[Speaker 17] (1:05 - 1:35)
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[Speaker 1] (2:21 - 6:53)
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. . It's actually a hybrid, so it's accessible on Zoom as well.

We felt it was important to meet in person to kind of have a bit of a more hands-on approach to kind of looking at some of the issues here, especially what we would consider probably the most important outstanding issue right now, which is traffic and circulation. And so we can just sort of really kind of chisel down at those details and know where we can what we can do and how we can make things better right now. Hi, Bill.

So I thought what we might want to do is kind of update where we are right now. And in terms of, in terms of all the, we have the latest site plan, which I thank you for delivering to us is dated December 5th. The complete set of plans, the big 24 by 17s who are available at Town Hall, you also have a smaller copy in front of you.

In here, I think we have, well, I'm assuming that the smaller set is the same as the full set.

[Speaker 21] (6:53 - 6:54)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (6:54 - 9:26)
In terms of all the information. We have gotten quite a few comments from some, some neighbors, abutters and so forth and a lot of that does concern traffic. We can get into that a little more later.

We've had our initial full traffic report that was presented to us by Leggett. We've had a peer review of traffic report and we also were referred to a report that was done back in 2016 for the Vennon Square area that was part of a study that was done by the Boston Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization, which really addresses the overwhelming circulation issues at Vennon Square in general and of course includes this particular site. So that's probably one of the most important aspects that I'd like to discuss about the traffic here is that even though clearly we're discussing your site, there are two properties here, essentially we're treating as one.

It does sit in three different towns, well, two towns in one city and even though a very small slice is in Salem, the Salem piece is very important because it affects the transportation network and it also affects the sewage and drainages, all the drainages leaving the site and going through Salem. And it also is hard to look at this kind of as an isolated spot when it's in the midst of a kind of a large traffic network. So we've got Paradise Road and running through Swampscott into Salem, we've got Essex Street crossing, Tedesco Road, Vennon Street, there are the various kind of cut through Sunbeam Road going into Vennon Square, we've got Salem Street.

So there's a lot of what we have to talk about here and what's gonna happen here beyond simply the numbers that we're looking at on the traffic reports are impacts from all the other activity around it. So that's kind of some of the stuff I'd like to address. I don't know if you, do you wanna begin first by, is there anything that you wanna, why don't you go ahead, Thad, and update me and then we can kind of move into some of the issues that we had about traffic.

[Speaker 2] (9:26 - 10:23)
Yeah, good evening, Thad Simasco, SBA Design. Bill Goss is here from Legate. Sam Cole is on the call from Legate.

Steve Moderano, you see right there, is our civil. I think that Paul Feldman, our council, is gonna join us, if you haven't already. And we thought we'd start first.

We'll give you an update on all of the aspects of the project from sustainability and fire and historical, but we thought since Jeff is here and ready, he's the traffic consultant. He and perhaps with some assistance from Steve we can walk you through the traffic peer review and we'll start with that and then after that I can, we'll probably do civil landscape and then I can talk through a little bit of the architecture. Basically I just wanna outline what changes have been made in this latest set that got filed from what was done originally.

You've seen most of it, but we'll show you and point out the highlights if that's okay with you.

[Speaker 1] (10:24 - 10:25)
That sounds good.

[Speaker 2] (10:25 - 10:33)
So Jeff, I think if you're ready, you can talk through the peer review, your back and forth on the peer review on traffic.

[Speaker 3] (10:35 - 18:23)
Sure, thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board. For the record, Jeffrey Durbin with Aspen Associates.

I think the chair had a probably pretty good overview relative to where we are in traffic in terms of our presentations to the board. So we've made a whole traffic presentation to you of our traffic assessment and the findings of that assessment. The board, as well as Marvel, has well retained an independent third party peer review consultant to check the facts and findings of our traffic assessment.

I think just kind of as the outset of, before I get into kind of what we responded to in terms of comments, I think it's very important for the board and the public to understand that when you conduct a transportation analysis, there is a series of standards that will require you to follow. They're set by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Means of professional engineering with over 30 years of experience are required to follow those standards.

A standard traffic study is certified when it complies with all of the required standards, not only of MassDOT, but of the traffic engineering and transportation planning professions. The first role of your peer reviewer is to, in fact, make sure that that's the case. That is probably the first thing that they do.

And they can certify that. In fact, they certify not only the methodology but also the findings of the traffic study, as well as, I think, we hope with all peer reviewers is the end of the processes that result in a project is better at the end of the process in terms of the peer review than what was first before you. And really, what you'll see in terms of the last peer review letter is that we've, in fact, achieved that in terms of the project as well as some improvements that we'll talk about in a minute.

For the project that gets to the point I want the chair to mention, which is not only just looking at the impacts in this project, but of the careful dynamic of traffic that happens in the area and the relationship between two of the intersections and how it conveys traffic through the area. Because there's a, you know, as the board's well aware, we are very closely looking failure of one intersection may have reverberated into other intersections. In terms of the kind of the high level additional work that we've done with the peer review consultants is, as the chair mentioned, there was a previous study done in the Midden Square area by the Central Transportation Planning staff that looked at the area as a whole, planned future growth, existing conditions in terms of the way that the intersections operate, and developed some strategies for improvements to the square, and to each of the intersections.

As a part of the peer review comments, one of the things that was discussed in there was to try to take some relationship of our traffic comes to the traffic from several use in that study, and in particular, as a waste of the impact of coal. And so that analysis was undertaken, some additional adjustments were done to increase the traffic volumes that we get used in our traffic study. We run the analysis for the project.

And as a result of that, these higher traffic volumes in each of the intersections, what we found was basically the result was similar to our original traffic study, which is that the project, which is expected to produce somewhere between 40 and 50 peak hour trips, did not result in a significant impact on intersection operations. And when we're talking about significance, there's two things we're looking at. It's increasing motorist delays at any of the intersections that make up the square, and we're also looking at queuing at intersections.

So when we're talking about significance in this case, delays did not increase by more than 10 seconds for any movement at an intersection, and vehicle queues didn't increase by any more than two or three vehicles. I really think that queuing is probably the more important parameter in this area because of the fact that we govern closely space and intersections. So as we look at the initial measures associated with the project, I think that and others may show some of the plans later on in the presentation to talk about what we're doing for mobility improvements, as well as some signal timing improvements.

The signal timing improvements are really made to not only address the impacts of this project, so that things would be better or in no harm condition with the improvements we're planning to do, but we're actually hoping for better in the year. So that's kind of the first step of improvements that we're planning to do, is to retime the traffic signals and coordination of the traffic signals, so how they convey traffic from one intersection to the other intersection, to do two things. As I said, offset the impact of the project, but the important thing is to not have queuing back through the intersections.

So the specific things that we undertake as they relate to the timing of the traffic signals, so that we don't have traffic backing up from the intersection. We've proven that out through some analysis that we've provided to your peer reviewer, and they've agreed that that will, in fact, mitigate the impact of the project and will rewrite it and result in a better, which was what the central transportation planning staff was looking at as they looked at the main square area as a whole for improvement. So we're gonna be implementing some of those measures The other improvements that we're doing is to return to some.

We'll build in the safety of these areas. As you might remember from the earlier presentation, we have the benefit of two bus routes that run past the project site, one on Salem Street and one on Bennett Street, and they're sort of within walking distance of the site. They run right at the project site, and the ability to get to that bus stop, as we mentioned, is a stop directly opposite.

There's a stop at the site on Salem Street at the main Portland Square, and then the other stop is opposite the site at Sunbeam Lane. And so one of the improvements that we're doing is we're actually moving a crosswalk that currently exists on the south side of Salem Street and Sunbeam Street to the north, and then re-sprinting that crosswalk and the crosswalk across Sunbeam Lane, and then we're rebuilding the wheelchair ramps at that intersection and installing some upgraded signs and markings there as well. So there will be high visibility crosswalk markings in both instances at that location.

It's a safer crossing, it's a more logical crossing, and it provides that benefit for us to provide a direct linkage to public transportation services. Now, just a little bit more from the site, Salem and Bennett Street, that's kind of the crux, as everyone's kind of pointed out, is that we have two byways. That intersection is the concentration point for traffic associated with the project.

So we are making some significant improvements at that intersection. Not only the retinue I had mentioned and the coordination of that traffic signal with the Paradise Road intersection, we're also on mobility and safety improvements at that intersection. So in the case of the project, what we're going to be doing is making sure that there's crossings actually across all three lanes of that intersection.

We have a fourth lane, you can see the five lanes of the shopping center. So there'll be the ability for pedestrians to cross all of those lanes, new crosswalks, new wheelchair ramps there. We're also replacing all of the pedestrian push buttons and signal indications at that intersection as well for pedestrians.

So it's a full operating of the pedestrian accommodations, all ADA compliant, as will be the sidewalks along the frontage of the project. And then there will be that new crosswalk across the Bennett Street east lane of the intersection that is not there today. And that's the most direct crossing associated with the project, as you might remember, our internal pathway network leads to that intersection and provides a direct connection to that crossing.

So if you do want to walk from our site to get over to the shopping center, I mean, it's just one crossing to make rather than making a crossing of Salem Street and then across Bennett Street to get over to La Plaza. So it simplifies that crossing, it's a much safer crossing. And then as I mentioned, we're upgrading the wheelchair ramps.

[Speaker 5] (18:24 - 18:37)
That's a change from last time, right? Like last time we had talked, there wasn't going to be a crosswalk at that exit from the property straight across to the shopping center. I think that's correct.

[Speaker 3] (18:37 - 20:20)
Yeah, it's a significant change from the standpoint of pedestrian safety at the intersection there. So thank you for putting this up. And my description might not have been as good as the plan, obviously, from the showmaker.

Yes, that is a change as well as adding those sidewalk segments and wheelchair ramps at that location. And it provides that direct connection that we talked about because it didn't make sense. Obviously, pedestrian exposure and safety, if we can just minimize the amount of times that the road needs to be crossed, it's a safer intersection.

This certainly provides that as well. So that's the essence of what is the result of a video review. Again, they check the facts and findings of the traffic study, agree to the terms of the impacts of the project, agree as it relates to mitigation measures associated with the project.

The central pieces of it are focused here. And I also wanna mention that there's a follow-on mitigation that goes after the project is constructed. There's also a retiming and optimization of those traffic signals I mentioned.

So it's not just working the signals as they exist prior to the project being occupied, but it's after the project is occupied, going back out there and making a similar adjustment so that we're making sure that, to the extent the traffic patterns in the area are different than when we originally had done our assessment, we're accounting for that and readjusting the signals so that, again, we don't have issues looking at traffic back and forth through the intersection.

So that's a high-level overview, and hopefully now you've covered everything that you wanted. But that's kind of where we are on the peer review. You should have a letter that basically confirms what I've said to you tonight.

I'm also making some recommendations that these improvements that I've described are conditions of the approval of the project.

[Speaker 1] (20:23 - 22:51)
Thank you. So, any comments? So what I see here is that the, what we had talked about, specifically if I move over to Binnen Street, Salem Street intersection, and that light, which is kind of at the very, I don't know what direction, the north corner, the northwest corner of the property, that has just been traditionally a problematic, problematic intersection.

And as you mentioned, the Paradise Road, Binnen Street intersection is maybe six or seven car lengths away. So traffic backs up all the time because of people that want to turn left and they can't get into the left lane, so they try to go to the right and they can't go to the right. And then people in the right lane are turning right to go to Marblehead or trying to cut through the Staples parking lot.

And I do note here that you moved the crosswalks up closer to the actual, instead of making them at the narrower part of the road, now they've moved up to, it's a longer crosswalk, but it's actually a more realistic crosswalk in terms of where people are actually gonna cross. And I know this came up at our last meeting, and I, like most of us, go through this intersection all the time and notice that with the old crosswalk, there isn't, not one car stops before it. So it doesn't, it's not really working as a crosswalk right now.

So that, just moving it up, it would certainly be helpful. All in all, I just think that that light has been problematic. And you mentioned something about timing, the timing of the light, signal delays, and let's say, no, you mentioned the timing of the light and then the, and reducing queuing there.

So what would, what kind of timing would actually improve that situation? So in other words, if right now, they're timed for like two minutes or something, what would you do? Would you make it a shorter time or a longer time, or what, I mean, it can only go one way or the other, right?

So what actually happens?

[Speaker 3] (22:52 - 25:17)
So it could be either one of those things. But the key thing here really is that the, so the traffic signals, they have sensors. Those sensors may or may not be working, but the way the sensors work is it's letting the traffic signal go, and not only that, there's a vehicle trying to get through the intersection.

So it's a red light, it tells the traffic signal there's somebody waiting for a green light. Once the light turns green, the other thing that the sensors do is it tells the traffic signal how many cars are passing over that sensor into the intersection. The balance of retiming a traffic signal when you've got close to space intersections is to, that second part of what the sensor does is as it counts cars going from one intersection to the next intersection, the delicate balance that you wanna have when you have close to space intersections is that if traffic, let's say, is turning, is going straight through on Bidden Street on Paradise Road.

If the Paradise Road traffic signal turns red, the sensor on Bidden Street, you wanna make sure that it shuts off the traffic on Bidden Street at a point where no more cars are introduced between the two intersections, they can physically hit it. And so that's the dynamic that you need to, it could be a combination of increasing the amount of time or decreasing the amount of time depending on the time of day, but the key thing is when you have close to space intersections, is to make sure you never introduce more traffic between the intersections that can physically hit. So the sensors allow us to do that.

So we can have the sensor tell us, like you said, if there's only room to hit five to seven cars, or seven cars, let's say, between Paradise and Salem Street, then we shut the signal down at the Salem Street-Bidden Street intersection at a point where no more than five to seven cars pass that sensor. And then the light can turn red at Paradise. And so the re-timing really achieves that balance.

And so we will be, as we update that traffic signal, is number one, making sure everything's working properly. That's always done. Number two, making the upgrades that we had said for the pedestrian accommodations.

And then lastly, is re-timing that traffic signal after we ensure everything's working so that we achieve that balance. No more cars introduce between the two intersections that can physically hit when there's a red light on, say, a perilous road. So that's the balance that we do with the re-timing of the signals.

[Speaker 5] (25:17 - 26:13)
The synchronization between the two seems to be incredibly important. Because what I see all the time is that the cars are lined up down Bidden Street. The light at Salem Street turns green.

But the light at Paradise Road is still red. And it basically goes through the whole cycle. And so the Salem Street light is green.

Nobody moves. And then the Salem Street light turns red. And the Paradise Road light turns green.

And so maybe those couple of cars that were stuck in the in-between get to go. But you go through cycles and cycles where you're sitting stuck at a green light because the light 20 feet ahead of you at Paradise is red. So that synchronization between those two, I don't know if the sensor piece that you just spoke to really gets to it.

