[Speaker 1] (8:45 - 9:32)
We are here in hybrid fashion, we have one member who will be participating by zoom. Ron Landon will be joining us in just a few minutes. We can proceed with our first matter on the agenda, which is petition 20-17.

We have this brief issue, I understand that Mr. Quigley is present remotely. Mr. Quigley? Yes.

Okay, so Mr. Quigley can tell us about the relief you're looking for?

[Speaker 5] (9:34 - 9:45)
We're doing a small change to our previously approved plan, and Rich Baldini said to be on the call tonight to take care of the administrator.

[Speaker 1] (9:54 - 10:41)
Okay, so we're going to put that up, the plan for the new, for the change. Mr. Quigley, do you want to start to describe why you need the change in the staircase?

[Speaker 3] (10:42 - 10:53)
Yes, the initial staircase was in the back of the house, we moved it to the front of the house to make it easier to access the second floor.

[Speaker 1] (11:15 - 11:18)
Do you have a digital copy of the plan?

[Speaker 3] (11:20 - 11:22)
Myself? No.

[Speaker 1] (11:24 - 11:26)
But it's been submitted to the building department.

[Speaker 3] (12:12 - 12:15)
Is Rich present tonight? The building inspector?

[Speaker 1] (12:29 - 12:31)
He may be due at the hotspot.

[Speaker 9] (12:31 - 13:38)
Yeah, I think I might have it here too.

[Speaker 1] (13:45 - 13:51)
That's just a letter.

[Speaker 8] (14:11 - 14:16)
Chris, do you have a paper copy? Do you have a paper copy that you can throw onto the floor?

[Speaker 10] (14:20 - 14:57)
Sure, my wife's going to get it. Okay, he's coming down here.

[Speaker 1] (15:00 - 15:01)
You're probably just a little too close.

[Speaker 10] (15:02 - 15:03)
Yeah, move him back out a little bit.

[Speaker 2] (15:05 - 15:09)
Alright, so if you look at this, the stain is there, you can see the stairs in the background.

[Speaker 3] (15:12 - 15:23)
So it's a small change, and it's in the confines of the present deck, and it's pretty simple.

[Speaker 1] (15:25 - 15:26)
And where were those stairs before, they were in the back?

[Speaker 3] (15:27 - 15:30)
Correct, so we moved them from the back of the house to the side of the house.

[Speaker 1] (15:31 - 16:22)
Okay, and it's within what we approved for area, for dimensional relief. Correct. So simply because it's a change from the approved plans, Rich wanted to come to us administratively to get it approved as a minor change, right?

That's correct. Okay, is there anyone that wanted to have any comments or questions about this? No?

Okay. So I'm going to make a motion to approve the administrative change to permit the change to move the stairs from the rear of the house to the side of the house as shown in the plans that have been filed with the building department. And that's it.

Do I have a second on that motion?

[Speaker 6] (16:23 - 16:23)
Second.

[Speaker 1] (16:24 - 16:27)
Okay, I'm going to do a roll call vote. So I am a yes. Dan?

[Speaker 6] (16:28 - 16:28)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (16:28 - 16:44)
Heather? Yes. And Paula?

Yes. Okay, Mr. Quigley, you have your relief. Okay, and I'll write a brief administrative decision and file it and send a copy to Rich.

Good luck with your project.

[Speaker 10] (16:44 - 16:44)
Thank you very much.

[Speaker 1] (16:45 - 16:46)
Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 10] (16:46 - 16:47)
Great, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (16:48 - 17:39)
Okay, so is Ron on yet? Okay, great. All right, so the next matter that we have tonight is petition 21-01 by Wynn Development for a comprehensive permit for a 120-unit mixed-income apartment building located at 129 Essex Street, 25 and 35 Pittman Road, 21 Elm Place.

And I understand, Mr. Drukis, that you were here on this petition.

[Speaker 4] (17:40 - 17:41)
Yes, Mr. Chairman.

[Speaker 1] (17:42 - 30:41)
Okay, so before you begin with your presentation, with your team, I know we have a large audience that is here in person and remotely, so I wanted to just go over a few things before we began. One is just to first set a time limitation for tonight. We're going to plan to go until no later than 10 p.m. tonight, and then we will set another date for the continued hearing. Next, I am going to also first introduce the public our consultant, Ezra Haber-Glenn, but first I wanted to just, for the board and for members of the public, I thought it was worthwhile to just give a bit of an overview of my understanding of the comprehensive permit statute known as Chapter 40B, or anti-snob zoning. And I think it's important because we haven't had one of these petitions in Swanscott in quite a while, and I thought it was important to understand the jurisdiction, at least my opinion, of the jurisdiction this board has when there's an application for a comprehensive permit. The law that was enacted in 1969, it overrides municipal zoning authority to promote affordable housing.

Swanscott, which has significantly less than 10% supply of affordable housing, is subject to a developer of subsidized housing requesting a single comprehensive permit from this board. The developer must construct a certain number of affordable units, and the project does not, the developer can proceed with the project that does not comply with zoning requirements and other local land use controls as long as the project does not create health, safety, planning, or open space issues sufficient to outweigh the needs, the local need, for affordable housing. So I suggest that that is really what our focus needs to be on for this hearing.

It needs to be on the statutory requirement that there is a local need here for affordable housing that we are required to acknowledge, and we can concern ourselves with issues of health, safety, planning, project design, and open space issues. And that criteria must be the focus of this public hearing. Importantly, if the ZBA denies the comprehensive permit or burdens it with conditions that make the project uneconomic, the developer can appeal directly to the Housing Appeals Committee, which is a body within the Department of Housing and Community Development, which will decide the appeal on the statutory and regulatory criteria.

And the term uneconomic is the standard by which conditions in a comprehensive permit are judged in such an appeal. Conditions that do not render a project uneconomic generally will be upheld. However, conditions that do render a project uneconomic will be removed by the HAC.

The term consistent with local needs is the standard by which the HAC reviews the denial of a comprehensive permit. If a denial is consistent with local needs, it should be upheld. If the denial is not consistent with local needs, it should be overturned.

So we have a unique procedure here with a comprehensive permit where other boards have provided or given the opportunity to attend this public hearing and offer recommendations, but this board alone has the power to issue permits or approvals as any local board or official who would otherwise act with respect to such an application would normally do, including but not limited to the power to attest to said permit or approval conditions and requirements with respect to height, site plan, size or shape, or building material as are consistent with the terms of the section as described in the HAC. The Board of Appeals is authorized by the HAC to use the testimony of consultants, which we will do, and something else that is unique to this hearing is the Board of Appeals is required to render our decision based on a majority vote. So often we are deciding special permits and it is by a four to one vote that must be obtained for a petitioner to get the requested relief.

Now, something else that's important to note as to what our board can do, we may not commission our own studies and demand that the applicant pay for them. We can have peer review by our consultants. That is permitted and we have already obtained and approved engagement of one such consultant and there is a second consultant that I think we will address tonight to deal with potential engineering and stormwater issues.

Now, with respect to a potential denial of a permit, the statute at section 23 provides that the burden is on the local Board of Appeals to demonstrate that its denial was reasonable and consistent with local needs. Meeting that burden requires two steps. First, the local Board of Appeals must prove that there are valid health, safety, or other local concerns that support the denial.

If it meets that burden, the Board of Appeals still must prove that its valid local concerns outweigh the regional need for housing. That doesn't mean that this board cannot deny a comprehensive permit when there are egregious health or safety concerns. That has been upheld and there's a collection of cases that provide for such force.

And then there are similarly plenty of cases where the findings of the board are not considered sufficient for a local need, including one that when I first started on this board, is a report at 100 Burrill Street, LLC, the Swanscott Zoning Board of Appeals from 2008. In that case, concerns relating to building mass, traffic safety, and fire safety were not sufficient to justify permit denial. So I just wanted to give some introductory comments and actually one further one that I wanted to note.

A common reason for denying a comprehensive permit is the fear that the project will exceed the capacity of municipal services, such as water and sewer, or overwhelm the local schools. The HAC has consistently held that such concerns are not valid reasons for denying a permit. School overcrowding, water supply problems, or an increase in traffic alone are insufficient to outweigh a regional need for affordable housing.

And one cite from that is of importance. Municipality cannot rely on its own failure to remedy existing drainage problems as a grounds for denying a permit. Now I don't look to provide those comments, those preliminary comments to suggest that this board has made up its mind one way or the other about this petition, but rather to make sure everyone is focused, both the developer and the public, on what the law provides for us to do here, which is to focus on health, safety, planning, project design, open space issues, and to understand that the law also looks for this board to hopefully have a healthy negotiation and dialogue with the developer to provide for an acceptable project to both the town and to the developer that promotes affordable housing and satisfies those concerns that are within our jurisdiction.

So I don't know that we will get to public comment tonight because I do not know how long the petitioner will take for their presentation and with the other items that we need to address administratively, but I promise members of the public that their concerns will be heard. We don't have unlimited time to deal with this petition. That is one reason why we gave it its own name.

That's something that we rarely do, but we look to do here so that we can give this petition all the attention that it deserves because it is a project that is substantial for our town, and we recognize that. We will likely look to continue it to a date not too far in the future because the regulations require that we act expeditiously on the petition. So one thing I would ask is if we do get to public comment that you try to have your thoughts organized, and if you are looking to state facts that have already been stated by another member of the public, it's fine to say that you agree with those comments rather than repeating them because in the interest of time, it would be helpful.

We have a great deal of questions that have been brought forth from our planning department and from other boards that we're going to look to have a dialogue with the developer about. So I'm not going to put a limit on anyone's public comment at this time, but if we are getting bogged down, I may look to choose to try and encourage comments to be made more condensed, I'd say, but right now I'm not going to look to do that. So with that, before I let you start with your presentation, Chris, I just want to introduce Ezra, our consultant who's present, and see if he had any other comments he wanted to add preliminarily before we began.

[Speaker 3] (30:42 - 30:44)
Thank you so much. Can you hear me okay?

[Speaker 1] (30:44 - 30:45)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (30:45 - 41:31)
Okay, great. So first off, I'm sorry I'm not there in person. I'm glad to see you are because I do know there's a sort of dynamism that happens in the room and it can really help, and I do look forward to us all getting back to public meetings as much as we used to complain about them.

I think we do realize the value of that, so I'm sorry I'm not there with you and I hope to be in future meetings. My name is Ezra Glenn. I'm a consultant working for the town here.

I am the executive director of a nonprofit consulting firm known as Public Planning. I'm actually under contract right now with Mass Housing Partnership, which is a statewide quasi-governmental subsidizer and planner of affordable housing. They provide a contract for me to work for you.

So the key, what I wanted everyone to be aware of is I work for the zoning board here, but it doesn't cost me anything. So you applied for this to get this expertise to help you, but I don't work for Mass Housing Partnership in this context. I work for you.

I also like to throw out there at the very beginning that I'm not a lawyer. I think your chair is a lawyer, and you certainly have town council as well. As things get into sticky legal questions, I would refer to that, but I'm a planner and have worked on a number of 40Bs all around the state and seen how these projects work.

It can help really sort of sift through the issues and move things forward in a way that can help, because the very first point I'd make is this is not a normal zoning board process, and that's why we have this program. Your chair really did most of my job by sort of laying out what 40B is, and I think that was a great introduction. It's a complicated piece of state legislation with a complicated past.

Even when it was brand new, it wasn't very clear, and it's gotten sort of less clear over the years, although there's been some more recent attempts to clarify a lot of it. So I think the last 10 years have brought a lot more guidance from the state about how we should look at 40Bs. So I think we're entering a time that will be less confusing.

But as the chair mentioned, this is a piece of state law under Mass General Law Chapter 40B. It was created in 1969, and if you remember 1969, that was a time with a lot of attention to civil rights and to building the kind of great society that would include everybody. And a lot of concern that that American dream was not open for everybody.

So this was a year after the Fair Housing Act was passed at the federal level, and it represents a sort of form of a Fair Housing Act for the state of Massachusetts. What it did was it recognized that the state has a long tradition of local land use control. We control development at the city and town level through zoning, through the planning boards, through subdivision control, through local wetlands bylaws, historic preservation, and a host of other development regulations.

And the state recognized that and wanted to honor that, but also was becoming concerned that that local control might lead some communities to be unaffordable. So they created an alternate pathway for the development of affordable housing, and that's known as Chapter 40B. Over the past 50 years, it's actually resulted in more affordable housing than any other program in the state.

It's really important, though, to be aware right at the outset. This is a program for affordable housing development. In order to even apply for a 40B permit, an applicant needs to be an eligible developer.

They need to either be a public agency, a nonprofit, or if they are a for-profit, they can be a limited income partnership, and that is all monitored by the state to make sure they do not use 40B as a way to make developers rich. They use it as a way to build affordable housing. And they need to get a letter from a subsidizing agency indicating that they are an eligible agency, and in this case they have.

The project also has to be affordable. At least 25% of the units need to be affordable housing. Certain cases can be as low as 20%.

Some of them are 100%, but there needs to be affordability in the project. It can't just be making an argument that we need more housing, so therefore we'll do this. And then lastly, these can be ownership or rental projects, and I guess what I really want you to take away from this, if you remember anything about a comprehensive permit, Chapter 40B permit, there are three key pieces.

