your complex and I need to make a left onto Main Street which driveway do
180you envision people using and how feasible do you think it is to make a left out of that driveway excuse me um both driveways that we well we have um I guess four curb Cuts uh but two are just to the guest and and drop off in the front two are the primary ones where most of the cars are going to be going which are existing today um so they're both one way I mean two-way in two-way out uh so I think you could use either but realistically I understand uh with existing traffic patterns the one on Main Street would be more challenging um so people may naturally select the one on Myrtle um but that's something that we'll certainly look at more intently with the town's consultant and our own consultant okay thank you
181I I would also mention uh one thing uh to people that have not been through this process before we hear a lot of you're going to need a traffic light that that is not at our discretion or even the town's discretion there's a state warrant [Music] a state warrant that you need to meet I think it's 10 different uh criteria not five of 10 but all of them in order to have a light um implemented so and and that's harder to meet than you would think but a lot of people say you'll need a light that's not at our discretion it's at this it's at the state do short of a light though there are traffic caling patterns there's signage there's all sorts of other things that we can do to uh dictate how traffic
182flows in and out of our site um and we plan to do all of that to the greatest extent possible sure um hold on go ahead Jeff just to expand a little bit on that I think one of the things we might be asking is not necessarily to add an additional light but to line things up to where with the existing light so the entrance and exit to your development with Pleasant Street and Main Street sir so we yeah we would I'll be open to discussing that okay thank you uh next I think we got Paul want you go ahead yes Paul poovak 40 Lake View Terrace um I've got a couple questions for the developer um how can you say that you've only been in business for five years how can you say that
183your your um deal is talking micop your deal is that you don't you know sell properties and I'd like to say you know I've got a lot of experience with traffic studies with sight lines I've got degrees in civil engineering building construction and I think Joe brought up a very good point along with Michael cars are coming down off Route 9 and Route 9 and the Mass Pike going down Myrtle Street they're they're going 45 miles an hour in front of the waterfalls and you've got an exit coming right out there and it doesn't receive hardly any traffic now but putting those units back there you know they're going to cheat and you know when they come down there and they meet 75 other cars backed up all the way Beyond pin hill road that
184they're going to cheat and they're going to scoot in there they're going to scoot in there it's just you know the project I think is just not right for Ashland because it just H you know you can talk about building setbacks tight restrictions but that doesn't address the real problem it's going to be a cluster you know what okay thanks Paul anybody on Zoom yep next up on Zoom is LK LK I am unmuting you hello everyone uh my name is uh Lenny kensky and I actually leave two houses away from this location so I probably going to affect it a lot first of all I want to say thank you to Jeff and his team for great presentation and um with all resistance and negativity I personally love this project and I feel really
185jealous for people who get apartments on the fifth floor and have a awesome view but uh and I also think out of all units uh town is putting right now that probably going to be the best looking but the question I have is did you guys review that uh pollution from the nanza factory is that going to be an issue is some research about that are you gonna do something there to mitigate that yes we will um I'll let who wants to answer that you have your LSP here that will all be uh uh humiliated um as part of this project they're required to to uh handle that but I don't know I want you want to just give a short statement on that the short statement is yes we're very well aware of it
186and yes we're already involved in the process with d on uh meeting all the regulations on uh how we're going to address that so um it is very much um you know under our consideration it is also a process that's separate and distinct from this 40b process because it's a state permit state entity and if for some reason we were unable to address the issues that you know are inherent on the site we would have a problem to be quite candid so we have to be able to satisfy DP that we're doing all the necessary measures and taking all the necessary action um you know to address the issues I don't know we've had quite a history with do you have experience with that or your team absolutely I'm professional just just to address the
187question uh first of all I want to say uh quite a bit of work has already been done on the property and of course nanza I know people know that here um and we're continuing to monitor we have a long-term monitoring program on the site uh and I just wanted to follow up on what jef said is that we've already been working with quite a bit with mass DP um and uh the other thing I can add is uh uh the apartments will be all above uh a an open a garage parking garage so that'll mitigate uh any potential uh Vapor intrusion uh into those structures so I I think we have a very good plan and uh be continuing to work with mass DP uh throughout the process great thank you John you're up