Like, making sure that they're synchronized with each other to avoid the situation we currently have, I think, is the most important piece.

[Speaker 3] (26:13 - 26:49)
That should be happening. What you described is a symptom of a system that's not working properly. They should not be operating like that.

And that is a reason. It really could be a condition of what, if on the timing of the traffic signals and the coordination, it could also be that the system is, the sensors I described, if those are not working properly, that could also happen because then what happens is it operates like a time, it operates as a time clock without any intelligence that's actually built into those segments. So that is a symptom of both of those.

And so we will be addressing both of those as a part of this model.

[Speaker 5] (26:49 - 27:02)
Yeah, you spoke about betterments before. That would be a betterment. If we can, even with whatever increased traffic comes from this project, if we can figure out a way to time these lights right so that there's not the gridlock that we currently have, that would be an improvement.

[Speaker 3] (27:02 - 27:16)
Yeah, that shouldn't be happening. That means something's not working properly because the equipment is able to do, shouldn't be doing what you described. The equipment is able to do what I described.

So if there's something's not working properly where the timing is not set for it.

[Speaker 1] (27:18 - 33:57)
All right, so I have a, I have a, just a thought. And I'm gonna draw it over here on the board because I don't know how else to do it. I don't know if you can see.

You probably can. Okay, so I'm not a traffic engineer. I've never studied traffic engineering.

So this is the site thing. This is, over here is, that's the gas station. This is Walgreens, okay?

You get the picture. And this is on Greenway, okay? But this is, you know, you know the architecture.

So this is Benning Street. So this is the site. This is just a test, a small-strip model, right?

Okay, so here is problematic light number one. Then we go over here, and problematic light number two. So what would it look like if we did one of those nice rotaries, which would have to go into the parking lot, I think, of that massively unused stable parking lot, which is always empty, but then you have something like this.

And then what happens is that people would go around, and you could go to the right, and then you could get into the first little alley, and then you could go straight, and then you could go around and go this way. And then you have more of a even flow, and without just being totally jammed up. I've just seen this work in a couple of really tight spots, and I'm sure you're aware of that.

One is on Danvers Road. I think we should call it Danvers Road. Danvers Road, coming out of the Home Depot and others.

And the other one is up in downtown Salem, sort of by Essex Street and whatever that, and Chestnut, I guess it is, that comes out there. That used to be a hellish intersection. Now, the one in Salem has a traffic light that only a few car lengths up, so that was always a problem, too.

It's still gonna be, there's still gonna be a lot of cars. So this is the thing. We're not going to get rid of cars.

It's gonna happen. I mean, they're gonna be there. There's more units going in.

If the traffic report shows five cars an hour or seven cars an hour, the cars are gonna be there. So it's a matter of how do we, are there ways of moving them a little more easily? And I think that's kind of what the deal is in Salem.

If you looked at what happened there, for example, it's still crowded, but it moves. It's just a different flow. It moves better than it did, and it's kind of an indisputable fact.

So I'm just throwing it out there. Is it something that, obviously, most of that lands in Salem, so that's something that they do, they are involved in this project, they do have an interest in part of this property, and they're, from a utility standpoint, they're very much involved in this project, and from a standpoint of contribution to the traffic, they just built another building, literally on our town line, that hasn't even opened yet.

As you know, that residential building that's just beyond where the old Starbucks used to be, it's on Essex Street. I don't even know how many units are in there, but that hasn't even opened yet. So that's gonna get moving, too.

And there's constantly going to be something else that's gonna be more flow. So how do we look at this like, how do we make it better from, A, the car standpoint, where we just understand how people drive, how they move, where they're going. And we know this.

We've been looking at this for a couple of months now. So people coming out of this exit, out of the Marblehead exit, most of them are gonna turn left. I know there was conversation about no left turn there.

I mean, if they're gonna turn left, they just are. I mean, if they're gonna go to Menin Square, and most of the people coming out of the Swampscott exit, some of them very well might go straight, and that could be because they don't wanna get in line at Salem Street, so they'll cut through the free-for-all parking lot, and they'll find their way out through there. But some people are also gonna, most people will turn right.

If they're going to Boston, maybe they're gonna shoot down Salem Street and go the other way, who knows? But you'd have a pretty good mix. So how do we, I wonder if different kinds of solutions like that, and again, I'm no engineer, if it's worth considering, because does it start to change behavior in a way which is something, can we try to change behavior?

That I wanna put out there, because I think if it were something that the engineers even think is worth thinking about, then we could make an effort to do some, have more discussions, set up the kind of collaboration we would need to with our town departments in Salem, obviously, and pursue that discussion. Other issues that are gonna have a tremendous impact is just the pedestrian access. So I think the crosswalk improvements, I mean, that would be something else that we could, if something like a roundabout was used, then that changes where the crosswalks go, but that's okay, because you can have shorter crosswalks because you don't have a light.

So you can actually pull the crosswalk away from the intersection and have it at the shorter part of the street, because now you don't have a light, and so people can actually have a safer crossing at the shorter part of the sidewalk. So just, I'm trying to think of it, all of this is gonna happen together, all the people, all the bikes, all the crossing, all these cars, it's just trying to change behavior. So I'm thinking that that might be something to consider.

So then I have other suggestions, but I just, that's a big one, and I just wanted to put it out there and see if it's worth talking about or having this discussion.

[Speaker 5] (33:57 - 34:23)
I thought you were crazy when you first started talking, but when you mentioned the two examples in Salem that have work, you are right, especially the one in downtown Salem. I mean, just anecdotally, I drove through downtown Salem on October 30th and thought it was gonna be a disaster and went through that roundabout, and it works, surprisingly. I don't know how, because everybody should correction to each other, but it works.

[Speaker 1] (34:23 - 35:06)
I just think it's a behavior change, it just is. And the crossing works better, too. People can cross there, and it's just, and I try to think, why would it make it easier to cross?

And then I realize it's because the crosswalk is you're not trying to get it at the crossing points of the intersection. You can pull it further back, and it's not associated with a light. So it's just a different, it's a different, just different approach.

So I'd like to at least have more discussion about it and see if it's anything.

[Speaker 20] (35:06 - 35:06)
I think it does.

[Speaker 1] (35:08 - 35:10)
Is this my client asking?

[Speaker 3] (35:10 - 35:19)
Yes. So the improvements that you're talking about are generally regional planning level improvements.

[Speaker 1] (35:20 - 35:21)
Well, we tried a lot of times.

[Speaker 3] (35:23 - 36:58)
So, and so, you know, that I can see here, so you can put some facial expressions to this. I think that type of improvement there is, it's a couple, it's over a million dollars, more than a million dollars to go back. It's certainly not something that's within the scope and scale of this project.

The benefits you described are 100% correct in what others have observed. If you have the land areas available, and you can, and I think everyone, you know, the Salem one might be a good example. The circle has become a tractor load and the bus is going around.

So the circle ends up being, you know, something that's, I think, larger than what you might think that it may be. And so, typically, it requires a lot of land, I think, is the first thing. But it does achieve the benefits you described.

I mean, it shortens pedestrian crossing distances. It certainly is a safer design because you're eliminated crossing converse. You know, if you drive from the center of that circle, no one's really interacting with each other except within the circle itself.

And then pedestrians have short crossing distances. They also have the benefit of being able to cross in two stages because typically the crosswalks are to an island area. So you can cross halfway, and then wait, and then cross the other way.

And traffic moves slower. I mean, so there's a lot of advantages. The disadvantages, obviously, are that it requires a significant amount of land.

So the footprint of the circle would be much larger than the intersection that exists there today. And then, of course, it's extremely costly.

[Speaker 1] (36:59 - 41:28)
There is a lot of unused, or underutilized, I should say, land in Salem in that parking lot. So I think there may be some collaborative efforts. I mean, I think if we, and I wasn't insinuating that you, well, I mean, I'd like you to participate in whatever.

I mean, there are gonna be some kind of improvements, sidewalk improvements, crosswalk improvements those kinds of things. So there is some involvement here. I was not making the assumption that Leggett was going to get into the roundabout business and go out there and do this.

But if you are willing to consider this, I would certainly pull the parties together that would need to talk about this pretty quickly. We have contacts in Salem. We have, I think we could get significant support in the town to do this.

And we have MassDOT currently working on Paradise Road. These requests that were sent to MassDOT years ago, we've been trying to follow up on this. I mean, I think there's a lot of, we could get a lot of public will behind it.

So this could be something that wouldn't have to hold up the project, but could be considered as an important part. I just wanted to bring up again that we have a group of neighbors that have been attending many of these meetings and or several, I mean, all of these meetings. Our father's only been, this is our third.

So who have put together a petition and I don't know if that was shared with you, but okay, you saw it. So, and the petition is to redo the traffic study with the notion that it was just done in, during COVID and the numbers aren't right. So I completely understand that.

And there's a general just lack of comfort with, oh my God, there's gonna be all these extra cars and oh no, and how are we gonna handle it? And it's just, that's, and I understand that completely. I think that, and when I spoke to one of the residents, who had, was involved in this, my question was, so I think their concern is absolutely legitimate.

My question about requesting the study was, what do you want to know? What's the goal? Is the goal to just find out if indeed that number's bigger, which we can safely assume is probably true, or I think one of the big concerns is that the project was too big.

So my explanation was that this is, this was the agreement that the town of Swampscott and the Athenas family, the town of Swampscott agreed to 96 units in our zoning, which town meeting voted on. So that's by right, within the law, you get to build that many units by right. And town meeting passed that zoning.

And then the other piece of it was, the agreement between the owners of the property and Leggett. So there wasn't that possibility. But I think my, and I'm not trying to put words in their mouths, because they all have their legitimate concerns.

My interpretation is, oh no, there are going to be a lot of cars. I don't know if it's gonna be five more an hour or 10 more an hour. What are we gonna do to manage this?

It's chaos up there. So I believe that there is a solution out there that we have to start looking at. I do think we can get the public support behind it.

But I'd like to, you know, I'd like to see you help us partner in this. Again, you know, not saying, you know, just write a check, if that's not the point. Well, you know, anyway.

There's gonna be improvements that you're gonna make. So, you know, but the piece of whatever that would have been, and we would try to collaborate with others as well. You know, I might as well just add on to this now.

So another part of my concern is, if we look down at the, are the plans still up there?

[Speaker 2] (41:28 - 41:29)
I didn't get it up there.

[Speaker 1] (41:30 - 44:44)
We'll just put that back up. If you, there's a crosswalk at, on Salem Street. That's from the Swampscot, it's the Swampscot exit from the property, entrance or exit.

And so you can see where, I don't know if anybody can point, I think. Yeah, okay. So you can see where, yep, the way that crosses the street right there.

Okay, so that's where cars are either turning in or coming out. So there's a crosswalk going across there. So if you are, if you walk to that little, where the pointer is now on the Salem Street side, the other side, that's where the bus stop is, right there, where the two pillars are now.

And if you, then we have a brand new crosswalk right there where you can cross the street, sort of over by where Walgreens is, that side, and that's the bus stop going the other way. Now, if you walk down to the corner, so now down the street, nope, other direction. Stay on that left-hand side of the street.

And as if you're gonna go up Sunbeam Lane, yeah, intervene and, yep, that way. So now there's no more crosswalk. So here is where we have a huge problem.

There's a teeny bit of crosswalk on the other side of the street that, you know, where the orthodontist is and the residence is at Vinnon, up on the hill. There's an itty-bitty bit of sidewalk that goes along that property and then it disappears. So, and there's no sidewalk along the Walgreens side.

So I see this as an issue. And again, it's part of a much larger plan and it's something that I'd like to, we need to, you know, obviously be in touch with the owners of the property, and I had to date have not brought up anything with the owners of the property. I think there's more than one.

So just something to, I think I would like to see that this work, which I agree with your configuration of the sidewalks, expanded so that we can actually create an area where people can walk. I mean, if I get there and now I wanna go to Walgreens, I'm in the middle of the road. And that's not, I mean, it's important to your site because Sunbeam Lane is a private road.

It belongs to the, it belongs to, not sure who it belongs to, but it's not a town-owned street. So we have kind of an issue with that. But that's just, that's going a little further down because I think what you're describing so far is easily kind of, you know, essentially it's figuring out how to structure a bit of walkability into that chaos and free-for-all that is that parking lot.

I do, however, think that, you know, moving the bus stop up there as opposed to that opposite corner where it used to, or it was on the opposite corner, right, because it crossed in front of the orthopedist. Yeah, that was a bad spot. So this is far preferable.

And so I think that makes sense. I don't know whether your conversation with Marblehead included any kind of a crosswalk down by their exit. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (44:45 - 44:54)
There's not a sidewalk on the other side of Vinnon, so it'd be a crosswalk kind of, sort of nowhere. So I think they asked us, they encouraged us to get folks to the corner.

[Speaker 1] (44:54 - 44:55)
I see, okay.

[Speaker 2] (44:55 - 44:57)
And put this one in where there are sidewalks.

[Speaker 1] (44:57 - 45:40)
I mean, and once again, it would be the thing where, you know, the roundabout would address that issue. Which I think is really achievable because you have a very large parking lot there where the, you know, the Staples is and the Bank of America is. And, you know, there's tons of parking there.

I mean, I don't think there's anyone that would dispute that there's way more parking than is necessary. And that if, you know, of course, the property owners would have to be willing to work with us to use some of that to, you know, alleviate traffic and make their own site much more appealing and accessible. But I think that's something that we could definitely look at.

[Speaker 6] (45:42 - 48:35)
Angela, it's Paul Thelman if I may speak to you this evening. Hi. You know, when you're trying to figure out, I mean, this project will lower the field lines a lot, a lot because it's not a particularly large project.

And I know, and I appreciate that there's dysfunction in the intersection that you described. And maybe a roundabout fixes it. That roundabout is an enormous undertaking, not only financially, but the property rights that you just alluded to are very, very complicated.

And either people are going to give up their property or it's going to have the eminent donations. I mean, who knows what's involved. The question is, what do we do with this project that's before the board?

And what we're suggesting is that the mitigation that our traffic consultants develop that's been reviewed by DHB, they agree that it's appropriate mitigation for the scope of our project. It will mitigate the issue to the extent that our project is aggravating things. But our project can't fix the infrastructure issue that's there.

We can work with you and cooperate with you. And it's going to take us a year or plus to build this project. So it's going to take all that.

And you can say to us, well, do these physical mitigations that you were planning on doing last, after you build the project, you can do them before, anyway. There's not enough time to plan for, to plan for this initiative and with the help of others, you get this roundabout that needs infrastructure improvements, because there are no dollars associated with them, and convert those dollars into the revised design. And it's not accomplishable in the next 18 months when we go forward and we implement what's here, which is appropriate to mitigate our project.