Think of it as it is comprehensive, it is flexible, and it is expedited. Okay, so I'll take those in order. First off, comprehensive.

This chapter of state law envisions a one-stop shop for local development approvals. All of those different regulations that I mentioned at the beginning can create a very complicated process for development of housing. And 40B said there should be a simpler process for affordable housing if it needs to, and it should just go to one board in the town for all the local approvals it needs.

And in 1969, the general court thought, well, which board should that be? And they chose the zoning board. They said that's the one with the best knowledge of how development works.

So the zoning board is right now acting not as the zoning board, but in the capacity of sort of all the local reviews that this project might need. That doesn't mean they act alone. They can consult with town officials and with other local boards, but this is the only development review process this project will need to get the relief it has sought.

That said, do keep in mind I mentioned the word all local approvals. This is a state law that allows affordable housing to use this process to change the local development review. It does nothing about state law.

It does nothing to change federal law. Everything about this project must comply with state building code, with the Americans with Disabilities Act, with 21E, with if there's a curb cut permit required for Mass Highway, it still needs that, the State Wetlands Act, anything that's a state or a federal law, it still needs to comply with, and there's actually nothing you can do to help it get around that. And that's really important for people to know that it can still need building code.

It can still need ADA, all of that. But anything local, this is the one stop. So it's a comprehensive permit.

Second, it's a flexible process. In addition to being the place that will decide all those local approvals, the developer can ask for waivers from any of them that it feels are necessary to build the project, and most notably that's typically to build a project that is more dense than might be allowed in the zoning. That's the structure of 40B is to say, because there was concern that the local development controls might make such a project unaffordable, you need to have that flexibility.

And that's a key component here. You're often used to thinking of your zoning as essentially a blueprint for development, and it generally is, but in this case, really, the developer can ask for relief in ways that you maybe could not grant variances for that in a normal way, but under 40B you could. And then thirdly, as your chair mentioned, it's an expedited process.

Under Chapter 40B, you have, from the moment you accept the application, you have 30 days to schedule the hearing, and then 180 days to close it. That's about six months, and then a little extra time for the advertising and getting it around, and then you have about 40 days to render a decision. It might sound like a lot of time, but that can go very quickly, especially when you need time in between for reviewing plans, for public participation, and your other cases you're doing.

So it's a really fast process, and what that encourages us to do is to focus on the real key issues first, and figure out what the big things are and move through them. That doesn't mean it's a rubber stamp process, though. The 40B still contemplates a full, comprehensive review, and I think your chair made a great point about this, that any issues you're identifying are important for you to identify and have resolved.

You should not approve a project that you think has problems. You really want to sort of very quickly figure out what are the problems, and then explore alternatives to resolve them. There are three possible outcomes of a 40B.

The first, as the chair mentioned, is you can deny it, and then there's this appeal process that you might have to think about. A second alternative is you can approve it just as submitted, which is pretty rare. And the third is you approve it with conditions, similar to what you would do with a zoning board case.

And those conditions really should be the way you address all the issues you identify. So what we really encourage in the review is to start to focus on what are the concerns, what are the problems this might create as proposed, and then think of what would need to change to get you to a point where you could approve it. Often that comes through that peer review process.

So you may know that traffic or parking or emergency access or stormwater, that those are key issues, and you want to know can they give the information about it, can your review review that, and can you recommend some changes or some conditions that would make sure it didn't have impacts. Once you're at that point, then hopefully you have a project that you can approve. And then as the chair mentioned, if you can't get to that point, then you would have to seek the root of denying.

I will be here for all the meetings as well as helping to coordinate your peer review. But really, to the extent that I can be helpful, I'm happy to chime in. But it's certainly your meeting.

So I will, I think at that point, stop unless you have questions. And I look forward to hearing the presentation as well. With one question, because of that 180 days, I do think it's important to recognize and make sure there's clarity between you and your clerk about when this was accepted and how long do we have, because I know this originally came in way back in January, but it's coming again.

So that's one issue. You don't need to address it right now, but I do want to make sure that's out there. Thanks.

[Speaker 1] (41:32 - 41:47)
All right. Thank you, Ezra. Any questions for Ezra before we get started with the presentation?

Hearing none. Okay. So Mr. Drukos, I welcome you to introduce yourself.

[Speaker 4] (41:48 - 42:00)
Yeah, but excuse me, before we get started, I know we're talking about having another meeting, and I know we've got that other peer review, which I think the contract was just signed today, I believe.

[Speaker 1] (42:01 - 42:04)
Right, for the engineer, for VM consulting engineers.

[Speaker 4] (42:04 - 42:15)
Right. We'd like to see it, rather than wait until the end of the meeting tonight, if we could potentially schedule when the next meeting is, particularly with the holidays coming up and all.

[Speaker 1] (42:16 - 42:25)
Right. So I talked with Marissa about potentially a January date, but I'm wondering if that's too long to wait.

[Speaker 4] (42:26 - 42:33)
I would think, yes, it is. I think we think maybe the weekend, the 14th, a little over two weeks from now.

[Speaker 1] (42:36 - 43:19)
So we have a – We have another meeting that week, December 13th. Right, we have – that's a one-night town meeting, right? And then our regular meeting is December 21st.

Any idea how long? I'm not sure if you had any conversation with the consultant on stormwater, how long it was going to take for the review, if they would be done by then. I'm thinking maybe December 16th, a Thursday night.

How would everyone be with that date? No? You're away that week?

[Speaker 9] (43:19 - 43:20)
I'm away that day.

[Speaker 1] (43:20 - 43:21)
That day?

[Speaker 9] (43:21 - 43:22)
I'll change it.

[Speaker 1] (43:23 - 43:24)
No, we can look for another date.

[Speaker 7] (43:24 - 43:26)
It's okay. It's okay.

[Speaker 1] (43:27 - 43:29)
Or we could do December 15th.

[Speaker 7] (43:30 - 43:31)
I'll change it.

[Speaker 1] (43:33 - 43:37)
You sure? Yeah. How would December 16th be?

[Speaker 18] (43:40 - 43:44)
Okay. Aaron? On the regular meeting, the 21st.

[Speaker 1] (43:44 - 44:05)
The 21st. Or the 15th. I promised to get us a month off.

Sometimes I'm out of hearing once we get through this stuff. Two meetings a month. So what do you think about that date, December 16th?

We need to confirm that we could have this room?

[Speaker 4] (44:06 - 44:07)
Aaron? Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (44:11 - 44:23)
Ron, would that date be okay with you? Yes. It's okay with us.

Okay, I was wondering where Ron landed. Ron, you okay with that?

[Speaker 6] (44:25 - 44:34)
Just checking. I think that should be okay.

[Speaker 1] (44:34 - 45:24)
December 16th? Yes. 16th.

I said both, but 16th and Thursday night is what I think we're going to do. Yeah, I think that should work. Okay, thank you.

Okay, so December 16th will be our next meeting. And the consultant, the consulting and engineers, have you got that today, your review? And it's acceptable?

Mm-hmm. Okay. Great.

So please feel free to begin.

[Speaker 4] (45:25 - 51:55)
Yeah. Thank you. Chris Drukis, attorney at law, office at 81 Washington Street in Salem.

I'm representing wind development. And I'm here for the Elm Place project. I'm here tonight, and hopefully I've got everybody.

Because everybody isn't here physically. But we have Adam Stein, who's the executive vice president of wind development. Adam Giordano, project manager.

Angela Geil, project director. Deb Colbert of Hancock Associates, senior project manager. Mike Burnett, senior project manager of the architectural team.

Gil Wynn, CEO of wind development. Michael Bryan, executive vice president. Attorney Peter Freeman.

Attorney John Smolak. Jeffrey Dirk from Van Ness Project. He's the project engineer.

With Bruce Paradise and Barry Tucanis. And if I've missed anybody, please speak up. Before I turn the meeting over to representatives of the company who are going to make the presentation of the application and the plans, I would like to walk you through what is being proposed under the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 40B, Section 20 to 23, for the comprehensive permit in keeping with the regulations under 760CMR, Section 56.00. I believe you'll see that we have made an attempt to comply with many of the requirements of the zoning bylaw, although we are asking for waivers, many waivers to be given. I think when you look at what we have done and listen to our presentation, you will see that we have taken into account the many of the comments that we have received from neighbors as well as the Board of Selectmen and other town officials in an effort to create a project we can all support and that will benefit the town as a whole.

After all, the property owners were approached by town officials to pursue affordable housing for the site about five years ago when they first were proposing a commercial development. I am sure you are aware of the ongoing process as we did appear before this Board about a year ago in order to sort of give you a warning of what was going to be coming. This project was in the pipeline.

We didn't make a formal presentation at that point in time, but we did show you at least that we were going to be coming forward with one. We have not been idle over the past 16 months since we first approached the town with some drawings for a plan. We met with various departments in town and town officials on several occasions in order to make revisions to our plan as a result of comments and ideas that they have had, including the Fire Department, the DPW, the Board of Selectmen, the Planning Board, Community Development Director, Building Inspector, and Town Planner, just to name a few.

I am sure I've left out many others with whom we've had these discussions, many neighbors included. It's important to note that in March of this year we received a site approval letter from the Department of Housing and Community Development, DHCD, which approval was necessary for us to move forward with our plans in order to receive the site approval letter. The project must conform with all the DHCD requirements, then in effect.

The DHCD made the necessary findings after an on-site inspection. They determined that the pro site was an appropriate location for multifamily housing, citing the amenities nearby of the train station and Swampskate High School. They further made the determination that the conceptual project design is generally appropriate for the site and that the site is suitable for residential use.

Further, they determined that the project appears to be financially feasible in the context of the Swampskate housing market, based upon the initial pro forma and third-party appraisal commissioned by DHCD. Although this review and approval was granted, DHCD identified areas that need to be addressed before final approval so that funding can be granted. And you will identify in your presentation how we will identify, rather, in our presentation how we've addressed many of these matters.

We have provided for you revised plans from the original submittal we filed earlier in the year, which you have before you. These plans that we will be discussing tonight show the significant changes made as a result of the input we received from various town entities officials, as well as comments we received from neighborhood meetings. We have recently had input from the planning board with comments after two meetings we had earlier this month, although we are still evaluating their comments and are not, at this point, prepared to fully respond to all of the comments that they had.

As you are aware, we have in our petition filed for numerous waivers for this project. We ask that the board carefully consider all of the waivers that have been requested, which we're more than happy to discuss, as the granting of waivers is essential for the granting of a comprehensive permit. Without taking further time away from the people who walked you through the plan, I want to turn this matter over at this point to Angela Geil to provide you with reasons for this project in Swampscot, some information about wind development, as well as the effects to the plan as a result of the changes to the plan as a result of the public comments received through neighborhood and town official comments.

[Speaker 1] (51:57 - 52:36)
One second, Chris. So I was informed that it turns out on the 15th and 16th of December, the select board has this room, which is the most appropriate for the audiovisual presentation. So with that, reluctantly, I would think perhaps December 14th, which is after town meeting, but I don't know when else to keep it out of Christmas week.

I can't do the 14th. You can't do the 14th? I can't do the 14th either.

December 10th or the 15th? The 15th is out. Do you have an option?

[Speaker 8] (52:36 - 52:57)
I know maybe the 5th or 6th is January.

[Speaker 1] (53:05 - 53:19)
So what I would see is I don't know if we would have the ability to support between Christmas and New Year's. It's a tough time. We need the consultants and everyone in the public.

I think that's a tough week to do it.

[Speaker 4] (53:20 - 53:24)
What about at your regular meeting? Is it a loaded agenda?

[Speaker 1] (53:24 - 53:30)
The agenda, unfortunately. So that's on Tuesday night.

[Speaker 4] (53:34 - 53:35)
That's the 21st, right?

[Speaker 1] (53:35 - 53:46)
That's the 21st. I hate to do it on the night before or the night after. We've been going 1130 at night on our regular agendas.

[Speaker 10] (53:47 - 53:51)
I'm out of town. If it matters, I'm out of town that week.

[Speaker 1] (53:52 - 54:48)
The week of Christmas? Yeah. I don't know if there's any interest in the week between Christmas and New Year's.

Or you prefer no? All right, our key people, our administrative staff here, planning staff. What about January?

We can make ourselves available anytime. So the only thing that I'm reluctant about that week as well, besides that we don't have our key technical people here, what about if we did it Tuesday, January 4th, or Wednesday, January 5th?

[Speaker 14] (54:51 - 54:54)
Wednesday the 5th?

[Speaker 1] (55:02 - 55:03)
January 5th?

[Speaker 4] (55:11 - 55:16)
Chairman? January 5th, I won't be here. Oh, you won't be here?

I can do the next week.

[Speaker 8] (55:22 - 55:27)
Chairman, just a question on if it can be considered to be all virtual and not need the space?

[Speaker 1] (55:30 - 57:13)
So the reason why we've come back to a hybrid is to permit the public engagement, and that's probably going to be the main time when we're taking comment. I've done plenty of virtual meetings. We've been pretty much virtual.

And I've heard comments that people weren't able to be heard at those meetings, so I don't want to have that same issue. So I prefer that it were hybrid. So it's the same thing if people were away from your team, they're welcome to participate remotely.

