e e e e e e e South Carolina wedding down in Charleston okay why don't we begin it's uh it's 7 o'clock so um we're here today
at the uh uh damers Town Hall in the Tumi room here for our um March 11th 2025 meeting of the of the Danver planning board my name is Lewis George I'm chair I'm here joined by to my left is Jean hartnet who's our clerk to to
her left is Michael dulis to my right is Jim Sears and to his right is Tim spittle uh and we're joined by Josh Morris um with the town of Danver so and um we'll also be uh joined a little uh later in the agenda with Aaron Henry is
our director of Landes and community services so let's look at the agenda here today so our first agenda item is a public hearing for 50 indep dependence way it's a request for site plan review
pursuant to section four of the zoning bylaw submitted by Chick Fil-A uh CEO bowler engineering for property in the commercial 3 C3 zoning District the applicant proposes a standalone restaurant with a drive-through and
Associated site modifications map 63 lot 5 unit 1 so is the uh is the applicant here and Jos do you have anything you wanted to say at the at the outset we um just um just one kind of macro comment
speak yep sorry just one macro comment um we are still um with the development team and the engineering division working through um a memo that was um provided to us late yesterday so um I think um with that we
unfortunat we won't be voting on this item tonight but we'd like to you know have a good productive conversation about the application and U talk through um any questions or um comments that the board has so okay right very good if the
the applicant if you can identify yourself and uh and the floor is yours sure uh my name is Joey fona um with bowler uh and here with me today is Zack Middlebrooks with Chick-fil-A Aaron fet with Bowman's our traffic consultant can you speak up a little bit I'm sorry I
could oh sorry is this is this maybe I just gotta um and so we have Zack Millbrooks with Chick-fil-A Aaron fet with Bowman associ our tra traffic consultant and Andrew Hayes with uh Eastern uh real estate as U representing the property
owners here um at this location um so I see you have the presentation up on the screen so that we're here today to discuss um 50 independent way here this is the former Friendly Toast building um and Josh we can flip yeah perfect thank
you uh and I'm as most of you know it's uh probably probably familiar with this location kind of highlighted here in sort of a turquoise color but that's the existing building location just to kind of give you a feel for uh the location of the site uh it is within the Liberty
Tree Mall the overall property um component uh for this uh sitting within that Liberty uh Tree Mall is about 20 acres um and the sites located in a commercial 3 District um so this is a good image here just to kind of show
where where the the main access points are here so Ott is running kind of on the the bottom of the page here um so there's a signalized intersection there with Independence and endicot um customers can enter the plaza through that signalized intersection and then
make their way towards um towards this this location turn left into the parking area um and you're you're in sort of a larger parking field um from from that signalized intersection there's other access points uh throughout get get you there as many ring roads through the
Liberty Tree Mall that's kind of the direct access uh route there um so just just kind of briefly touching on some of the existing conditions out there so The Friendly Toast building consists of a about a 5100 foot building um that's there there are some patio areas and walkways surrounding it uh there's
parking directly um adjacent to the building but there's also shared parking throughout that area um that's kind of you know just uh just part of overall shared parking agreement through the mall um as as well as cross parking
agreements um the utilities out here are serviced through uh gas connections uh the existing um electric and water and sewer um as well service the site uh today um if you all are familiar with
the site there is a gray change um from up up top on the top of the sheet there to the bottom so flowing sort of north to south um about a 5-ft gray change uh so the here basically just she flows um towards the South and there's a few
catch basins located along that um that bottom Edge there kind of where on this image you can kind of see where the um that that kind of landscaped area is on the bottom of the sheet below the building um it it gets captured in there and then everything's conveyed towards the left towards where Josh has his
cursor today um where it's uh in open CT which then flows South and continues offsite under the the proposed condition we can just flip to the next sheet um actually this is just a survey of the
plan so again just kind of highlighting where the building is um kind of that tan color uh on the site and the various parking um associated with it to the left uh that building that's shown on the left there is the it's an existing Firestone building and again that's just a large parking field kind of in between
the two next slide please oh it's a little delayed yeah it's all good thank you um so this is just a just kind of a colored representation of the site plan um I'll first start by saying the red highlighted box that you can see on the screen just represents the existing
building location so the proposed building is relatively in that same location on the site just to give you a little context of where this new building is um so it's it's in the same spot it's about the same footprint area as well it's about a 5100t building as well and that's just represented in that
kind of that tan color um uh on that on that plan um so the the the proposed restaurant will have a total of 70 seats interior so as far as the parking CS required for this um there are 59 parking spaces required
which represents combination of the Interior seat count as well as um accounting for 35 employees during their largest shift um for the for the restaurant uh so that gives us a total of about 59 parking spaces again as I said earlier this is kind of a shared
parking area so there are you know an abundance of parking throughout here um and again it's it's it's part of cross parking agreements um between um between the the various entities for the Liberty Tree Mall here um with this layout um as you can see
here there is a there two-lane drive-thru approach um from the beginning which is the entrance is uh at the bottom um of the page here there's actually a three lane entrance um two lanes will will be for the drive-through use uh and then that third lane um will
be used in the event of um uh you know what what we can get through we can get to it but it's more of a mobile through adaptation here um but it's also giving um employees uh a drive aisle to reach the parking spaces that are located east of the building it might be hard to see
on this plan but there are a row of parks that are kind of adjacent to the drive-thru that'll be um noted as as just employee Parks it's because really those are the only um cars that are going to be able to access it through the drive-thru um but it is a double drive-thru going through there are two
canopies it's similar to most Chick-fil-A locations uh there's a canopy at the order board which is that first canopy it's kind of a darker shaded gray area um and then as you order and you and you progress through to the pickup window there's a larger canopy there which is more of um the the
meal pickup zone um and I'm not sure if all of you have visited Chick-fil-A but this is a pretty common um drive-thru um pretty standard drive-through um approach here uh for this building we've got a patio area uh located south of the building can of see those dark kind of
circle areas that's just indicating some outdoor patio seating there um and then we've just adjusted the parking area directly in front to accommodate obviously some some spaces along the face of the building but also some Ada spaces as well to get close access to the to the main door there um so
drive-through flow is is kind of a counterclockwise uh Direction you exit out into um it's it's what is an existing Drive AIS today um so that drive a is not changing the curb Cuts not changing along Independence Way um we're really just kind of altering the parking um kind of directly around the
building um and you know adding some additional landscape and Islands uh as today they're just it's just all striped so it's kind of a free-for-all there so making more kind of efficient more formal kind of parking and drive aisles um throughout this this portion of the
site um north of the drive that I was just mentioning is um it's a little bit hard to see on this plan but is the trash enclosure location it's kind of in the northeast corner of the site yep um and so we're that's just two uh two locations there where you'll have uh two
two trash bins will be serviced and this is a shed there for um the operator to store shovels and you know um other items in there as well the overall parking in this area just due to this development and certainly with the drive-thru is a
reduction of 39 total Parks um or 38 total Parks I'm sorry uh in here so again excuse me how many total 38 38 total uh reduction in parking um and the utilities will all be serviced um likely
just be connecting to existing services in there I know there are some comments we got back from engineering that we're working uh through that but we're anticipating just tying into you know sewer water there'll be a new electrical um primary that run here to a transform warmer and then a new gas service to the
building as well uh storm water um will be um similar to what's what's out here today albe it there'll be some additional catch basins uh throughout the drive-thru um to collect some of that additional storm water you know that that's uh that's going to be um being generated within the drive-through
area as it is isolated it is just all being captured and conveyed towards the existing system within the plaza um this layout does reduce impervious coverage by considerable amount it's about 9,000 square ft of paved area that's going to be converted to landscaped um you know
whether it's it's lawn area or it's going to be landscaped and that's all really represented in the in the green um hatching that you see on the screen here uh so a pretty a pretty large reduction in impervious coverage with that obviously less storm water being generated through here and obviously
you've got the benefits of additional water quality as well through the additional catch basins with deep sump catch basins and hooded Outlets um as well um we've also uh included uh lighting
and Landscape plan as well with this set um if you can skip a few I think I've got a few sheets in between um this is the landscape yes the landscape plan which is similar to the similar plan you were seeing earlier um with the Landscaping of course we've got
a large reduction impervious coverage uh so with the Landscaping I know there there are Landscaping Rags within uh as part of the site plan review application here but we're we're proposing about three additional canopy trees 18 Evergreen um trees as well throughout
and then you know about over 200 of just ornamental grasses and shrubs kind of throughout this area um really to just kind of bring out some additional landscape and enhance what's out there today which is kind of a sea of pavement and and parking um out here today uh
lighting um there there'll be some additional light poles throughout the parking area again through the uh drive-thru um as well as just you know within the parking itself um there's building mounted lights as well I know that was submitted as part of the overall design and this is just kind of
highlighting those additional light poles in the parking area um throughout the site and that's really it from a from a high level um from from a site design yep and then the we've included some build building elevations as well here
which is on the screen now um and I will say the trash enclosure that I was discussing earlier there's actually an image of it there on the left it's it's constructed in the same materials as a building so it does match match that same kind of brick pH side that you see here and then the the front doors are
you know a solid solid door um so there's no there no chain link or vertical slats or anything through there so um nice looking trash enclosure uh throughout there but but um and and the the look of the the building the architectural it's it's all it's is prototypical for Chick-fil-A so they're
all pretty standard build here so standard colors as well here on this and I think that's really it from a overall um just site plan perspective and obviously we're in front of you all for site plan review uh for for this use
so um I would turn it over to Erin fet with Bowman to she submitted the the traffic um memo that was prepared along with this and kind of just run through that and then we can open it up to to any questions that you all might have on of that thank you very much again if you can just please identify yourself for the record that'd
be great for the record Aaron fet with Bowman Consulting Group Traffic Engineers on the project I'll give a brief overview of what was included in our traffic assessment but of course always happy to answer any questions that the board may have um so the traffic assessment that we provided for
the proposed Redevelopment um really focused on the change in trip generation for the proposed project site um as as previously stated it is an existing restaurant and while we recognize that a restaurant with drive-thru is going to generate more traffic when we consider
the particular context that this location is in we start to see that the actual overall increase in trips is not projected to be as substantial as a you know brand new site popped down in the middle of of nowhere um so when we use utiliz The Institute of Transportation
Engineers trip generation manual in order to estimate the number of trips associated with the proposed Chick-fil-A we then took away the trips that are associated with the existing restaurant also utilizing um The Institute of Transportation Engineers trip gen manual uh we then take additional credit for
what we call passby trips so these are trips that are already on Endicott Street passing by going to other retail uses um and for a fast food restaurant with drive-through land use um in excess of 50% of trips to and from that kind of land use can be attributed to this
passby so again that's another reduction in new trips to and from the project site and there's also another credit we call internal capture so that would be trips that are already in the Liberty Tree Mall so somebody's already going to Target or Michaels and then they decide to go to the Chick-fil-A or vice versa
so that's a further reduction in new trips to and from the site and so when you start to take into account all of those potential reductions the overall increase starts to become relative ly um relatively small in comparison to the overall number of trips the other item
that our trip assessment included was a review of potential trip distribution so uh Liberty Tree Mall benefits from excellent access it has a number of access points um including two on endicot way and two others um towards
the the west and the the North and so in combination with the trip credits that I mentioned and the ability for vehicles to enter and exit um a number of different locations recognizing that the the two the Independence Way and Commonwealth Avenue are likely going to
be the the more predominantly used locations for accessing the site um it does start to diminish any significant impact to an singular um movement or approach um we also looked at analysis
that was recently conducted along the adjacent roadway Network um in order to understand how it might be able to thank you um how it might be able to absorb some of these additional trips and based on a review of that analysis there is ample capacity to accept the additional
trips which were based on the analysis provided in the assessment is shown to be about 2% or less increase on Endicott Street um during the the peak hour which in this case is the Saturday midday um so I know that was a lot to kind of run through quickly I'm happy to dive into
any additional detail or turn it back over to Joey just for clarification so the the in the report um I know you see the the trip generation is that um that's I guess you're looking at like tables two and three is that really where the where sort of the bottom line is confirm that
for you yes tables two and three and I would say table three is really the the the bottom line um with the about you know the Saturday peak hour is the peak and we're seeing about 55 entering vehicles and 55 exiting Vehicles which over an hour is let's say one one
additional trip per minute okay so you said 55 additional 55 additional or what we call new trips so those are trips that are not on the study area or you know they're not on Endicott they're not on these area roadways but would be added um as a result of the proposed
Redevelopment okay got it okay thank you happy to answer any questions that you all might have as part of this uh proposal thank you okay very good thank you I'll go turn it over to the uh the board with any um any questions um Tim do you have any questions for the app