But I think to create that kind of scenario allows this project to go forward and we were going to mitigate our issues that were potentially creating the way we've demonstrated and have been described by Jeff Durham. Or if the dollars that would be spent on this mitigation in contributing to the other plan, if it ever comes to fruition, can never be bought. It's a major, that's a major thing that you're- Understood.

[Speaker 1] (48:36 - 48:39)
So I think we're saying the exact same thing, Paul.

[Speaker 6] (48:40 - 48:58)
Okay, so then it's just a question of fashioning a condition that allows for this mitigation to be substituted in contribution, an equal contribution.

[Speaker 1] (49:02 - 49:36)
Agreed. And please understand that I'm under no illusions that this is an easy thing to do. But I also believe that projects like this, for us, it is a really big project.

And for Swampscott, I know for traffic engineers, it's like small potatoes. For us, it's huge. And it's not, we can't treat it like it's an island because it's just not.

But I understand our position, I understand your position, and again, I think we're saying the same thing.

[Speaker 5] (49:36 - 50:14)
And I would just add to that, I think that it's part of our responsibility as a representative elected board to hear what people in Swampscott are saying, which is that there is concern about traffic in this area before this project, after this project. And so our responsibility is to investigate any option we have to alleviate that. And I think that's what we'd be doing by looking into this, is seeing if there's a way to make things even better than the traffic engineers proposed.

If there is, great. And if not, we have other mitigation measures that we're talking about tonight, so.

[Speaker 1] (50:15 - 50:28)
And I haven't even, I mean, honestly, this was the first time that I can't talk to these guys outside of these meetings. So this is the first time I've brought it up, so I'd like to hear from other members and see what they think too.

[Speaker 11] (50:30 - 51:21)
Yeah, I was talking about Salem and Benin streets. This is the one intersection in town that I drive so often out of my way to not have to go near that thing, because it's the worst intersection in the area, in my opinion. So I really empathize with the residents who live over there and don't have the ability to literally drive around the other side of town to avoid that.

So I think that that solution that you proposed, Angela, would be something that I would be very supportive of us looking into as vigorously as we can, because that is a, you know, that's a really important intersection in this town. There's a lot of big properties around it, whether they're commercial properties, residential properties, residents that live nearby. So we owe it to ourselves to use this as an opportunity to look at potential solutions, big or small.

So very supportive of that.

[Speaker 13] (51:26 - 52:03)
So, excuse me, I agree it's an interesting proposal and I don't believe it's on them, like everybody's saying, to foot the bill, but participation in this case could come in as taking a little bit of this corner as well so that it wouldn't all be in the, in the, what's that, Staples parking lot? Take some of this corner, start the rotary back further, and you could potentially have that all kind of encompassed if Staples doesn't want to kick in a couple of feet.

[Speaker 5] (52:04 - 52:15)
I just drew it to scale. Okay. But it does what I was saying, cuts off a little bit of the corner there to make the circle fit.

[Speaker 13] (52:20 - 52:45)
Oh yeah, so the details, details obviously have to be worked out, but we're relying, or we're sitting here, we're hypothesizing that Salem, Staples, or whoever owns that lot, it's probably not Staples, right? Can you correct me? Whoever.

We can speculate that they may be, maybe they want to help out and give some, but maybe not all, and we could do something here and a little bit from the gas station. You know, there's a lot of space there.

[Speaker 5] (52:46 - 52:56)
All of us have said that there's many steps between this conversation today and this rotary materializing, but we owe it to ourselves, as Ted said, to see what we can do.

[Speaker 13] (52:56 - 53:24)
And the second comment is that rotaries don't have to be round, and with 12 roundabouts, I guess they do. So I'm back from the rotary era, not the roundabout era, which is basically the same thing, but it doesn't necessarily have to be round. So it could be, maybe not teardrop shape, but sort of angled as such that it could be more on the swampscot legate side and less on the Staples side if that's not part of the solution.

[Speaker 1] (53:26 - 54:25)
Again, I wanna reiterate that I don't see this as something that's, let's wait till we have this whole thing figured out before we move on. That's not the way I'm looking at this, nor do I think that's even necessary. It's important as part of the traffic conversation because there are a lot of concerns here that need to be addressed, and I think that could be a really important component.

I think figuring it out and organizing this is really on us, but if we don't have a cooperative partner in terms of the project that's going there, your piece of it, which is whatever improvements were going to be created, then it's not gonna work. All right, so that being said, I thank everyone for their thoughts, and I think we certainly have a lot of work to do. We can summarize that, and...

[Speaker 19] (54:26 - 54:30)
I think we're mutually aligned to approve the traffic policy.

[Speaker 1] (54:30 - 54:38)
Okay, okay. So that sounds good. That sounds good, so.

[Speaker 9] (54:38 - 54:40)
Angela? So.

[Speaker 1] (54:40 - 54:40)
Please, go ahead.

[Speaker 9] (54:41 - 55:10)
As described by your representation, that sort of like we can make this intersection based on the plan that was presented by the traffic engineer, the mitigation as good as possible, and then if the roundabout idea moves forward on a separate track, that funding essentially transfers or something like that. Should we, we should formalize our, any comments of improvements to this plan here.

[Speaker 1] (55:10 - 55:12)
Right. Separately, yeah. That would be formalized.

[Speaker 9] (55:12 - 55:13)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (55:13 - 56:25)
Okay, so there's no, it's clear where we're, what we're talking about. Importantly, the other reason I bring it up is because of the overwhelming community concern we've had. And you saw the petition.

There were, I don't even know how many signatures, but there were a lot. And those are just those people, never mind all the other people I've heard from. There are many, many people that are concerned, and it's understandable why.

Because people already feel kind of overwhelmed by this crowding and congestion, and anything, it's like another toothpick is gonna seem like too much. So I think it's important to understand that, and again, I'm maybe interpreting their concerns, but doing another traffic study that just proves that, oh yeah, it is gonna be another percent or whatever, in terms of cars, isn't gonna change what we do. The problem is that we need better solutions.

So that's what I'm trying to address here. So in addition to just suggesting that, it's really addressing community concern that I was hoping to achieve.

[Speaker 18] (56:28 - 56:30)
I think that spoke to the traffic studies.

[Speaker 1] (56:30 - 56:36)
Yep. I read that, yes. I know that.

Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (56:37 - 56:48)
We haven't had a chance, I guess, to discuss that petition and our feelings as to the merits of the argument that there should be a new petition. Should we talk about that?

[Speaker 20] (56:48 - 56:49)
Sure, sure.

[Speaker 5] (56:49 - 57:47)
And again, I'll put myself out there first. Again, I'm with you, Angela, 100%. I live very close to the area.

I understand all the concerns about the traffic. I'm not sure that spending the time and money on a new traffic study is the best use of resources here, mental energy even. I think that at best, worst, however you wanna put it, a new traffic study will change the numbers incrementally in some way, but it won't change the reality, which is that we need to do everything we can to improve the situation at this intersection.

And whatever those numbers are, really that qualitative conclusion is more important than the numbers. This idea that we need to make this better. And if the number increases by half a percent because we did a whole new traffic study, I don't know that that effort is worth it.

What needs to be done is the effort to make things better. That's my initial take.

[Speaker 1] (57:47 - 57:50)
And the cars aren't gonna go away. They're gonna keep coming.

[Speaker 9] (57:51 - 57:51)
Can I add?

[Speaker 1] (57:51 - 57:52)
I just are.

[Speaker 9] (57:52 - 57:53)
Can I add something?

[Speaker 1] (57:53 - 57:53)
Please.

[Speaker 9] (57:53 - 58:07)
So maybe I'll direct a question to Jeff, right? The mitigation here for this, any added cars essentially, to me seems to be mostly with signal timing. Is that correct?

[Speaker 3] (58:08 - 58:09)
That's correct, yes.

[Speaker 9] (58:09 - 58:33)
Yeah. So if there was an increase in 5% in traffic volume, I'm just throwing a number out, right? Well, you said once the project is occupied, there's a post-occupancy survey and re-evaluation of the signal timing, right?

So you would re-evaluate the signals at that time to make the improvements needed for any more added cars anyway, right? Am I correct?

[Speaker 3] (58:33 - 58:53)
Or any changes in traffic patterns, even if they're not related to the project. It's really, it's guaranteeing the town that not only do we fix it before we get it in place, but also afterwards, we adjust it not only to reflect our traffic, but also anything else that may have happened in the area that added traffic that maybe didn't have a study in place.

[Speaker 9] (58:54 - 59:07)
Yeah. So it's like, they're gonna tweak it, which is good. So the additional study, not to downplay the concerns, it's gonna be post-evaluated anyway by the equipment.

[Speaker 5] (59:08 - 59:57)
And if I understand the way that traffic studies work inherently, because I think one of the concerns with the current study that's been raised by the community is the reliance on formulas to address the pandemic. And so this idea that we need to do this again under current conditions as they are now, but I think even in a brand new traffic study, if I understand it correctly, car counting is part of it, but a lot of it is still extrapolation and formulas. And so I don't know that it gets us any much further than we already are to have a whole new study.

I think we're still gonna be relying on formulas to try to figure out what the current conditions actually are. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:00:02 - 1:00:04)
So anything else on that?

[Speaker 11] (1:00:05 - 1:00:42)
No, I agree with Dave and you at the outset. I mean, I think we can all understand what a new traffic study, if we were to do one, gonna say the same thing. Might be a few more cars if you ask.

We're talking about a few more cars and a really bad intersection that needs to be fixed. So let's just fix the intersection. I mean, we know what the outcome's gonna be.

We gotta figure out how to fix it. Doing a new traffic study is gonna tell us the exact same thing. It's another bad intersection.

It's gonna have a few more cars that we gotta fix. So let's just figure out how to fix it. At the end of the day, we gotta fix it for the guys that live there and shop there and everything.

So let's just do it right.

[Speaker 9] (1:00:43 - 1:00:58)
Can I ask one more question of Jeff? The intersection of, I think it's Loring, right? And Benin, right?

So that's like the other end of this. And sometimes there's backups through there too, right?

[Speaker 1] (1:00:58 - 1:01:11)
So Loring Ave coming towards Swampscott and the people that try to make a left off Loring just can't get through because it's backed up because of that light. Because the cars between that are trying to get through that Salem Street light can't move.

[Speaker 9] (1:01:12 - 1:01:19)
Right. So I know that intersection was included, I think, in the study. Is that signal included in the retiming effort?

[Speaker 3] (1:01:21 - 1:02:08)
So if it's physically connected to the other signals, then yes. I think our initial review is that it's really the Paradise, Benin, and Salem, Benin intersections that are really the ones that are having probably a little bit more significant issues and would be the most proud school teachers where to the extent that that additional traffic that is, you know, you're talking about getting from that to when he was there, to the extent that there were issues of storage associated with that, that's where it's gonna show up. And then, as you know, then there's a choice.

Once it gets past Paradise, you can go to either end of the triangle there so there's more dispersal. But really those two intersections were where we focused on the improvements because that's where the most profound impact of the project would show up.

[Speaker 9] (1:02:09 - 1:02:09)
Gotcha.

[Speaker 13] (1:02:09 - 1:02:14)
So I think your question was the Benin intersection at Paradise, it's just toward the Salem side.

[Speaker 9] (1:02:15 - 1:02:26)
It was both, it was both actually. I was trying to include another signal. At Essex Street?

Yeah, kind of next to the funeral home over there. Yeah, that's Essex Street. They call it Loring and Salem.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:26 - 1:02:29)
Oh, right, Loring, right. Does it turn, Loring, Salem, and.

[Speaker 13] (1:02:29 - 1:02:35)
I thought you meant the right turn from the Paradise intersection. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, yeah.

Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:35 - 1:02:41)
Just one troublesome intersection after another. They all end up converging, so.

[Speaker 20] (1:02:41 - 1:02:41)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:42 - 1:07:12)
Yeah. All right, so I think where we'll, in terms of traffic, okay, so there was, there are a couple other things I want to discuss and then I think it would be, we can kind of sum up where we are and see when we're gonna be in a position to kind of wrap things up. I know I had talked about extensions with you.

We can talk about that a little afterwards. So traffic within the site is something that I'd like to talk about, okay? And I know, I guess I've had, I guess this project has been on my mind for a while, so there's something I'd like to throw out there.

Traffic within the site, you know, we've got the sort of, there's a lot of parking, a lot of on-site parking and, and some of it's necessary, obviously, but you have underground parking in the Marblehead building, underground parking in number two, and no underground parking on number one, so which is our little building here along Salem Street. So what could make that any better? How could we maybe reclaim some green space on the site and make the project a little better?

So I had another idea that I'm just gonna throw out there. I also have not had a chance to talk this over, but so here goes. So I'm thinking that what if on building number one, you've got a ground, you've ground floor apartments that in my mind are, they're right on Salem Street, you know, there are headlights going into those ground floor apartments, they have a cutie pie little decks coming off them, but I don't wanna sit there, people kind of going back and forth, back and forth, except for that one that's like way up in the middle but the top, like a little, you know, entryway, they're just, you know, they're not appealing apartments, plus all their parking's outside, so that whole building suffers from not having underground parking.

So what if you took out the 12 units on the first floor, just removed your whole first floor, 12 units are gone, that first floor is now underground parking, and what if you took those 12 units, that's 14,600 some odd square foot footprint, and what if you put it on top of building two, stepped back a little bit because it's smaller than building two, and then, I'm not done yet, what if you took building two and you pushed it away from the street, I know it crosses into Marblehead, but only for, you know, crosses into Marblehead maybe 20 feet or something like that, but it just gets a little further back from Paradise, now you've got building one, you have no ground floor units and you have all underground parking, bonus, makes the whole building more appealing. Number two, you've got a fifth floor that overlooks the golf course, nice.

Both, in both situations, it's a better project for you. From my standpoint, well, my personal opinion, which is all I can talk about right now, is I get a better looking project with more green space. So I'm just throwing it out there, I'd like you to think about it, and I've mentioned it to, the only person I talked to was Becky Curran, who also has not spoken to her board.

[Speaker 13] (1:07:13 - 1:07:14)
Green space is that little parking lot in there.

[Speaker 1] (1:07:15 - 1:07:29)
Yeah, or however you want to reconfigure the green space, it's however many spots, figure if we took out, so, right, if all of these are gone, on the ground.

[Speaker 13] (1:07:29 - 1:07:33)
So just shift that underground and then this becomes grass.

[Speaker 1] (1:07:33 - 1:07:47)
Yeah, and we could, you know, and then this gets pushed down, so we get a, so this gets pushed down to about here. So then, no, the top floor is much smaller, it's only about 84% of the size of building two.