It's mainly the public that I'm concerned with, making sure that they have access to be heard. So what about that? We could do Monday, January 10th, or Tuesday, January 11th.

Either one? Well, why don't we go for Tuesday, January 11th? How would that be?

Okay. All right. Thanks, everyone, for that.

Okay. So back to you.

[Speaker 6] (57:13 - 57:33)
All right. January 11th. I think we should be able to.

All right.

[Speaker 10] (57:33 - 57:33)
Ready?

[Speaker 8] (57:34 - 57:34)
Yes, we're ready.

[Speaker 1] (57:35 - 57:35)
Okay.

[Speaker 8] (57:36 - 57:37)
To be clear, that's January 11th?

[Speaker 1] (57:38 - 57:38)
Yes.

[Speaker 8] (57:38 - 1:02:16)
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, board and Chris, for that introduction.

My name is Angela, and I'm with the Wynn Companies. And I wanted to just go over a few slides before our design team really gets into details about the site plan and the building itself and traffic and parking. So as Chris described, since October 2020, the entire project team has been meeting with both the community members, as well as different town departments, holding community meetings, office hours.

We post everything online on our website. And we have really heard and listened to a lot of the comments and concerns that we've received since that time. And to date, we have changed the project in multiple ways, which we will go into detail momentarily.

And most recently from the planning board, that's where it is. Thank you. Who we met with twice in the month of November.

You know, we received kind of new concerns and new ideas, which we're still exploring, but we do really look forward to hearing what the DBA has to say and think about these things before we make any future project changes. And the town of Swampspot has also conducted so far one peer review for traffic and parking of which we have officially provided our response for members who have that printed in front of you. And that will be posted online as well.

And then we're in the process of having the town conduct their utility peer review, which we'll then evaluate and respond to that as well. So the primary adjustments that we made during this time, you know, was height stories and density, right? So we listened to the concerns about just how tall it was, how many units, how big it felt.

So we reduced the number of stories in certain areas, thus also reducing the number of units down to 120 units. And that is, of course, also just decreasing the density of the whole project. We were with that, though, able to creatively find new space to add a lot of parking, which was another just huge concern that we heard time and time again is where's everybody going to park?

So we'll go over some of those ways in which we found more parking spaces. I think one of the most important things that we really listened to and took into consideration was just changing the whole design of the building, how it looks from every angle. And you'll hear about that more, but we took a look at the surrounding architecture, the aesthetic of Swampscott, and really tried to make a building that we think will fit in really nicely.

We have reviewed all the emergency access plans with the fire department who has signed off on what you'll see a little bit later. We have done traffic impact analysis and a parking demand analysis and further traffic studies that the town has requested. And we also continue to support, really support the town's efforts in designing and continuing a future segment of the rail trail to and through our property.

Just to touch on the affordability aspect of the project, so although we went down to 120 units, the overall mix of the project has remained the same, and it's still truly what we originally envisioned, a mixed income community. So there will be units for those at or below 30%, 60%, as well as a range of units available for the middle income or workforce incomes as well as market rate units. And all of these units, all 120 units of our project, will count toward the town's subsidized housing inventory.

And that's just a little bit on the affordability. Happy to answer more questions later. Now I'm going to turn it over to Ben Colbert, who is our civil engineer.

[Speaker 7] (1:02:17 - 1:08:39)
So this is very odd to me. I haven't been in the public in two years. So can you all hear me?

So the project is located in a currently vacant lot with a couple of houses on it and the Berks gym. It's sandwiched between Elm Place, Pittman Road, Essex Street, and the MBTA Railway. This is the existing conditions plan.

There's four parcels on the property currently, and we're going to merge the four properties into two lots. And then in the lower right-hand corner, there is some property number 27, Elm Place, that we'll be using for project parking. And I'll get into that a little further down the way.

The proposed project, again, is taking the four lots, combining the four lots into two lots, and then we'll have the Berks Tumbling Gym and the project itself. Five-story building, three-story building, and then parking underneath with a four-story unit along the railroad. Currently, it is zoned for A4 and B2, and as noted before, there are some waivers that we are requesting, and I think you have a complete list of those waivers, but if you want me to go into detail, we can go into those details a little later.

I just want to give you an oversight of the site. The utilities, the grading and drainage plan here, shows that currently there is no treatment going on with the drainage on the site. However, because of Massachusetts laws and regulations, we are required to mitigate any increase in runoff and make sure that that runoff is treated, and we are capturing that, and there will be no increase in runoff from the property whatsoever.

We will be eventually tying into an 18-inch line that goes underneath the railroad, and we have actually scoped the line, and the line is actually in good shape. Other utilities that we'll be connecting to is we've got electric. I don't know if you can see my cursor.

Electric, sewer, water, gas, drainage again, and more sewer. We've scoped all the lines in Pittman Road, and the lines are in good shape down there. Elm Place, they have had problems in the past, and we're looking at what we might be able to do to help out the town there.

Landscaping, we are meeting the regulations in regards to the number of trees and landscaped area. We are proposing trees and grass areas on the site itself. This is a demolition plan, which of course will be mitigated and taken care of in regards to making sure that any waste or disposal is taken care of properly.

We have to meet all the rules and regulations that are required by the city and town. Fire and safety. I know that there was a big concern with the fire department and the planning department, and initially we were going to just come down Pittman Road and have a gate access through Doherty Circle.

That is not going to be the case anymore. We've met with the planning and the fire department, and we've been able to create a turnaround at the very end of Pittman, and we again meet the codes and regulations of the fire department, and they've accepted this plan. This was the old plan.

Sorry. In doing so, we do lose two parking spaces on Pittman Road, but we are meeting the turnarounds for the fire department and the requirements for safety of the buildings itself. Parking on site.

I don't know if I can zoom in. You won't be able to. No?

Okay. On site. I know that this is one of the biggest concerns, so I just wanted to spend a little bit of time here.

So on site, we currently have... I'm hard-working with someone else's machine, so... On site, we have 93 spaces.

Sorry about that.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:40 - 1:08:40)
Okay.

[Speaker 7] (1:08:54 - 1:11:26)
Now I'm just trying to move it up. There we go. So on site, we have parking underneath...

Thank you. On site, we have parking underneath this, the wing that is alongside the railroad tracks, and then there's also some parking along Pittman underneath that building. There is currently, as designed, 92 spaces on site, and then along Pittman Road, there are 15 spaces, but because of the fire truck turnaround, we are actually at 13 spaces.

We have, because of the request for increasing our parking demands, which we don't believe we need, but we have increased the parking for additional parking off site, and we're providing another 23 spaces over at 27 Elm Place. So we have a total of 128 spaces now for the entire project, and there are 120 units that we will be providing spaces for. We've done a photometric plan for the entire project, and we are making sure that there is plenty of light and safety for the project itself and for the apartments, and then there's also lights along Elm Place here so that when people are coming from the off-site parking, there's plenty of light.

I know that was really fast, and I know that you all have had time to look at the plans, and I'm sure you've generated questions, and so we'll be able to answer those at the end. I'm going to hand it over to TAT so that they can talk about the project, the building itself, and happy to answer questions later.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:26 - 1:11:32)
Can I just ask a quick question about the 15 spaces on Pittman?

[Speaker 7] (1:11:32 - 1:11:33)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:33 - 1:11:51)
I understand that some of those are on the public way, partially located, so I'm just wondering if those should be counted. You don't have to answer this right now. I can leave it for Chris to answer too, but just something to consider as we work our way through the project, one of the issues that was raised by planning.

[Speaker 7] (1:11:52 - 1:11:55)
Yes, and we want to work with you on that.

[Speaker 18] (1:11:56 - 1:11:56)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:58 - 1:11:59)
And that was it.

[Speaker 11] (1:11:59 - 1:12:00)
Any questions for now?

[Speaker 6] (1:12:12 - 1:20:14)
No, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm Mike Bennett.

I'm the managing partner at the architectural team. You're familiar with our work in that we're also the architects on the Michon School, so we're certainly familiar with the particular nature and quality of housing and architectural style throughout the town. That being said, we came in originally with a plan of 128 units that had certainly a much more modern design than what you see in the revision that I'll go through with you.

That was clearly, you know, we heard pretty clearly from residents and people throughout the town that that was not really the architectural path to really proceed down with a more modern kind of style. So in addition to kind of stylistically, we had originally anticipated a full five-story building throughout the whole footprint of the building. In looking at that and, again, hearing the response, and 40Bs are inevitably different than usually what surrounds them, unless you're in kind of a commercial area, they tend to be larger than neighborhoods in which they reside.

We take that into consideration in trying to balance all the needs of the site. Clearly, again, heard resounding concern about the bulk of the building here as well. We think we've made significant strides in reducing that bulk, particularly as it relates to Pitman and the narrowness of that street and how that kind of all nestles in.

So what you see before you is our original design, and with the red is kind of the area that's been taken out of the building along Pitman. We reduced that whole portion of the building to four stories, other than the piece that's now abutting Essex, which is our front door. That building is actually a two-story building where the first floor is taller because it's got some of our building amenities as well.

Essex Street is our front door. It's what people will see as you come to rent on the property and visit the property. But this design still continues to take advantage of the natural slope of the site, which slides down about six feet from Essex down Pitman towards the train tracks.

So what you see here is the building actually steps down and follows that roadway topography that exists today. And what we've done is you can see the front portion of the building aligns with really the third floor. It's a taller floor-to-floor height.

It aligns with the third-floor grade along Pitman as it starts to step down. So in addition to kind of changing the style of the building, one of the ways to diminish the feel of a bulk of a building is to break it down into smaller pieces. So what we really tried to do here is break the building into three separate components in the way that it looks and feels.

So the use of color, the two-story along Essex, transitions to a much more typical multifamily residential scale as it drops on Pitman. But we've introduced the fourth story here with a mansard roof, so it's very much more familiar as kind of what you would see in a roof as opposed to a floor, and created a cornice line at the third-floor level that really starts, we believe, to transition down to the smaller single-family scale and the housing authority scale, again, as you look across Pitman and walk down Pitman. Again, the original, much more modern, again, was all five stories, fairly different.

And looking back at it today, again, emphasizing the building and breaking down into those components, I think, make it feel much more, you know, transitional in scale to the existing buildings on Pitman. So in addition to kind of breaking down the horizontal, we wanted to make the building feel less linear as well, so the creation of building punch-outs along the way and recesses that make it feel, again, it's not a single street wall. It's broken down into components.

And I think really importantly, the individual porch entries along the units along Pitman will, again, really bring you kind of to the sidewalk level as you look down and your eye focuses on those things that are happening kind of at the sidewalk level as opposed to kind of up high. What you see, you transition from kind of where the blue and the gray is, again, changed to a slightly different style along the tracks, which is still at the five stories. Again, that gray is lower.

It's about six feet lower than the tracks, so there's the garage component that takes up the first floor is in large part concealed by the berm of the tracks themselves from our neighbors that are along Stetson and Norfolk. In terms of the way the building relates, I wanted to touch on, Deb mentioned the parking. We're down to 128 spaces for 120 units.

It's really important to note that 84 of those 120 units are studios. Seven are studios, 77 are one beds. So the mix of those units, it's really important to understand or think about in relation to, you know, our parking needs relative to not just number of units, but what those units really are.

So what I wanted to show here, the first floor grade and how the building really works on the site, we really followed the lead on what the land is and what the particular shape and size and topography of the site are. Pittman, it feels very different from Elm Place, and it's really very different from what the tracks are. So we, again, put the first level of parking along the tracks.

We've got a knuckle, the pink areas that you see kind of in the middle and up at the end on Essex Street are really the building amenity areas. Those are still being kind of fine-tuned, but basically state-of-the-art amenity packages, WeWork type of spaces, fitness, you know, today's needs for package deliveries, things like that, all, you know, well-planned in how the building is going to function. We've got some covered parking spaces in the Elm Place parking lot, directly accessed off that aisle, but we've hidden the parking completely from Pittman along the Pittman Street wing, again, by fronting the parking spaces with units.

So, again, you've got very familiar front door, front porches and elements, building elements that are much more familiar and traditional in the way Swampskate feels. Again, we've gone over the access issues with the fire department. We've met with them several times.

State-of-the-art fire detection, fire protection throughout the building. They have asked, and we have provided, we'll be providing direct stairway access to the roof, internal stairway access to the roof at their request. Direct radio contact with the fire department from their control box.

They're going to be attacking any kind of situation that would come up here in the knuckle between the two wings, again, at their request. And, you know, that aspect we're particularly sensitive to because life safety, obviously, is paramount. That's the first of many more meetings that will happen as we develop the construction drawings for the building should we be approved.

[Speaker 2] (1:20:35 - 1:42:46)
So, good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. For the record, my name is Jeffrey Dirk. I'm the managing partner with Manassas Associates and I'm appearing before you virtually, so I'm waiting for Angela to take control for me on this slide.

So we're the transportation consultants for the project. As you heard at the outset of the presentation, one of the subject areas I know that the town is expressing concern about is traffic and transportation. I would say in most instances before we appear before you, we do not have the benefit of having a professional peer review done of our work product.