sure in regards to traffic I'm I'm looking through the report I'm curious um maybe we can flip to the page what your breakdown was of the directionality of of where people are coming from and how they'll navigate through the sure
the okay just these two um it's labeled figure three Josh if you have it um you might only have figures one and two if you if you bring up the last aerial image I can I can speak to that
um in the presentation that we were just talking about not not the traffic memo not the memo I mean if you have the memo the memo is that better yeah that's great yep it's um figure three I think is the one and so um yeah based on
the information um that we're the the traffic volume information we were able to review we were estimating about 25% coming from each Direction on 128 about 10% further east on Endicott um and then
about 25% to the south of Endicott in understanding that there is additional access to 95 in that direction um and then a smaller percentage of 50 15% up towards silven street is this the figure yes thank you yeah you can it might be
hard to see the text on here but it's looking at the arrows about 50% two and from 128 and the remainder are distributed on the more local roadways gotcha I think um there there's a separate figure three uh if you keep scrolling Josh
figure four figure four no it says figure three from vaness oh oh oh yes so that that's that's the information that we reviewed from the previous analysis got it yeah I I was thinking more about the sort of uh much smaller micro zone of like Independence Way Commonwealth a
and theot just because it seems a little I know having gone to those restaurants like it's not a direct route because you can't turn left from Independence so I'm curious what it looks like in terms of yeah so I don't know that we have um that specific level of routing but I
would expect that the majority of people coming from the EAS or 128 are actually going to bypass Independence Way and go to Commonwealth turn right and then around the Firestone turn right in that way cuz I think that's the easiest way and I think that's the way that like a Google Maps would take you because
otherwise you're having to uturn around the median on Independence way to get in or take a left go past the median on on the I believe that's still Independence Way um to turn left into the parking field so um yeah I would expect that most people coming from are going to
take that second signal into Liberty Tree yeah and I think I saw somewhere you know a sign for no u-turns on Independence sway cuz we don't want people going up turning around to take the right into the Chick-fil-A is there any signage to tell people to go to
Commonwealth right it's like I don't think that it's currently in included in the proposed package but I don't see why we couldn't add some wayfinding signage to ensure people are going the preferred way with all the right turns as opposed to the U-turn yeah I guess
you know playing defense saying don't take a U-turn people will still do it so if you give them the proactive hey go this way it's going to be easier that might be awful I think there was also discussion in the report about uh repaving on Independence Way is that
right there was a Tim's referring toering an engineering memo that we received late after late yesterday afternoon so um I think that we're still between the development team um we haven't had a chance to really talk through that too much but yeah and and
Andrew's here as well I'm not sure if you want to maybe mention it a little bit but we have been discussing it it's you know we're we're in a position where we're only able to really modify our lease area for for it and that's sort of outside of that but Andrew can certainly discuss that a little more detail on
those yeah if you can identify yourself for the record and just sort of sort of answering the question I know I had a question in terms of that as well just in terms of where the jurisdiction where your sort of area is and sort of what can be done absolutely so my name is Andrew Haz with Eastern real estate uh
we are the property owner um so um to address the first question um we have had a conversations with the Simon properties who actually maintains the common roadways at the property uh and what we understand from them is from you know prior proceedings before this board
uh they there's actually an ongoing Capital plan to improve those those roads um and so we are working with them and coordinating with them on that effort uh as it relates to the specific lot lines that we own if you go back um to I think one of the prior plans is
this one help Andrew um you know yeah I I can work with this so we own a portion of that Independence Way stretch that was identified in the memo M uh effectively um it's what portion do you about three4 of the southbound
portion okay thank you no problem so maybe I could just clarify my understanding because I'm looking at the property map here is independent way as it comes in from Endicott and takes a right is a Town Road is that correct no private that's why everything everything in here this interior everything looking
at is private but the what I think inre is alluding to is because the mall is owned by several different entities so Simon it gets complicated but I think what we're trying to clarify confirm is that I believe that Simon owns if you're coming off endicot Street
you take the right into that section of Independence Way the north they own and then you're saying uh plan South that you own a portion of that the section of Independence Way closest to the proposed
building is that correct that's correct so you said it was a a third a third a third about three quarters of that three quarters of that uh and again you know the the common roadway holistically is managed by Simon Okay so that by agreement with you all that is correct there's a private
party agreement that um you know takes into account all all the property owners okay and I believe the roadway Improvement plan you're discussing was before us because of the Mass do Park and Ride I believe that covered
Commonwealth a I can't recall if it covered Independence I believe that it it does as well it does okay and um I think we all expressed some skepticism at the time of that plan that it would be followed through with because of the poor condition of the I at least did of
the Simon properties and their ability to maintain the roadways so is that something we can get an update on in terms of what they've already promised to do yes I believe that um actually what we're looking at right here in the fall I believe that I could confirm at a
future date that this intersection this T intersection of Commonwealth and I believe it's the section it's also called Independence Way that in front of sort of in between dicks and sporting goods and the
99 that there was a section of it that that was what we're calling like plan a or phase one mhm that they did a millon overlay on a decent or moderate sized portion of that um intersection but I can confirm I know that we were talking
about it in the fall um I have a bunch of emails back and forth um but I believe that that work was completed in the fall but I could confirm so that was their first that was essentially the first um segment or that they were supposed to do for that maintenance um
Improvement plan that you're referring to yeah I mean if the engineering memo is covering a further proposal for repaving on Independence Way I think it would be helpful for us to have an sort of holistic view of what they committed to last time progress they've made was it on time because it does seem to be
important that if this is part of the the approval that we know they're actually sticking to what they commit to sure um last question I have um I've never seen a drive-thru with three lanes I'm just curious sort of like how does it work and do we have do you have other
examples around the area of that sort of setup sure so uh Newington U New Hampshire has a a three lane drive-thru that was recently uh that opened in November of last year um so the third lane is more of
um as more and more uh Chick-fil-A customers use their phones to to to order you know on their phone it's it's it's easy to order through their app um the it's they're sort of slowly rolling out kind of this this third lane as what what what they're calling a mobile
through Lane so if you have an order on your phone and you're not sitting in that in that drive-through queue to go to the pickup Winer to get your to get your meal you can get into that mobile through Lane which that outside Lane and just kind of
bypass those two um the inside Lanes which is really just your traditional ordering Lanes get your meal and then you're you're exiting and that way you're not kind of stuck in in a queue in there if you if you order through your mobile app it's slowly becoming popular so it's more of have giving the
operator um you know the the opportunity to to turn that on and turn that off uh if they feel that mobile through and mobile adaptation here is is really taking off they can keep that open during their peak times um but they can also you know turn it off in in that event when when you order I haven't done
this through the app yet but it'll tell you to whether to to get into that mobile through lane or you just going to enter into their the traditional ordering lanes and there'll be signage out there as well the operator will have to direct in went through there so if that outside Lane isn't open uh they'll
just enter the queue like like a a traditional customer would uh and then just wait in that queue and then pick up their meal and exit uh as needed it also serves as another purpose to access those those proposed parking spaces uh along the right and then also correct
and then also a fire route U through there there is no canopy over that third lane uh so it does allow for a truck to a fire truck to kind of navigate through the the drive through an exit if in the event that you know there's an emergency and the truck needs to be um you know
within that drive-through Lane um so that's that's it is sort of a newer uh style drive-thru um like I said the closest one to here uh is Newington there are certainly sites that are existing Chick-fil-A restaurants that that um their custom projects team is is
looking at to try to see if there's a way to add an additional Lane in there it does just increase the efficiency of the drivethru certainly when you've got more more and more customers ordering through their app makes sense and that does mean that a human is walking it out to the cars in the second and third
Lanes correct it does yeah and and typically that's that's on all Chick-fil-A um operations during their peak times they will have uh team members out in the drive-through Lane taking orders uh underneath that order canopy on iPads and then as you as you
head towards the pickup window there'll be team members out there you know delivering meals and they're also kind of delivering meals and and and also dispersing the traffic as well so you don't have two cars exiting at the same time they kind of stagger the meals so that everyone's kind of exiting in a staggered approach as they're as they're
leaving uh the drive-thru Chick-fil-A's kind of mastered you know their their drive-through operation uh to make it as efficient as as they can and part of having team members in the Drive-Thru is is they've realized that during their peak times they can they can quickly get meals processed through there and
delivered to their customers quickly and and keep traffic flowing through there their drivethru yeah no other questions for me thanks okay Jim questions um I'm assuming you didn't did you did you think of reusing the building it's kind of a shame to tear down the building but
I'm assuming the drive-thru was the issue correct yeah so the the location of the building is it was uh closer to uh independent way um and then having the drive-through through there a would have we would have lost a lot of parking we we had initially had a concept where
we slid the drivethru over but it did result in a net loss of you know losing those spaces along the drive-thru uh and through you know um the the through our coordination with Andrew Hayes and his team we really needed to maximize the amount of parking in here knowing that
we were losing uh some parks just due to the drive-through uh location here so that was one way for us to to gain some parking spaces back okay uh on your architectural plan um can you show that for a second and
sure Josh different set sorry yeah it's just on on that one sheet you had the one the one pager yep there it is so those depictions only show two lanes I believe correct so this is just
their this is just a design overview sheet um so that site plan is not site specific site plan this is just a design overview just kind of highlighting some of the features of this prototype model just highlighting the color palette um the building the architectural uh
features on it some of the building signage and then you know the patio materials as well okay are you going to have uh any charging stations on the park in the parking lot so that that does come
up uh often um the issue with fast food restaurants is just it's it's a quick turnover so you know you I don't have an electric vehicle but I you know you're not going to get much of a bump um you know parking here for for Quick Serve um it does service purpose at at other
locations so we typically try to avoid having that um you know unless it's required unless that's a requirement um for from whether it's building or or the board as well but um it is a it is a tough compromise uh with these locations
what about solar panels This was brought up at other other sites kind of trending to the future is that considered at all so I do know that the the roof themselves it's a white roofing membrane um which as far as the whole heat island
does U you know does have an impact there um so I know that that's standard throughout all their prototypes I I'm not sure if they've um if there is any thought to photo panels on the roof I do know that they have a lot of HVAC components up there there's gas Etc
through there and I know that space would be limited just knowing that they've got um you know units up there on the roof um um so it's it's certainly a question we can ask but um I'm not sure that there's enough real estate there to make it um
efficient okay uh I'm assuming the plants are all drought resistant do you have do you have um irrigation for the plants or they there there will be irrigation through there I we can verify I can verify with our landscape team if they're drought toer and I know that's
been sort of the directive on a lot of our our locations so I I yeah that's what we require yeah yeah we'd like to know that is that going to be grass or is it going to be mulch it's a com it's a combo of both I
I can confirm that but it's a combo of both um mulch areas and and grass areas through there I think that's denoting sod versus um you know some Disturbed areas that will just receive some Hydro seed I'm just a little concerned about
the logistics of having someone standing in the [Music] drive-throughs filling uh phone orders and directing traffic and the winter time and sure unseasonal weather how does that how does that work maybe the
gentleman who from operations can explain it I'm just a little concerned how especially with trying to get the products out and you know do you have an extra staff to can accommodate that sure so this is a pretty standard approach for all Chick-fil-A so the the can part
of part of the canopy addition cuz that that is um newer the the older prototypes didn't have canopies there were just more just awnings over the over the pickup window but part of having team members out there was to kind of protect them from inclement weather and also just even just ordering
as as a guest um having you know having it covered um so you're not getting any any rain kind of blown in on you um the canopies do have up here in the Northeast we have um there are um heat shields up on the on the ceiling mounted heat so that there are there it does
offer some heat for the team members that are out there they're obviously dressed appropriately um up here in the Northeast but if the if the weather conditions are severe like lightning if it's severe cold they're not going to have team members out there they're going to they're going to operate the drive-thru as a as a traditional
drive-thru where you're going to order at the order boards and you're going to pick up um at the the pickup area the the pickup window slash door it's it truly is it can open as a window it can also open as as a full-size door where team members can walk in and out um so in the
event of there not being team members out there they'll just be picking up their meals through the window just like a traditional drive-thru um use but this is you know the the team members are trained they do have they are wearing protective gear you know obviously in the winter months they are wearing um
heavier St I know some locations have heated vests that they give their their team members it's it's really PR the operator here but they are trained in it they you know they're they're dressed appropriately uh like I said there are some um up here in the Northeast at least having some some heat underneath that those canopies do help um through