[Speaker 19] (1:07:49 - 1:07:55)
I'm just not clear. First of all, I can't push into Marblehead because it's already pretty much a waste.

[Speaker 1] (1:07:55 - 1:08:03)
But I think that they can, I think they had, I don't think 44 was their max. It is their max?

[Speaker 5] (1:08:03 - 1:08:10)
But is this idea contingent? What if you eliminated that pushing into Marblehead for a second? Would you still be in support?

[Speaker 1] (1:08:10 - 1:08:12)
Yeah, I'd still be in support.

[Speaker 5] (1:08:12 - 1:08:16)
I'd still be in support. Okay, maybe it's easier to talk about if we don't, because that piece seems more complicated.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:17 - 1:08:17)
Right.

[Speaker 5] (1:08:17 - 1:08:19)
We should start with just the idea that this building is staying.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:19 - 1:08:23)
Okay, so start with the idea that the building stays in Swanscot.

[Speaker 19] (1:08:23 - 1:08:35)
I was thinking about the one that's, kind of, the one that would, The one on Salem Street?

[Speaker 1] (1:08:36 - 1:09:15)
That would give us the more bang for the buck in terms of street beauty. Right, so we don't have, I don't wanna look at parking. And we get more green space, so it improves drainage.

We reduce a significant amount of the paved surface. We get a greener project, more green space, a better looking project, and you get two buildings that are much more marketable. We can waive the height restriction on building two, if need be.

So, just, I'm not expecting an answer.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:15 - 1:09:17)
Yeah, we can look at it, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:17 - 1:09:19)
Why don't you just look, we can look at it?

[Speaker 5] (1:09:19 - 1:09:22)
Yeah. And I'm curious to see what that makes building two look like.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:22 - 1:09:23)
Yeah, I have no idea.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:24 - 1:09:38)
You're saying it'll be stepped, and everything is pretty uniform. I mean, well, no, it's not. What's nice about it is it's not uniform.

It has bump outs and everything, but the three buildings are kind of the same look and dimensions to them.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:38 - 1:09:40)
And so, It's just too far.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:40 - 1:09:42)
That's what I'm curious to see. Yeah, I'm curious to see what that would look like.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:42 - 1:10:35)
I'm thinking about how do I make it greener? How do I make it more lush? How do I make it prettier?

And I mean from, I think the buildings, I mean, I think you've done a nice job tweaking the roof lines and the skirt, all of that, the materials we like, the landscaping, we can talk a little further about that. We had some comments from the tree committee, which you can review, that type of thing. The green element of it, getting a little more green back, it's a lot of the dense site.

If we can make that improvement, I feel like the town gets a better project. I happen, have I drawn it? I'm not an architect.

Mike's the architect. He can fiddle around with something. You guys are the talent pool.

I don't know how to draw that up.

[Speaker 11] (1:10:37 - 1:10:40)
So, I can doodle something.

[Speaker 9] (1:10:41 - 1:10:51)
Give me a second. So like the two red squares are the parking, right? That you're thinking maybe go away, right?

At the south side of building one.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:52 - 1:11:03)
Also would help with the queuing right there, because people that are pulling into those parking spots, if they're slowing down to pull out of the parking spots or into the site, they're gonna jam up that little exit.

[Speaker 9] (1:11:03 - 1:11:03)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:03 - 1:11:08)
So, right. So you can eliminate the queuing there, which is one good thing.

[Speaker 9] (1:11:09 - 1:11:55)
I guess the one thought I had about the green space is, whether it's at the part where the parking is now vacated, right? Or you are now have the opportunity to make the corner even grander, maybe by sliding one south a touch, you know? And that starts to get a little closer to two, and there's a distance you wanna keep those away from each other, right?

But then not only do you increase the green space on the corner a little bit by sliding one south, maybe a little bit, you know, you're also freeing up a little extra land in case that roundabout comes to fruition, right? Maybe. I know there's a minimum you'd want, like 40 feet probably, between one and two, but yeah, at least, yeah.

[Speaker 5] (1:11:56 - 1:11:58)
How much space is between one and two now?

[Speaker 9] (1:11:58 - 1:11:58)
I don't know.

[Speaker 5] (1:11:59 - 1:11:59)
I'm not sure.

[Speaker 2] (1:12:01 - 1:12:02)
60, 65, something.

[Speaker 5] (1:12:02 - 1:12:05)
So in theory, you have like 20 or 25 feet to gain back.

[Speaker 9] (1:12:05 - 1:12:07)
You're getting two choice, probably, right? Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:12:11 - 1:12:14)
Can I share a gut, just a gut reaction?

[Speaker 20] (1:12:15 - 1:12:16)
Yeah, sure.

[Speaker 2] (1:12:16 - 1:13:41)
I think the starting point for me was the view of the Salem Street building, one, for the residents of Salem and Marblehead and Swampscott who are coming down that street, not to see a stone-based parking garage, but rather to actually see an active residential use, where folks could be sort of outside on those. I know it's not great, but it actually feels like you're not going by an uninviting wall as a pedestrian down that line. You're going by a series of units, and it's kind of neat, and there's maybe just some holiday lights and stuff that's happening there.

It's not a dead, it's not particularly dead on that particular side of the street coming out of Sunbeam, coming down Salem, and coming in that intersection. I thought that was important. That's why there's no parking under that particular building.

I felt differently about going underneath the Marblehead building. We'll call it when you're past that part. As it is, there's units right in that point of the Marblehead building, purposely so that that's what you see.

Then you're in the car, you're going by, and there's more room there to screen the parking. And then there's the balance of units to parking and all those things that we were thinking about. I also didn't know that I could have a fifth floor.

If I could go for six stories, that's how it is.

[Speaker 1] (1:13:42 - 1:14:30)
That's something that, again, not discussed with the board, but my opinion, my personal opinion, would be that that's, first of all, we have the authority to waive the height, so that's not in question. And second of all, to me, unless I felt it was a really worthwhile advantage for the town, for the site, to eliminate some parking and have more green, I wouldn't suggest it. I also wouldn't suggest something that's like, no, let's take this building and turn it this way or bend it.

I mean, I'm not asking, I mean, look, I'm not saying it's not an ask. It's just, or it's, but it's something that is, you know.

[Speaker 5] (1:14:31 - 1:14:54)
Can I ask a question about, so if it was ground floor parking there at the bottom of building one on Salem Street, you mentioned looking at a concrete parking garage as you're driving by. Does it have to be that, or is there, I've been thinking, I feel like I've seen sheer walls that, I don't know if the word's sheer, but. That's kind of the aesthetic, I think.

I don't see the stone there, no, but.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:55 - 1:14:57)
Don't put the shrubbery right up against it.

[Speaker 5] (1:14:57 - 1:15:04)
I'm just wondering if there are, I feel like I've seen parking that doesn't look like parking necessarily.

[Speaker 2] (1:15:05 - 1:15:22)
Yeah, no, I think that's true. I mean, we've done a good job of landscaping away the parking that we do have along that Marblehead line. It's just that there's just less sort of human activity related to that versus seeing windows and patios and doors.

[Speaker 1] (1:15:23 - 1:15:47)
I understand that exactly. I guess I look at it from the flip side. If I'm the human that lives there, I don't like being on the ground floor level.

There's constant cars and turning and headlights and just constant noise and constant moving and just constant, and I feel a lack of privacy and I don't have underground parking. So if I'm the person renting there, I don't like it as much.

[Speaker 5] (1:15:48 - 1:15:54)
There's also a bus stop right there at the corner of building one, right where a couple of patios are, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:15:54 - 1:15:58)
So, you know, it just doesn't seem quite as appealing.

[Speaker 13] (1:15:58 - 1:16:05)
Or is there a reason you can't dig down for the parking and leave that first floor level?

[Speaker 18] (1:16:05 - 1:16:07)
Yeah, I wouldn't have. What is it?

[Speaker 13] (1:16:07 - 1:16:11)
The cost, the cost. Well, it's gotta be cheaper than building a fifth floor.

[Speaker 18] (1:16:12 - 1:16:12)
Nope.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:12 - 1:16:13)
I don't think so.

[Speaker 18] (1:16:13 - 1:16:15)
Really? No.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:15 - 1:16:21)
And fifth floor is fifth floor. We don't transition into steel frame at fifth floor.

[Speaker 18] (1:16:21 - 1:16:23)
Let's at least look at it, so.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:23 - 1:16:33)
Okay, so that's fine. That's all I'm asking. Did you guys, I mean, I haven't talked to anybody, so I just wanna know if there's any thoughts or, you know.

[Speaker 11] (1:16:34 - 1:16:46)
I'm curious to see what you think, how it plays out. Because I actually, I agree with everything you said, but I really like those patios too. I think they look kind of cool.

But everything else, I can do a vandal on.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:46 - 1:16:51)
I wanna do what, obviously it worked out best. I just thought it was worth considering.

[Speaker 11] (1:16:51 - 1:16:56)
And I'm really eager to see what could happen, so. See what happens.

[Speaker 13] (1:16:59 - 1:17:02)
So, is there a ledge or something you have to blast? Is that the problem?

[Speaker 18] (1:17:03 - 1:17:16)
Is it because you have to blast for ledge, or? No, no, there's no ledge there, no. It's just the cost of excavating and then ramping down.

It gets very expensive.

[Speaker 1] (1:17:17 - 1:17:20)
As opposed to slab and parking on the natural grade.

[Speaker 2] (1:17:24 - 1:17:49)
If there was a natural grade drop where you could come in and excavate just some, that's helpful, but just basically with a flat site, you really, it's the ramping issue and then the waterproofing issue. And then just the grade unknown of what you're gonna find when you dig down that makes that cost not, that's why you don't see too many underground. Unless the grade is supporting it.

Or in an urban context. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:17:50 - 1:22:03)
Well, I'm sure there's plenty more comments where that came from. So, I just thought I'd put it out there and I appreciate more thoughts, consideration from all of you guys to me, and from you gentlemen to me, and all of us. So, we can circle back, as they say, on that one.

Thanks. And so, the one last thing I, well, not the last, but the other important topic I wanted to bring up was, which I attended the Historic Commission meeting the other night. I think you probably know.

I've told you from day one, Bill, we've been talking about the Glover Homestead that's there, that was, you know, it wasn't, it's funny, because a lot of people who live in town, just, you know, people see that site differently. They'll look at it and say, oh, what a mess, and gosh, fix it up. And there's other people who, you know, been, either been around for a long time, or used to go to the restaurant, or, you know, from long ago, just remember that it was, what its place was in history.

And if you're, you know, a bit of a history nerd like I am, then you probably knew, you know, even maybe a little bit more. And I know there are a lot, there's quite a group of people that are very interested, and in addition to the folks at Marblehead, who are also very interested. So we do know for a fact that the original 1780-some-odd house is there, that was owned by that, the Brit loyalist, Brown, and was acquired by John Glover right after the Revolutionary War.

And that house is there. Now, we've seen the pictures, so we all know that it's not in great shape. And I know you've discussed with the Historic Commission about, you know, potential salvage and all that, so that's all great.

I do know, well, we know, that the, you know, the actual, the original house is there. Its foundation is there, so the footprint is there. So we're very, very sensitive to, you know, when it comes to demolition, which I know is a ways off, but as we look at it and we come to demolition, that there is a very special attention paid to that.

And I know it's being addressed by, like I said, Marblehead Historical and Swampscott Historic Commission, so I just wanted to voice my support for that as well, and that we'll just, you know, and in terms of, you know, doing a nice memorial to the site, which I know can be, you know, we'll figure it out. But I did speak with Mr. Athenas, who was very gracious with me, and was happy to, you know, get more information for us and some artifacts and so forth, which a couple of which I have and others that we hope to, we hope to have for either a shared exhibition at some point or something like that. So I want to make sure that I mention that in this meeting, because it's, I can see from some of my audience members and from myself that it's something that's near and dear to my heart.

And I think it should be, I mean, there's no way we can just kind of bulldoze a site and say this is, you know, this is a native site. This is actually, this was the real deal from, this is one of the closest to being a first period house that we have in this area from Revolutionary War times, where we have so much data about what actually happened to here and the inhabitants and how important it was. So we just want to make sure that we share that with everybody.

So that was my only other comment for tonight. Please, oh, I'm sorry. I have to, you know, before I'll close the meeting.

I mean, I'll take some public comment after. I guess I thought you were. Okay, just give me one second.

Yeah, I am gonna make it. Hold on a second. Does anyone here want to say anything before we open up to some public comment?

[Speaker 11] (1:22:04 - 1:22:32)
Yeah, I had a couple of questions. At the last meeting or the meeting before, I think you had alluded to the fact that you might be having the power supplied to the properties from Marblehead, the municipal power company. Have you made a decision on that?

Or is that, because I know some folks at our last meeting had questions about that. So I'm not sure where you are in the process there, if that's still ongoing.

[Speaker 21] (1:22:33 - 1:22:34)
I think. Steve, can you do that?

[Speaker 4] (1:22:35 - 1:23:13)
Yeah, I can speak to that. Steve Matterhorn from Boulder, a civil engineer for the project. We have made a slight change to that, really, the Marblehead building, where we have the municipal power plant in Marblehead.

They want to provide power to Marblehead, really. And then we crossed jurisdictional lines, and so you've got National Grid providing power to the Salem parcel, so there's a, we're providing, the providers of the individual town will be providing power to those buildings. So we'll have two separate sources for that building.

[Speaker 11] (1:23:13 - 1:23:14)
Gotcha, okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:23:15 - 1:23:27)
Okay, so then we can follow up on that in terms of the civil plans and so forth to make sure that we, that's good news to me, because I also know that there are some issues with the power supply.

[Speaker 20] (1:23:28 - 1:23:28)
Right.

[Speaker 1] (1:23:28 - 1:23:29)
That they were anticipating some.

[Speaker 16] (1:23:30 - 1:23:31)
Renewable stuff, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:23:31 - 1:23:52)
Some interruptions, possibly, in Marblehead. So I think, and I know that there's a lot of interest in the Swampscott side from our Renewable Energy Committee and others that we pursue something a little greener, or more silver, I guess is the right term.

[Speaker 11] (1:23:53 - 1:24:02)
And then I just had two other quick questions. I know there are EV charging stations. How many do you have on the site, just out of curiosity?

[Speaker 2] (1:24:03 - 1:24:21)
Yeah, it's 15%, which I think was, and they now show up on the plan, I think was it 27, it's here on a note. Sorry, let me pull that up. There are 34 charging stations.

There are 17 charging stations that have a double head.