And in this case, the town was very proactive in paying a peer review consultant to review our assessment. The benefit of that is not only that we get some feedback from the consultant, but it's also that, as I'm making the presentation to you tonight, the facts, the figures, the numbers that go through with you, as well as the findings and recommendations of the assessment have all been reviewed by your peer review consultant. And so as you're looking at the information I'm presenting, it's not just my work product.

It has been peer reviewed by my peer in World Tech Engineering, and they have confirmed the numbers in what I'm going to present to you tonight. So I think to some extent that's helpful. It obviously doesn't remove questions that you or the public may have, but at least I think that from the standpoint of the technical accuracy of the information, at least that's been validated.

So if you could go to the next slide, Angela. Thank you. So just by way of a high-level overview of the findings of the traffic study, so we completed an assessment, and that assessment is prepared in accordance with standard practice.

And those standard practices are kind of the first thing that your review consultant checks against. So the Department of Transportation has a series of requirements and guidelines that we must follow in preparing transportation assessments. And so you've had many traffic studies presented before to you before, and really the basis of making sure that we follow these guidelines is that the methodology and the way that we approach assessing impacts of the project are consistent, and so that you should be able to, you know, hear my presentation or presentations of other consultants, and they should be similar in terms of what they're presenting to you in terms of the data, and that really helps you as you sit and evaluate multiple projects. You should be able to see what the cumulative impacts of those projects are on the community roadway network.

As I mentioned, the title of the study is a transportation assessment, so we're looking at all modes of transportation. So as we look at our assessment, it's not only motor vehicles, but it's pedestrians and bicycles, and then I think you heard mentioned earlier, we're looking at emergency vehicle access, sight lines, and safety as well. So that's all built into our study.

It's not just traffic. It's all modes of transportation. So we did have the World Tech peer review.

One of the things that has been updated since this study was prepared, there were two additional intersections added to the study area, and those were the Hillcrest Circle intersection with Essex Street and the Essex Terrace intersection. Of course, the reason for that request is that those two locations are directly between Pittman Road, where the access is in the project, and Dignal at Burrill Street. And so there's an interaction, obviously, between the traffic signal and the traffic related to this project as it relates to those two residential streets.

So that has been added to our study area at the request of your peer review consultant. The thing is, we conduct traffic studies during this time where we have the COVID situation going on, that has certainly altered traffic volumes and trip patterns on all roadways within the Commonwealth. The volumes are getting back somewhat close to pre-COVID levels on some roadways, not all roadways.

But an important thing is that we always make sure that as we're conducting traffic counts that we refer back to historic pre-COVID counts to see if there's any adjustments that need to be made just to reflect those anomalies that may occur with respect to volumes and trip patterns in the areas. That has been done, and your consultant has validated our checks and balances against the pre-COVID traffic volumes. The overall conclusion of the study was that with respect to looking at motor vehicle delays and vehicle queues at intersections, this project's going to produce somewhere between 36 and 46 trips during the peak hour.

And that was actually based on the 128-unit development proposal, so the numbers are slightly smaller than that. Those are probably good round numbers to be using. So we're producing somewhere between 36 and 46 peak hour trips as we added that additional traffic onto the roadway network.

And, of course, it disperses sometimes right or left. Once it gets out to Essex Street, the numbers get smaller and smaller. And as you look at residual impacts at the intersections, what we found is that delays did not increase by any more than 10 seconds over no-build conditions, so essentially conditions without the project.

And that resulting increase in delay also caused an increase in vehicle queuing of no more than two vehicles. So, again, in terms of the metrics looking at the impacts of the project, increases in delays of 10 seconds or less, increases in queuing of less than two vehicles at any intersection, so it was not significant. I think critical as we look at operations at intersections, there's really no significant changes in terms of those levels of service that you heard, those report card and intersection operations, the gradations, and we really want to do better in terms of letter grade, so that's what we're trying to get, that's passing essentially at intersections.

All movements were D or better, and this project did not cause any intersections to degrade below the level of service of D, so it was again a relatively minor as a result of the project. It doesn't mean there aren't impacts and that we don't have mitigation, but just in terms of entering of the impacts, that's what we found and your review consultant has confirmed with. Also very important, those safety deficiencies, and we'll talk about that in a minute, safety deficiencies being both motor vehicle crashes, and then the last bullet point you see here, looking at lines of sight at not only the driveways, but also at the Essex Street, Pitman Road, and Essex Place intersections, that the sight lines were appropriate for the actual speed of traffic along the road, but it's not posted speed limit, but the speed, the vehicles are actually driving.

Next slide, please. So this slide just shows the contents of the project site, obviously highlighted in yellow on the slide here, and you heard mentioned that the site is bounded by the commuter rail track to the, we'll call it to the southeast of the project site, and you can see Essex Street more or less running in the southwest northeast direction, bounding the project site to the north. Just to the southwest you see the Swampscott commuter rail station there, and that's an important landmark that we'll talk about in a minute.

Next slide, please. This slide here shows, as I mentioned, this is a transportation assessment, and so what this slide here shows is not only that Wheeler Project site is located in relation to the roadway network, but what you see in the orange lines is where there are sidewalks, and again, that's very important as we're looking at ways to reduce the amount of automobile traffic and parking demands for the project, to make sure that the project site is walkable, bikeable, and has access to public transportation.

So this slide shows actually all of those features. The orange, as I mentioned, is where there are existing sidewalks. So you see Essex Street has a continuous sidewalk that extends past the project site frontage.

There's sidewalks along Pitman Road. We have a short segment of sidewalk along Elm Place that extends just a little bit beyond Essex Street. Where you see the blue lines, those are where there are crosswalks.

So that's where you have active crossing of intersections. So you see that all of the intersections that were crossing of at least one lane, the two signalized intersections at Burrell Street to the southwest of the site, and then at Burbey Road to the northeast of the site, those have crosswalks across Essex Street for crossing, and those are all controlled by push buttons and have a pedestrian crossing basin for pedestrians to be able to cross both of those intersections.

And lastly, I want to mention, it might be difficult to see, but when you see the little Bs in the circles, and you can see right opposite the site there's a little B, that's the bus stop locations for the MBTA's 455 bus route that goes right by the project site. And again, we pointed that out because it's an amenity. So if we look back to the site location app, we've got the Swanstock Community Rail Station, which is about a 45-minute walking distance to the west of the site, and we have all of these sidewalks that connect us up to that.

We also have the 455 bus that stops right out in front of the site. So I mention those because those are opportunities to us to be able to leverage those existing infrastructure to reduce the traffic and parking demands for the project, and as we talk about some of the recommendations we'll see that we do have recommendations on how the project can encourage the residents to use those alternative modes of transportation. Next slide.

So this slide shows the traffic characteristics of the project, and I'll kind of explain it in a minute, but what we're showing on here is the trip characteristics of the project, and it's broken down by the mode of transportation. So we did review the U.S. Census data for the town of Swanstock and this specific area within the town and looked at the numbers of persons that report that they use an alternative mode of transportation to single occupancy vehicles. So in this general area, approximately 70% of residents commute by means of a single occupancy vehicle, and 30% use an alternative mode.

What you can see here in terms of the way that we've developed the traffic characteristics of the project, and we've assumed 83% of the trips on this project will be made by a single occupancy vehicle, and in the balance, 17% will be made by an alternative mode of transportation. So we've assumed that 15% of the trips will be made by public transportation. Again, the bus stop is right out in front of the site, and the commuter rail station is an amenity that's within a 45-minute walking distance of this project site.

So we think that given the fact that in this general area, residents of the town, about 15% of them use public transportation services. We're expecting our residents will basically use that same mode of transportation at a same percent of wise basis. 2% of the trips are made by pedestrian and bicycle trips in the area, and again, that's consistent with what residents of this area have expressed as their mode of transportation.

About 2% say that they walk by. The thing that's not shown here is about 7% of the residents in this area report that they work from home. We actually think that now during COVID, that number is slightly higher, but at some point, we'll get back to probably more people being in the office, although the work-from-home trend is going to pretty much stay there.

But again, that's something that's not reflected in those numbers. In fact, what we've done is the work-from-home numbers have actually been pushed into the single occupancy numbers. So I think as your consultant has looked at our breakdown of these trips, he's basically concluded that these are conservative on the high side in terms of our estimates of the amount of automobile usage.

So it's a long way of getting to what you see in the blue column or the blue-shaded column here, which is the amount of automobile trips that we're expecting to add to the roadway network. And so this is based on the 128-unit development program, and you can see those peak hour trips. So one hour in the morning, the highest traffic volume between 7 and 9 in the morning.

The peak hour is actually somewhere between 7.30 and 8.30 in the morning. We're going to produce about 36 vehicle trips. That's 10 vehicles entering the site and 26 exiting.

In the evening, the highest traffic volume hour between 4 and 6, which is generally between 5 and 6 p.m., we're going to produce about 46 vehicle trips. That's 27 vehicles entering and 19 exiting. The rest of the traffic associated with the project would happen outside of these peak hours.

So even though we're only having 36 during a one-hour period, let's say, in the morning, and there's that 7.30 to 8.30, what it means is that between, let's say, 8 and 9, we could have 35 vehicle trips. It's just not 36. 36 is the peak number, so it basically rises up on a curve to a peak, and that would be 36, and then it slopes back down.

But on either side of the curve, the numbers could be 30 to 35, but just not 36. So if we take these high-traffic volume hours and the peak hour and add them to the high-traffic volume hour on the roadway network, that's the worst-case analysis condition. That's what we assess for the project.

The 120-unit project will probably... it will reduce these numbers, the peak-hour numbers, by about 4 to 5 trips. So you could call it 30 trips in the morning, 40 in the evening, just by way of round numbers, so it's not a significant change.

But our analysis and your review consultants' evaluation of our index are based on the 128 units in these higher-traffic volumes. Next slide. So this slide shows how those trips are distributed onto the roadway network.

As I mentioned in the initial slide, the reason we don't have a significant increase in delays is the traffic gets away from the site and the numbers get smaller and smaller. So that 36 and 46, that's the concentrated number right at the project site, so it's, let's say, all coming out of Elm Place up Essex Street, and then as that traffic disperses, turns right or left, the 36 and the 46 get smaller based on these percentages here. So this is how those trips distribute themselves onto the roadway network.

And this data is based on U.S. Census data for persons that reside in the town of Swampscott and basically where you report that you go to work. So as you report on the U.S. Census, you say that you live in the town, and then you also report where your primary workplace is. And so we can look at those primary workplaces and then how do you get there from this project site.

And so that's how we come up with the distribution that you see here. So what you see is about, we come out from Elm Place, what you see is 70% of that traffic would be turning left and heading to the southwest on Essex Street. The balance, 30%, is turning to the north and heading northeast along Essex Street.

And then that traffic that turned left, you can see that it distributes itself about 45% onto Essex Street, 25% down to Burrill Street heading towards the commuter rail station and southerly thereafter. But the point of this really is, the 36 and the 46 gets broken down into numbers that as soon as you get outside of this general area, we're really talking about no more than 20 trips on any roadway during the peak hours. So again, that's why the numbers get smaller and smaller as you curve away from the site and so the impacts get smaller and smaller.

Next slide, Angela. So before we talk about our recommendations on the study, we also wanted to talk about parking because I know that there's been some significant discussions about right-sizing parking for this project site and also recognizing, as was mentioned, we also have the adjacent gym that abuts the project site so we've got parking associated with not only ourselves or this project but also with the gym itself. So focusing specifically on this project, one of the things that we were asked to do is look at comparable residential communities that have similar proximity to commuter rail and MBTA bus services.

So we did undertake a study of parking demand studies and actual demand observations at three residential communities and those residential communities are the Vantage Point apartments that are located in Swabscott, the Bell North Shore apartments that are located in Sale, and Hamilton Highlands that are located in Meade. So those are all multifamily residential communities. They have similar access to public transportation by way of either MBTA bus service or walkability to a commuter rail station.

The peak parking demands for a residential community, as you might imagine, happen late in the evening and very early in the morning. So it's when everyone's back home from work and before they've gone to work. So generally you're going to find that the peak parking demand is going to happen early in the morning.

So that's when we've done our parking demand observations. So you can see that we conducted the observations at each community in 15-minute increments starting at 5 a.m. and going until 8 a.m. And then within that time period, the three-hour window that we observed parking demands, we actually walked through the parking lots and observed the number of vehicles in the park. What we found is that the average parking demand, peak parking demand, was on a weekday it's about 1.1 spaces per residential unit. And on a Saturday, it's slightly less than that. It's about 1.08. But on average, it's about 1.1 spaces per residential unit. So that's what the demand observations that we found were.

And they're pretty consistent with what industry standards are. And I think your consultant had taken a review of this and also provided some citations to you indicating that for multifamily residential parks and commuter rail plus services, the numbers are somewhere below once. So these demand observations are consistent with that.

And I think you heard mentioned that we're reviewing our parking supply to try to achieve these parking demand ratios. Next slide. So now focusing on the recommendations from our study, we have recommendations related to the access to the property and internal circulation and then those related to off-site and then finally transportation demand management.

So the recommendations are mostly relative to the site access. They're consistent with some of the comments that your consultant had. We want to make sure the access points are 24 feet wide.