there uh there are specific areas within the drive-thru that are striped lanes for team members they're three feet wide it's kind of indicated on this plan as well um where the team members will be walking back and forth again just to kind of taking orders taking you know two or three cars underneath that uh
canopy just being able to kind of have that flexibility walk through and take multiple orders but like I said they're they're wearing highly visible vests and they're all they're all trained um for specifically for this drive-thru is there is that area where the tables are outside is that a fence
around it there's a aluminum patio fence surrounding it to keep people from yeah it kind of encloses it prevents you know kids kind of running out good idea um just one comment on the on the roadway maintenance I know the uh
representative from Simon Maul um came last time and they did do some Paving um over near the new bus terminal um and a little bit in front of the dicks but there's new potholes um unfortunately
with the weather we had the last month um so I'd like to see you know that taken care of hopefully and there are some they did replace some light poles near the new uh bus terminal but there are several uh that have not been replaced um still on the ring roads of
the property uh in front of dicks and um heading up the other way toward um Home Depot so I think it would be a a good Improvement of the site and it's good that they are you know addressing that but there's still some big there's a big
manhole cover that needs to be raised in front of Liberty Tree Medical Center which they put a little you know one foot patch of paper but it dips down about a foot now so there are some hazards on the roadway that should be
addressed so that's it for me thank you thank you Mike um thank you um so I just had a few questions I just went and looked at a on a Google maps of a Chick-fil-A just so I could see the drive-through a little bit better and the Chick-fil-A I happened to
look at had 28 cars that were in line is there like a busy time specifically that there is that many cars is that typical is that again this was just a random Chick-fil-A on Google Maps that I happened to look at and it had to be at that that specific it was the Framingham location just it had the same drive
through and it had it's good to know the location so the Framingham location was an older prototype where it went from two lanes to a single Lane correct so that that as as Chick-fil-A became a little you know more popular up here in the Northeast that's that's kind of a pinch point where they knew they had to
improve um and that kind of brought this the two-lane approach so you got two lanes in throughout out throughout the entire drivethru or before you kind of had maybe 10 cars at the order board and then it would merge into a single Lane uh and it was certainly an inefficient approach this is more of an efficient
approach where you've got you know the double stacking there two order lanes and two meal delivery Lanes as well um to to leave so that's a a little bit that's not really comparing apples and apples to this location um you know they're they're that operator does a great job
even with that approach and and they're looking to to maybe potentially modify that as well but that is that is the the older prototype in there they busier times certainly you know it it does vary from locations but usually lunch lunch and dinner time are usually they're they're pretty popular some locations
will be you know mostly busy from say 11 to you know through dinner time maybe there's a little bit of a a slow down in between there but breakfast isn't very popular up here as it is in the South um so typically you know there are a few customers that will go there for
breakfast and you know their hours are 6:30 to 10: U Monday through Saturday they're Clos on Sunday um but it's it's typically you know that that lunch and dinner shift is is typically the bus busiest and to to that point too the team members are only out there in the
drive-through Lane during their peak times um the operator will know like I said it does vary from locations but the operator will get an idea once once they're they're open and that everything kind of normalized after their grand opening when those peak times are so he'll know when to have his team members out there in the Drive-Thru to kind of
prevent you know a lot of that a lot of that stacking Beyond you know the the um the order board the operator obviously wants to run it as efficient as you all want the drive-thru operations to be efficient as well certainly on the site so are the cars typically in the drive through lanes because obviously your
drive-through backs into parking spots so they try to keep them out of that area is that the goal yeah so this is kind of this is sort of the newer prototype for Chick-fil-A meaning it's isolated you've got a um you know you've got uh I can't remember off the top of my head how many cars that are stacking
at the order board but I think there's a total of um 16 I think total between say the entrance and the order board where typically that was half we only had maybe maybe eight in there um and really this is just to do that to they know um
how many stack like what that overall stack wants to feel certainly during their peak times they want all their cars to be within that isolated stack so they're not you know spilling out into drive aisles um and this approach this length is really what they're what they're sort of
aiming for on on their new builds okay thanks and then my last question is um the turning radius in turning in like Lane one looks super super tight is that just looking at it in the image is that is it actually that tight and do you know how Drive how wide the drive lanes are so the drive lane the the overall
drive lane is 25 ft wide um for sorry uh this is three lane so 25 would be two so you'll have an extra 9 ft on top of that so and that includes the 3ot for the so 34 minus the six I assume because there's two walk or three walking areas so minus 9 three correct so each each
lane is about 9 ft but there the striping it's all striped there's no there's no like curb or burm Islands throughout the drivethru it's all just you know wide open pavement so that inside Lane is typically they're all 20 foot radii um in there that's just typically what they what Chick-fil-A
wants in their drive-thru that one's an 18 just given the angle of um of the the order canopy that you know we had to modify from the the first iteration here when we submitted um it is tighter however when we run our our you know our
our truck turn or car turns through there um you know there is ample room there you are crawling you're you're you know less than a mile per hour as you're you know turning through the drive-thru um but the fact that these are striped and not raised curb Islands or or curbed
does give you you know it doesn't bring in those Lanes where you feel too tighty you're hit a curb so is Ample Ample thank you and then sorry I just had one more question deliveries food like trucks is it 18 wheelers is it box 18 wheelers yeah they're so the larger deliveries they're WB 50s um if they can
get a I mean 62s if they can get a 67 they'll use that you know just to reduce the amount of trips but they'll see what fits and what can navigate through the site but typically it's a 50 or a 62 and what would their plan of delivery be and then what hours also would the so their their hours are um is typically done
before store open so they're overnight they're going to be early morning before the store opens um and that's for two things one a you not disrupting the operations during uh the the restaurant being open but two it does allow for the trucks to kind of cross over parking
spaces as they you know move in um to to the delivery door Etc it gives them a little more freedom to navigate through especially larger plazas uh like this I would imagine they're going to be turning Independence Way being on the top of the page there turning right into to the parking lot and then you know
performing U-turn then exiting back out either independent on the towards the right or you know heading left through there it is a pretty large open parking field it's not an isolated site where it's a little bit tighter if they were trying to navigate so they've got enough room there um to do their deliveries but
they are done up the larger truck deliveries are done um early morning they will have like bread deliveries which are smaller box trucks that can happen during the day um but all the larger ones are are um are prior to restaurant being open okay thank you
appreciate it yeah I have a question um about the Ott Street quarter this might actually be Josh a question for you um so for 152 the Fidelity they said that before um they had a certificate of occupancy they were going to do like redo all the
signals on that whole Corridor so have they gotten their certificate of occupancy yet no so they're doing that um they're working on their intersection as we speak right now so with this Chick-fil-A and all these traffic numbers the 50 something additional
trips in the peak Saturday would that be included in the corridor redesign um so in terms of when when when we were talking about 152 yeah in that like sort of
analysis I would say that this you know there's a these are additional Tri this is be kind of built upon that you know what I mean these are so we couldn't get this included in that so when we were talking about permitting
152 well I guess if it's helpful I can um no helpful so I think based on what we're seeing um and again the different points that people can enter and exit I don't think there's any singular movement that's going to experience like all 50 of those trips and I think based
on the analysis we saw for 152 I I think all the right turns were level of service a they were you know there was there was really nothing kind of stopping people from getting in and then coming out I think we saw a level of service C at most of those left turns and so we felt like the improvements
that they were proposing as part of that would accommodate these trips so uh I guess like it's not specifically included but I think we we feel comfortable that the the improvements as outlined for 152 would absorb these trips okay thank you yeah um that's all
I don't have any more questions okay um I have some questions and um uh and I I'll ask some questions and then this is a public hearing so members of the public have any questions they can they can pose them as well but um question I do have though uh and again picking up on some of the points was made earlier
about about roadway issues I mean that's definitely something that we are concerned about in terms of other um in terms of when we had other site plans that have come up I know that for example obviously the the Logan Express as well as when we've had Aldi as well
locate there was is part of the condition of the site plan approval was an obligation to work with the either you know was it was that I think it was Simon for that one but working with the owner to um you know to ensure that any sort of you know necessary uh roadway
work was done because the concern that I know I have is just that is is not just in terms of the existing you know that that especially you know with the winter you know that the existing roadway around it has has had some uh isn't in the best shape but also
I would imagine too this is not I mean this is you know you're doing a building demolition and then ultimately doing a construction of a new building I think that's not going to necessarily make that surrounding area any better and so I would think that that so as part of
that I think you know you know and it is private roads but people drive onto it and they you know we want people losing their rims or tires by uh you know in terms of trying to go into the businesses so that's something and I know there was it was mentioned also I think in the engineering comments as well so definitely we would want to
expect some some commitments there um with respect to um a question I I guess is more of a qu a question I have uh and maybe if we can just go to the overhead Josh sort of like the first just sort of seeing the existing
yeah right there um just a question I have I guess in terms of you know and I this was touched upon I guess a little bit in terms of Jim's question about in terms of you know team members going to like that third lane but also have a you know and I've asked the same question
when we've had other like when for example we've had Starbucks located in danver's Plaza or at the Market Basket Plaza of a concern of people who might you know someone who's getting their car worked on at Firestone or someone who might be going um you know someone who's
who's an employ employe of one of the of you know who's perhaps an employee of total or an employee um of Kohl's walking across and sort of their safety and so what sort of you know what sort of steps you have you taken in terms of either lighting or crosswalks or such to
ensure pedestrian safety so this lot is there's no pedestrian access currently towards towards this site and even I think along the the top there on Independence Way there aren't people will walk there right um where are s side plan currently shows a crosswalk
along the front of the building and that's really just to give um a some of the yeah you can see it there it is it isn't straight it's just how those those islands kind of matched up there but it does give um some pedestrians that are kind of parking in that area there um
you know just an Avenue to to get towards the the front door it also doubles to you know allow for the team members to their um their backa house door is um facing that crosswalk where they can take their trash totes out and and head towards a trash enclosure um so
there is some pedestrian you know access you know through there that we're providing but as far as overall like holistically through that parking lot there aren't currently sidewalks or any kind of you know existing you know improvements outside of this area and we're kind of you know we're just sort of looking at um you know the
improvements within this window that were um you know that we've been working with the you the development team on but the thing is the thing is I mean if you the conc ER I have also if you build it they will come and in terms of people potentially you know I I would just ask if you haven't already if there's you
know if there's any additional steps that you can take or anything you can look at in terms of or you know with respect to pedestrian safety again from that person who might be walking from Firestone or someone who's an employee okay also in terms of um another
question I had I guess this is this was picked up in terms of um in terms of employees so I think you know I guess a question was asked in terms of number of employees and so there I think you said is it 35 employees that would be during their their largest shift and
that that again that varies per location but yeah on an average you know 30 to 35 would be during their their peak times yeah and in terms of the um in terms of number of employee parking spaces how many is that again so the dedicated
parking along um so oh the total overall that's see per the let's see it would be an additional 59 spaces um I
I the total overall parking is 59 um so 24 so there' be it's basically one for one for the employees so one one spot per that maximum shift of 35 oh so there'll be one there'll be one spot for each we're it's not they're not dedicated here on the on the site plan I
mean employ the audience just I'm having difficulty hearing thank you the the parking would just be sort of you know they would likely Park F the furthest away from from the building just to allow the guest to park closer to the building but the the the spaces along the drive-thru those will be dedicated to just employee Parks I believe that
there or I don't have that number in front of you but I believe there's is there 15 okay through there do most of your employees I think it's 10 yeah 10 total so 10 total spaces there 10 total do most employees just in terms of the the way it works I mean do most emplo employees Drive their vehicles or do we
have a mix of potentially like you know maybe high school kids who have a have a parent drop off or that sort of thing how does that generally work in your operation yeah I think you're you're right on it's it's a mix of of employees are going to be driving some will bike um and there there's a you know we have a bike rack location here um so there
will be bikes some will be you know dropped off um there may be some you know car pooling if some of the team members live close to each other they can do that as well that's that's kind of um how it's kind of most in terms of the team does the team generally you have do you generally you know employe
from the from the town and all you know from absolutely yeah absolutely I think that's what they that's what that's what they want you know they're they're they're here to to be part of the community that's what Chick-fil-A does they want to be a part of the community they want to support the community um so that they certainly will be hiring um
right now in terms of the I know you mentioned about the the the operator so it's is it so I know chickfila is the the the applicant but the but the is the so is this is this a just so this a franchise is the op how is this or you have a separate operator it it is a a