188good evening John featherston 98 Heritage Avenue and also a commonwealth affordable housing Comm commissioner right and past select board member I have to put that plug in oh and Board of Health all right that's enough I was interested in the mitigation on the property because I'm not aware of that but I'd like to talk to you maybe offline uh grossly disappointed that we you mentioned the word curb cut 19 times and there was no public transportation shelter mentioned in those curb Cuts interesting you mean like a bus stop public transportation shelter yes it not NE necessarily in the 21st century The Bu interesting thought I mean I'm I'm candidly I'm not sure I understand the question but confidently why don't you have a bus stop I'll make it simple well we we maybe it's an
189oversight I mean one of the we all our projects well no all our projects have a bus stop for if you're talking about like the school age kids that we have that would get picked up just public in general for the for the public Regional Transit Regional public transit so we'll have a Metro West Transit Authority could potentially be a stop plus you're close to the commuter rail station you know that sort of thing we would be open to that I mean candidly it might it's I mean as I said then you're going to have to look at really serious mitigation on Main Street for a curb cut to to accommodate a a regional transportation bus in the parking lot park no because they won't go into the park I don't know admittedly I'm a
190little over my SCH on this issue I if there's a bus stop on the street wouldn't the bus just stop and pick people up not with your traffic that Havoc you're going to cause no yeah but there's I live in heavily trafficked all right I think it's a it's a good point and we'll keep that in mind John do have something else yeah uh and this is a real important question because you know as I said as a a housing commissioner there's nothing more urgent in the in the Commonwealth than getting affordable housing for residents but uh I'm concerned about who your customer is and I'll ask Mr manan's and Mr Herbert's question a third way what does your customer have to look like for you to achieve profitability and more importantly who's going to
191manage that portion of the property for you and then I just have a third question on that I'm not sure so Jeff maybe you can explain what the expected rents are for the affordable and Market R relative to the property for a project of this size we would use an Institutional manager that is known and highly experienced in managing these types of um developments we tend to use gry star who we think is the best in the business uh you can look them up um so they would be the property manager relative to the affordable units we would use SCB housing to facilitate our affirmative marketing and fair housing plan so they would be responsible for screening all the applicants uh that are interested in the housing we work very closely with the municipality and
192any affordable housing groups to outreach and make sure we're um reaching all the interested parties in the town of ashin that may be interested in this housing and also those rents are prescribed by the state based on the area uh median income in the metropolitan area so those are not established by us as the developer so everything is fairly prescriptive but I would tell you that this project will be you know professionally managed by uh it's not we're not like all due respect and I drive a pickup truck but outfits that you know somebody driving their pickup truck handling Landscaping on their own and snow removal and you know and doing the plumbing and whatnot that's not how we would own and and manage this building thank you and John one and just to follow
193up on that and you you raised the point uh so it could turn into a migrant shelter all right John so you made your concerns it's no I'm not concertive it's a it's a topic that needs to be tsed with the migrant shelter problem in Commonwealth right now there's no housing I happen to run a migrant shelter you know right now I know there's no housing if this management company would Ain the opportunity to to become a migrant shelter it's a conversation that needs to be had in public uh is there any statement you could make about your plans that I mean I think it's rental market rate rental housing plus 25% so I'm not I don't see why it would be migrant housing any more than any other apartment I don't I don't made
194comment earlier about you know how it it would help towards ashop well that is not in dispute uh it would uh the affordable housing secondly and I'm not an attorney but I think our permit would prude us from doing anything of that nature we have a regulatory agreement that we're ISS that we're signing with Mass housing it's a long document it's very clear in terms of so I thank you honestly I don't think that's Jeff while you're up there can I just ask have you done projects where a certain percentage of the housing is reserved or prioritized for Town employees yes yes every almost every project we've worked on has what's called the local preference and we work closely it usually and forgive me I should know this but I think there's four categories that