The same thing with the circulating miles throughout the site. That allows for two-way traffic. It also allows for parking maneuvers to occur in efficient manner.

We've recommended stop signs and stop lines where appropriate, compliance of signs and pavement markings with both state and federal standards. We want to make sure the site's spot is walkable, so wheelchair ramps and crosswalks where appropriate. And then focusing on signs and landscaping and snow storage areas.

And this was a comment from your peer review consultant, to make sure that none of those features block cycling from the driveways or from any of the adjacent roadways. So there are commitments to make sure that that does not, in fact, occur. And looking at storage areas, a commitment to making sure that we remove any snow that would exceed a certain height that would block cycling.

Next slide. Angela, you can change to the next slide. I'm a little bit delayed.

Thanks. So in terms of off-site recommendations, so these are recommendations outside of the boundaries to the project site. So the Essex Street out-of-place intersection, we call it the southern intersection, which is the one proximate to the project site, we have recommended that a stop line be provided that would really demark the location where vehicles would stop so they're not sticking out into the crosswalk that's across Essex out-of-place.

So that's an important feature, given the fact that we're adding vehicular traffic to the out-of-place approach, as well as more pedestrians crossing in the crosswalk. We've also recommended that WL's center line be provided because, again, with the increased traffic on that approach, the out-of-place approach that we'll be vehicle-queuing as it approaches Essex Street, that WL's center line just makes sure the vehicles are properly positioned so that vehicles that are turning from Essex Street onto out-of-place are able to do that if the vehicles aren't changing over that center line.

So it's basically the stop line and center line just are basically providing proper vehicle positioning relative to their approach to Essex Street. The Essex Street traffic signal system, so this includes the Burroughs Street intersection, Angela, if you go back one, this includes the signal at Burroughs Street as well as at the Furby Road intersection. So you have two traffic signals there.

We are adding traffic to those intersections, obviously, and so we are recommending and committed to retiming those traffic signals, making sure that they work in an optimal fashion, that the pedestrian crossing times are sufficient for pedestrians to safely cross those intersections, and then the coordination, so how those two intersections operate in concert with each other, that that's functioning in an efficient manner.

The other thing that's not still on this slide, and it was a part of the supplemental evaluation that Angela had mentioned that we submitted, was at both of the additional intersections, so at the Essex Terrace and at the Hillcrest Circle intersection. One of the reasons we were asked to look at it is because we know that vehicle queuing for those two signals, especially at the Burroughs Street intersection does at times go, extend back so that it blocks the ability to be able to enter and exit those streets, so one of the things that we've committed to doing to the extent that the town would like it to be done is installing the do not block pavement markings and signs at those intersections to be able to keep those clear to allow vehicles to be able to enter and exit those.

It is a town roadway, so subject to town approval, we wouldn't be able to implement those improvements, so that's an addition that we recommended as a result of the Bureau's comments. Next slide, Angela. And then lastly, we have a transportation demand management program for the project, and each of the bullet points you see here are a series of measures that the management company, after the building is constructed, will undertake in order to encourage residents to be able to understand that there is transportation services available to them and where those services are located and then very importantly, what the train schedules, what the bus schedules are so that they have access to all of that information and then in terms of pedestrian and bicycle accommodation, we do have a fully walkable site, so sidewalks, crosswalks and connections out to the sidewalk and Essex Street, and then within the site, we have both external bicycle racks as well as weather-protected bicycle parking as well, so we're providing both of those. Again, all of these measures are meant to encourage use of those available public transportation options.

I believe that's the last slide, Angela, so I'll turn it back over to the team. Thank you.

[Speaker 8] (1:42:46 - 1:42:55)
Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. So that does conclude our prepared notes and presentation, so thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:57 - 1:43:19)
Okay. Well, thank you very much. I had a question about the rail trail landing and really trying to understand that and what you propose, if anything, about that issue, which I know was raised at the Planning Board.

[Speaker 14] (1:43:24 - 1:44:46)
So this is Gilbert. I can speak to that. So we, just to state maybe firstly, we very much support the rail trail and think that, in general, and we think that the rail trail being adjacent, abutting, or as close as possible to our site will be a real amenity to our residents.

We think it's a wonderful idea. There is space to, as you look at the site, if you're facing the tracks to the right, that we have reserved, there's about 10 feet there, that we have reserved to be donated for a dollar or a license agreement for a dollar to the town to, together with land that's on the Housing Authority site that abuts it, to more than be adequate for a rail trail landing. To date, like recently, the Housing Authority has made it known publicly that they don't wish to have a rail trail there.

I don't know if that is subject to future change, future negotiations between the town and the Housing Authority. I'm not involved in that. But I just want the Board to know that we will continue to reserve our half of that land for free for the rail trail should that change in the future.

Because we think it's a wonderful thing for our residents.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:47 - 1:47:17)
Okay. Well, I could just note for consideration that I do see that as an area of discussion and consideration for our Board. There are some very good points that are raised in the public comments that were submitted.

I see Mr. Perry's here. He brought that up. I see other people have brought that up.

Planning has brought that up. That the town made the plan and adopted a town meeting to fund this rail trail. And the risk that it's cut off and doesn't connect all of the town despite the portion of the town that's contributed their taxes to this plan for this rail trail and the potential impediment from the project.

That leads me to another question about the circulation on the site and trying to understand. I know in the Planning Board comments, which I'm sure you've seen, I think this was these were Angela's notes that were on the back page. And she had a it looks like that's what she was showing was the rail trail landing being half on your property and half on the the Housing Authority site.

Is that what it appears if you look at this sketch that she had it was in the Planning Board comments. But I also want to understand about the easement for parking that is on this site or proposed for the Berks gym. And I want to make sure I understand what the how the parking I know the number of spots.

I see the plan, but I want to understand about the easement that exists and how you're addressing the potential conflict with the Berks parking for the site.

[Speaker 4] (1:47:20 - 1:48:36)
If I may a little bit on the Berks parking situation. There was a lease between Mr. Paradise who owns that building and the Berks Tumbling Academy and in that lease a certain number of parking spaces are guaranteed to Berks Tumbling Academy with there's 34 spaces have to be the they're entitled to the 34 spaces closest to the front door of the building. The other spaces that they have are on the side of the building so that they have in total 51 spaces.

And that was part of a lease it's in existence and we have been able to work a little bit with them in reconfiguring their parking spaces with some negotiations that we've had with them and that's where that situation is. It was a pre-existing lease.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:39 - 1:49:08)
Has there been any thought about, I see the board, Angela, had a substantial suggestion that would require quite a bit of reconfiguration about moving the Berks Gym further down and its parking and segregating. Was there any discussion internally that you had about that?

[Speaker 4] (1:49:09 - 1:49:36)
This is we've only had this from them, from Angela, shortly after the date of the document. And as I said earlier on, I think that we're in the process of trying to prepare a response to that November 22nd.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:38 - 1:49:38)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:39 - 1:49:41)
We have a lot of things to consider.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:41 - 1:51:04)
Yeah, no, no, there's a lot in there. I agree. I certainly haven't been able to digest it all.

But I see the questions that she's raising are about the parking circulation and connection. Along those lines, is the plan for the parking spaces for each unit to be assigned to a unit at all? Or is it to be open spaces?

Yeah, we would look to assign those spaces. It would be either done probably through a lease agreement, or you can assign a space for the individual. Recognizing that you only have so many spaces and figuring out.

That's right. And of course, for the programming on that, I see there was a comment about there being 84 studio and one bedroom units, but only, I think, 77 of those are studio. 77 are one bedroom.

And then the rest are proposed for two-bedroom or three-bedroom. It seems that it could be a lot of difficulty in locating a space and having residents driving around if they didn't have an assigned space. So I was just curious about what the programming for that was.

[Speaker 4] (1:51:06 - 1:51:08)
You have to know that there are people on site.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:09 - 1:51:16)
Yeah, I was just going to say that this would be also managed. I don't know if we spoke to that, but wind development is the entity working with Mary Bruce to develop this property.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:17 - 1:51:53)
It will also be managed by Wind Residential, which is the residential arm of wind companies, which would have full-time on-site staff managing the property on a day-to-day basis. Right, but I believe in your submission you expect to have people on site in the management office until 5 o'clock, right? Right.

Typically Monday through Friday during reset periods, it would probably go into the weekends, but 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. What about are there management people or is there someone on site after 5 p.m. for maintenance issues, for parking issues? Absolutely, yeah.

[Speaker 14] (1:51:53 - 1:52:36)
So I just want to clarify we will number the spaces and they will be assigned to each unit. And then there will be at all hours, 24 hours, 7 days a week, there will be an ability to tow cars should people be not in their assigned spots with the assigned sticker. That's common practice and not unusual.

In terms of after hours, consistent with any Class A luxury building, when the manager goes home for the evening, there's a number for tenants to call and that number is answered and should there need to be a dispatch of a maintenance worker or a security issue, it's dealt with immediately.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:42 - 1:59:39)
What I thought would be the next step for us to do is to go through some of the comments. I don't know if you've had a fair chance to look at the planning board comments, is what I plan to do, to walk through those. And the alternative is to look to take some public comment.

We're at 10 minutes of 9 now so we have about an hour and 10 minutes left. If I went through or perhaps we could go through some of the planning board's comments, which I think will probably be a lot of the same issues that the public is raising and not to necessarily work through all the issues tonight but just to address areas of concern and to as the planning board suggests, identify problems and issues and perhaps consider some possible solutions. Why don't we do that?

The first one that they raised was about parking, which you spent a lot of time in your presentation understating that it's a significant issue. The question being whether or not the 128 spaces with 15 on Pittman Road are or now it's 13 on Pittman Road. That's how we get to the 128 and whether or not that is adequate.

I understand you believe it is adequate and with the programming that you plan to do but the potential solution that Angela was talking about the planning board was to look at ways to increase parking potentially with site redesign as she gave you her sketch. I guess I should ask the question on the lease with the gym. What's the term of the lease?

In terms of the length of it. When does it expire? Okay, so you have a long-term commitment already with that tenant.

So about six years left with the five-year option? If anybody else on the board has questions as I go through some of these issues please feel free to raise them. Angela raised the issue of circulation with the on-site and off-site parking lots broken up.

Tenants driving back and forth to find parking. It sounds like you're looking to have a program to address that. She also talked once again about site redesign with all parking on-site.

Perhaps at the next meeting you could show us what you suggest with programming to identify parking that relates to specific units. At least the programming. How many spaces would be for a studio?

How many spaces would be for a one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom? And how you might control that if there are reductions in rent if someone doesn't have a car, doesn't have parking and also identifying specifically I'm trying to understand where the where the Amazon trucks are going and Uber Eats and wherever else for deliveries and guests and how you would plan to program that. I think that is something I would really like to see because it's one thing to understand how it relates to other sites that are comparable but to see it with these other uses that everybody is using, how it relates.

Overflow parking in the Burke spots overnight. So I'd also think that perhaps if you could represent that that might be permitted if there might be a potential modification of the lease that permits you to use those spaces that would be an amendment to the lease so there was comfort that yes there could be overnight parking in those spaces. That might be something to consider to have a legal right to use those spaces overnight or if there's a snow emergency to be able to use those and the next comment you had was about staff parking that that should also be considered when showing us this parking plan as to where the staff is expected to park and how do we protect the SHA parking spots so I'm not exactly sure where those are located I think I'd have to understand that a little bit more but that's another comment that was raised no on-street parking available so I'm not sure currently what the limitations are on on-street but I see that's one of the comments here and I don't know if on any of the side streets here if there are different limitations that are proposed from the town but it sounds like planning believes that there is no additional on-street parking available is that accurate that there's no on-street parking that's abutting the project well I'm saying it looks like I'm thinking just more immediately on Essex Street you can't park on Essex Street and on

[Speaker 4] (1:59:40 - 1:59:41)
Elm Place

[Speaker 1] (1:59:41 - 2:02:37)
there is parking on Elm Place on-street parking on Elm Place non-resident okay so that might be something else to identify in the plan on-street parking and how many spots are there and whether or not it has limitations currently about who can park there if there's any permit that you need there as a resident or not and she comments parking already at maximum strain in this area due to limited street parking and demands of train station parking but she raises the issue of potential for zip car rentals bike rentals shuttle, create rail trail connection the thought on the zip car rentals I don't know that it needs to be necessarily done at your site with the amount of people that you have there but that might be something to consider perhaps discussing with the MBTA to have a zip car at the train station or more and to perhaps have bike rentals there at the train station that your residents could access easily and reserve and it might encourage more people to not have cars at your property is another thought that I had on the traffic issues that Planning Board has raised she raised I don't know that I need to go through all of the issues that are raised here right now but especially when we have a consultant that's also providing information and advice or peer review but it's once again addressing the UPS FedEx, Amazon the potential conflict at the Berks entrance and it sounds like the potential for more traffic calming measures there which typically are involving more with on the public way and whether or not there should be any I guess that's a question for for Mr. Dirk and our consultant to consider whether that should be taken yes oh yeah so we should use some of that time yeah

[Speaker 22] (2:02:37 - 2:02:40)
yeah so why don't I

[Speaker 1] (2:02:40 - 2:02:46)
take a break from going through those right from World Tech