[Speaker 20] (1:24:22 - 1:24:22)
Yeah, okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:24:22 - 1:24:47)
And we did commit to putting conduit in all of the garage spaces for 100% EV charging capability in the future, and the ones on the site are easy enough to add if we ever got to the 100% need for charging stations. And that does show up on, it's now indicated on the set of revised plans, sheet 1.01 has the note.

[Speaker 11] (1:24:49 - 1:25:06)
And then last question, the affordable units that are in the building, the AMI for that, is that calculated before you? Like, is that part of plans, or how does that decision work on what the?

[Speaker 18] (1:25:06 - 1:25:09)
It's per the town requirement, which was 80%, 80% of AMI.

[Speaker 1] (1:25:10 - 1:26:05)
Okay, that was on our, yeah. We do need to get, there was something, one other piece of, one other piece of information that we had to get from you. And I think that was having to do with that particular, yeah, form of affordable housing restriction that satisfies the requirements of 4880.

So, what I will do is, I'll make sure that I follow up with you on anything that, like this kind of a thing. I also wanna make sure that you have all the comments from all the boards and committees, okay? And especially the ones that our board will review.

And I wanna, those comments will get added to the, any preliminary decisions that we put together. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:07 - 1:26:17)
Yeah, we, those were posted recently, and we are going through that list. Okay. Including fire department, which we've already met.

I can talk about that a little bit if you'd like to know.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:17 - 1:26:21)
Sure, I'd actually like to know, because I know they were gonna coordinate that with Marblehead.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:21 - 1:29:29)
Yeah, see if I can pull up, I have a fire safety slide here. If I can share my screen. Where'd it go?

Sorry, bear with me. Sorry about that. So I had a meeting with the fire chief, the deputy fire chief from Swampscott Pots and Chief Gilliland from Marblehead together, which is really good.

I had their comments that they wrote, they had gotten together and reviewed the project together, and then they sent us comments on the 11th of October. And we went through them kind of one by one, and we showed them a site plan that showed how the fire truck can flow through the site for each of the towns and the city of Salem's truck, for that matter. And then there were some points that they said, they'd like to have a coordinated review of the plans.

Ultimately, there's the plans now, then there's the final construction permit set. And we agreed, of course, they could coordinate that review of that construction document set. We looked at the plan and figured out where they would wanna hook up for if there's a fire situation, their particular equipment, where the fire department connections would be.

So we know where those are going. We agreed on where the fire alarm control panels would be, the central one in the amenity building, and then individual remote panels in each of the lobbies, where the Knoxbox key stations are, that there'd be BDA systems within the buildings, heat detectors, this whole list you see here. Basically, they gave us a list of what they thought made sense.

We totally agreed, fire safety's critical. We agreed on basically all of their comments. But we got some really good feedback on some specifics on where to locate equipment for the future.

So we think we're good with them. They asked also for the ability maybe to get behind the building on the golf course, rather, with just a pedestrian path that would be maintained. We have concerns about golf balls heading out that way, but we might have it just gated off so that it can't be used by a day-to-day pedestrian, but it could be used in a case of a fire emergency.

Those kinds of things were in a letter I wrote and copied, I think, you, Angela, perhaps, or Marcie, and Becky, and the two chiefs, to just say, here's what I heard in the meeting, here's what we're agreeing to do. So that should be, so that meeting, that letter was dated December 8th, which went through all those particular comments that you see on the screen here. I think I left any out.

A couple of things that were not on their original comment list that they wanted us to be sure was that we'd put the swimming pool chemicals at a particular storage way that they store them. They liked where we had our EV charges in the parking garage near the entrances and on the outside wall. They mentioned that they liked what we did with those.

You know, those kinds of things were listed. There's like a T.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:29 - 1:29:34)
You said there was a call box in both towns, is that right, was it?

[Speaker 2] (1:29:34 - 1:30:03)
Yeah, there's a, the BDAs are a way for the radios to talk all one to the other, between the departments. But they would have, they would all get to the central fire alarm control panel in the amenity building that tells them exactly, it's addressable, tells them exactly where the issue is and where to go. When they get to the lobby of a particular building, it's gonna say unit 104, that's where the heat detector's going off, and that they know where to go rapidly.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:05 - 1:30:10)
And so they did the drive around with the trucks then, so they know it's gonna, or they did the diagnosis.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:10 - 1:30:14)
We showed it to them on a plan, which looks like this.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:14 - 1:30:16)
It's just that rear corner, I guess.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:16 - 1:30:41)
You can see the track of the trucks kind of coming through if you look very well, really carefully. So we demonstrated that the trucks can flow through. Salem has a particularly, a little bit of a larger truck, so that's almost, if you will, the worst case scenario.

So that, we think we're left in a good place with both the fire prevention folks.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:46 - 1:30:48)
Great, that's very helpful.

[Speaker 9] (1:30:50 - 1:30:58)
So that area behind building two may turn into a bit of a walk or a driveable surface or something?

[Speaker 2] (1:30:58 - 1:31:22)
Not driveable. They didn't say, they said they didn't need to drive, but what I thought was, to the extent that it's, let's say it was heavily landscaped or full of snow, and they needed to get back there with a ladder or a hose for that matter, they'd want to have a good, clear path. So that seemed to make sense, something that could be snowblowed clear in the winter.

[Speaker 1] (1:31:23 - 1:32:00)
It's actually like a golf cart path, too, that's on, it goes up along the fence property line for a little while. I'm not sure if it goes up all the way. I'm just thinking about how stable that surface is.

Well, that sounds good for the fire. I'm glad to hear that. Wasn't, you know, those trucks, yeah, they're good.

In terms of the civil plans and the coordination between, where, you know, I think the water's all coming from Swampscott, is that correct? But all the drainage is going out through Salem.

[Speaker 18] (1:32:02 - 1:32:08)
You can have, I mean, Bowler has an update on the status of the plans. They were prepared to talk about that, I believe.

[Speaker 1] (1:32:08 - 1:32:09)
Okay, great.

[Speaker 18] (1:32:10 - 1:32:10)
Yep.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:12 - 1:32:14)
Yeah, I can share.

[Speaker 21] (1:32:14 - 1:32:17)
Sure, I'll stop sharing, Steve.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:18 - 1:37:32)
Which you covered most of the highlights that we had on the civil set, so I can flip through the voice just quickly. Make sure everybody's up-to-date, so I'll share this. Okay, so you should be able to see that.

Now we've talked through all of the on-street crossings. We did make an adjustment to the person's comments of internal site circulation and how to make sure the cars, you know, traverse slowly through the property. So obviously, besides just the, we added several genologues in there.

Those are all meant to be traffic calming jobs, and a parking lot, this is also traffic calming. But here we've introduced a raised crosswalk. Again, just another traffic calming, where there is a longer straight-ish stretch there.

It's not a 90-degree turn, it is bending. But we thought that was a good advocacy suggestion. It's still looking good, and it works pretty well in that location.

So that's been added. Again, it's building regular crossings. These would be regular crossings, because folks are going to a 90-degree bend here, so don't think there's a higher speed in that area.

So it didn't work as well in those areas, so we left those at grade. We did some realignment here, which obviously, we're, through the building locations, we'll continue to revisit this area, but really trying to get, and we talked about some of the materiality coming in here, and obviously, we're trying to respond to the rents that we're creating, and get folks to the crossings, right? So we're trying to make a little more sense to help people find these locations with the improvements to the crosswalks and the internal walkways.

And then the last thing that's just right here, Blue Bike Station. We added Blue Bike Station. We tucked that into the property, which is the concrete apron that connects out to the sidewalk, so that's a pretty prototypical way to do it.

So the Blue Bike Stations aren't in the way of plowing out the sidewalks. They can stay to be around, and they're just kind of tucked just out of the way of the public realm, so kind of adjacent to it, right? So they're available to everybody, so it's really a good location.

Don't want it right at the corner, because we don't want people gathering and getting bugs and blocking the intersection with people crossing. So just set that over there for the intersection, so I think that's a good spot for the Blue Bikes. And then just clicking forward to the drainage.

So the way the drainage works, we do have, we're just maintaining existing drainage patterns, but again, we have a marble head side, which has been created. All the water does end up in Salem, so we are coordinating with Salem and meeting their requirements. And I think it's the state that's been sort of imposing water quality and infiltration requirements on the individual towns and cities, so everybody has a pretty similar requirements.

So we're taking it to that state level and then local levels for treatment and quality before we discharge it, and all the discharges off the site are reduced for all the analyzed storms, so small storms up to 100-year storm, is what we look at. Each scenario will be our adaption. But we do disconnect, that's a disconnect.

We have a connection to the same point in Fiddle Street, and then similarly, mixed in coordination with the Sponge Cot Public Works, we have a connection here in this main role here that's in Salem Street, which again, is an existing connection from the site. We're maintaining that connection point after it goes through our on-site treatment and infiltration system, detention system, so. Maintaining those patterns, but greatly improving the water quality is the biggest improvement that these systems are focused on, and reduction in heat flows coming off the property.

And then just lastly, the electric we talked about, we do show the separate system, which will be coming in here from the Sponge Cot side, so we'll put it in the property, closer to the buildings, and then we have a separate, sorry, it comes in a separate, we have a separate seat that is the Sponge Cot, I mean, my lab, but we'll have to keep in mind that, again, trying to pump those in to the site and not right out on the sidewalk of Main Street, again, some of those things that David mentioned, it's just trying to create the best streetscape we can and pump these utilities back, so it can be in Portland a lot, or it can be in some landscape areas, so.

I think that those are really the updates.

[Speaker 20] (1:37:32 - 1:37:34)
A lot of the other information is the same.

[Speaker 4] (1:37:34 - 1:38:43)
We are feeding all the buildings, as we said, from Sponge Cot water, and we had a good conversation with the water superintendent, talked about the quality of the service line in Salem Street, they've got some state lines, some of them that they're able to reline that pipe, so it's probably one of the better-conditioned pipes in Salem, because they get that line to reline it and make it effectively a new line, so it's good for us to get better water quality and better water flows through the pipe that's been rehabilitated recently, so.

All good, there aren't any concerns with that connection, as shown, so. Still work through the details with them, of course, and some of the fire department, they have updated plans as we go, so we'll continue to work through them as we come up with a building permit, and probably on. So, happy to answer any questions on the civil or utility connections, anybody else?

[Speaker 1] (1:38:44 - 1:39:05)
I think you had the, oh, I'm thinking about the, I guess the sewer and drainage plan, we had the peer review on that, but that would be, I'm sure you've had a chance to review all that as well. If we did, we issued a response to that letter.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:06 - 1:40:10)
Some of the items we've incorporated in the plans already, some we've, I'll get it, no, just, I'll get it. Sure, and we're still working through it, we're still talking to the departments and peer reviewers and gathering some survey data, and we'll keep updating those items that were requested, but we think they're agreeable, the comments were good. Some, like I said, some have been incorporated into the plans now, some we've suggested should be prior to building permit as a conditional item, and then some we're trying to gather, oh, one more thing, I missed one time, some survey data relative to the crosswalks to make sure we've got the right reciprocal ramps for those crosswalks that we're modifying or touching the ramp on our side here, we're obligated to touch the ramp on the other side.

We've got a little bit of ongoing work there, but I think we're agreeable to the comments in there for conditions.

[Speaker 20] (1:40:13 - 1:40:13)
Okay.

[Speaker 9] (1:40:15 - 1:40:22)
Are you the right person to ask about landscape improvements, the trees and the plantings and stuff?

[Speaker 4] (1:40:23 - 1:40:31)
We have the right company, but I'm gonna let Jay Emperor take over, because he probably is better, so he's our landscape architect.

[Speaker 9] (1:40:31 - 1:40:32)
Gotcha. Just checking.

[Speaker 4] (1:40:34 - 1:40:35)
This is Jay.

[Speaker 7] (1:40:35 - 1:40:40)
Hi, I'm here, happy to answer any questions. Jay Emperor, this is all right. Hey, Jay.

[Speaker 4] (1:40:40 - 1:40:50)
Jay, do you want me to put on a screen or do you want it controlled? I want to see what I can just put up. Okay, I'll give it to you, I'll give it up there, you can hold it.

[Speaker 7] (1:40:58 - 1:42:14)
Okay. I can just touch on a couple of things that the board of directors kind of indicates varies. In the corner, we talked about the path, and when we looked at the door marker at the intersection of the town lines, from the historic commission, we're gonna expand on that.

The blue lights we touched on, we did that at another walkway here from her environmental class where we were exiting this building. So there's direct access to the sidewalk just as a native front door, so instead of a sidewalk in the street, but this is to encourage pedestrians to go towards the crosswalk or to adjust to that intersection. We added additional evergreens along this edge here, and then in talks with the golf course, there will be a new tanning fence along this perimeter of the property.

We did receive comments from the open space committee and the tree committee that we're evaluating right now. The majority of them were related to species selections and whatnot, so happy to adjust based on their recommendations.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:17 - 1:42:19)
That would be wonderful, we'd appreciate that.

[Speaker 7] (1:42:20 - 1:42:20)
Sure. Any more?

[Speaker 1] (1:42:22 - 1:42:24)
Happy to answer any questions.

[Speaker 9] (1:42:26 - 1:42:33)
No, I didn't have any questions. I just wanted to make sure you received those reports because I was very supportive of the tree committee's report in particular.

[Speaker 7] (1:42:33 - 1:42:56)
Yep. Just to that, the fire department request for access behind building two may affect some of the trees that we're planning to be back here, so we'll work with civil entity to try to maintain as many of those trees as we can while providing access back there.

[Speaker 5] (1:42:57 - 1:43:21)
Not to put you on the spot, Jay, since this just came up earlier tonight, but we were talking about gaining green space where that, if that surface level parking went underneath building one. Off the top of your head, do you have any idea if you had extra space to play with as a landscape architect, what you could do in that area if it became available green space?

[Speaker 7] (1:43:24 - 1:44:38)
Yeah, that is tricky. I just, just in general, perhaps a wider buffer at the perimeter, maybe down this zone, down here. We do have a berm along this edge and this edge, so a screen will already be provided, but then obviously, probably more incremental changes, maybe fewer parking spots here or there, or it would be massaged to create some wider spaces next to walkways and whatnot, but I think we have a lot of great uses on the property already with the clubhouse, we have the dog run, we have the common area in the middle, so maybe just buffer areas at the perimeter.

Again, with a busy intersection, potentially a rotary, with intersections in Settlement Street and Vineyard, creating a larger green is nice, but not really a space that could be activated too much. It's more of a visual space, so probably more incremental changes than large, unfortunately large swaths or large amenities. Thank you.

Sure. Makes sense.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:45 - 1:44:51)
Anything else? And anything else from you guys that you want?