195are allowed by the state uh Town employees people that live in the town people that have direct relatives that live in the town and um there's one other one but anyway those four um categories can be used as part of AAL preference so that those people are given priority uh for the affordable housing that is um you know available or marketed yeah thanks and before and I think we'll alternate with zoom now but I before so I think I have Kate as the last person in the room is there anyone else who wants to ask a question who isn't standing up just let us know we're just trying to plan how much uh how much more time we need all right so it looks like Kate will be the last one in the room to
196speak and you've got one person left on Zoom Peter yes one person left on Zoom Amanda Hayes please step forward um Amanda Hayes 21 Roseberry drive and along the concerns around traffic um and transportation and and some of the notes around the location um being so proximate to the MBTA station has there been any consideration given to um to running shuttle service um to the train station to potentially reduce the number of people that are commuting using the train but also using their car um just reiterating uh Mare's Point around how difficult that is um to get out at rush hour so and you're aware of where the commuter rail station is Jeff yeah that's one of the reasons we like the site okay um I know the 250 units seems like a ton to
197some people but I can say with great certainty there's not enough demand from that size to weren't a shuttle unique to our property but if the town had some sort of shuttle or was contemplating uh you know a shuttle on a greater scale we certainly would be uh amenable to uh participating in that paying a fair share and the like but I I can say with a high degree of certainty we'll not likely have a dedicated shuttle um to because there's not enough units people people come and go at different times it it just doesn't warrant it so thank you uh next sir go ahead hi thank you uh Alex Keef over on Pine Hill Road um I know A lot's been talked about traffic so my question is with the study that you're completing
198are you including the adjoining roads such as Pine Hill Winter Street Water Street Moran Drive strobis Lane uh and those being cut throughs that might be a potential uh being a a former police officer of the town with um Mr manani I can tell you the average speed coming down M Street's about 40 that's why I usually clocked people at when I pulled them over and that is a high accident area on the Myrtle Street side for due to that cut so definitely something you're going to want to look at through the study if you wouldn't mind uh more importantly uh noise is a question I have uh going to be produced since the the height of the building as well as uh the overshadowing that might be caused with shading issues that could cause
199potential ice over on the roads uh and I know South bro when they defeated a 40b they had to do with access and one of their issues was with the railroad so wondering if that's going to play into it because one of their issues was when the freight train cut into that back area where they were proposing it it was cutting off emergency access obviously the Train's not right next to the building but is that something that's going to be considered as well I don't know um I really understand that question about the train I don't forgive me but I I don't understand the question relative to the train and the cut off and the point you were making I'm not trying to be evasive but um could could you rephrase it or yes so
200I guess I'm looking at the the overall study of the roads and the patterns through the traffic study of how it's going to be accessible for emergency access the town's just invested roughly $1.7 million into a new ladder truck working with the fire department to make sure that can make the turning radies in such okay I can answer that okay um so I mean one of the things again we like about the site is the fire department will have 360 degree access they'll have uh two ways in and out and we will have our civil engineering team from bowler we use a template if you will that shows the fire the largest fir Tru in the town maneuver ability through the site we'll make the fire department comfortable that they can access everywhere they need
201to go that the the bull knows that the entrances are appropriate so all of that will be looked at and I have every degree of confidence that it will will meet whatever the fire department is looking for great thank you all right thank you Roberta go ahead for Berto Suman 28 Woodridge Lane um I want to thank you guys for your presentation tonight and you actually can sit down I don't have a question hey Jeff there's a oh Jeff's getting a workout in all of you for coming for your presentation for staying so late and it seems like you have a thick skin so I'm just going to let it rip um I have a couple of comments um one is aesthetically for the building and my apologies to The Architects but I think it's
202one ugly building um it's way too high for the area and the use of the historic buildings that Helen is so concerned about seems like an amazing afterthought they just seem to be like stuck on the end and not really integrated well into the design and to get back to Yolanda's point I really hope that there is reconsideration for the color and the materials so that it might have a chance of looking Blended together better and maybe be more aesthetically um pleasing the other issue people have talked about with the traffic um Friday afternoon at 4:30 I was coming down Main Street from Route 126 going towards your the property which would be on my right hand side the D the traffic coming in the other direction was stopped at um Pleasant Street backed up