franchise um here there will be a there will be an operator selected yeah he certainly add in more to it but yeah there will be an operator selected for this location okay you can and again could you introduce yourself sure Zach Middlebrooks with Chick-fil-A um so our
model it is a franchise but it's a a unique franchise model and that each location has a specific operator so the operator is generally from the Community is involved in the community kids are in school in the community so that's that was what Joey was touching on the
community element of it um get involved with the local schools Parks things like that so um yeah it will be a local operator running just this restaurant okay so local operator and the and but the ultimate you know the the ultimate owner is the Chick-fil-A yeah
Chick-fil-A ink will own the asset sure and the operator will run owns everything inside is running the day-to-day business and the business operations per per ink guidelines okay great thank you and I do want to say I want to real quick on that third lane of
the drive-thru it it is important to us but in this particular instance there's been a lot of talk we've had a lot of conversation we've been working with staff going back to like November on this particular deal a lot of that third lane is kind of coming from fire so yeah
we will use it but I just I want to make it clear that that third lane it's going to get periodic use from our operations but in this instance is it also allows that fire apparatus to completely swing around 360 Degrees around this building
so that's kind of where a lot of that was kind of in discussions with Chick-fil-A and with the town fire department okay great thank you very much and I guess just a last question I have with respect to I and this sort of the lane sort of brought this back to me
um in terms of do you are how do typically like your Uber Eats or pickups and such how do they generally work do they usually go through the drive-thru do they are they do they Park in a regular lot and walk in how does that usually done yeah so we and that is I mean that's becoming a bigger thing
right especially up here um and it's we we are now establishing a separate dedicated area as they so they'll park and they'll come in the front door and we've kind we're dividing and it's it's a constant process with design but we're we've got an area where it's there's a
monitor board up so they can see their name usually a team member is sitting there making sure checking the app making sure you're getting what you're there to pick up but it's kind of off to the side from where the normal customer would go through the line and place their order and and D in the restaurant
okay I got it and so then will they have design like a designated parking spot like a we do we put a couple of their portable signs um they're you know just little mountable bases that the operator can put out depending on the volume e see some restaurants have higher volume with the Uber Eats and third party um
but they're you know they usually have a couple of spots dedicated just so they can get in and out and not clog things up okay thank you okay um I don't have any further thing I was just going to ask Josh just where things stand in terms of engineering and all where
things are yeah know things are moving along uh just um we just you know there was a memo from um yester provided yesterday there was just you know three to five just items that I think engineering and the development team you know mo mostly like utility related
other than this the paving piece which we got into tonight I think there's some Paving piece I think there was a mention about me andhole cover there a yeah there's a couple utility things that I think just um bowler and um our ton engineering just need to kind of just work through
um but those I'd say those are the two items buckets or items that just need to be kind of flushed out a little bit be worked out a little bit more yeah okay and to that I expect that it might be more efficient to maybe get on a call with um the town engineer and just kind of you know work through some of those
comments a lot of comments were I'd say like Construction level details which you know we can certainly provide but there were some some larger items there that we'll need discussion not only from our team but also from Andrew and his team as well so we'll we'll continue to work uh with with staff on that when it is anticipated when would it be
anticipated that construction would begin in terms of obviously it depends on approvals and such but when is you know what's what's sort of the time you know time period we're looking at so that was just a question I was asking Andrew so obviously if it was up to me as soon as we could um but we do have
the existing tenant with friendlies and don't don't hold me to this but I believe they have till the end of the year so when we start looking at the winter conditions and things like that and their vacate period if I had to give a time right now I would probably say like a year from today okay like we
would as soon as the weather started breaking Fe February into March start with the Demolition and the construction okay but when we come back to the board we'll have a better I'll be able to give a better timeline on that good thank you all right um I don't have any further any other further questions for members of the board before I turn it over to
members of the public this is a public hearing so if any members of the public have any questions or comments they can come to the podium please make sure to address any comments through the chair and please identify yourself for the record good evening I'm Bill McKenzie 34 har Street the only thing
that I get I see this beautiful Greenery and Shrubbery and who's to put into place that they maintain that I mean intercost Street looks like looks awful right now and I think over the past it just things just slip away
so there has to be something put in place that there's going to be maintainance on that that's about all I could say it's a beautiful fit by the way okay thank you could I um could I address that question to the to the applicant in terms of the sort of the long the longterm upkeep of the yeah so
I will and I appreciate that so that kind of goes back to our operator model it's not we're not a franchise where one person owns 30 or 40 locations and just kind of deals with them as they need to the operator is in the restaurant almost daily um and on top of that so the
operator owns it it's it's their business like an entrepreneur and on top of that that uh Inc also has a facilities department and we come in and do regular maintenance so if the parking lot starts to get bad we're going to come in and assist the operator so
that's just I mean that's just a how the Chick-fil-A model works and they have that ownership and sort of as a followup to that if let's say the the owner is fall sort of falling down on on the job you know hopefully they wouldn't but if they are I assume that there are mechanisms
in place where they could either um where there's they take where they check can take action to ensure it happens or come in and take it as a corporate location okay and we hope that that doesn't happen it happens very very very rare the process to become an owner is
pretty thorough um so yeah they they take a lot of pride in the the locations okay thank you good yes sir thank you any other well the town can find them as well if they're not in compliance the town can someone issues a complaint the town can can go in and find them
Nova samay town meeting member Precinct Juan just in regards to the Landscaping um I'd like to encourage any kind of native planting um which will help with drought tolerance and if there's not as much maintenance it's okay it doesn't they don't need quite as much because
they are adapted for this area thanks thank you very much any further uh any other questions or or comments for members of the public okay right and come back to to
the board any further questions um or comments for members of the board no okay so I think we'll need to um a motion to continue so I think we will need to a motion to continue the public hearing and so do we anticipate in terms
of when we be um in terms of being able to work with you know the town engineering staff and such I mean when could the applicant come back guess they could speak to that what would be the next the the next date yeah it would it would be on March 25th be March 25th two
weeks from today two weeks from today um um yeah I would um I would ask that for now if we could Target the 25th I just think that with us and with all the different ownerships because it sounds like to me the biggest issue is the roadways and it's just understanding
Financial Obligations from the three different parties and commitments so that we come back to you and we can answer that because I think that's ultimately what you guys want to hear that's the biggest item I took away so if we can do that if we can do the 25th and then we've been in close contact with staff with with Josh and then if
something comes up or we need to push two weeks if you guys could be flexible with that that'd be great yeah we can do that yeah and in terms of the um yeah in terms of takeaways I think it's the I think it's the um you know questions and concerns raised in terms of roadways um you know landscaping for sure in terms
of particularly the the drought resistance and Native type plants uh as well as I know concerns about pedestrian access so you you know as long as hopefully you're taking some good notes yeah no yeah and the the Landscaping is no problem I mean that's an easy easy fix it's just the roadway I took I was
taking notes but the roadway is the biggest one just because it's it's not just me I can't just commit to it just just one one question I had do is there any outdoor audio typically we don't like to have any outdoor audio so would you agree to a condition on that
um most of the audio is inside there is uh as Joey mentioned like we we do have the team members out but in say for a breakfast say 7 o'clock a.m. if it's not a busy time we will run off of a menu board so there will be audio off of that
but not like not like a not like speakers playing music outside because some we do have some establish that believe it or not do that there's a little bit in the patio but you know in the past what is the deal amount we we can come back with a decimal amount that we don't go over and it's more like just
easy quiet you know family type music that you would hear in the restaurant if you're sitting out enjoying your lunch okay if you can details does staff have headsets is that how they communicate pretty much okay thank
you all right so I guess we'll need uh um I guess we can we uh I think we'll need a motion uh I make a motion we continue the 50 Independence B public hearing to our next meeting March 25th 2025 okay motion's been made to continue
the public hearing to March 25th 2025 for 50 Independence Way is there a second second okay second by Tim okay very good motion's been made in seconded any discussion all in favor please say I I I
any opposed none the item is continued thank you all right so our next um next agenda item here and we gave a there was a bit of a preview about this at our last uh meeting and so this was the uh the
housing production plan uh so this is discussion about the housing production plan and I believe that we have a uh a presentation um okay by Mr Aaron Henry sorry just making sure the technology was going to work um could
have given a longer I could have given a longer intro so sorry I'm just waiting there's a little lag there on the screen good evening thank you for having me um as you said Aaron Henry the town's uh director of land juice and Community Services um wanted to kind of start a
process around a conversation for formalizing uh draft housing production plan um the Housing Trust has been working on this um for about a year uh a little less than a year um and I
was thought I'd walk you through a little PowerPoint I got about 15 slides maybe 12 it is maybe take me 15 minutes and then turn it open um for questions and comments so I apologize um Josh you're gonna have to be my Vanna White
and um if we could go to next slide so a housing production plan kind of at a high level what is it um about a decade ago the state created a housing production plan um to offer communities
below the 40b Mandate the 10% mandate and again I apologize if I'm using jargon feel free to interrupt me and make sure you know where we're at but there's a state law that requires 10 right for the members of the public I would say who may be watching on you know watching on on dcat or YouTube it
would be great if you any any any jargon if you can just give a quick yeah and it it is a bit of an alphabet soup when we talk about housing and I apologize for that so housing production plan um was created by the state to encourage communities to adopt proactive
strategies to comply with Massachusetts General Law chapter 40b which is the state's affordable housing um law that said many communities that have achieved the 10% continue to use the policy frame framework and the outline
that the state created in that um plan scheme just as a general touch point for communities to use as a housing plan so again in in our case Danvers has achieved the 10% under the law but this is a very helpful framework for
understanding how to approach uh the ongoing needs that communities face next slide please so if we're above 10% why do it again here are some of the bullet points and reasonings as to why a community
would do it there's also ongoing Grant there are grants out there that having a certified plan on file with the state is uh we can only pursue should we have an approved plan um so again that's another reason why we're pursuing this is to
maintain eligibility for any possible grants that are out there that the community wishes pursue and then again the planning office isn't opposed to a housing production plan even though we're above 10% because in theory a housing production plan satisfies uh the
state law for what uh comprehensive plan one of the required elements of a comprehensive plan is a housing element and a housing production plan satisfies that criteria so it checks a several boxes um that we want to pursue next slide
please so the background um I had hoped to to speak to the board um a few months ago uh unfortunately there was there's been some internal issues um and and higher priorities that we've been dealing with um management level things
so I was not able to get you kind of an earlier version of the background you saw a version of the plan um but basically the affordable housing trust has paid for the town to pursue this um version of the plan we did one uh in
2014 that expired just before covid um and it's been a couple of years and we decided the trust decided that they wanted to pursue renewing that plan um and have funded that and so here we are um the draft plan has been um put out it
has four broad goals and about 19 implementation items and we'll talk more about those in a moment um obviously we have started to receive some feedback we've had a couple of events there are some things that people want to learn
more about have more say on and that's what we're here to do and at the end of the day some of those items that we're hearing about uh are accessory dwelling units the new state law that uh mandates all communities in the Commonwealth
permit accessory dwelling units in certain situations um that's closely related to an existing process we have on the book called extended family living areas um those typically would be seen by the zoning board of appeals and not necessarily the planning board um
but they're closely related and so we think we have to deal with both of those and then related to that is dwelling conversions we authorize currently in the zoning bylaw and have for years I'll say the subdivision I don't mean that capital S like I'm cutting up a big
property of of land but we allow the building to be subdivided into additional units if you have so much square footage and so much lot area you can cut up the old big uh Victorian into smaller units um we're also starting to
see some interesting development pressure around dwelling conversions being used in a way that I don't think town meeting intended when they pass that law so thinking we may want to throw that into the mix as we talk more about adus and effas and then also in the
state law around accessory dwelling units specific specifically says municipalities May regulate the short-term rentals in accessory dwelling units and again not having done a ton of
community process around what we would do Under This rubric staff's impression of where we are would be that we would probably move to prohibit short-term rentals in accessory dwelling units moving forward but that's something that we will have to talk about as we go
through this process um in deeper detail so that's uh a little bit on that any prohibition on short-term rental units currently the community does not allow short-term rentals but we have kind of
backed into that in that our bylaw if you're not if if the zoning bylaw does not say you can do it you cannot do it so we're relying on that posture kind of a reactive posture and I think it'd be better to have a more proactive