[Speaker 3] (2:02:50 - 2:03:47)
and if I could Mr. Chairman this is Edward Glenn in general I think there's a lot of stuff in that planning board letter and I think in general as you sift through the input you're getting it's really key to sort of think through what are suggestions that they can certainly consider to make the project better and what are key problems that have been identified and ideally that's where really the peer review really can help because I think if you have a traffic engineer saying there's a problem here that's a really important hook to hang up on and say we need to address that problem with mitigation if there are different ways of doing it and you'd just like the applicant to consider something that's all fine but if you're thinking about adding a condition I think we really want to hear from World Tech to say is there sufficient parking are these sight lines okay those sort of questions with that I'll turn it over to Mike

[Speaker 1] (2:03:48 - 2:04:01)
alright great thank you Ezra thank you Marissa I see Mr. Mike here yes Mike

[Speaker 5] (2:04:02 - 2:09:26)
again Rod Emery from World Tech Engineering I think you just did a pretty good job summarizing the traffic story we're a little bit at a disadvantage because some of the data that we reviewed was a year old or six months old so the parking plans that we looked at were not the latest plans the traffic report was the latest traffic report and we did get a supplementary parking analysis without being a dead horse all the building blocks went into the traffic study which is gathering all the existing traffic line information the existing conditions generating traffic for this project trip generation distribution we all looked at seasonal adjustments COVID-19 seasonal variations and all the foundation for the traffic study was well done and didn't require any our comment was that it was okay I think that just like we've said for a couple hours now a couple of the issues probably the biggest one is parking we were looking at an old plan obviously there's been some changes a little bit of reduction in the number of units a little bit more parking our comments were still this existing parking lease, how is that managed and how is the assigned parking going to work all of those are still questions that we've had some debate how do we manage the parking and there are new parking on Elm Place to look at I'll reserve some of those comments, we did look at a couple of site distance issues I still think that we need to make sure the driveway isn't blocked by snow and trees and parked cars and we did recommend another look at the Elm Place maybe just be the sign there's a difference between stopping site distance and intersection site distance intersection's a little bit longer distance to see and we go back and forth on which one's required stopping site distance is if you're on Essex Street and when he pulls out unexpectedly from Elm Place you have enough time to stop or I prefer it to be a little more conservative it says we want enough site distance so if you're on the site street you have enough site distance to pull out safely it may be a sign or two maybe just checking the driveway design to make sure that works Jeff did mention retiming the signals and the queuing on blockage of some of the signal work the timing has changed for pedestrian and vehicle clearance times are all brand new a little bit longer they've already done the analysis so let's just take advantage of recommending some timing changes there so site distance parking site access and traffic operations I think were all the highlights that we paid attention to and made some recommendations all of the issues about the different types of parking are still, you know, need to be defined a little bit better I didn't see, I think it was a commitment to bicycle parking I didn't see that delineated on the plans as well, so, you know, it's just cleaning up some of the details on the parking that are probably the most outstanding and it's not unusual that we talk a lot about parking I've done probably ten housing project periods in the last year parking is all over the place on multi-family housing and the other ones that are going on right now are lab spaces, so those are the two biggest land uses that are sort of out there and there is a lot of research going on about limiting the parking, which I think is a good idea but we also have to be aware that in residential neighborhoods, we don't want to burden the people that live in the neighborhood so it's always that sort of strain between just enough parking but not too much parking to encourage more people driving and we do have a bus route that Jeff talked about out front, we have the MBTA station, so we definitely will have a reduction in the number of trips that might be on other projects where you don't have as good access to public transit the fires we did bring up the fire access that seems like it's been addressed, we also need to look at how trash is picked up and the site access has to be done as well, so there's a couple issues there that still need to be defined or cleared up I understand there's a response to our peer review, I haven't seen it yet, so we'll take a look at that as well. I'm happy to answer any other questions too that come up Did you look at delivery in your review?

I looked at well, we mentioned that somewhere on the site, somebody should it should be validated where delivery parking is for that

[Speaker 1] (2:09:31 - 2:10:41)
so I see under site distance with your recommendation there that it should be provided to improve the site distance for drivers on Elm Place to enter Essex Street to meet the ISD requirements or provide additional warning measures to warn drivers on Essex Street at the site drive intersection with Elm Place, review the parking layout along Elm Place to make sure that ISD site triangles can be maintained and snow storage and landscaping will not impede site distances for exiting vehicles My question would be on that recommendation that's earlier for safety On the next page you talk about the some of the things that we raised earlier about the management of the parking spaces and the shared parking with tumbling academies we've talked about that and similarly would you see those as safety issues?

[Speaker 5] (2:10:45 - 2:11:00)
Well, anytime you have people wandering that aren't sure where they're parking or recirculating, I think you just don't want the extra traffic on residential streets so it's sort of ancillary safety issue if you will

[Speaker 1] (2:11:14 - 2:11:36)
And you have you talk about that they've addressed the fire access

[Speaker 5] (2:11:36 - 2:11:40)
In our report it wasn't addressed but I see that by now it is

[Speaker 1] (2:11:40 - 2:12:03)
Right, but what about the not being able to get to the back of the building along I see they provided a plan that shows the fire hose being able to reach along the back but I don't know if that's your area of expertise Not the fire hose

[Speaker 5] (2:12:03 - 2:12:08)
but definitely the turning tracks of different types of vehicles

[Speaker 1] (2:12:10 - 2:12:24)
Okay, so I think it might be one question for fire that I have about access behind the building and whether it's safe with the fire truck not being able to reach further than the turnarounds

[Speaker 5] (2:12:26 - 2:12:30)
It was originally a plan that showed where the fire hose was laid out

[Speaker 3] (2:12:30 - 2:12:45)
but again, that's not my expertise And on that again, this is Ezra, the applicant has represented, they spoke with fire prevention but certainly we want to get a letter from fire prevention saying we're okay with this plan and we'll check it out

[Speaker 1] (2:12:45 - 2:14:13)
Yeah, okay, great, thank you We have that We have that Okay, alright, so it must be in my comments here Okay Alright, and you talked about the signal timing that they're addressing Yes And the comparison with the other properties that were done in Salem and I think that one was in Needham They had at least two of them I believe had a significant higher ratio for spots that were available than what we have here I'm just trying to confirm that you agree with the conclusions about the assumptions that are made to get to the opinion on spaces per unit Well, I referenced again, I didn't have

[Speaker 5] (2:14:13 - 2:15:02)
this information available when I did my review, it was based on a whole parking plan and I did get the supplementary parking study from Jeff and the API and I compared it to standard IT rates and MAPC's done some work now that show they've done several communities in the North Shore I think Peabody Beverly, and I can't remember the third one that they did a follow-up study to So it's a little bit more than what MAPC says It's a little bit less than what IT says It's in the ballpark, but I think taking another look at it again, I think you want to get that right balance of not encouraging people to drive cars and protect your neighborhood

[Speaker 10] (2:15:05 - 2:15:05)
It's within

[Speaker 5] (2:15:05 - 2:15:34)
that ballpark I guess Understanding what's going on with this Burks Academy or the Tumbling Academy and how that works to me is a crucial part of understanding it and how you are signing spaces are we signing we don't expect people to come in at night, when the Tumbling Academy opened late and they use those spaces at night, or what is the exact management of how all the parking's going to work

[Speaker 1] (2:15:36 - 2:15:42)
Do you think it would be important for you to see what the specifics are of the lease agreement

[Speaker 5] (2:15:45 - 2:15:51)
No, it would be more about how we're going to manage the site manage the parking, is it just free for all

[Speaker 10] (2:15:51 - 2:15:54)
I heard tonight that there's going to be assigned parking

[Speaker 12] (2:15:54 - 2:15:58)
so each unit will be some kind of assignment

[Speaker 5] (2:15:58 - 2:17:02)
by unit but what gives me the other factor is that it was mentioned that there is a large number of studios which I think will keep the parking demand down compared to some other sites there is a factor for parking based on the number of bedrooms that should apply and that would give you less than 120 spaces that they're providing it would be probably close to 110, so again I think we're in the ballpark if we get the right balance of visitors and deliveries and how we balance this existing lease parking I don't think people are going to like to walk as far away, but depending on how late at night it is and where you're coming back to I live on a street your report has, we have no driveway, so we're always parking on the street, so parking's a condition that's always a problem for us

[Speaker 1] (2:17:05 - 2:17:14)
Okay, so you'll be able to take a look before our next hearing at any changes that are made by the petitioner

[Speaker 5] (2:17:14 - 2:17:24)
Yeah, I'd like to see the response to the parking and then, you know, based on some of the comments tonight I think we're close I think we just need to iron out some of the details

[Speaker 1] (2:17:25 - 2:17:25)
Okay

[Speaker 3] (2:17:25 - 2:17:52)
And the general process is you have a peer review memo which I think you all have now and I think it might even be on the on the website, but you can see it's identified a number of issues we would ideally hope that eventually gets changed into something that is kind of like a clean bill of health, essentially it says all the issues have been addressed through possible changes or more information and that's the model for all the peer reviews essentially.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:52 - 2:18:00)
So, Ezra, is that something that I should be asking Rod to work directly with their traffic engineer to get to that clean bill of health?

[Speaker 3] (2:18:01 - 2:18:30)
I think it's implicit. It was in the scope I think we gave to Rod and it's kind of incumbent on the applicant to now have heard all these questions and get the answers so that Rod can get that clean bill of health You know, they have no benefit in dragging their feet I think they've mostly said they understand these issues but the two of them can speak directly and then what we want from Rod is something saying every issue I had has been addressed and here's how

[Speaker 5] (2:18:31 - 2:18:48)
And generally I think Jeff did say or somebody said that they did provide a response to our peer review so generally our next step is to review those comments and then say yeah everything looks good now or you know we still have two or three issues we need to iron out we work through those

[Speaker 3] (2:18:49 - 2:18:59)
And the basic process is we move from question to identifying the issues to finding the solutions and then once you're there we're ready to move on

[Speaker 1] (2:19:09 - 2:19:30)
Rod, I wanted to ask you about something else that was identified by planning board about pedestrian access on site and crosswalks in front of Elm Place Is that Is that something that is in your peer review?

[Speaker 5] (2:19:31 - 2:19:46)
Yes Okay I just got the planning board comments today so I'll take a look at those issues as well Okay, alright Is there any other questions that you have for Rod, anybody?

[Speaker 1] (2:19:47 - 2:21:04)
Or Ron? Okay, alright well Rod thank you we might have some more questions for you appreciate your input very much One thing I wanted to bring up that is in the planning board comments and I think is something that we should address or at least have a discussion about about the the design and the size of the structure and the pitman side talks about further stepping back building along pitman road and planning board raised the questions shadow study and also about the height of the building and so the question I had was whether or not there should be architectural peer review on the site and whether the I wanted to ask Ezra what he thought about that

[Speaker 3] (2:21:06 - 2:22:14)
Sure it's certainly something you have the right to ask for and I'd say probably I'd say about half of the 40Bs I've worked on and certainly the larger ones you know I think with this one it does seem like there are quite a lot of changes made already so I think the first important thing would be for the board if you felt those changes were generally moving in the right direction but you still had some thoughts or concerns about the shadow study or this idea of could there be a way to open up a corridor through or what about the sound that's certainly something an architectural peer review could help you with and there's a number of firms who do it you would essentially as you did with the traffic and with the utilities you would request the applicant provide you with funding and procure the services as you normally do you know as long as you're doing it in a timely way I think it's a perfectly reasonable sort of thing I would encourage you to get that lined up maybe make that vote today and get it lined up soon so it doesn't slow the process down because it can work sort of in tandem with everything else but yeah I think it's well within what seems reasonable

[Speaker 1] (2:22:14 - 2:22:43)
to me Thank you Ezra So Chris that's something I would ask you about I see there's a lot of questions that are raised in the planning board comments and I'm just thinking about getting out in front of the issue and looking to address it timely as opposed to being at our meeting in January and we're asking for it Go right ahead take your time

[Speaker 14] (2:23:09 - 2:23:10)
We have to

[Speaker 4] (2:23:15 - 2:23:20)
We had to conduct a shadow study I don't know whether it was apparently it wasn't submitted

[Speaker 1] (2:23:20 - 2:23:32)
I haven't seen it but I don't know that it's a shadow study I see it as also a lot of the questions that we've already talked about that rail trail landing connection I don't know if that's something that might be within

[Speaker 4] (2:23:32 - 2:23:37)
I think the difficulty with the whole rail trail thing is getting across the railroad track

[Speaker 1] (2:23:38 - 2:23:38)
Right

[Speaker 4] (2:23:38 - 2:23:44)
If you're going to I mean to be quite candid if you're thinking about doing a tunnel

[Speaker 1] (2:23:45 - 2:23:49)
I heard that's out I heard that that is out I heard that

[Speaker 4] (2:23:49 - 2:24:26)
to walk across it or to build some sort of a bridge across it it would be so high enough over a train and I just think you don't have enough wind in that area to really effectively do that Your only course is to work something out with foot traffic going over the railroad track and that's going to be up to dealing with the MBTA and how agreeable they will be to that whole process It's a bit of a conundrum

[Speaker 1] (2:24:26 - 2:25:33)
Right, I realize that but if to have your expert telling us I suppose it's one thing for you guys to say sure we'll, I mean you can only do what you can do if you're saying we'll have this landing area and we'll provide access, I just want to make sure if the town is able to get something done there that a building isn't built there that prevents the further connection or this landing area, so that's why I'm just thinking getting out in front of the architectural issues in terms of we're excited or to hear that yes what they've done is what they should be doing and getting the peer review done for that and the other issues that are being raised by planning that I see from the comments from the public so that's that's why I think it's something we should be considering

[Speaker 4] (2:25:34 - 2:26:00)
I think it's fully within your prerogative to do that a lot of the questions as I said, I think I said in the very beginning when we got the information from the planning board, we haven't had a chance to pull all of our answers together in that section but I know that we have many of those, we can provide many of those answers

[Speaker 1] (2:26:00 - 2:26:26)
but you know how it's going to play out if you give me a shadow study we need a peer review on the shadow study because no one from the public who's opposed is going to trust it so we might as well I think get out in front of it and engage, look to engage as quickly as possible for that peer review so that we can do it on on a expeditious basis

[Speaker 14] (2:26:28 - 2:26:38)
so if it's the the desire of the CBA to order a peer review we're happy to assent to that

[Speaker 1] (2:26:38 - 2:27:18)
okay, alright so let me just make sure that we can pick a vote on that issue of engaging an architect for peer review of the architectural issues that are raised I'm going to take a roll call on that so I'm a yes with that motion Dan?