203past pin hill road and all the way up the hill and around the corner as far as I could see so I'm hoping that your traffic study takes that into account we had a developer here once Pro provide us with a traffic study that they did in the summer when people were away now I know you're not doing that because you're doing it now but a traffic study that isn't there when the traffic is there is is useless to everybody concerned there's also it's really narrow road over there it's really narrow coming down that hill and it's windy and I think the site line is going to be really awful um and it's narrow going over the bridge by mil Pond and by the um Pine Hill Road and by the waterfall and I think
204that's a real safety issue not just volume of traffic but safety and um finally I was part of the committee that helped to um do the Riverwalk and the renovation of milpond Park and the bridge that goes over the water and I'm glad you see that as an amenity to the tenants in your building but it makes me incredibly sad that that building will be right across the street and kind of ruin the Aesthetics of that natural environment in that Natural Area so thank you for listening thank thanks Roberta all right Joan Jan and Friday onshore Road um I am on the historical commission but speaking as a resident um I have a few quick questions and then a comment um first is um how um sorry will there be a residence I know you
205mentioned that um Greystar will be managing the building but will there be um resident superintendent in the building to um maintain the building and keep the harmony of the area with gry star typically there's not a resident uh uh someone living at the property but I assure you there is 24hour 365 emergency response from Greystar so um we're not successful if we have tenants and residents that don't have their issues um addressed quickly so I we we have another project that does have a resident super um I can't commit to that but I would say it's probably more like unlikely than likely and um um how um sorry how far from the street are the front steps of the tow houses i' say that varies from maybe 19 to 30 something feet as that angle
206opens up and the difference in height from the front building to the back building the actual height so about 11 ft would be the difference between the four story on the front and five story on the did you mentioned that that the town houses were one story is that no I'm sorry if that I what I if I misspoke um the the townhouse building if you will where they have the direct entrance it's the each unit is one level but there's four they're Flats there's four levels but the somebody's apartment will be one level okay does that make sense you go you go up to the four Flor through an elevator yes in that in that area yes okay and did did you look at keeping the third building of the M buildings uh we
207did and I would like to Echo Helen's comments on trying to keep the granite at least in incorporated into your design we agree with you oh boy um and I have one more question sorry please be with me um the the height um of the the height of I'm sorry the height of the um six stories five well it's plus the garage so in the back it's six and I believe that's 69 feet 11 in and I'm wondering if it were just a little bit higher You' required to to meet additional safety parameters I believe and I'm wondering if you will be incorporating those into your project um I can say this that every this building will meet every applicable code and I can say this also that it will be monumentally more safe than
208the building is there now right so it will be under you the I think below the provision that you're referencing by 1 inch right thank you all right one in right all right thank you Joan hand it off yeah uh Brian Mallet um we live on 14 Water Street um which is obviously going to be impacted you know pretty heavy by this project um a few questions if you guys don't mind um so on the point of traffic um again we live right across the street from this um Water Street is already used as a cut through by many people at I would say very high speeds um we have small children our neighbors all have small children um I guess for the board is there any consideration to putting like speed bumps or any
209speed mitigation things on Water Street um you know safety for us is a big concern we have dogs small children adding you know 250 units to the end of our street is only going to increase what we already discuss as a neighborhood as a major problem so right if I can interrupt you that that your question has been well received by the traffic study committee Safety Committee and I'm the chair of that committee uh we've been in contact with one of your neighbors who gives us video weekly with respect to that matter um it's being looked at with respect to speed bumps there is some concerns about speed bumps and liability so we we're looking into that but we've also talked about putting additional signage up there uh traffic study will be done as well
210uh but it takes a while to get all those uh things and you know completed so it your question and the concerns have definitely been heard by us and we're working on it okay thank you sir you're welcome um my second question is other than uh traffic studies um are you guys planning on or have you done any studies on the crime impact like increasing crime that this might bring to the area again with small children raising a family here um major concern of ours is adding you know 250 units of low-income housing at the end of our street oh it's not it's not low income so it's affordable housing which means they so low income is when you think of like Section 8 very low they might have vouchers things like that this is