statement of about what the community's wishes are when it comes to short-term rentals we probably have that we are aware of I'll say maybe 40 to 50 properties that are regularly listed on short-term rental sites so it's not a
huge problem that balloons a little bit in the fall with um the Halloween festivities but again it doesn't seem to be a huge problem but nonetheless I think this would be a good time and appropriate time to talk about that as it relates to accessory dwelling units
and even townwide so a little bit on I'm sorry Josh one if you can go back to that so the HPP this the development of this plan um kicked off late spring last year we've held uh a couple of community
forums um and have done a survey survey was not uh we didn't get a lot of responses on that but we did do a survey um staff is basically as as I say here Technic tecal approval of a housing
production plan is the planning board and the board of Selectmen obviously we also have that affordable housing trust which is paid for this initiative so over the next couple of months there's going to be a little bit of a dog and pony show as we kind of Bounce in between those three boards and kind of
triangulate and and hone in on um final language um and that again is the goal is to get all three boards on the same page and happy and satisfied with the document um and again I want everyone you know there
is no rush on this we're not it it doesn't need to be approved tomorrow doesn't need to be approved next month obviously I'd like to move things along because there's other work in the queue that we're not going to start until um this process is complete but the board should feel like they have all the time
in the world to talk this through um hope as I said hopefully we can wrap it up at some point in the near future but again take the time we need to do it right is the most important thing next slide please so I'm going to borrow from the consultant a little bit the next couple
of slides on the plan itself and then we can jump into questions and answers um So the plan consists of four main sections the housing needs analysis the development constraints local capacity and goals and strategies and for the most part tonight I'm going to focus on
goals and strategies although I'm going to fly over a couple of high points um in the plan next slide please so there's and again the document is about 120 pages and there's a whole chapter on the demographics and
socioeconomics of the community um I totally geeked out on it if you came to any of the public sessions or have come to a Housing Trust meeting where we've talked about it you'll know that the consultant can't get anything in edgewise because I keep interrupting with all the amazing stats that are in
here but the takeaway days are we have an aging population shrinking household sizes and the needs it appears on the numbers based on the census numbers that the need is outstripping the supply and again these are largely National and
certainly Regional Trends every day there's an article about the lack of affordable housing in the region so there's nothing exceptional about this these are broader economic trends that we're facing obviously each Community has a has a Nuance to it and how it's
experiencing the housing problems um but in theory at a a 30,000 ft level um we're not seeing anything wildly unique about the damber experience next slide again I think this slide is one of those ones that I kind of geek out on a little
bit what you'll see here is two bars this is the population profile in 2010 and I know it's hard to see it's in the plan happy to give anybody copies um what you see here is two bars side by side side the buckets are the age cohorts of the community the bar on the
left is where we were in 2010 um uh 2012 and the bar on the right is where we are in 2022 generally speaking you'll see the bar on the right everything has shifted over so everybody that was here 10 years ago is still here and has just shifted
over one bar unfortunately we're not getting any younger um as I'm learning um but in particular I think if you hone in on a couple of uh columns in the chart what I found interesting um is what's happening between the five and n
and the 15 and 17 so our youth our school AED population generally speaking you're seeing a fairly dramatic decrease in elementary and middle school age children and then an actual slight increase in high school age children and again I haven't had the opportunity to
do a real deep dive on this but in a prior Community I've worked in that was actually associated with cost of housing in the community where barriers to entry or the cost of Entry is such that young families that are having the children
have yet to be able to get into the community so what is happening is they're showing up later in the their timeline when the kids are a bit older um similarly what you're seeing in the middle the 25 to 44 again probably a
little bit of Boom Boomerang happening there we hear a lot about adult kids coming back to the home that probably explains the increase in the 25 to 34 year olds to a point um but it is interesting that you see the 35 to 44
year old cohort go up so much and again in the prior in in another context that was because it it was no longer a first-time home buyer Community you're a second you know so you're leveraging your first purchase to come into the community a bit later and your kids are
bit older again I'm not saying that that's the experience here in Danvers but but the information is tracking pretty well to uh something that we did in the prior community and then again if you look at the 45 um to 84 84 plus you what you'll
see is just a massive change in an older cohort um and again there could be a lot of explanations for that obviously mortgage rates being what they are it's not a good time to move so you're kind of going to stay in the home longer until you have a place to land that also speaks to the fact of what sort of
housing choices do older folks have when they become empty nesters so kind of becomes a vicious cycle but it's this this slide in particular I think kind of encapsulates a a massive demographic shift that's been happening in the community over the last 10 to 20 years
as we get a little bit older so in particular again what this kind of hones in on from an affordable housing need is cost burden and this is a statistic that is tracked National Al um cost burden is is I think the the
concept is over 100 years old now of when if you're spending more than 30% on your gross income on your housing you're considered cost burden and then if we can slide to the next uh move to the next slide so what this slide says is we
have about 3,000 households in Danvers that are spending more than a third of their income on their housing 3,000 households is about I'll say it's greater than 25% of the households in town we have about 11,000
households in town so over 25% of them one in four is probably paying more than 30% of their income to afford their housing this chart in particular highlights 80% Ami households and under
the reason we metric uh or tie that to the 80% area median income metric is that's the maximum income that the state will consider a unit an affordable unit so when we talk about Mass General Law chapter 40b the affordable housing law
in the Commonwealth this is the metric that you you must Supply 10% of your housing stock for two households at this level or less and as we can see as your income level goes down uh you see that those bars continue to move out next
slide thank you Josh this is the exact same data but flipped to actual income so again at the state level we talk about it in percent Ami but just to kind of give you context as to what it looks like um as an income and so for those
that can't see it the qualifying income is about I'm sorry I just lost my slide um about 118,000 if I remember correctly household income is about 118,000 or less so and I I I apologize tonight I
don't know how that compares to other communities again I wouldn't say I would be shocked if we were exceptional in that this is a profile that is fairly common in Eastern Massachusetts at this time but it is surprising to me that we have about 25% of the population in that
category okay so goals and strategies I was trying to cut I I cut out a lot of the the good uh fund stats but try to talk about goals and strategies So the plan at the moment these are the four goals uh sustain danver's current affordable housing
portfolio address Town Senior and accessible housing needs promote housing production that builds local wealth and leverage key sites for mixed income and affordable housing that's a lot of gobbly G let me tell you what I think that means um the first goal is we've
achieved the 10% requirement under Mass General law 40b how do we stay there because it's a moving Target every unit we add means we have to do some have have some corresponding action um on the affordable unit side um the second goal
address Town Senior and accessible needs I think again our housing Supply the housing stock in town doesn't have a lot of options for folks who want to get out of the single family home I think we have again about a little over 10,000 housing units in town I want to say
about 7,000 of them are single family homes so again there's not in theory not a lot of inventory for people um that have a different situation or desire a different situation than a single family um promote housing production
that builds local wealth this is a conversation we've been having at the affordable housing trust for years about um how do we do better for those at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder the state's policy around affordable
housing encourages rental housing and we have pursued that um there's been some conversation at the Housing Trust level about maybe how how do we incentivize or encourage home ownership affordable home ownership as the state defines
affordable and that while the rent or I'm sorry the mortgage payments on an affordable home ownership are similar to the rents they would pay in a rental situation at the end of their tenure they do get to walk away with a little bit of equity that they gain in that
that home and again the Housing Trust has had a lot of conversation about how to encourage that and see more of that that's kind of like the Habitat for Humanity model where you're getting them into the home and giving them a little edge up um over time and we have worked
with habitat quite a bit over the last few years uh final leveraging key sites for mixed income and affordable housing you know essentially how can the town help facilitate additional production um and I think this could be talking about Endicott Street Corridor this could be
talking about town-owned property that might be able to be repurposed or reused or sold on the market for some sort of um development again very high level conversation about these four goals and I know we'll hear some feedback on these and again I will
say as we move forward and talking about the goals and strategies we're here for the feedback we're not You' haven't missed anything we're very the draft only came out um I think in late January so again there's no rush to approve this overnight there if we need to make
modifications that's what the public process pieces for and I know we've gotten some feedback already and I anticipate having to make some adjustments as we go forward so uh on implementation in particular um the next couple of slides yep Josh one
ahead all right so about a month ago we talked about this plan and where we were internally and on the 19 implementation items I was so bold as to highlight some of the ones that I thought that we would highlight in particular for further uh
for further work um I think the first one on the list is um has to do with increasing the opportunities for two families we're hearing a lot of uh we're getting a lot of comments and feedback on that again I look at these 19 things
I understand how they're written in the plan and I think this is going to be the piece that we're going to have to revisit and and reward a little bit based on the feedback but B basically how I summarize these 19 things is the consultant that we hired to look at our community profile and offer us some
proposed solutions to Affordable uh housing or housing affordability um these 19 things are like the buffet we're not going to not everybody is going to take everything on the buffet so again I think the process over the next couple of months as we move from
planning board to trust to select board and circle back with everybody um it's which of these 19 things do we think we have consensus to further to dive into and do further work I'm just going to go on a limb and say I don't think two
families is going to get a lot of votes as we go through the process based on what I'm hearing um that's okay right we don't have to pursue it and we could based on the feedback we will adjust the language around that as needed so again
we're here to collect that feed back but I'll just say I know what we've heard a lot about that one I think and and I apologize I can't really see the slides I did not bring my readers with me um Josh if you could maybe just highlight three and four okay yeah so the ones you highlighted were developing accessory
dwelling unit regulation and the town zoning that promotes Adu production and consider whether to permit or prohibit their use as short-term rentals yep and then the one below it is it's definitely like it's like housing redevelop vment um combin the
commission a planning study for the Endicott Street Corridor including the Liberty Street mile area to create a community based vision for new zoning a potential future development in the area so those are two things obviously with the with the Adu law coming online February 3D um and our zoning bylaw not
having a an affirmative statement about how we're going to handle that and having those other creatures that kind of act like a Adu like effas and dwelling conversions um we think that we need to focus on that um and then similarly we've talked about the
Endicott Street Corridor for a number of years now and have in theory we're on Pace uh to open up a planning process around endicot Street Corridor before the end of the calendar year expires again we want the feedback if if we've
got that wrong totally okay it's your community we're not trying to drive the bus um on that we need your feedback but was thinking those are items that I think we have talked about a great deal and and have some consensus on Josh if you can move ahead one
slide um yeah I could do the highlighted s do we want to yep um Mr George may I take a question from the audience or should I yes if there's a question claric yeah so the question was is in terms of what exactly is the Endicott
Street carrier what is it incomp excellent yep um the commercial 3 zoning District spans uh Hutchinson Drive BJ's and the medical center there all the way down to basically silven Street Grill
and then reaches into the mall property um in the Home Depot and a little bit on the other side of the street where Bed Bath and Beyond used to be in 152 endicot Street thinking that area again we get a lot of comments from condition of the roads from it's not firing on all
cylinders um what can we do there and I think we've talked about that for a couple of years now and I think there's seems to be mostly nodding of heads when people say I don't think that's firing on all cylinders what can we do maybe there's nothing we can do but we should probably talk about it as a group um on
the next slide uh Josh If You Could Read nine and 10 for me I apologize no support home repairs and retrofits for income eligible households in Danvers Helping Seniors and people with disabilities to remain in the community that was number nine and then number 10
create a local preference policy for new affordable units created through inclusion area zoning and comprehensive permits so really pleased on number nine support local homeowners with home modifications the Housing Trust uh during the course of this year and this
planning process not this year I guess it was 2024 um created a partnership with habitat um which is headquartered just down the street um on a Home maintenance program it's called the critical care program uh habitat used to
run this preco um and for a variety of reasons that that program kind of mothballed for a couple of years um and we've been working with them to reawaken that and the affordable housing trust has seated the danvers's program with
$50,000 um they typically a whole modification runs around $10,000 and um so far I think we've had two come through the system um in the last 6 months so we're off to a good start on that item and and that was highlighted anyway but the fact that
the Housing Trust has already started to to implement that is is wonderful and um we're really excited about the the early launch to that and then number 10 um create a formal local uh preference policy so whenever a private development
is required to provide an inclusionary unit which under the terms of of our affordable housing Provisions in the zoning bylaw is almost every type of development almost every time if they are triggering the creation of a unit they must go through a affordable
housing Lottery process and we could and we have but we're doing it on a one-off basis we could draft a broader community statement about local preference that those developers would have to use in