[Speaker 21] (1:44:53 - 1:44:57)
We could update you on the historical commission meeting, but it sounds like maybe you'd listen to that.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:57 - 1:45:01)
I went, but you should update the rest of the board.

[Speaker 2] (1:45:01 - 1:46:24)
Yeah, I can, let me try to quickly again share a screen. So there's a meeting on December 8th, and we received from the historical commission four requests, and we looked into them, and then we responded at the meeting, and then there's a couple more that came through, which we're ready to respond to. The process for the demolition is that you apply for a demolition permit, the building inspector who forwards it to the commission, then there's a formal hearing.

At that point, we believe we'll have wrapped up the issue. We appreciate the history of the building. Unfortunately, the original house has had pretty much three of its walls removed to add on to these extra wings, and then part of the building has collapsed and on itself and so forth.

So it's not particularly salvageable. I did sneak in there and looked to see if there was some, to see if the frame was there, and it does not appear that the actual original frame is really there anymore. The big chimney is in the middle, but I was hoping to find a good old wood frame that somebody could salvage, but I didn't see it.

[Speaker 15] (1:46:26 - 1:46:29)
Oh, I'm sorry.

[Speaker 21] (1:46:30 - 1:46:32)
That might be almost there.

[Speaker 20] (1:46:32 - 1:46:33)
There you go.

[Speaker 2] (1:46:35 - 1:50:06)
So one thought was, can we incorporate, we did a site walk. Historical commission was there, many of the members, and they talked about, we looked at some artifacts, some really great iron fencing, some lampposts, some cast iron lampposts, the sundial, and so forth, and could we incorporate them into the design. So I went back out, did another inventory, and then I got a plan that I showed them where we thought we'd use some of these elements.

We agreed to do the Form B type historical research on all of the buildings. Marblehead is a person that they've used before. Successfully, they asked us to engage him.

I talked to him. He seems ready and able to do it, so we agreed that we would do that. And then if they're during the course of excavation and demolition, if there are things that are of value, archeological value, we sort of would alert the commission and sort of stop for a second and grab our breath about it, if you will.

And then the commission was wanting the ability to look at the feasibility of moving any of the buildings to a new location. We're certainly amenable to that. Needs to happen within the timeframe of the actual project demolition, of course, but that's a ways away.

So those are the four items that came up in their request, and those were our responses. And then we, as I said, I went out to the side of the inventory. There were about nine of these eight-foot-tall cast-iron lampposts from probably the 1920s, 10s, 20s.

They were just, some of them have some cracks in them, so we think we can salvage, let's say we salvage six of them at least. They need to be rewired and relamped. But we put four of them around this sort of monument area, we're calling it, and I'll show you what that plan looks like, just to sort of mark the spot.

That's where also we're planning on moving the sundial. And then we're gonna put two of them at the bus stop area where we're saving the piers, so they really kind of, we're trying to group the history, if you will, kind of together. There's a potential for some of these iron gates to also back up that bus stop, so there's two benches now shown, the iron gates, the lamps, be a nice little spot that the public will really enjoy in that spot, because it's almost right opposite Sunbeam.

And so that's what we looked at. The rest, buried in these bushes are some pretty interesting fences from a company in Boston on Portland Street back in the day in the 20s. They did the Frick Estate in Beverly, those famous gates you might see, 127.

So we're gonna try to use some of that. There's like 45 feet of that fencing. So this plan here kind of showed where it was, and then we suggested where it was going to go.

And then this spot here where the three towns, one city and two towns intersect, we thought, well, that's a great spot to mark. It's highly visible to have something that would suggest, you know, recollect the history. So we talked about this kind of idea where there'd be some benches, the four cast iron lampposts, the sundial right at that intersection point, and an interpretive marker, and the historical commissioners suggested they'd help us with the script and what that would, I wanna say.

So there's a good stopping point here where all those paths come together. It's highly visible. So that's how we left it with the commission.

I think they were pretty pleased with our effort.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:08 - 1:50:57)
Okay, I would just say that in terms of the demolition, and I'm not suggesting that an entire project gets held up by an archeological dig, but I would like to request that special attention be paid to the actual footprint of the building, which we know is there, because the stone foundation is there. We've got the original brick hearth that's there. I mean, it's stone hearth, it's not brick.

And I'd like to make sure that it gets documented photographically. I don't want that piece of the property wrecking balled. So I mean, there's other, just to be able to cautiously take things apart so that we can do a full photographic documentation would be greatly appreciated.

[Speaker 2] (1:50:57 - 1:50:58)
Yeah, that seems reasonable.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:58 - 1:51:04)
Thank you. All right. Does anyone mind if we take some public comment?

[Speaker 9] (1:51:05 - 1:51:07)
Can I add one more thing?

[Speaker 1] (1:51:08 - 1:51:09)
I'm gonna let Mike go first, go ahead.

[Speaker 9] (1:51:09 - 1:51:30)
Right before we take public comment. First of all, it's gonna be the nicest bus stop in all of Swampscot, I think. By far.

It's nice, right? Oh, not really. Did we touch on affordable housing for like a second?

Do you have a plan in this package that shows the distribution of the units? Not yet. Not yet, but you will at some point.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:30 - 1:51:36)
I think that's one part of that, the report that has to be submitted or something like that, so.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:36 - 1:51:46)
Yeah, we often just mark with a circle or something, and they're distributed by floor and side of the building.

[Speaker 20] (1:51:47 - 1:51:48)
Yeah, they're kind of like type.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:49 - 1:51:52)
And they're not differentiatable, if that's a word.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:52 - 1:51:52)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:53 - 1:51:56)
One from the other. Right. Okay, yeah, I just wanna see that eventually.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:56 - 1:51:58)
I guess we have to comply with the, you know.

[Speaker 9] (1:51:58 - 1:52:02)
Sure. Yep. All right, that's my only, that's my last comment, so.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:03 - 1:52:09)
Does anyone have any objections to taking some public comment? Okay, please.

[Speaker 14] (1:52:17 - 1:52:20)
Ryan, I'm sorry, if you wouldn't mind just approaching the microphone, that way you are.

[Speaker 20] (1:52:20 - 1:52:22)
Oh, sorry, I was supposed to hear you as well.

[Speaker 14] (1:52:23 - 1:52:23)
Thank you.

[Speaker 15] (1:52:26 - 1:52:40)
So my question is on the process of the wrecking ball, which is to say, when it's decided that the sites to be leveled, who gives that authority? That's a process question. Is that?

[Speaker 1] (1:52:40 - 1:53:14)
That would be the building inspector. It's the applicant would supply a demolition permit. With this application, we would require a demolition plan in which all the conditions that we've talked about would be ironed out, exactly how we're gonna do it, and that covers everything from, you know, protecting the site, disposal of asbestos, to doing the exact things that we're talking about, how every particular structure gets handled, what gets, you know.

[Speaker 15] (1:53:14 - 1:53:19)
So on some properties, there's a nine-month delay. Is that applicable to this project?

[Speaker 1] (1:53:21 - 1:53:22)
That's not up to me.

[Speaker 15] (1:53:23 - 1:53:34)
Okay, and then the question is, if a group wants to, you know, remove some of the historical property or buildings, what's the process for that?

[Speaker 1] (1:53:34 - 1:53:54)
I think that the applicant has been pretty open about, you know, being willing to work with the commission in terms of, you know, whatever has been identified as salvage. Is that, am I right? I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth.

That's my understanding.

[Speaker 2] (1:53:55 - 1:53:56)
I think that's correct.

[Speaker 15] (1:53:56 - 1:54:20)
So I just want to make sure everybody knows that the historic Humphrey House in Swanscot is part of the Historic Society, and that's different than the Historic Commission, and so there's a second group which would be, I think should be brought into this, which would be the Historic Society, because they have done the Humphrey House.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:20 - 1:54:41)
And I would recommend, in fact, I think it's great that you're here, too, Molly. I think it would be really important for you to work together as to, you know, connect with the commission. The commission is the government agency, so they have some regulatory authority, they hold public meetings and so forth, and the society's a private organization.

Is that correct?

[Speaker 20] (1:54:41 - 1:54:42)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:42 - 1:55:22)
Okay, so without getting into a lot of detail, I think it's, and the Marblehead's got the same deal, really, it's important that I would recommend that you, that the society, and the commission coordinate your efforts together. So maybe you just hold a joint meeting, or you know, whatever it is, but building on the request that they've made, and make sure all of your concerns are met, and then we can certainly bring it back to the petitioner, and just, I don't think that your needs and desires are that much, are far removed from what they're hoping to do, but I'm, you know, I think it's, the more information we get, the better.

[Speaker 3] (1:55:26 - 1:55:28)
Perhaps, I mean, Oh. Do you want to say something else?

[Speaker 1] (1:55:28 - 1:55:29)
Nope, I'm good.

[Speaker 15] (1:55:29 - 1:55:46)
No, that's okay. I mean, commission, I don't think the society was on copy, that's all, and that's an issue.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:46 - 1:55:56)
That, it is an issue, and I would recommend that you try to set up a meeting with them. You should definitely be working together. I think it's, would make the most sense.

[Speaker 8] (1:55:58 - 1:57:17)
My name is Duncan Maitland, and Hi, Duncan. I am part of the Board of Governors for the Swampscot Historical Society, and my concern is that, in my estimation, Swampscot cannot afford to lose any 18th century building that still exists within the confines of Swampscot. The major building that is most upsetting to me was the Blaney House, and that was torn down to accommodate a florist shop, as far as being built on the property.

Blaney Beach, which, another name is Fisherman's Beach. All of that is combined in that central area of Swampscot. I feel that we should have somehow had at least one person, if not more than one person, do a walkthrough, or have you, Angela, been inside that building?

[Speaker 1] (1:57:17 - 1:57:21)
Not for 50 years, I used to work there.

[Speaker 8] (1:57:21 - 1:57:24)
All right, what I'm wondering is the central chimney.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:24 - 1:57:46)
I think the central chimney is standing, that stone chimney, but, and some of the brick chimneys that were built subsequently are standing, but, and I've not been inside the building. It doesn't, I don't know that I'd wanna, you know, step inside, and I'd love to, but I'm not sure how accessible it is.

[Speaker 5] (1:57:46 - 1:57:55)
Well, I understand from the walkthrough we did that we were told that essentially, like, nobody could, no one from the public could go in the building from a safety perspective.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:55 - 1:57:59)
Seems a little unsafe. So, I hear you, and I said that.

[Speaker 8] (1:57:59 - 1:58:13)
Well, what I'm wondering about is the central chimney, in an authentic, and somehow, in my mind, that building dates back to possibly 1730.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:14 - 1:58:15)
Possibly, yeah.

[Speaker 8] (1:58:15 - 1:58:33)
And the construction, as far as the chimney, because the weight of that chimney is so immense, as far as the fireplaces and everything connected to it, that it should have an arch support in the basement.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:34 - 1:58:34)
Possibly.

[Speaker 8] (1:58:34 - 1:59:32)
Now, the Humphrey House does not have a center chimney, because when the house was moved from Elmwood Road to Paradise Road, they left the chimney behind. So that, to me, is an important piece of the entire building, let alone the connection to probably the most important person outside of George Washington, as far as the Revolutionary War is concerned. And Swampcote has a claim to that person through the building that we now are talking about, as does Marble Head with the building that Glover lived in during the time he was with George Washington.

[Speaker 1] (1:59:32 - 2:01:26)
Unfortunately, that building survived as a house, and it never, you know, it was continually maintained, and it was, as you know, that entire part of Marble Head is one huge historic district. So fortunately for them, nothing ever got modified or changed or anything like that. As far as a, I couldn't agree with you more, that we should have had, you know, historic, we should have had a, and some, that inventory should have been done on that property.

I mean, many, many, many, many, many moons ago, since it's been, for as long as I've, you know, as long as I know, it's always been known to be a historic site. It wasn't always clear, you know, because he had his house in Marble Head, and, you know, it wasn't exactly always clear, like, when he acquired it, and was it an inn, or did he live there? But we do know that now, that he, you know, did acquire it around 1781, and lived there through the end of his life.

So we do have a lot of information. But I will say to you that the, you know, the only way we could have done anything, we, meaning the town, could have done anything differently would have been to have had it inventoried long, long ago, which would have, you know, at least been something. But at this point, that was, you know, at the meeting, when you were at the historical community the other night, you showed a photograph of that, of that fireplace, that big stone hearth.

So we know, in fact, that it's intact. So if there was, you know, in going through this process of, you know, taking apart the buildings, I think if there were, if there were monies, any ways to figure out how to move that, this is a conversation that, you know, we should prepare for, and that you could have.

[Speaker 8] (2:01:27 - 2:02:38)
I'd like to make another, or put on the floor another suggestion. The Lynn Historical Society, in their old building on Green Street, had a very unique room in the basement of that museum. And that room was a complete built rendition of a revolutionary house where the person went to battle and never returned.

And it was like you were in the house as far as how well done it was. And is there any possibility that at least one room in that house could be reconstructed some other place? Now I'm moving the whole building, just so Swamps Court still has a claim to that house that we've had for many years and never really appreciated what we had.

And now it's going to disappear forever.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:38 - 2:03:33)
Here's what I would ask you to do. First of all, I think that you, it would be my recommendation that the society collaborate with the commission and just insist that you want to work together. And second of all, I would contact the Lynn Museum and Mass Historical and see what kind of resources you can pull together.

And then we can communicate and we do have, demolition will happen at some point. But we have time now, this is the time to have any conversations because we have a petitioner who's been more than, he's been very willing to help us out with requests and been very open and amenable to requests. So I think if there's an opportunity here to work together, and it's possible, if it's possible, then it's possible.

[Speaker 15] (2:03:34 - 2:03:34)
Let's just figure it out.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:35 - 2:03:36)
Pardon me?

[Speaker 15] (2:03:36 - 2:03:37)
How much time do we have?

[Speaker 1] (2:03:37 - 2:03:39)
What did you say, next summer in terms of demolition?

[Speaker 6] (2:03:40 - 2:03:41)
Fall, fall.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:41 - 2:03:51)
Good time. Less than that. Tomorrow would be a good time to get started.

I mean, you know, these things take time, right?

[Speaker 8] (2:03:52 - 2:03:56)
But I mean, one room is.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:57 - 2:04:27)
I understand what you're saying. Look, I'm just as, I don't know if I can say I'm, I'm, you know, I think we share the same interest in this. So let's just leave it at that.

I understand how you feel about it. And I think you're not alone. I think there's a lot of people that share that level of interest.

So the point is, it's on us to get our resources together and figure out, you know, if that's there, then what can we do? Could you share those pictures with me too? You don't have to have them right now.