211only 25% is going to be the affordable housing portion which means you have to meet a certain income requirement the other 75% of this building are going to be market rate apartments and current market rate is not cheap so it's not neither the affordable housing so I think the idea that you know you're concern about crime that's not necessarily not a concern valid or a concern because of the type of people that most likely will be living here interesting so but they're mostly one unit apartments right so these aren't families moving in here there will be he mentioned he me they it was mentioned that 10% three bedom 10% yeah so about there's yeah 10% is three bedroom uh 25 of them will be three bedrooms so that could be families 188 of them are
212going to be Studios and one bedroom apartments well it's a little bit concerning just to be honest that you just dismissed that out of hand I think it I'm not what I was dismissing was when you were saying um low-income housing there's lowincome housing is usually much lower incomes they are you know you know they are they're they have vouchers for housing is considered low income affordable housing you still have to meet income requirements but you most of them are still working and things like that as we were saying it's Workforce housing so for some of our town employees who are teachers or firemen or things like that it's I mean I think what's the current income for an the for for a family of four you talking about the Ami it's like 884 so
213these are you know these people are making anywhere from $60 to $80,000 for these affordable housing units depending on the unit thank you you're welcome um outside of that my last question is just um do you have do you guys have any info on the impact evaluation of surrounding houses based on projects like this uh for this particular project uh no but I can tell you anecdotally that um there's never been any study or analysis that said anything that any 40b project had any negative impact on home valuations in any com in any municipality Michael or anybody on the board are you familiar with uh property studies like that yeah so there have been a few done um and I can't name them specifically right now but they're consistent with what Jeff said um they
214haven't necessarily seen a correlation with the decrease in surrounding property values okay thank you very much thank you next go ahead Ash else is there someone you want uh I am the chair of the sustainability committee but I'm speaking as a resident um two separate sort of areas of questions so first one we've been talking about 25% of the units are affordable housing does the entirety of the project count towards are so so all 250 will still be counted correct do we have any feeling for let's assume that this project was to go forward at what percentage we would land that post the project we be up in the 8% range okay all right yeah if if you took this project by itself by itself yeah yeah okay thank you that uh and then the
215question for you guys is what kind of sustainable features are you planning to build into the property are you considering going either fir or net zero on these proper on this property uh recent studies show that especially for Den housing which is a good thing uh not necessarily always in this context but overall from a sustainability perspective it's a good thing there's a lot of opportunity for you just to go fire zero and and not really have a material impact on your cost um I will say this um one of the one of the things that councelor Hy said at the beginning is under 40b you're only required to do a sketch plan um that's not our style I mean you can tell already you know we do a pretty good plan and we'll have
216more details for the zoning board uh what you're asking is a certainly legitimate question but a more specific technical construction question that we've not fully vetted I will say this um there was a lot of discussion before about the stretch code and whether that's applicable or not I have every expectation we'll at a minimum meet that um so the whole discussion we were having earlier is obsolete but then we'll work closely with with embark who's always you know advancing and thinking about these things um so give us a little time on that we haven't fully vetted it but we'll definitely uh you know it's listen it's the way of the world these days and something to be uh carefully considered great thank you Jeff I think that's that would you potentially be considering on-site solar
217or or EV charging within the unit or or all electric units would you be looking at fossil fuels at well of our projects have a certain number of EV charging stations um solar is something that's continually advancing I wouldn't say we would rule that out um so all the things that you're talking about are definitely things but at a minimum we'll have a lot of EV charging stations whether or not we're all electric in the units remains to be seen it seems like that's kind of how things are are evolving but stay involved you know as we advance the project will be we be I mean you don't need say that tce right great thank you go ahead Anna good evening Anna Tes minitz for Meeting House path Ashland Mass speaking today as a resident