their Lottery process that would um again like I said we're doing that as a oneoff as we can currently but um there is a a stronger policy Avenue we could take to ensure that all of the affordable housing lotteries in town are
taking advantage of the local preference policy moving ahead we're almost there nothing's highlighted nothing's highlighted if we can move ahead keep going okay and again I don't mean to gloss over the other 19 things we happy to double back I was
just thinking that you know as we talk about what are we going to do are we going to do all these 19 things I don't want this plan because I don't like number 18 just trying to you know we're now talking about how to hone this list down Josh if you could highlight 15 16 15s identify a monitoring agent for the
town's affordable housing stock ensuring that units remain available at prices consistent with town and state regulations number 16 convene a housing Round Table consisting of representatives from town boards and committees and other housing related organizations to build consensus and further address the housing
affordability in town and number 19 advocate for the restoration of MBTA Transit service in downtown Danvers so I'll start with the last one first um again since the um Inception of this
planning process um we have had very productive conversations with the MBTA about restoration of service to downtown um the work we have done um through the mbta's ACT uh we leveraged our hard the
community's hard work into a conversation and um we're not able to tell you that we've achieved the restoration of service but we are having conversations with the te about routing and what that'll look like and in my opinion if they were going to tell us no
they should have done that a while ago because we are definitely talking about how to do this uh and wake the service back up um which I think is a great thing for the community um the number 15 identifying a monitoring agent for the
town's affordable housing stock so one thing that you see is once you get to 10% um is the monitoring of the existing affordable housing units in town um is a little bit catches catch can and there are stronger uh programs out there to
make sure that we don't have any um issues within that housing portfolio and again a private developer could screw something up and who pays the price the community because the units come off the list if the developer not adhering to
the state rules for the affordable housing so there is in theory some interest in the community to ensure that private operators of affordable housing units that we need for that credit are doing so on the up and up and again generally just like everyone else not
everyone's an expert in affordable housing um and so again this is kind of a third party to kind of help us keep an eye on them and that's an expertise that we do not have on staff um the jumping to number 16 um the
housing Roundtable um again I think that that's just a good idea uh for an organization of our size with the number of disparate boards we have in the and the public that is involved in affordable housing you know this would include the housing Authority um maybe
the senior center again we have lots of uh social service agencies that I think a housing Round Table is a good idea to do uh once or twice a year so those were the 19 things and the five or six that I highlighted of the 19 and again I know
people are going to have a lot of comments and concerns and feedback and we're here for that and again um based on your questions I am likely to return to a future meeting with our planning consultant I figured tonight I would try
to answer any procedural questions because the consultant costs a lot of money and the procedural stuff is is ours if there's subject uh matter questions that I can't address we'll get those answers to you next time and we'll bring um the project team to a future
meeting so that they can address those uh questions to you great so with that I'll do what I can okay great thank you very much and um and so you know I think what we'll do is let's you know we'll see about let's get some you know questions and comments from members of the board um and we do have members of
the public here as well so once we've had some questions from members of the board we I'll turn it over to to any public questions um as well and just in terms of procedurally before I go there I guess just a question I have just I know you said there you we have disparate boards here and we have you know we have planning board this is
ultimately going to go before select board it's going to go before Housing Trust I know for example when you have a you know when you have a you know zoning article going for a town meeting we have you we know there's a specific you know what happens in terms of that who gets you know in essence you know approval
Authority or what you know what ends up sometimes something gets you know gets changed or something drops so how is how does this work in terms of since we have different parties because we could for example planning board may say look we agree with all of your highlighted points but then select board may have a different view or Housing Trust may have
a different view either less or more that's the fun part well we have to have that conversation and the reconciliation amongst everybody and hopefully we can arrive at a consensus document like I said we have no time constraints on that conversation um so
again we'll we'll give everybody the space the time and space they need um to work through it okay sounds good turn members of the board with questions sure you want to start yeah Tim go ahead Myck papiss you go he said
so um not Jim can you help Orient me because this is a housing production plan you said this is part of a comprehensive plan correct could be could be it is it so what is a comprehensive plan um I can't remember the state law that the comprehensive
plans are outlined in I want to say it's chapter something it's the subdivision control Law chapter 81 l or 81m um but basically it requires every community in the Commonwealth to have a comprehensive plan there's no penalty if you don't but it's just basically we
wish you did and a comprehensive plan has seven statutory sections in that plan housing element is one of those plans housing production plan qualifies as that if you have a housing production plan you can check the box on your
comprehensive plan that you have one Tim it's also often called or referred to as the master plan for I am setting you up a little bit because I do know what it is um we don't have one correct we do not have one and we've never had one um the town has had various long range in a
very long time we haven't had one correct probably since I've been alive um uh it seems a little backwards to me because the master plan as I understand it sets a sort of long-term Vision correct for what we want for development in the
town so it seems a little backwards to me to be thinking about housing production without alignment on the long-term vision of what we actually want as a town understand what you're saying we've just done uh because I think we're going to get up here we're going to hear a lot of differing opinions about this problem
I have my opinion I'm sure other people have their opinions but we don't have one opinion represented as a living document that guides this board and the decisions we're supposed to make that seems like a problem to me and I'm we're not proposing a comprehensive plan I'm just saying that what it could be it
could be an element or a chapter in a master plan we're not proposing that but we do happen to have an open space plan under development right now and we're working on a transportation needs analysis which could depending on what we find morph into that but we are not
proposing a devising a comprehensive plan what we are basing a lot of this work on is uh strategic Danvers which was a plan that the town did a couple of years ago resilient Danvers again where we've had lots of conversations with the
community about what they're looking for um and we're trying to pull all of these threads together in a document like this so we've looked at resilient Danvers we've looked at strategic Danvers and trying to make sure this plan is in
alignment with those obviously two family homes was not mentioned in strategic Danver so again we're kind of in the deep end on this subject matter but I hear what you're saying but again we are hoping to pursue the housing production plan so that we can have an approved plan on file with the state so
that if a year from now we want to go after certain grants or do something we have the eligibility the prerequisites out of the way to do so yeah I mean I I just would like this to be part of a discussion for what our plan is to get a master plan I think that's very
important and just to sort of solve one fire because it's in front of us rather than thinking about the big picture and having you know okay this is a great step I'm glad we're doing this I'm glad it's paid for I know we need it let's keep going like what does that look like I think that would be helpful um just big
picture um one thing I wanted to to touch on specifically so for the adus that you mentioned I don't fully understand so this time I'm not setting you up if we the state has passed this law it says we have to require it in certain circumstances if we do we have to react
in order to comply or does it overrule Us in we do not but I guess where unfortunately with zoning it's never like just this issue it right you you do authorize adus and now you've screwed up three other things so what we need in my
opinion to deal with is now that adus are allowed and there's nothing we can do about that how do elas work in relation to that how do dwelling conversions work in relation to that um how to short-term rentals do we want to do short-term rentals so again
unfortunately and we had provided com ments to the state saying we wish they had delayed the implementation of this law so that communities because I don't know too many that are in a situation where they're ready to have this dropped into their zoning bylaw we made the comment to them that you you got to give
us time to straighten out the rest of the book because we now have inconsistencies come to the counter you can do an effa you can do an Adu you can do this we would like to try to make sense of that and we we with the NBTA communities act they gave us a year and a half to try to come up with a plan
before the law went into effect we thought they were going to do something similar with adus and give us that time they did not what' they say they the law went into effect February 3rd I mean yeah they gave us a six- month warning but that whole time the state agency in charge of that was
him and and H about whether they were going to issue regulations whether they were going to delay implementation of the law such that communities were kind of stuck betwix and between um but ultimately they chose to issue regulations but not hold up the implementation date of February
3rd you said something that was interesting to me about the reactive posture of our bylaw you said something about if we don't explicitly say something's allowed we assume it's not correct is that a tested legal theory that seems odd to me no that's that's
not every zoning by law out there has that trait yeah ours does most communities the all the commun I've worked in have that trait where unless we tell you you can do it you cannot do it from a use perspective from in the use the used table if it's not in the
used table you can't do it so in that rear of the book so the 50 use are kind of now in a great area because they're not in the used table but they're allowed under state law um so we've been a I'm sorry short-term rentals didn't exist in the zoning B whenever that
table of uses I think was last adjusted in 2007 of I think the Evan B it was created yeah created in 2007 off of text um we never that wasn't a thing then and so our book is silent to it there was a a nearby community that had almost the
same exact language as we have in our zoning bylaw they prevailed in a court case so we are relying on that court case and the similarity of their bylaw and our bylaw as our enforcement mechanism got it not the best place to
be I would rather have an affirmative statement that we can point to yeah makes sense um so you you sort of teed yourself up for being the procedural person so this is obviously a huge document really interesting topic 19 different things to
react to We don't want to keep everyone here till 3 in the morning so do you have a rough sense for like how many more times we'll get to talk about this here from the public opine edit things like that again absent the conversation and again we in 10 minutes I could give you a very different answer
um but as I speak I know two or three times I I whatever it takes to work through I think a lot of it in my opinion is restructuring the goals and objectives um section of the of the plan um maybe phrasing things a little bit
differently within that plan making it clear that the community may not be looking to implement all 19 things out of the gate exploring other things with more you know needing more time to explore other options but then this kind of goes back to the high level uh
comment we made before where Board of Selectmen may have a totally different take and the Housing Trust which is paying for the plan may have a completely different take so time will tell but my hope with that each board will need about two or three meetings to kind of reconcile um we'll be sharing
drafts going back and forth that's the plan but and is it right that the plan is essentially because some of it does involve things that would such as zoning by a amendments which would need to come through the planning board so that is not a this is a recommendation right correct we recommend X and then the
followup is pling board actually has to debate and I think that's been a big hesit toy as people assuming like you know the first draft like oh my God this is it no it's it's not it we can work on this we can massage it and we can hopefully get to that consensus okay um I think that's all my
questions maybe the last point I'll make is um I mean a lot of the statistics about socioeconomic sort of disparities and and the increasing income and asset inqu our town are a little disturbing and I think everyone who's bought a house recently has a mortgage watch interest rates go up sort of understand
what's happening I'll say that it's um I think we should be bold and creative in the way we think about Solutions here so I'm happy to see so many things to pick from and happy the planning board gets to work on a lot of things I'll say that the other thing that's sort of concerning for me right is almost every
everyone here and everyone here like we actually benefit a lot from a small a strain supply of housing my housing property's gone up a lot since I've lived here I borrowed on it got a home equity line of credit but solar panels on my roof look at me doing nothing just
making money sitting here because no one else gets to afford to come here and so my asset keeps getting more and more expensive so I think there's a perverse incentive for us to not solve this problem that we all have to sort of look Inward and say this is a bigger problem this is all in Massachusetts it's a
great state to live in increasingly hard to live here um the income inequality issue the housing affordability issue is not going anywhere and inequality is not a sustainable game I might be benefiting now but if my town creaters because no one wants to work and live here then it
won't be very valuable soon so I'm excited to to work on this thanks all right um so just at the outset my initial question before I Del of the topic is being on the board for since
the '90s um every time we've done any type of planning the planning staff has been great in able to get us grants and pay for Consultants why does the damous affordable housing trust have to use their money to quote unquote pay for
this consultant where we've got millions of dollars in our budget in our general fund and we've got a selectman here we've got why why are they paying for it why are they using their money that could be used to help people get housing to pay for the consultant why don't we pay for the consultant or apply for a
grant it was identified as a priority by the trust but I will get a deeper answer I'll be at their meeting next week we can flesh that out a little bit but I think they felt a strong need for a planning document at the moment they're not a lot there wasn't a grand
opportunity for this at the time that we were doing this um but how much are we talking about um it's about 50 ,000 we can't find that in our budget for 2025 maybe and reimburse
them our consultant budget is uh less than half of that and a fair chunk of spoken six figures and consultants for grants for the downtown alone we've got tens and tens of thousands if not
hundreds of thousands of dollars of Consultants we've sat here for 26 meetings so it seems odd to me that they have to use their money to pay for this thing that's going to benefit our town and promote affordable housing so that's I
think we need to look into that and see if we can reimburse them because I think it's crazy to have them use their money which is going to benefit the town and I think the town can well afford that um you know the town has a general fund the town has different funds that they can