[Speaker 2] (2:04:28 - 2:04:28)
Yeah, I don't, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:28 - 2:04:34)
If you could just share them with me, that would be helpful. Then we'd give them a basis to, you know, get some information.

[Speaker 8] (2:04:35 - 2:04:37)
I mean, I've seen postcards, but I'm not seeing this.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:37 - 2:04:45)
I know, how about the inside? He was able to get his camera through some glass and get inside pictures. All right.

And they're pretty, they're quite good, so.

[Speaker 2] (2:04:45 - 2:04:51)
Yeah, and I'd caution you, the building is not safe. So we will get, I can share the photos, but you.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:52 - 2:04:55)
No, I'm just saying so that they can use them in their, in gathering.

[Speaker 2] (2:04:55 - 2:04:57)
Absolutely, I just would be careful of the building.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:58 - 2:04:58)
Understood.

[Speaker 2] (2:04:59 - 2:05:06)
For a whole bunch of reasons. Structural, glass broken, all of that is not a safe place for humans.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:06 - 2:05:10)
Understood. Thank you. Okay.

Yes.

[Speaker 16] (2:05:11 - 2:05:14)
Now, historically, if a building is going to be.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:14 - 2:05:15)
This is Douglas, we had.

[Speaker 16] (2:05:15 - 2:05:20)
Ripped down. Now we have Douglas. It has some historical, well, Doug Maitland.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:20 - 2:05:20)
I know.

[Speaker 16] (2:05:20 - 2:05:45)
A former member of the Swanscote Historical Commission and Swanscote Historical Committee for 22 years. What I'm interested in is the documentation of the building before it's destroyed. And will that information and photos and so on be put on the town website?

[Speaker 1] (2:05:46 - 2:07:14)
I would imagine it will be. This is an interest that's shared with the town of Marblehead. They too want the site documented.

So I know in speaking with the planner there, they also have their Form B that they want to get working on. We have ours. I know that that's a process that has, I guess is about to be initiated.

And whatever, not only would it, if once we submit that in its entirety, which takes a little time to get together, not only will it be on the town website, it's on Macro. So it's on the internet and you can just, it's very easy to access. We'll keep you posted.

I can promise you that. No, we don't have anything that's submitted through a consultant that you are hiring through the historic commission and the town of Marblehead. It will, once the, when the Form B has been complete, it goes to the state and it gets, and if they accept it, it takes a little time and they get back to you and they let you know a site's been accepted.

Everything gets uploaded into the site called Macros. It's M-A-C-R-I-S. That's great.

That's correct. Okay. And once you meet with the historical commission, they can fill you in on all those details and how it gets done.

Go on there now. All our historical inventory's on there.

[Speaker 8] (2:07:16 - 2:07:17)
Thank you for listening.

[Speaker 1] (2:07:17 - 2:07:25)
Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for coming to our meeting. Any other comments tonight?

And do we have anyone online, Marissa?

[Speaker 14] (2:07:25 - 2:07:47)
I think we do, yeah. I saw some hands raised. Okay, just calling them, calling on them in order that I see them.

I know, I was just thinking about you. There was someone's hand that I accidentally just lowered without allowing you to talk.

[Speaker 20] (2:07:47 - 2:07:48)
It was Ryan's.

[Speaker 14] (2:07:49 - 2:07:51)
Oh, okay. Great. All right.

[Speaker 20] (2:07:53 - 2:07:55)
Oh, no, oh.

[Speaker 14] (2:07:55 - 2:07:58)
I accidentally unmuted Verena from the Swamp Scratch Committee, but.

[Speaker 20] (2:07:59 - 2:08:00)
Verena, you're up.

[Speaker 14] (2:08:00 - 2:08:01)
Okay, Verena.

[Speaker 12] (2:08:02 - 2:09:30)
Okay. Hi, Verena. Good evening.

Yes, yes. Thank you. I also wanted to congratulate you on the meeting.

It's really very well run and everybody's contributions were great. So I'm the chair of the TRICA meeting and I just, we mentioned that our feedback was submitted a couple times. I was just wondering what you get to hear back from the landscape architect and others.

So there were, I think, two main concerns in my mind. One is, how do we save our trees, especially on the intersection of Benjamin and Salem Street where that entrance is planned and all the paths. There are some prestigious trees that could be made safe.

And another comment we had, what we had was around the parking lots, the outside parking lots, there were some large stretches that didn't have the landscaping buffers. Our zoning bylaws actually request that there's no, we have 15 contiguous runs of parking spaces that are uninterrupted. So maybe that can be considered.

And, yeah, what do we get back in terms of this is our main question?

[Speaker 7] (2:09:33 - 2:11:00)
We received an update from all our colleagues and architects. So we didn't see those comments in the last week. We are reviewing them.

I think most of them are easy to address. A lot of them were species recommendations. Again, happy to work with you on those.

Also happy to walk the site and review any trees that are there. I think a lot of them look better than they actually will in person. There's some already citrus trees that we're gonna run work to keep up to 10.

It's feasible. There are a lot of great changes we've been developing with the walkways to make accessible and consistent with that. But what we can keep, probably more on the perimeter, we'll definitely want to keep.

On the plan, we'll work closely with several because we want to finalize to indicate areas that vegetation can be maintained. And then, again, be on site and discuss particular trees we're happy to do that. As per the stresses of parking, we'll be able to work with several to integrate islands.

We're gonna start to break up those walk-in runs to get along together with some team. So we'll integrate an island at that run. We are reviewing those.

[Speaker 12] (2:11:02 - 2:11:30)
Yeah, I also want to mention, we are happy to collaborate with you. You mentioned that you started visiting together maybe in the spring when the trees started looking out again. And we did that very successfully, actually, with our new elementary school project.

We were able to save some of the old trees there. And that was very, I think, in the face of climate change and what's happening with that loss around us, it's a good thing, anyway.

[Speaker 7] (2:11:31 - 2:11:45)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's a more mature site, which I think helps everybody as well. We'll integrate the historic elements that Ben was speaking to.

And having mature trees there, it just all goes to a reactor that we feel is appropriate to the site.

[Speaker 12] (2:11:46 - 2:12:05)
Great. And one last question. Is there actually a survey of the existing trees?

I saw the demolition plan, and I think most of the trees are slated for removal with the exception of a very few. But is there actually a survey of what the trees are and what the sizes are?

[Speaker 7] (2:12:05 - 2:12:16)
I don't believe there's an official tree survey. But again, if you go ahead and take a look at the site, we'll be able to indicate which part of those trees are new. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:12:18 - 2:12:58)
Verena, in terms of the demolition plan, you're probably referring to the demolition notes that are in the existing plans, which is just a lot of that is just kind of boilerplate information about typically how a site gets prepared and the precautions that need to be taken and the supervisory issues that need to happen. So typically once a demolition plan, if the formal plan gets submitted, it's far more detailed than it would include. In this case, we could get much more into the, no pun intended, into the weeds on the landscaping piece of it.

So just to let you know.

[Speaker 12] (2:12:59 - 2:13:04)
Okay. So we are able to talk about it and work with you on that.

[Speaker 1] (2:13:04 - 2:13:05)
Okay. Great.

[Speaker 12] (2:13:06 - 2:13:06)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:13:08 - 2:13:13)
Okay. Any other comments? I know Ryan Hale.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:15 - 2:13:16)
Thanks everybody.

[Speaker 10] (2:13:16 - 2:13:59)
So I'm Ryan Hale. I'm a town meeting member and the chair of the Renewable Energy Committee and also on the Capital Improvement Committee. So I have one traffic related question and then a whole bunch of energy around the design of the building.

So should we start with traffic? I didn't hear anything in the comments before about bicycle safety or any sort of data that was collected about bicycle traffic during the traffic study. So could you please tell me what you know about bicycle traffic in the area and how your designs are going to improve the safety of cyclists through that part of our town?

And then I'll come back to the actual building design stuff after that. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (2:14:03 - 2:15:52)
So it's a very good question. We do collect bicycle data as a part of our traffic council and we do have that information. I don't have it at my hand, but it was collected as a part of our study.

Those bicycle counts were done in August, so it's favorable weather conditions. So we do include cyclists as a part of our analysis. One of the biggest things that we're doing as a part of the project is making sure that the driveway design, as well as the internal circulation, accommodates bicyclists.

So if we start them within the site, we already have bicycle racks and micro-bicycle parking. So exterior bicycle racks for short-term bicycle parking and then interior bicycle parking, weather-affected for long-term. So we start with that within the site.

As we proceed off-site, any of the improvements that we're designing, we can still talk about pedestrians, but we're also looking at bicycle activity as it relates to the improvements that we're going to construct. So we're looking at not only wheelchair racks, we're looking at drainage and attach basins to make sure that those are bicycle compliant in terms of not trapping any vehicles. But as we're adjusting the traffic signal timing, I was mentioning about the sensors in the pavement.

As you probably know, because you're a cyclist, those detectors are set to detect bicycles as well. So I spend a lot of time talking about more vehicle traffic, but we are sensitive to bicycle accommodations. And when we're timing the traffic signals, we are looking at bicycle accommodations at the intersections as they relate to the operations of the traffic signal.

So that will all be considered as a part of our retiming and reevaluation of those signal systems and making sure that the detection system is working properly to not only detect vehicles, but also detect bicycles.

[Speaker 10] (2:15:53 - 2:16:21)
Okay, great. And so the actual road design, I don't really understand where the scope of this project ends, where the, like who owns the street and who owns the land. So if we're talking about bicycle lanes or paint markings in the intersections, drive through Salem and you see some of the improvements that they've made to actually move, park cars to protect cyclists from the moving traffic, all that stuff.

So is that in scope for you guys in terms of road markings, or is that the street's problem?

[Speaker 3] (2:16:22 - 2:16:54)
Not in this area, but to the extent that we can add sheriffs to paint the markings, but we're not blocking the road with more bicycle lanes into the area. Even, it's not something that we could do that would be very spotlight in terms of where we could provide it, but we can use things like paint markings and signs and things like that. But we don't have anything that's as dramatic as what you described about Salem where we have opportunities to use a parking lane, create a buffer and bike lane, things like that.

It's just not something that exists in this area.

[Speaker 10] (2:16:55 - 2:17:28)
Okay, cool, thank you. And so maybe we just move on to the building design itself. So I'd love to hear from whoever's designing the building what your thoughts are about the upcoming changes to stretch code and the opportunity to really set a leadership position for our town in terms of energy efficient design.

Do you guys have, how do you feel about passive house? How do you feel about a HRS rating for this building? Are we going full electric?

Just tell me what you guys have thought about since last time around the energy efficiency of this structure, please.

[Speaker 2] (2:17:28 - 2:17:44)
I have a sustainability sort of set of slides I can go through real quick that touch most of what I think you're talking about, if that's okay. Great. I'm also getting an alert that my computer battery is dying.

So I don't know if you guys paid your electric bill or not, but...

[Speaker 10] (2:17:46 - 2:17:49)
It's actually the solar panels on the roof are what's charging your laptop.

[Speaker 2] (2:17:51 - 2:18:36)
So we're headed for a minimum of a LEED silver certifiable. We probably won't actually go through the program, but we use the outline of the program as our basis for thinking about sustainability. And as you know, there's the six different categories that you go through and we've gone through their kind of checklist and said, okay, can we land at a silver rating?

And I think the answer is yes. Projects like this, use this LEED version four for homes, building and design and construction for multifamily. In any event, one of the categories is this location and transportation.

The big deal on this site is that it has been previously developed and it's in the middle of this area with all the mass transit. Look at that. Thank you.

Hopefully that was quite a lot.

[Speaker 13] (2:18:36 - 2:18:38)
You just have to start pedaling to make that one.

[Speaker 2] (2:18:38 - 2:21:02)
Yeah. You know, the density of the site, the fact that it's 30 units per acre is actually good. And the fact that all these bicycling station facilities are provided.

So that's sort of the first step. The fact that during, that we're handling our stormwater runoff and they have a pretty contiguous, lots of contiguous open space and a full blown landscape plan and reducing the amount of heat island effects with the trees and the use of white roofing is in the sustainability category. We're being water efficient with how the plants we're picking and so forth.

We are energy star rated. I think that shows up in this. This relates to the new stretch energy code coming.

We'll at least meet the current one, which has these R values. We'll have the continuous exterior insulation application. We'll be solar ready.

If not even solar, we'll have solar panels on the roof. We will be using an electric heat pump system for the heating and cooling of the units that would be with individual controls and metering. We would be energy star rated.

We will do the HRS rating and we would do unit commissioning and unit segregation. So we'll meet all of those points. We'll stop short of passive house at this point.

It's a little bit due to the industries. Hasn't quite caught on enough for us to find enough partners to do the detailing. So what you can see here, there's a full, a big dedication to the sustainability of that part.

The last couple of categories are things like materials and resources, like using recycling chutes in the building and putting in a composting program. Then the indoor air quality of simple things like no smoking on the site, but also exterior closed dryers, a little bit larger window, fresh air into the units, being brought into the units with an ERV. And I guess that's it.

So those are the six categories. We take them seriously and we expect to be, I would say state of the art, maybe not Ford, absolutely on the Ford cutting edge, but darn close.

[Speaker 10] (2:21:03 - 2:21:12)
Okay, cool. And my eyes aren't what they used to be. So I think I heard for the exterior, you guys are using permeable materials for the landscaping, everything to.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:12 - 2:21:35)
I think, yeah, I think that came through with the open space committee. We're evaluating how much pervious pavement we'll use beyond the fact that our site is more pervious now than it was when we started. Okay.

You know, admittedly it's a very low bar to hit, but what I think, what talked about some of the things tonight will improve that. And then the use of pervious materials in certain places will be part of our program.

[Speaker 10] (2:21:36 - 2:21:42)
And I think I heard you say no natural gas for HVAC. Is that true? Yeah, I think domestic hot water will be natural gas only.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:43 - 2:21:56)
We haven't quite figured out how to do that effectively in this kind of use with individual units, but the actual units themselves, the heating and cooling will be done by electric heat pump. Yes, technology, yes.

[Speaker 10] (2:21:56 - 2:22:12)
Great. It's great to hear that. I'd love to see if we can raise the bar and get no gas at all at the site if we can, right?

If there's whether it's on demand hot water or something, I'd be great to sort of raise to that level. I didn't see a HRS number. Do you guys have a preliminary number yet?

[Speaker 2] (2:22:12 - 2:22:40)
Not yet, but we will get there. And I hear you on the natural gas for domestic hot water. That's something we hear from a lot of folks that we're trying to figure out how to do it.

The individual units don't work within a unit. And for this kind of use, it just seems like you'd need individual control. Instantaneous hasn't proven to work yet well, cost effectively or maintenance wise.

But there's a lot of focus in the industry on just what you're saying is let's get rid of the gas line.