218um I wanted to thank the select board um Rich who's in the room and the developer for being willing to do this particular forum for the public um for some context although I'm speaking as a resident I am a planning board member I'm also on the comprehensive plan steering committee and this particular Forum was born out of a comprehensive plan meeting in the box and so I wanted to thank Michael and the select board chair specifically for being willing to make this forum happen as a result of that discussion that's right and because it was born out of a comprehensive plan meeting in a box I wanted to lay out that context form the three questions that I'm about to ask um and what I will do being a lawyer is I don't want to
219um bombard you with too many questions but I'm going to just give you all three and you can answer them in whatever way you like um so question number one has to do with fiscal impact um and I'm assuming Jeff you're willing to work with the town to use the fiscal impact calculator that the planning board already has available to it and you did mention some data points that you already have from your prior projects and are you willing to share your own tax um data in whatever way you're comfortable to show the town hey for these projects and you don't have to answer all three of my questions you might want to hear them first um it might be easier um so uh are you willing to share your um tax data if you
220will in a way that you're comfortable where you could lay out for the town okay here's my projects here's my number of Apartments here's my ratio of Studios one-bedrooms multifamily or multi-bedroom here's the towns their tax brackets and the uh tax revenue that I pay in a way that would make you comfortable so that we could not only have the fiscal calculator but your own data to better understand um this wonderful tax revenue that you believe you can bring to town um that's question one question two is zoning so coming from the perspective again as a resident who happens to serve on the comprehensive plan steering committee um question two has to do with two potential zoning changes one is um currently the downtown area does not allow for hotels if the comprehensive plan steering
221committee or the planning board presents a zoning change allowing for hotels downtown is that something that would be interesting to you as a developer um similarly airbnbs how have you addressed those types of zoning changes in other communities where you have development have you worked with either planning boards or select boards to develop Airbnb related regulation and how do you regulate airbnbs in your rentals and then the last question has to do with would you be willing to come to the steering committee for the comprehensive plan and be part of the conversation since being a developer here long term you are essentially becoming part of our community and your voice and your contribution to our comprehensive planning would be very important those are my three questions thank you do you want to address any of
222those now or you don't I mean or take them under advisement I I do want to say the Airbnb is a great concern I'm not sure if it's something that we' rely on you to solve but you're welcome to I can say this I like to stay in hotels that's about the extent of what I know of them I can say emphatically we have no interest and we're we're a multif family residential developer we're not a hotel developer so we would not develop a hotel I think do you have any measures to to ensure that won't be happening I think that's the just or is there anything in the industry do we do that are you talking about the short-term rentals now Rob oh that's a different well that's a different question the the Airbnb
223is easily legislated by the zoning board you can part of the comprehensive permit issuance you can prohibit that so if tenants were airb being their unit they'd be in violation of the permit and their lease and we could proceed with an eviction so that's an easy one um so that hotel question Airbnb question uh I would be honored to go to some I don't know about the when you meet or whatever but I would be happy to participate and then our fiscal impacts um we did not do any um for this development nor are we required to but for different reasons in different municipalities we have and those are not outdated and I would be happy to share those with you we did one in um Walpole we did one in I think we did
224one in Winchester I have a and and the methodology is is the same it's basically you look at the in number of units the bedroom types the anticipated kids uh you know um they look at some of the specific elements of the municipality uh tax rate obviously so I could share those with you it be very happy to and then I think it would just be a little leg work on back the town taking your own tax rate and stuff because the methodologies as you'll see are basically the same and I think you could arrive at you know the some some basic conclusions and then I'd be you know happy to talk if we you know we don't need under 40b you do not need to do a fiscal impact analysis but if as part
225of our discussion it became critical for whatever reason or part of our negotiation or whatnot I'm not going to close the book on that but you know it's not an insignificant cost to us to do that and it's not required but I wouldn't say necessarily we're not doing it but I'll let us share with you what we've done and then come back if you have any suggestions com can you use the microphone Anna please issue although not required does come up a lot when projects like this are presented and so it tends to be sort of a marketing mention of hey this is going to be great for your Revenue um so I think if it's going to continue to be presented that way to the public it would be advantageous to see your actual