Paula? Heather? Ron?

Ron present on that? Marissa do you have Ron Landon?

[Speaker 3] (2:27:20 - 2:27:24)
I'm here sorry I couldn't find my my mute button, yes I'm a yes

[Speaker 1] (2:27:24 - 2:27:44)
okay thank you, alright so Marissa so we'll look to work on that to engage architectural peer review yes oh that's a great suggestion right so Ezra

[Speaker 3] (2:27:45 - 2:28:06)
yep I was just going to unmute, I have some good scopes for that and I think you know one key piece there that does keep you within the bounds of what you're allowed to do and moves the process forward is to make it clear that you know this is about reviewing their design and looking at some of these issues that have been raised it's not hiring an architect to redesign the building or anything like that

[Speaker 1] (2:28:07 - 2:28:39)
yep I understand that that's what we're permitted to do and I'm you know I'm concerned that when things like shadow study come up that it's peer reviewed so that we don't get hung up later on that issue and some of these other issues that are raised by by planning board and in the public comment I think also so that'd be great Ezra and we typically

[Speaker 3] (2:28:39 - 2:29:01)
you know we'll come up with that scope you often run it by the applicant just make sure that there's nothing they object to and then there's no conflicts in the firms you'd be soliciting but then we you know procure that consultant in the way you normally would so we could get that all done and even get the review going before the January meeting

[Speaker 1] (2:29:03 - 2:31:21)
right right one other thing that Chris that I saw that was in the planning board comments about a potential shuttle bus to take people to Vinton Square to reduce individual car trips I just thought that was something worth considering that that was a very good thought myself I'd be curious what the traffic experts have to say about that I don't need to know right now but something for them to consider the next thing I thought I think I'm good with myself with the planning board comments is the historic commission had addressed certain things I don't know if anyone from the historic commission wanted to be heard on this petition tonight if you're here I don't know if Justina is here if she wanted to be heard about okay okay how about from fire is anybody here from fire or not I know that it was represented that there's a letter oh here's the letter the fire prevention memo okay so I guess that's something worth bringing up because I'm assuming that's what you're referring to with the letter from fire and it discusses that you presented two options in the emergency gated access into Doherty circle which is not part of your current plan and I saw that there was a lot of dialogue about that so maybe you could explain why or why you got to the plan that you

[Speaker 10] (2:31:21 - 2:31:21)
did

[Speaker 1] (2:31:22 - 2:31:25)
if you think that's something that we should understand

[Speaker 6] (2:31:36 - 2:31:42)
come down pitman right on to Doherty circle and out that way so because

[Speaker 1] (2:31:42 - 2:32:15)
you don't have the legal access to cross their property okay I'm wondering if there's anyone from the housing authority that wanted to be heard about the petition and any issues that they may have as an abutter anyone here from the housing authority that wanted to be heard so we have we have a microphone over here we also have a sign-in sheet asking everyone to just print their name and who they here on behalf

[Speaker 9] (2:32:25 - 2:34:40)
hello I'm I'm a member of the board of the housing authority we did have comments about the fire gate that was a big concern for us but it sounds like the fire gate isn't an issue anymore since we're going to do the use plan B which is the turnaround option if the fire gate is back in play we would be very concerned about that it would be it would be a problem because we have a small enclave our residents are elderly and disabled and and it's basically a circle like a driveway and to be running fire trucks through there would be serious problem for the people living there it would it would affect them adversely and it seems unfair to put that burden on them in order to build this development so that's one thing the other thing is the the rail trail we did have a meeting and we we do not want to allow easements over the property for the reason I just outlined residents have expressed concerns about people walking through not knowing people the way it is now it's pretty small and private area to open it up to having you know traffic through there would be a significant change for people so as it is you know it's there's going to be now building there kind of blocking light and sun etc but obviously they don't we don't have control over that so we just want to mitigate the effects of this development as much as we can and there are a number of residents here who I'm not sure if anybody wants to say anything else about it

[Speaker 1] (2:34:40 - 2:34:44)
I just I just I didn't want to open up to all the public comment

[Speaker 9] (2:34:44 - 2:34:46)
right no but that's our

[Speaker 1] (2:34:46 - 2:35:27)
on the specific one thing I know in the fire prevention memo that I thought was interesting and something for you perhaps to consider was that Deputy Chief Potts he talks about if there's a gate he was talking about access to into Doherty Circle for the Swamp Squad Housing Authority property because it creates access to the Swamp Squad Ladder Truck into the Housing Authority property current access requires ground ladders to be carried from Burrell Street to Pittman Road to perform a rescue at Doherty Circle so

[Speaker 9] (2:35:27 - 2:35:29)
that's something we don't really understand

[Speaker 1] (2:35:29 - 2:35:36)
I think maybe it might be beneficial for you to talk with Chief Deputy James Potts

[Speaker 9] (2:35:36 - 2:36:02)
we have talked to them we have pictures of the big ladder truck in Doherty Circle they came and put up a flag for us two years ago there have been 60 years there's been no issues about accessing the property for safety reasons not until now and they wanted to put this fire gate in so we dispute you know Chief Potts' analysis of the situation

[Speaker 1] (2:36:03 - 2:36:08)
perhaps you could maybe share those photos with Deputy Chief Potts

[Speaker 9] (2:36:09 - 2:36:11)
here's the big ladder truck

[Speaker 1] (2:36:12 - 2:36:19)
pictures that might have him revise his memo that information

[Speaker 9] (2:36:19 - 2:36:25)
I think we told him that in a meeting that our Executive Director had with him

[Speaker 1] (2:36:26 - 2:36:30)
alright well that's very helpful appreciate it

[Speaker 9] (2:36:31 - 2:36:35)
okay thank you thank you very much

[Speaker 1] (2:36:54 - 2:37:20)
well I just before I opened up for a public comment I was just trying to make sure I got through as much of what I had from staff comments and then I can I think have some public comment okay sure

[Speaker 22] (2:38:17 - 2:38:19)
I do

[Speaker 20] (2:38:23 - 2:39:15)
thank you relative to the fire gate I don't believe it's necessary to have a backup plan and also that it would parking is a huge issue we would lose two parking spaces for the gate we would lose an area to store snow and it would require the removal of the transformer and replacing that somewhere else I just don't think that's a feasible plan and the ladder truck has never had a problem getting in and out of there or participating in any emergency events that were there I think it's more for the new construction to have access to the backup than anything to do with the Housing Authority property

[Speaker 1] (2:39:16 - 2:40:38)
thank you alright thank you thank you so I think with having 25 minutes left I'd like to open it up to some public comment we have many members of public that are present I know we have some we've received many emails and letters about the proposal that have been uploaded so I'm going to ask that first I'm going to invite people that are present if they're in person tonight to be able to comment I don't think we'll reach anyone who is remote tonight but we'll be given the opportunity at the next meeting so if I could have my hands raised who wanted to speak okay so when I have right up here you sir in the second row yes I'd ask you to go to the microphone

[Speaker 18] (2:40:43 - 2:41:43)
thanks so much my name is Chris Mancini I'm a Swampscott resident I live at 68 Walker Road and I just came here to speak in support of this project I won't regurgitate all the facts about affordable housing and the need for it in the city but having I have a degree in planning urban planning and a lot of experience in development projects from both the public neighbor side and through my work and I think this is a strong project in an appropriate space an appropriate area for a town like Swampscott near the train station and it's rare to be given an opportunity I think to do something for the good of a town and for equity values and this is something that the town of Swampscott is being handed is well designed and is responsive so far I think in my opinion to public feedback and comments so far so just wanted to register my support for this project thank you

[Speaker 1] (2:41:43 - 2:41:51)
can I just ask you to sign in you did great thanks so much okay next row sir

[Speaker 13] (2:41:59 - 2:44:16)
hello my name is Aaron Birdoff I live at 11 Juniper I just also wanted to voice my support for this project and just three quick points for tonight since we were talking about 40B again thank you to the chair thank you to Ezra for going into the details of 40B I know that gets lost there's not a lot of knowledge of what that is in town so thank you but just a couple things to add to that it was enacted in 1969 and we're in 2021 and we're only at 3.7 percent SHI so it's taken that long so again looking at ways to delay projects moving forward I think we need to not do that fun fact that was a year after the Fair Housing Act but it exists because we have made it illegal in this town and a lot of other towns to actually build multi family housing in most of the town so I've got 85 percent of town we can't do anything in terms of multi family housing it's all dedicated to single family so again you mentioned at the beginning of the meeting getting a project like this is rare I mean and we need it because we are in an affordable housing crisis in the state especially in the Boston metro area especially around commuter rail areas and this fits all of the bills for that and again I would like to go back to the chair's points at the beginning of things we can't deny or to be projects for in terms of parking traffic mass density all that I know you're still deliberating and going over the details but I mean at this point you have answered the question whether this fits the bill or not and then last just to address parking and traffic because that's taken up 95 percent of the discussion tonight if we ask for more parking spots we're going to get more cars and we're going to get more traffic and that's exactly what a lot of people do not want is to ask more traffic so let's stop asking for more parking spots because that's going to bring in more cars we're looking for people to live here that don't rely on an automobile necessarily for all of their transit needs so I think the town of Swampscott should perhaps ask themselves what are we doing to promote alternative methods of transportation instead of asking for more parking spots in all of our developments so thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:44:17 - 2:44:25)
Thank you. Did you sign in as well? Great, thanks so much.

Okay. In the back please.

[Speaker 10] (2:44:26 - 2:47:19)
Hi, I'm Cynthia Tennant. I am the resident commissioner of the Swampscott Housing Authority and the vice president of the Swampscott Senior Tenants Association. Being on the Housing Authority Board our job is to make sure that the residents of public housing have safe comfortable clean places to live.

We think that there is going to be a big problem with this development. After checking with the Department of Environmental Protection in Boston we were informed by Karen Stromberg that there have been five toxic spills over the last hundred years that would affect the Housing Authority properties. The majority of them are in the area of Elm Place, Pittman Road, Burroughs Street.

Once she told me that once they start digging there our buildings being probably a hundred feet away from where they're going to be digging there are going to be problems. Residual problems because none of these toxic spills have been remediated. There was one toxic spill from Essex Oil when they were using it as a railroad thing for the oil company to fill the oil trucks there was a toxic spill.

It was a diesel fuel spill. It was a gasoline spill and none of them have been remediated. I checked with Geno Cruster he said no.

They have not been and once people start digging here there's going to be things turned over. We have 44 elderly disabled people living within a hundred feet of this who are scared to death The other issue is rats. There has been a rat problem in this area for 50 years.

It has gotten so bad somebody called me the other day they saw eight rats in one day. Once they start digging here and taking down buildings there's going to be more rats. We're concerned with the safety of the people that live here.

Some of these seniors are going to die. this is going to be their last home and it's up to us as town members, board members, people that live in Swanskip, the zoning board to make sure that these people are safe and comfortable in their last home. We do not think that this is a good idea.

[Speaker 1] (2:47:20 - 2:48:17)
Thank you for your comments. I would say that I'm familiar with Massachusetts having a law known as 21A and I can assure you that before this project gets financing and even if it was there's a requirement for a cleanup so if there's a spill there that's been un-remedied to date it will be required to be remedied if there's going to be housing on the site. I don't know if the petitioner might do some due diligence on or share what preliminary environmental reports they may have done at the site to alleviate any of your concerns and maybe certify that they will comply with Massachusetts law and 21A.

Thank you. I'm going to ask over here. Hi.

[Speaker 19] (2:48:28 - 2:49:38)
My name is Mike Wood. I've been born and raised in Swanscott. I'm fourth generation of my family who live here.

I'm a disabled veteran. I have two bachelor's degrees and a master's certificate from BU. I'm a homeowner, town meeting member and an IT manager.