look at the Town gets a majority of their um you know budget to education and I think this is going to promote opportunities in the town so maybe we you know we could have a we could have a uh initiative at town meeting to get them
reimbursed but let me get into the the the issues I have at hand the questions I have um the biggest thing I think talking to people about this in having to keep the town at their above their 10% limit and we did talk about this some members of
the audience are address this last week if we're encouraging more development not necessarily building more homes but maybe detached or improving an an existing you know um split I live in a
split there's a lot of splits in town and making that an accessory dwelling unit not an affordable dwelling unit right but an accessory drilling unit I think the state might have missed the Mark here in that they're making them
accessory and not requiring them to be affordable so there's no limit on people saying hey I can get $2,000 a month for a studio if I put a 900 foot unit make my basement that and I can put two or three
bedrooms in there maybe I get more money maybe I might think about doing affordable I'm but I'm not required to do affordable so what happens is about doing an affordable what happens is now after you expend the money to do that
now your denominator of houses increases correct but your numerator of affordable houses it's it's terrible stays the same so it seems like a crazy idea and now our 10% is going to go down to8 or six or seven so now we go from a
town of 28,000 people and if half the 11,000 households wanted to do this now we're going to have 40,000 people we have people that come to a meeting on chadam
Lane with six Lots complaining like they always do what's going to happen to the water there's not going to be any more water in town water is going to disappear it's all going to dry up what about the schools six houses that means
you know five more students maybe I don't know what about traffic traffic is going to go bananas the state just doubled the density of the entire it doesn't make sense understand how does it make sense explain to me how it makes sense asking me to tell you what the
legis I would love I would love I would love to have this consultant that another town board is paying $50,000 to come to our board and explain it well it's not the Jim it's not the housing consultant that adopted the law
I know someone needs to explain this law and how we can implement it how do we track it we talked about tracking it right now in danas I had a four family home the only thing they do for a four family home is every 5 years they come out and inspect it make sure you got
smoke detectors and CO detectors in two egresses they don't they barely go in the units a lot of cities in towns like Beverly and Salem require you every time you turn over a rental unit to pay $50 and have it inspected so are we going to
hire new inspectors for the town to manage that right cuz we we got to put these numbers on the books we got to put these units whether they're affordable accessory or whatever they are two families all over town we to count them right because we
want to tax them we want to make sure they're legal now we're going to have a a very busy infrastructure department where we're going to be adding we have to add water and sewer right to that 900t unit so we're going to be be a
separate separate so now we're going to be doing a lot of digging in the street so we're going to have a lot of little pavement areas where we're we're going to be bringing the separate Water and Sewer Service in and we're going to be bringing separate more electric lines to
the house right that's what we need so just picture it residance 2 residance 3 residence 1 a all these areas of towns where people complain about parking and density and schools and water we're going we're going to by
law we can do it there's all we need to do is get a building permit if we're going to add a structure or or improve upon the existing structure maybe to add a second egress to that existing space
so really very little they're build I me you need to pull a building permit to create a new unit so to to add a door in your in your split be more than that it's not this is not an EA this has to be fully compliant under the building code so fire separation between units
two forms of access egress for every unit need' already had two or three apply and we're working through of course they were all the most complicated ones you could imagine right out of the gate um which I think is a hard bringer hard to come if you can get
3,000 a month it's worth it sure for that unit or more sure cuz that's the going rate and again I and those are not affordable speaking for myself not for the planning staff not for I mean we are right now applying the law as strictly as we
can the state law says what we have to allow and what we don't have to allow if we develop a bylaw around this I mean there are some minor things that we can add to the process that we probably should but I I hear what you're saying
Jim it's a state law I got not I mean I can't help you with most of what you just said are issues we are lamenting every day the building code issues associated with all of this it is the state did this we need to deal with it
um and that's why I think we need to address a few things what we can and try to clean this up as best as possible and what the community wants to do with that you know that's what we will have to engage as we go forward over the next you know 9 to 12
months you talk about in your plan your wish list of subsidizing affordable housing how would you do that other than the limited funds at the affordable housing um I'm not sure I trust has how
in your in your checklist there sorry one of the things that the end one of things that I highlighted yeah that you want to subsidize affordable housing is that subsidize the creation and preservation of so you're going to pay me to to make my 900 S foot unit and
and somehow keep it affordable I don't how do you sub I don't have any ideas on I mean I I no you're one you it's part of your it's part of your plan subsidize I could read it for clarification subsidize the creation and preservation of affordable housing by supporting
private developers of affordable housing in town so if I'm a private developer this is the draft the first draft from I'm not trying to be argumented I'm just saying how do we how do we where do you get the funds to subsidize it and support it if a private developer we get payment in lie of funds through the affordable housing provision so the
zoning bylaw has a payment inl of function for small projects that don't create a unit they can pay into I think you've seen a few projects come through the planning board but if we're just doing one-offs we're doing less than five units or four units right so you have a payment in lie of so develop
development a does a project five units they owe us $72,000 for their payment in Li of that 72,000 in theory could become available for the town to leverage something else that gets that fraction back right we're going to take your 72
and that person's 72 and leverage a condo buy down somewhere else in town and G get a unit on the but on a small level on a smaller Adu level y on the on the one unit that you're at it's going to be very difficult and the state has
said you can't require adus to be affordable units an owner could choose to deed restrict an accessory dwelling unit that's not a very likely outcome but they have right I think the economics of it are why would they do that unless they're independently
wealthy and are just trying to be a do good I think the the economics of it would but that's not part of the bylaw like the app bylaw requir require them to do that so no it's a conundrum and I think that actually underscores the importance of having a housing plan
because we now have a new force on the scene creating new units every year that are going to be unaccounted for in the numerator so we have to figure this out and how we want to offset these for background
today we permit about 10 to 12 EAS a year adus are more involved than effas EAS aren't technically separate units so there's no fire separation necessary so that the
build out is a little bit easier adus are going to be requiring investment on behalf of the property owners so I don't know that whe will see 10 to 12 a year but again you know the economics better than I do of all what's out there in the real estate market my guess is is having
the ability to sell a condo for $500,000 is a motivating factor and that we could see more people use this along the lines of the effa so 10 to 12 a year maybe I don't I don't have a crystal ball but how do you deal with the EA um deed restriction how do
you remove that again we have to have a conversation about what the community wants to do there could be a version an alternative Universe where effas remain on the books post whatever we're doing with adus so if you approved my EA five
years ago and it's 1500 square feet right how does that fit the today you're you're legal you're you what you do not have is an a protected accessory dwelling unit under the chapter of whatever that I apologize I don't know
the mgl site for the new accessory dwelling law but that is a a thing that exists so if you have an eff today and we leave it on the books you're conforming efla although most of the time when we when we learn about effas it's because
they're no longer compliant but that effa requires me to rent it to a family member correct so now my family member moves out and I rent it to anyone off the street am I out of compliance yes how would you know because your neighbor
told me that you're renting to some stranger and then we've witnessed that and we start the process last year so you've got how many effas in town total yeah you know well like you said couple hundred in the
books if it's 10 or 12 10 to 15 a year and we have a tracking sheet we yeah we do actually we have a tracking sheet on all of on all of them so we're going to we're going to have a monitoring agent we're going to have uh a new sheriff in town and we're going to we're going to look
for these cuz let's face it nature is yeah if you have an opportunity to make money you're going to make money so Grandma moves out and goes to the nursing home right but I'm renting that unit but I guess that I guess the comment I think I heard from from the h that that that can I mean not that we
are advocating for it but that situation can occur right now it's hard for us you know for every life circumstance or experience to like Monitor and all of that so I hear what you're saying obviously there will always be people
like take advantage of anything that we're doing but how does how does the town fix it so that we canar it's a building or vot but but I mean I'm not trying to be uh I'm not trying to be violating the the spirit of the law so I have my 1500 square foot
detached effa that's been approved that I paid money to get approved by the town did the plans built it and all that you even have a deed restriction on that I get it all the prop proper way right and now my son or daughter or parent is
moving out mhm yep so for me to comply do I have to board up 600 ft of that unit you can either reincorporate it back into the house but it's attached it's attached yeah but I mean they they you know if you put the kitchenette in and you don't want the kitchenet in anymore because you're going to take the
space back no but I want to take advantage of this this ability to rent now to to a third party so how do how do I you're not you will not be able because you're above the 900 you will you not every e is going to be easily convertible to an
Adu because of fire separation and the way that those e units are created within the dwelling again you may have I'm just trying to think of a a what if a a detached garage that was converted
to the man cave maybe that would could could satisfy both and if that were if if that were the case you came in and affirmatively wanted to take it out of effas status and into an Adu status we'd have to have that conversation and look
at your setbacks and all that fun stuff that the adus must comply with and if we can check all of the boxes on the Adu side then you'd have an Adu under the new state law otherwise right now you have to operate your efla under the
terms of the local bylaw right and those could continue parallel forever I just think again as the community has this conversation and starts to come to grips with what the Adu law authorizes my guess is you don't need four other mechanisms to
create units shotgun style anywhere in the community at any time with very little control so my guess is for better for worse adus we need to get all those other things under control dwelling conversions and again the community may have the conversation and say we're fine
as is I just think it's a good time to have that conversation about all of these various issues because from what I prefer to do is when we're making a zoning change you want to have something of a buildout analysis of the new law like what what is this going
to do with adus I we can't really tell you I mean I don't want to be Sensational but basically if you can do a single family home you can do an Adu so it's doubling the density of the town would you run into issues with number of bedrooms Park issues cuz if
you went to two families in every zoning District except for residence one you I mean we already have two families by right in R1 but if I'm now making my one family into a two family yeah right are you going to limit are you doing an
Adu or are you I'm doing Adu sorry yeah let's say do the Adu I'm not limiting the number of bedrooms that's right so I could put three bedrooms in there if you can jam in y three bedrooms in a 900t space sure and meet building code y you could do that yep but what about and
it's gross floor area with adus and that's something this town doesn't usually get down to that level of measurement y but again strict compliance with the law we are using gross floor area for Adu so if you got a crawl Spa uh not a crawl space because
that's not habitable space but so we're trying to you know we are administering this as strictly as we can say I did two bedrooms yep and there's two couples that living there yep and I have my own house yep now you've got issues with
number of unrelated people living in a dwelling now you've got issues of how many cars are you going to have how much parking can you have there's just so many issues y that I see that would you you need a full-time staff person in my
mind if people are going to if this takes off the way the state wants it to and we want to encourage more and more building or more and more housing how we going to manage this it just seems if we're going to limit like right now you can only have up to what
seven people in a dwelling or is it unrelated people or maybe it's less than that there's a byw on that four you can have no more than four unrelated if I'm right four four unrelated so I've got my family of four in my house and then I
have a I have this so a separate unit so each unit can have so we can have four and related people in there yep y you can have four unrelated in the Adu and however many so how many cars can I have I can have 10 cars in the driveway or on the front of the house I mean you could
there's no limit on cars for any right we don't we don't regulate parking for single families and so that's the trick you regulate parking for two families and three families four families law around accessory dwelling units says if you don't do it for single family homes
you cannot do it for accessory dwelling units so I've worked in communities that do site plan approval for every single family home yeah if you want to regulate it for adus you need to start regulating it for single family homes my guess is
there's not enough runway in the near term to have that conversation about going to that extent at this in the near term I don't think this community wants to hear site plan review for single family homes at this time so in unless and until we want to
get crazy and go down that road we've got to whatever we do for a uh whatever we do for single families is the same rules for adus I'm not saying I agree with it I'm not saying I condone it I'm telling you that is the law and staff is trying to enforce this as strictly as
possible because there are a lot of unintended consequences associated with this the state did not think through no and we're we're we have to figure that out yeah I can just see a parking on the DSE areas of
town a parking issue traffic issue you know again the whole the whole gamut of issues no I think it and again like I said we we commented to the state that we felt that a cooling off period or whatever uh some implementation period
like they did for the MBTA Community acts would have been helpful because again this touches across so many processes to your point this is involves building permits there's these are by right they're not coming to the planning board they're not so we have to invent a
a process internally we've been working on that and I think we have it and we've already got two or three in the system and those have been very difficult to move through because of all the issues you're raising but what can we do what can we require and that there's no answers at the state level my guess is