226calculations and and we do have a model we've used in the past correct that we could use this to implement yeah I I mean I I have serious concerns with the accuracy of it um but um something to think about yeah and how it applies here okay oh and just Anna thank you for your kind comments I do want to point out that the the the select board as a whole was involved in the planning and discussion of this session so anyway well I think she gave you credit for it yeah no the sard as a whole yes oh was a whole okay um Kate go ahead C Jersey Katherine Jers 11 Rodman Road I'm a member of the planning board but I'm speaking as a member of the public and my question SL comment
227is to the select board so I have to be honest I was a little disappointed I thankful that the developer came to do this but was talking about some negotiations that happened and that's kind of um not negotiations but discussion so I feel like that this room was filled Zoom was filled people have an so we have to be letting the public know about when things are happening like if people are meeting with developer on a project this scale in our downtown there needs to be um a memo kind of published on the website and I'm asking kind of this is the first time I've met these individuals I haven't met anybody so I don't know what you're trying to trying to say I don't know who I just know it was mentioned yeah so
228I mean let so let's explore that a little bit yeah I don't think she I think it's a legit question a legit thing to to ask so I my my request is that when we have these un this I guess the developer probably knows nanza is a a wound to our community right and this site is critically related to that as well so for both General democracy transparency and and Civic engagement involvement I'm asking that you will do that I'm also saying on this particular site this is Extreme sensitive to our community so I I think it it's that added level is the request to make sure that we are public about things and I I guess as also as a resident if there's going to be the the developers expressed that there can be
229discussions I'm not even calling them negotiations but I I think that we have to have Community discussions about that like how how is that happening and who is who is discussing and what are they discussing and I I'm I'm asking for the um select board to comment about that and and what done thank you all right well I think uh this will be on our and I think we're all um believe in a transparent process and a systematic process we've talked about a number of things and this will be on the agenda for our next meeting just as kind of as a followup so um I think we're committed to continuing a useful constructive and transparent process I'm not sure at this point we have any specifics to say about it we've talked a lot
230about the procedures did anyone else have the I just wanted to say I wasn't a part of the S sidewalk but there was a s sidewalk that um Mr angle did with quite a few people with with several people so I think just one yeah the S sidewalk was part of the Mass housing process I think uh and I'll attempt to come to the defense of the Town a little bit here before you go there why why don't you give us an opportunity to respond to that uh because understand the concern resent the implication though um so yes uh Jeff and his team came to talk to Peter and I and basically was kicking the tires and saying you know they had a preliminary design and asked for our feedback um which we get gave
231and it's very similar to what everybody else has given um you know concerns about the height the architecture uh the historical buildings and keeping those because Jeff I if I remember correctly your first design didn't have didn't keep the um historical buildings um and a number of other things traffic number of units so I said okay and then came back and let us know what they were going to submit to Mass housing essentially so um it did not take the place of any type of open discussion um it's not like we helped sh I mean to the extent that I mean I will say Jeff at least when he came back he had kept a couple of the original Mill buildings um you know which you know was was great but um it doesn't take
232the place of the conversation that's happening now or what's happening at the zba so it's not like we entered into any kind of agreement or commitment associated with that and quite frankly you probably have more conversations in other towns with with people but we didn't really feel comfortable with that Kate I just I just want to respond too Kate I I think that um you know I I can't speak for the select board because but on some level I think I can um we we are very um you know committed to our community participating in this and I wish that our committee our community there I wish that we had filled this room and downstairs and that we had uh 300 500 people online so we are doing everything we can in terms of trying
233to make it uh uh people publicly aware of what's going on trying to give them the tools to understand what's going on and how we they can best have a a part and a role in this I wish that this community had been more involved in the planning and is would be more involved in planning meetings that you all do um because that's where real impact could happen so um I'm sorry that we're here we're here this plan it has many positive features to It ultimately it it's really a tough thing to do in the middle of our our town to put 250 units there it's that's really um changing our community forever and you know my husband's family's been here since 1856 so I'm I'm here with a lot of people on my back