[Speaker 10] (2:22:41 - 2:22:41)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:41 - 2:22:41)
Okay, great.

[Speaker 10] (2:22:42 - 2:22:49)
And I heard somebody say earlier, EV charging stations was 15%, but I think the new code is 20. So are you guys gonna reach 20? Yeah, sure.

Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:50 - 2:23:06)
When the new code comes in and reach 20, we'll start at 15, but we're gonna be capable. And clearly someone making this kind of investment in this property, knowing where we're going with electric charging, it's gonna be, the garage will be full of stations in 20 years.

[Speaker 10] (2:23:06 - 2:23:31)
Right, right, exactly. That's great. So I'm just really, really excited to partner with a firm like you guys who shares the same aspirations as we do to really have SwampScot be a leader in this type of resilient and efficient and sustainable design.

So anything that our committee can do to help you guys, we have volunteers that are here in person and listening online and ready to contribute to help us really, just really create a project that we're all proud of. So thanks for your help.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:31 - 2:23:32)
Oh, I appreciate that. That's terrific.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:33 - 2:23:47)
Thank you, Ryan. Ryan, could you, if you have a list of recommendations or priorities that your group has, could you submit them to me? Sure.

And that way I can just make sure we keep track of everything.

[Speaker 10] (2:23:47 - 2:23:47)
Will do. Thanks for your help.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:47 - 2:23:48)
Wonderful, thank you.

[Speaker 14] (2:23:50 - 2:23:59)
Okay. Okay. I think we had one more comment on Zoom.

Sabrina again.

[Speaker 12] (2:24:02 - 2:24:20)
Yeah, sorry. I wanted to answer the design question, piggybacking on Ryan's comments. Have you thought about doing roofs for the buildings?

I saw that you said something about white roofs to reflect some.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:22 - 2:24:55)
Yeah, we have mostly pitched roofs. And there's a center section, which has kind of a well that would have the electric condensing units for the heat pumps up there. The fire department is not liking the idea of a whole lot of solar panels up there, but we're gonna look at how big a space we have and can we put some in and have the firefighters safely traverse the roof.

I don't think there'll be room left for a green roof per se on the property.

[Speaker 12] (2:24:57 - 2:24:57)
Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:59 - 2:24:59)
You're welcome.

[Speaker 12] (2:25:02 - 2:25:09)
And we have the same common thought for herbal surfaces, as much as possible. Right.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:13 - 2:25:23)
Anyone else, Marisa? Looks like we're all set on Zoom. Okay.

So, anything we haven't covered that we should talk about?

[Speaker 9] (2:25:26 - 2:25:51)
Thought of two more things, based on the public comment. So the only thing that's gas is the electric hot water. The cooking is electric too?

Cooking is electric. Cooking is electric too, so that's the other source of gas, right? And then the other thing I thought of was, based on your comments about the chimney, there's not a chance that that chimney falls in the open spot on the plan, right?

It falls in a building. Yeah, I got it.

[Speaker 2] (2:25:52 - 2:25:53)
That's correct.

[Speaker 9] (2:25:53 - 2:25:54)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:25:55 - 2:26:23)
The chimney did not have an arch in the basement, which may make it more easily moved. I don't know. But it's gonna be a delicate process to take that building apart safely in the condition it's in now.

But we can, I think, to the point of what's a relatively careful demolition process and then the chimney will stand there and if somebody has the resources to wanna pick it up and remove it, that'd be great.

[Speaker 20] (2:26:23 - 2:26:24)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:26:24 - 2:26:24)
Yeah, okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:26:25 - 2:27:50)
Good. All right, so for our next meeting in January would be 120 days. So I can't say that we're gonna be, we need at least another, we need at least another month past that.

There's no way that we're gonna be able to review everything we talked about tonight and have. I think that I'll be able to put together a pretty good summary with a lot of recommendations. We've covered a lot of ground.

And we have, as a town, we have a lot of work to do on our end here. But I think, especially with the holidays, I just, you know, I think our time is so limited that I just don't see January as happening. So I would like to request that we push it at least 30 days after that, so February.

And we can shoot for a February date. Is that agreeable? I know I need to put it in writing, but I just can't, you know, I know that we're not in a position to be able to vote on anything final.

If anything changes, I mean, we certainly could let you know, but I don't know, we won't have a chance to meet again, so.

[Speaker 6] (2:27:52 - 2:29:42)
So, if my memory is certainly correct, I think the current meeting's at the end of January 2020. So we're gonna be with you at the January meeting. At that mid-January meeting, we'll do a hope group at a later point, where maybe there's even a draft decision where we actually have some conditions that have been articulated.

And, you know, you may very well be correct that at January, folks are public hearing and voting to give you a sense. You know, Marla had one meeting ahead of you guys. We started with the public hearing process, but Marla had one meeting before, and tomorrow night, we'll go to Marla Head, work with the planner.

They're gonna be able to go to the board, the planner's ready to ask you to close the public hearing and sort out a draft decision that needs to be considered. It'll be sort of work on the same timeframe in January. Hopefully, we'll be there.

If we know that by January 31st, you're not gonna be able to go in and say, yes, we're gonna be open to extending it to into February, whether it has to be all the way to the end of February, we can figure it out. But, you know, as we've always said, we're, you know, as long as we're making good progress and we need another meeting to get it into the end zone, I think, let's get us open to that. Bill, do you feel otherwise?

[Speaker 13] (2:29:43 - 2:29:43)
Agreed.

[Speaker 1] (2:29:44 - 2:30:17)
Well, I'm happy to work on draft recommendations. We don't have a planner, so we're at a disadvantage to getting a lot of that work done. I will do the best I can to put a draft together so that we have that to look at for January.

However, I don't anticipate being able to, and it's, you know, that I think is, you know, I'll do the best I can to get that together.

[Speaker 13] (2:30:19 - 2:30:20)
Can I ask a question?

[Speaker 1] (2:30:20 - 2:30:21)
Yeah, go ahead.

[Speaker 13] (2:30:21 - 2:30:23)
What's the extension process?

[Speaker 1] (2:30:24 - 2:30:31)
I have to, we, as a board, would need to request formally and then it needs to be put in writing and it has to be agreed to by both parties.

[Speaker 13] (2:30:32 - 2:30:35)
So they request us to put something in writing and we request something from?

[Speaker 1] (2:30:35 - 2:30:44)
No, the way it's written in the bylaws, either party can request the extension. I would have to submit a letter.

[Speaker 15] (2:30:44 - 2:30:45)
To who?

[Speaker 1] (2:30:46 - 2:30:57)
To Mr. Goss, to Layard. And they would have to agree and write back and we'd have to have, essentially both parties need to agree in writing, that's all there is to it.

[Speaker 13] (2:30:58 - 2:31:03)
So at that meeting, couldn't we just do it live? Am I missing something? We don't have to debate it tonight, right?

[Speaker 1] (2:31:04 - 2:31:11)
We're not debating it, I just wanna clear up where we're at. I wanna make sure that it's perfectly clear so that I can set the expectation and.

[Speaker 9] (2:31:12 - 2:31:19)
Can I ask that, is it really January 31st that we run out of time? Is that the day? Do we know?

[Speaker 1] (2:31:20 - 2:31:35)
Well, technically it would be the, what, the 14th? That was our first meeting, so. Our first meeting was September 14th, I think we filed like a week after, something like that?

Or maybe it was something, anyway, yeah, we filed on the 19th.

[Speaker 4] (2:31:35 - 2:31:36)
I guess I was.

[Speaker 1] (2:31:36 - 2:32:13)
We kinda lost a whole month because our planning board meeting was the, whatever it was, the 14th. You guys filed like, you know, like seven or eight days later. So literally we lost September.

Then our zoning wasn't passed. So we were, we couldn't deliberate in any meetings. So we lost all that time, even though we could look at stuff and we could review plans, we did not have the opportunity to deliberate.

Zoning didn't get cleared by the AG until November. So that lost more time, and now we're up against the holiday. So I feel like we've got an active advantage.

And, you know, the planner issue I already brought up, so that's, you know.

[Speaker 5] (2:32:14 - 2:32:26)
But it sounds like all that being said, if we get to our January meeting and we're not prepared to render the final decision that night, everyone's essentially in agreement that if we need to extend to get to the February meeting in order to get it done.

[Speaker 1] (2:32:27 - 2:32:31)
But do I need something in writing that night? Because that's what the bylaw says.

[Speaker 13] (2:32:31 - 2:32:33)
Or there must be a form, right?

[Speaker 1] (2:32:33 - 2:32:34)
Pardon me?

[Speaker 13] (2:32:34 - 2:32:36)
The ZBA does it all the time, right on site, right?

[Speaker 1] (2:32:36 - 2:32:37)
They do.

[Speaker 13] (2:32:38 - 2:32:44)
So I assume that somebody with the authority to sign would be present.

[Speaker 1] (2:32:44 - 2:32:48)
Okay, I just want that reassurance, and then I'm fine with it.

[Speaker 14] (2:32:48 - 2:33:01)
I can bring a, we have a request for a continuation form that's very routine, and I can bring it. I don't think that's, I don't know if it's quite the same, I thought it was a little more formal, but I'm fine with it. Yeah, we have a request for extension too, and I can bring that, and both parties can sign right here at the meeting.

[Speaker 13] (2:33:01 - 2:33:07)
If it's only for us to decide, we can do it then, and then, God forbid, we have to do it again, and then we can do it again. Okay.

[Speaker 14] (2:33:09 - 2:33:16)
Just to confirm, the date of the January meeting is the 9th, right? That's what I have down in the calendar. That's the other issue.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:17 - 2:33:25)
I mean, first of all, I don't think I'm back at that point, but, so I don't know when all this is gonna happen, but.

[Speaker 14] (2:33:26 - 2:33:32)
Unless you wanted to change the day of the week, because the following Monday is Martin Luther King Day. The Martin Luther King is the 16th, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:32 - 2:33:35)
So, unless you wanna push it to later, which we can do.

[Speaker 5] (2:33:40 - 2:33:57)
I think it may, the question then becomes, and just to be efficient, where is the time best used? Is it best used not meeting again between now and January 23rd? Because then, it shortens the time we have between January 23rd and our February meeting.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:57 - 2:34:00)
Well, I could always push it to the 17th. It doesn't have to be a Monday night.

[Speaker 5] (2:34:01 - 2:34:03)
Sure, yeah, that's fine.

[Speaker 14] (2:34:04 - 2:34:15)
Just keep in mind that the zoning board meeting is likely going to be the 17th. Really? Yeah, it's usually the third Tuesday of every month.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:15 - 2:34:16)
Third Tuesday?

[Speaker 14] (2:34:16 - 2:34:20)
I thought they were on the third. We changed it from the fourth, so it's not conflict with Marblehead.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:20 - 2:34:31)
All right, well, that's just gonna be what it is then for that. You know, I don't have a lot of wiggle room here. So, unless you want to go to the 23rd, which is an option.

[Speaker 6] (2:34:32 - 2:34:34)
How about the 18th?

[Speaker 1] (2:34:35 - 2:34:40)
That's 18th? That's available for me. I don't know what the board.

[Speaker 11] (2:34:40 - 2:34:43)
I'm not gonna be here, but feel free to continue with that one.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:44 - 2:34:46)
But you're not here that week?

[Speaker 11] (2:34:46 - 2:34:47)
Just that night.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:47 - 2:34:48)
Okay, just that night, okay.

[Speaker 13] (2:34:49 - 2:34:50)
As far as I know, it's okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:52 - 2:34:54)
I'd rather have the whole board together, but.

[Speaker 9] (2:34:55 - 2:34:56)
Is that better for me?

[Speaker 14] (2:34:58 - 2:35:10)
If it's something that doesn't have to be, we could set a tentative date. I might be able to, the zoning board is pretty flexible. I might be able to shift them to the 18th.

I've had them on one season before.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:10 - 2:35:13)
If you could do that, I would appreciate it. Then that would let us get in a month.

[Speaker 5] (2:35:14 - 2:35:23)
It seems like we'd want that time. We wouldn't want to delay to the 23rd and shorten the amount of time. Because it sounds like that's one of the final works we're gonna get done is in between.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:23 - 2:35:51)
The other thing is, if we can hit that 17th date, then if we need to extend, then it doesn't have to be a full month. Maybe we can have an early February meeting. I'm just trying to be reasonable here.

I'm not trying to jam up the whole process, but I'm just being realistic about what can be accomplished. So did we all say the 17th was a possibility?

[Speaker 13] (2:35:51 - 2:35:53)
17th or 18th? 17th.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:53 - 2:35:54)
17th, that's a Tuesday.

[Speaker 13] (2:35:55 - 2:35:55)
Tuesday, perfect.

[Speaker 6] (2:35:56 - 2:36:00)
Yeah, just so my client knows, I'm gonna borrow that.

[Speaker 20] (2:36:00 - 2:36:01)
Yeah, no, Paul, that's fine.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:02 - 2:36:19)
I totally agree. So does the 17th work for you guys? Okay.

So would you want to, do you want to, I don't think we need to vote. We can agree to move the meeting to the 17th of January. Yes?

[Speaker 14] (2:36:20 - 2:36:22)
Worst case scenario, Margie and I will divide and conquer.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:22 - 2:37:09)
Okay, so would you please do that for me, change the date of our January meeting to the 17th? Absolutely, yeah. Okay, so that might help a little bit too, okay?

All right, other than that, so in closing, what I'm gonna do is just taking, I took quite a few notes. I'm gonna make sure I get comments from the other people I need comments from. I will go through with this tape, summarize all of the, everything we discussed tonight.

We'll put together some findings and some preliminary draft information and get that out to everybody before January 17th. How does that sound?

[Speaker 18] (2:37:09 - 2:37:09)
Sounds good.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:09 - 2:37:20)
Okay, so, anything else then? If there's nothing else to discuss right now, we can adjourn.

[Speaker 6] (2:37:21 - 2:37:23)
We have a vote to continue to the 17th.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:23 - 2:37:39)
Ah, we have a vote to continue. That's exactly right. Thank you, Paul.

Thank gosh, we have a lawyer. We have, well, we actually have a few. A couple of lawyers, yeah.

All right, so motion to continue this meeting, this hearing to the 17th of January.

[Speaker 20] (2:37:39 - 2:37:39)
Second.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:40 - 2:37:46)
All in favor. Okay, so moved. Now we can have a motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 19] (2:37:47 - 2:37:48)
Motion to adjourn. Second.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:49 - 2:37:52)
All in favor. Thank you all very much.

[Speaker 19] (2:37:53 - 2:37:53)
Appreciate it.

[Speaker 1] (2:38:27 - 2:38:27)
Thank you all very much.