Swanscott's a small town and I agree it needs more affordable housing but this building design is way too big. It does not fit in with the fabric of the neighborhood or the town. It will overwhelm and dominate the house of the people living in the area.

The plan has minimal open space and inadequate parking for the 250 to 300 people that could be moving in there. It also backs or blocks the terminus of the rail trail which I was really looking forward to. Mr. Paradise and Mr. Wynn and their team are motivated by money and profits. They do not have the best interest of the town at heart. I hope this board will recognize that and help to keep this project at a scale that will add to the beauty of the town and be something we can all be proud of.

[Speaker 1] (2:49:43 - 2:49:56)
Thank you Mr. Wood and I note that you submitted a written memorandum as part of our record as well. Mr. Perry Thank you Mr. Chairman.

[Speaker 21] (2:49:56 - 2:50:02)
Just a few quick process questions. One, will you be allowing public commentary from January 11th?

[Speaker 1] (2:50:03 - 2:50:04)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 21] (2:50:04 - 2:50:46)
Thank you sir. Secondly, if we could please a lot of the documents I've been hearing tonight and many of my neighbors here have been hearing have not been accessible on the town's website especially the planning board. We haven't seen that yet.

Haven't seen anything on the fire department about the safety factors at the back of the building, things of that nature. We would, through you Mr. Chairman, if you could encourage the town officials to get these documents up so that the public can have it and have complete transparency that would be most appreciated. And if you're allowing commentary on January 11th Mr. Chairman I would ask respectfully to be allowed to speak at that time. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:50:47 - 2:51:45)
Certainly. I do see that as my job to make sure that there is transparency and that documents are kindly uploaded. A lot of information did come in late.

I received it late. It's been around the holiday as well. But I will look to coordinate with Marissa to make sure we look to get everything uploaded timely to make a record that the public has complete access to.

And I can tell you the same information as what our board is getting. So the public is getting it at the same time that we as a board are getting it. But thank you for those comments.

You're very welcome. Yes. Yes.

Well hang on one second so we can just get a microphone.

[Speaker 15] (2:51:47 - 2:53:31)
Hi my name is Leslie. I've heard two different scenarios today about the fire issue. And when you started off the meeting you did explain to us that if there were things such as safety, health and you mentioned the third thing and I forget.

But I want to see we, I believe, the housing authority and I live there I want to see in writing that there will not be any gate going through Doherty Circle to Elm Place. It is a safety issue. People who live and I've said this in every meeting at Doherty Circle there is a laundry room that the people on the buildings pointing behind me because that is where they live as part of Doherty Circle have to cross over little single road in order to get to the laundry room.

They're elderly. I'm probably the youngest person there. They're elderly.

They're disabled. If that is open as a fire gate to get through to Elm Place I am telling you that you are looking at probably a fatality and I know that sounds extreme but Mr. Wynn did say tonight I believe that there would not be any going through Doherty Circle.

[Speaker 1] (2:53:31 - 2:54:32)
Right. The petitioner has eliminated they do not have on their plan a request for there to be a gate at Doherty Circle. I raised the question based on the memo in the Deputy Chief when he was saying provide better access.

We had some discussion about that. Attorney Callahan raised all the reasons why it shouldn't be done. There were comments about showing that a lot of trucks can access Doherty Circle for an emergency.

So there's been plenty of testimony about that. So I don't expect that the petitioner would be looking to change their plan to have that gate because it sounds like fire is satisfied with what's present and we expect to see a memo confirming that in our next meeting and I don't expect the petitioner is going to look to change what they have currently designed which does not provide a gate at Doherty Circle.

[Speaker 15] (2:54:32 - 2:55:07)
I think Mr. Wynn agrees that because we spoke that that would be a safety issue. I just want to make sure that you all understand and the Swampscott Fire Department is on board with that before any project would take place. And the very last thing is access through to the rail trail.

That's something that I think Cynthia Tennant would be able to describe why we are not that pleased with that.

[Speaker 1] (2:55:07 - 2:56:06)
I requested that the petitioner consider the request for their land. We're not here to necessarily have a discussion about the rail trail entering through yard land. That may be something that the select board decides with any type of taking.

But that's not our jurisdiction. What I wanted to make sure of is what all these residents in town have paid their taxes for to have a connection that by us providing relief here that we weren't going to be disrupting that plan and making sure that we're doing the best job that we can to assure that that goal is reached. But in terms of what's happening in yard land, we don't have jurisdiction to decide that.

That's not our board. Okay?

[Speaker 15] (2:56:06 - 2:56:08)
Okay. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 1] (2:56:09 - 2:56:10)
Back here.

[Speaker 12] (2:56:14 - 2:58:59)
Thank you, Chairman. My name is Robert Bradley, 8 Littles Point Road. I'll be quick.

I have a bunch of notes but I won't go through them all. First of all, I was fortunate to be part of all the previous meetings as well as the in-person meeting, and I just want to commend the development team for actually addressing most of the concerns of the neighbors with the things we talked about earlier, both the height, density, number of units, as well as changing overall density. So I think that shouldn't go unnoticed, the effort that was put into that.

Secondly, I'd like to just say, after our last meeting here, I was taking a look back at the 2025 master plan that the town put a lot of time and effort into. And in that report, there's four initiatives of goals that were outlined with regards to housing and economic development. And if I could be real quick, the first goal, or one of the goals, was to maximize the benefits of Swanscrantz's geographic location as a coastal community and take advantage of the public transportation access to Boston.

I think that Elm Place, more than any other project, now nails that. It's on spot. I mean, the property, as discussed earlier, it's within walking distance of the MBTH commuter rail.

It has at least one, if not two, bus stops in its area. So I think it clearly reaches that goal. Secondly, they asked that the issue was to create opportunities to develop a more diverse housing stock, both affordable and market rate.

As discussed earlier today, we have a project before us that addresses both market, middle, which is a growing demographic right now, as well as affordable. That can't go unnoticed. And I think this project, again, hits a home run there.

Thirdly, it talks about the master plan address, providing housing for people with disabilities, handicapped. And as mentioned earlier, this project is not exempt from those requirements. So this will have at least six, if not more, fully handicapped accessible units.

It will have units for hearing impaired, visual impaired. And I think that's important to add here. And finally, it noted in the report that we should look at underutilized, underdeveloped areas and attack those areas for new economic growth.

And clearly, this is an area that I think is ripe for economic development. You know, it's a series of poor properties, but the single biggest structure here is an aged warehouse. So I think this would be an improvement for this.

So again, fully in favor of this project. Thank you for your comments. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:59:00 - 2:59:01)
Right here, please.

[Speaker 17] (2:59:09 - 3:00:51)
Hi, everybody. I'll be brief as well. My name is Justin Snow.

I live in Worcester Ave. I am also in support of this project. I don't mean to ignore, dismiss, or diminish what everyone else, many people tonight have been saying in opposition to the project. I know there are many issues that have to be resolved, but I just wanted to build upon what the previous gentleman said.

And I think that there are two items that come to mind when I think about Elm Place and why I think it will be a benefit to Swampscott. I think that because of its location, it's in walking distance to Essex Street, the train station, Burrill Street, and feasibly Humphrey Street, and all those local businesses are definitely going to benefit from this additional patronage. And I think that the town in that area specifically can benefit from this economic viability.

And I also reviewed the 2025 plan, and I think it's great. And again, it specifically does mention that Swampscott needs to leverage the transit access, the strong commercial areas to drive additional economic growth because the town's fiscal health is going to increasingly rely on this growth. I think another thing that's great about it is it doesn't remove any mature woodland or existing natural open space, which I think benefits Swampscott and the environment, which is also a priority of the plan.

I had a lot more to say, but I'll finish with that. So I encourage the ZDA to think about these positives in addition to some of the shortcomings when making the decision. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (3:00:52 - 3:00:53)
Thank you very much.

[Speaker 17] (3:00:54 - 3:00:54)
Right down the middle.

[Speaker 11] (3:01:06 - 3:04:01)
Yes. Thank you for taking my comments. My name is Dan McClory.

I live at on Upland Road. A lot of people probably don't know where that is. It's at the top of the Hillcross Circle.

I first want to start out by commending my neighbor, Mike, for his comments and the fact that he said that 40B housing he was in favor of, and so am I. It's just the scope of this project that has us concerned in the neighborhood. So first I'd like to just drill down on this parking a little bit.

So there are 128 spaces. Now how many of those are reserved for guests, for vehicles that are used by people who need supportive services, home health aides, nurses, physical therapists, other professionals. So out of those, if there's 120 stickers, is that one per unit?

With 36 two- and three-bedroom apartments, obviously some houses are going to have two, maybe three cars. Now, I know someone said that we want to not have as many cars. Well, that's true.

But if someone moves in and they own two cars, they're not going to sell them. So the question is, where do they park? And why is parking important?

Because if you live in the neighborhood, it's important. If you don't, it isn't. And if you've ever been up Hillcrest Circle, there are sidewalks on one side in some areas, no sidewalks in others.

And on Upland Road, there are no sidewalks. So that's why it's important if someone is parking in front of those houses, that road is so narrow going up Hillcrest Circle, if there's a car parked there, that's just an accident waiting to happen. And if you haven't been up there, you need to go up there to experience that.

So that's my question. If there's 120 stickers, where do the extra cars go? The other thing I was concerned about, and obviously that parking can be a safety hazard.

If there's cars parked and there's no sidewalks, I don't think I have to explain that any further. Now, the other thing was the planning board had an idea about spreading it out by having bricks move further down. I don't know what the response, was there any response to that?

[Speaker 1] (3:04:01 - 3:04:21)
I think there was that they're in a lease agreement, so the question's been raised, it's something for the petitioner to consider. I don't know how much consideration it will get, but I raised it. Because if there's five stories, the noise is for steps in and out of a residence.

[Speaker 11] (3:04:22 - 3:04:44)
I mean already when a train goes by, it's pretty overwhelming. Even at our house at 100, 150 yards away. So, with pulsating noise off five stories, I mean I just can't imagine what that is going to be like.

It's not going to be a great quality of life for the people living there either. So, I mean those are some of the main concerns I had.

[Speaker 1] (3:04:45 - 3:05:54)
So, thank you. Okay, thank you. I will say that, you know, the next meeting I do expect we're going to hear more about the programming on the parking with a plan as to how they're going to propose for each unit, you know, how many spaces, how they're going to try to incentivize their residents to not have cars there and use public transportation and trying to convince this board that they are able to succeed in minimizing parking requirements. And the issue of the sidewalks was something else that was raised by the planning board and their comments and the transportation consultant and peer review are also charged with addressing those issues as well for the circulation and pedestrian access. So, those are comments that planning board raised and we raised tonight.

So, I think we'll hear more about that on January, on our January date. Is there anyone else that wanted to be here? We're a little past ten.

I know you've been raising your hand, so I thought we wanted to hear from you.

[Speaker 16] (3:05:55 - 3:07:57)
Hi. My name is Jan DiPaolo and I live on Hillcrest Circle and I'd just like to say that I believe everyone here in this room believes in affordable housing. My concern is why do we have to take care of the problem in one project?

And for all these people that are gung-hoing for it, this size and everything, were you at Marion Court? There's not a single affordable housing there. Seems just unfortunate that people are taking this size of project and putting it in this town where it doesn't belong.

Again, I'm all for it, but just the size of it and everything. And my concerns about things that have been brought up tonight is a study in terms of sound. Has anyone brought up, they were talking about rooftop, having that opened for people to go up there and entertain, etc.

Is that part of the sound study? And as far as the traffic study, there was also comment before about possibly with the bus stop being there, putting a shelter up there for people to have better access to going to the bus stop, not access, but weather permitting, etc. Is that part of the traffic study with the sight line, if it's going up?

And finally, they were talking about parking and people, I'm on Hillcrest, and people from the train station park on Hillcrest. So that again is there's pedestrians that you can think they're going to use the crosswalks, but they're not. And how do we keep people safe?

And that's a huge impact on our neighborhood. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (3:07:57 - 3:08:39)
Thank you. Chris, on the sound issue. On the sound issue?

That was something that I don't know if you engaged your own engineer to look at. There's an open roof deck at one spot on this property, or is this an open area now still? So a couple things about that.

I didn't know if you thought as part of your petition that you might have a report on sound because of, is there a way with the building facing the tracks to absorb some of the train noise with design?

[Speaker 4] (3:08:39 - 3:08:48)
It's an unexpected design. We'll get into that. We didn't get into the specifics of the aspects of the building tonight.

[Speaker 1] (3:08:49 - 3:08:51)
We'll be getting all that.

[Speaker 4] (3:08:53 - 3:09:03)
Things like where, how we dispose of trash, noise, loading plants, assigning factors, all of that you'll have.

[Speaker 1] (3:09:04 - 3:09:12)
Before we break, are there any questions or anything else that you want an accuracy from your team before we continue?

[Speaker 4] (3:09:14 - 3:09:16)
I think we're fine for right now.

[Speaker 1] (3:09:17 - 3:09:49)
I'd ask that you sign a continuance to our next hearing and thank everyone for your very respectable and engagement. I am so impressed with our town for the way everything's been handled so far for this public hearing. I've got to say it's better than some of these small projects that come before us.

Very well done by our town. I appreciate that very much. Thank you all.