234and but in terms of are doing anything without the public input or wanting and and desperately wanting public input just isn't right okay thank you yeah I would also say you guys are ahead of most other municipalities relative to I mean to have a meeting like this before we even have a site letter is credit to the the board of Selectmen also on any project we're involved with we reach out to like the planning department just to take the temperature of hey we're kind of thinking about a project at this site these are this is our cred ials is there anything we should be aware of that it's a it's not a negotiation like we're going to do this but you better do that or it should be characterized as what it was it was
235an informational it was a casual conversation I will say the plan before you incorporates a good amount of what we heard you know that's important to the town um so there's going to be a lot of meetings about this project uh a lot of zoning board meetings there can be informal me meetings will take directive from the town but I would say I think the town is doing a pretty good job compared to what I've seen in other towns where there's no input no meetings just the zoning board and that's it so all right well thank you Jeff I think that um I see Joe did you want to say I just wanted to ask if uh if down the road uh to keep the transparency going as uh Kate was asking would you be
236willing to uh show up for another public form at some point in time in the future it'll be CBA yeah of course I mean you know the only thing I would ask is um what's what are you asking of us or should we present are we there to listen what's a you know objective um but as I as I listen there's there's easy ways and hard ways to do these things and ultimately sometimes you end up at the same spot but it would be stupid and shortsighted of me just to be like yeah we don't want to do any of that we don't have to because it's it's to to my benefit and to the benefit of the project do have input and do have some collaboration and if you ask me to do something
237that we can't do I will just say no and I'll explain why and that's just how it will be but of course I would be open to you know hearing additional um feedback and the like I mean we have a lot of work to do the traffic I'd say what 50 60% of the comments we heard tonight are traffic related so even before the zoning board we can submit our traffic study um um you know I think uh the town does a nice job of circulating the information that we provide so um so that's a very long-winded way to say yes we would be opening to okay there you go thank you and Michael I think you had a question all right so um first of all I want to thank everyone here Jeff and
238his development team and especially and the select board Town manager especially the citizens who came out tonight this has been a long meeting think there was a lot of great questions and observations I think this is the beginning of the process for this project as you can see we've got a long ways to go um but um you know I'd say we are committed to transparency and communication and discussion um because I think think we all we are all here because we're we're committed to this Comm community and trying to do the best thing we can um and so hopefully we can come together make this project as uh as uh good as possible in this uh situation so with that and I think do you want to outline maybe next steps or do you
239want me to or yeah I why don't you go ahead and do that um so you know so we're still in the process of taking comment from the public and then also the boards and committees and as Rob mentioned next week at um at the select board meeting um most of it might be done in exec session but we will have a public component you know our goal well we'll definitely have a public component our goal is to basically take all of that input and essentially prioritize it um and then at that point we will assemble what what's called a comment letter um that basically categorizes or explains all of our concerns with the development um and it will reference different boards and committees and different citizens uh concerns and then we'll also include you
240know the memos that the different boards and committees have sent to us um in full as well as um you know the citizen comments so all of that gets sent to Mass housing it has to be done by the 29th I believe 27th or 29th 28th or um and they use that to evaluate um the project as a whole and determine whether or not to issue a site eligibility letter and as councelor hav Hy had mentioned earlier if they get a site eligibility letter that gives them the green light to go ahead and file with the zoning board of appeals great and the other just last reminder you know we got you're holding the public comment open till Friday right in the portal and so um you know if you want to make detailed comments
241that you uh didn't make tonight feel free to do that we are also not believe formally uh recording these comments for tonight are we in incorporating know they need to be in the form if you want to have them Incorporated to mass so that's good so keep keep that in mind you know i' like you know we characterize this as like a listening session both for us and the citizens and for the developer so um I think it worked well in that um in that sense so uh but please if you have detailed comments um please make those any any other comments or thoughts from the board before we adjourn this so um I thank everybody and um this meeting is is over all right thank you Journey thank you all thank you all really
242app