we'll see the first CA court case out of this within nine months um and I hope it's not Danvers and that we can learn from that experience as to how to apply it to to our community um that's how this is going to work I think yeah I mean if for some reason the
interest rates come down I mean historically when we're at two or 3% we thought we probably never see that again in our lifetime but you never know right say they come down to 3% right now people can get basically free money y so now I'm going to do that extra building
now I'm going to maybe you get the developer that's going to say okay even though I got to pay a ton of money to build in downtown Danvers for this MBTA Zone maybe I stopped building a few of these and now they sto building so now we've got increased housing downtown
increased housing in all the neighborhoods so now our town could double in size and we haven't really uh we've become a city and I'm not sure that's what we want but that's the part of the
conversation that we can have around this that's definitely what could definitely happen and we're opening the door to that again I I hear what you're saying Jim and and I I'm not agreeing or disagreeing I'm it's we've had two gamechanging state laws in the last couple of years put on
the community and the communities of the Commonwealth have to figure out how to work with that law and you know with local staff and that's what we're here to try to help navigate the community through that process thank you that's it for me okay
Jean any questions or um comments we've covered a lot is is there any sort of um like have you talked to other communities to see what everyone else is
doing because we're not the only people that are facing this problem CH like there must be some sort of knowledge sharing going on right okay of that so at least we have that um lots of that and then is there a way that we can if people are applying for these adus
through building permits uh have them have them give like dedicate funds to the affordable housing trust no if we don't do it for a single family if we wouldn't do it for the development of a
single family we cannot do it for an Adu okay um I don't think I have any I think unfortunately we're going to have to wait and see how different communities roll this out I know Middleton recently went um I think they put a
height restriction on their Adu bylaw and it'll be interesting to see what the Attorney General's office does with that um so again I I think we're going to start seeing what communities are doing um over the next couple of months and shortly thereafter we're going to start seeing the court cases um and then maybe
we'll get a little bit of color on exactly what we can do around this issue okay thank you Mike um a lot of my questions answered so I just want to say thank you for present for the presentation and then just one quick question was when they when building
permits for the adus are filed are they noted specifically that it's an ad so okay in our permitting system you know you can apply for a residential permit a commercial building permit there's a couple flavors we have a flavor for accessory dwelling unit just so that the
the tracking and uh reporting out of these are a little bit easier so Josh I guess question for you when we get our like update with the different reports is it noted in there when someone applies for a building permit that there's an Adu like just so we can be knowledgeable about it um in your monthly development that's what I'm
asking does it note ad in the sheet behind it wouldn't be necessarily noted although we can add this if this is a desire of the board we're happy to modify the form but in theory you'd only see the adus in the list of actual permits pulled for the last month so if
I'm not mistaken you get a two sheeter that has what all the boards and committees are up to usually and then an attachment that's just the a run of the building permits issued over the last 30 days it would be in there as Adu D yeah 25 Dash whatever but so you could see
that quickly but if you would like us to highlight accessory dwelling unit permits going out the door on the monthly report um you know in the actual one uh one pager happy to do that yeah I know we might have a lot more in the future but I personally think it would be nice just so I can be a little more
knowledgeable about them and I and I notice it when I look at it but if other people think that's a new like like too much information that's okay with me too but I mean it's a new and novel kind of thing so it might be worth highlighting at least in the near term as we kind of just to stay knowledgeable as we move forward so that's all I have
thank you for your time appreciate it great um just a couple of questions I have and I know and and you know fellow board members have touched upon a lot of this um concerns that I had and thanks for the presentation I won't speak too long because I know we have members of the public here so I want to be respectful of their time as well so um
in terms of the um I guess in terms terms of sort of what we can do in terms of with you know sort of how adus fit into all this and I you know uh I guess in terms of the I guess a question I have and this is probably something for when the consultant comes we can ask I
know adus were mentioned in the in the report um but it you know so I guess in terms of they were I mean that you know I mean they were aware of the law they the recommendations that came in were took the took the Adu piece into
consideration or not just um I didn't have a chance I did um we spoke earlier in the week about um about this topic reached out to the consultant I did get an answer um or at least a response um from that I would like to follow up with
them verbally just to better understand but yes they have considered that um to some degree I think again based on community feedback I think we need to have a another goar around on how we phrase that in the plan but yeah they I
got preliminary response and they were aware of the ad Adu law and what that would mean Visa their recommendations and one question in terms of sort of the need and I think no one's doubting the need but one question I had in terms of in terms of affordability of of housing
there was um you know you saw the you know Separate Tables in terms of age you had Separate Tables in terms of income those who are paying more than a third for their their housing do we did was that broken down by age as well cuz you you definitely hear a lot of you hear a lot of stories of people like you know
my kids can't afford to live in danverse or it's you know it's a that's the you know often times it's the recall if we in any of the reports or presentations if we broke it out that way but I know we can get the data broken out that way
um the census information can kind I was interested cut that way so in your case what do you think those cohorts would be 65 plus right right and then younger and then maybe 18 to 25 just 25 34 getting into the you know in terms of Ages I mean I know even
in our neighborhood we live you know near um uh you know near Plains Park and there's just you know there was a house that was for sale uh you know that's currently one up a traffic problem it was like a traffic problem there was so many people so many people there and a lot of you know I feel like a old guy a
lot of younger people that are looking at places and so obviously there's a need so I was kind of um I'm kind of interested in seeing what that is um so I'm writing that down as can we cut the demographics by cohort by age cohort and I'm also interested too in knowing you
know talking about what we can do with adus I'm I'm I'm wondering whether there was a conversation with Town Council or or has one been had about what we what we can regulate obviously I know in terms of the short-term rentals that's something we can but what about um is
there anything is there any other sort of regulatory um we have included Town Council so we developed for our own purposes really and then obviously it's it's beneficial for the public I think it's sitting on the counter at both the planning office
and the building office it's in the um packet and you got it in the packet the faq's Town Council was um you know we ran that by Town Council in the process just to make sure that we're all on the same page but as I said earlier even Town councils aren't in a great position
to tell us what this law means because at this point we don't have a lot to go on and so we're all kind of I think that um just to pick piggy back on this a little bit Lou I think with your question one thing that I believe that we can regulate and I think that's a process
that um we might get to in 2025 is that situations in which people want to do the Adu but they don't they want to go above the 900 they don't meet the setback um you know if they don't check all the boxes by right M as the town
what is what is going to be our process or what do we want to do to to potentially allow folks who do want to do that we do have the ability to regulate situations in which people don't check all those boxes so when they want to go above the height when they want to go above the 900 and so I think
that's something that or or for example they don't have the they they may not have the setback neighborhood like that for so where we said I think as staff at least internally um you know we're talking about um hopefully by the end of the year 2026
um what are the regulations that we want to put forth in the bylaw for those situations gotcha and in terms of for um also aarin in terms of for me you know members of the public obviously this you know the the housing production plan is on the town's website yes can they get
if they if someone's and it's a lengthy document someone wants to get a copy of either your presentation tonight or the happy to provide um whatever if um I didn't bring a card but I'm happy to um it's on our website reach out to the planning office my my contact
information is there Joshua's contact information there get you whatever you need and if they're someone's listening and wants to wants to send a you know comments in or something they can absolutely they can send it along to planning staff they can give us a call and we welcome it again and I think this is I think you kind of need a straw man
to react to and I don't think the consultant put this out there to be inflammatory um they've been working and doing their their work for nine months handed us a draft at the end of January and we're passing it around to everybody and want to get the feedback and really appreciate the time the board gave me
tonight sorry I I yammered more than I intended to um it's a complex topic and we really appreciate the feedback and should you have any thoughts after this before I return with the consultant please let me know um happy to have a deeper dive conversations with anyone
about anything in the plan great if I can just go over Mr George just what I got for a check list here just to make sure I got it right from the board's perspective yeah and we will have and I know you might hear from the audience but um so we're going to do a little Deep dive or get a response on what
where is the master plan Mr spittle um Mr Sears mentioned um why did the trust pay for the housing production plan and what can can we address that um we're going to add adus to the monthly report to all boards that you're currently
receiving and um can we get a cut of the demographics by age cohort so that's my to-do list at the moment does that sound about right I'm interested also just in knowing and again this is maybe picking up on a comment that Jim made too I'm I'm interested in knowing a
little bit about any sort of tools to to sort of you know um potential tools to sort of mitigate any adverse effects of adus as well you know to you know I guess to the extent how much can we regulate but also what um what we can do
like I know was mentioned about parking I know you just said for example well if you regulate parking for adus you have to regulate it for single family so if even if that's that sort of answer if that's the answer I think I'd like to know that yeah yep could could I jump in on one thing as well Mr chair because
there's actually something in here that I just noticed that sort of blew me away which was is it true that 78% of the parcels in damers are non-compliant that appears to be correct that is crazy like non-conform a little
higher than for plot size or Frontage so so if I could just let me just kind of close that I'll keep this a tidy tid bit of a thought because one is just that speaks to a bylaw that's probably broken right it's not really actually governing the land that it governs if 78% are
already non-compliant it's an Old Town an old town I think that relates too because this Adu problem like I kind of want to temper the doubles are density because if 78% of your plots are non-compliant like you can't fit an Adu in there so in a compliant lot I just looked it up on the map and I being the
money hungry capitalist that I am already looked to see if I can add an Adu to my apply and I cannot because I can't fit it with the setback right so I think we should temper our like suddenly we're twice as dense I don't think that's really practical I'm not trying to be a poana about it our bylaw says if
you have in um when how would I say this right Josh will help me if we have a pre-existing non-conforming structure mhm single family home home it's close too close to the lot line it's on a substandard lot we allow today that
property owner to add expand modify that property by right provided everything they're doing goes the right way so if you're there's a graphic in my mind I'm seeing but basically where your setbacks are red and there's some yellow areas where you might need a special permit or
variance to go into and then there's a whole lot of green towards the middle of the lot so we allow people people in single family homes to do things on non-conforming Lots with non-conforming buildings and non-conforming situations because we allow that for single family
homes we have to allow that for adus so you're talking about the in the building but that means like you said you have to have a firewall it's not really practical yep in in extension which is kind of what you're talking about or a whole new structure yep DET and it also requires people to actually be able to afford to build that
right now well that's the thing too I think that's a piece to I want to go down the MH talk there's a lot of people in the public it's just like there is a monetary piece to this that I mean started with our conversation tonight I mean we already discussed that there's a significant portion of folks in town who are already struggling to pay for the
housing that they're already in so the percentage of people in a reality standpoint who are then are going to say you know what I have the means then to you know spend a decent a very moderate to a large amount of capital to do this I think in reality isn't as high as we
all think right and I appreciate I think what Mr spittle is saying I'm not trying to be Chicken Little about it but I I do think generally speaking when we adopt new bylaws and I know not everyone believes it but we do try to think about the unintended consequences of our
actions and try to quantify that try to understand what it's going to do if we were to adopt this adus are tough because it's not just doing a simple look at the map and saying blah blah blah it's going to be 3 000 we have a lot of nuance zoning rules
that could allow things to happen in situations that we can't contemplate very easily um so again that's my concern is that I just don't know the impact if you were to tell me how many of those lots 70% non-compliant can go I don't know could be could be most of
them yeah and that number is a little high for that number is a little high compared to other communities but it's not again that unusual typically communities were pretty well-developed then decided to impose zoning restrictions that may no sense on existing neighborhoods that rendered most of those lots non-conforming 75
years later here we are and we made all of those exceptions for pre-existing non-conforming lots and frontages because we were zoning them into non-compliance but we were making it we were taking the zba out of them moving ahead in their timelines by saying well
if you can do it in a conforming fashion we'll let you proceed by right well 75 years later now we have Adu being falling into the same category so again sorry it's like a deep dive but it gets it gets thorny real fast in this can you
just explain the firewall concept what is needed to make a firewall um well there's someone in the audience who's probably a little bit better at the code than I am but basically separation of like a 2hour firewall you might have to gut that wall
reinforce that wall and create a 2hour fire separation between those units today with an eff it's just I just need to put a door in that so that M does that include the ceiling are we talking the ceiling has to be a firewall yes separate unit separate unit
and how hard how hard is it to do I guess and a a standard split Jim's asking for a friend so that's it no I'm just talking one to two we got a lot of split you take a split and you put some sheet rock is what you're telling me to give
me my firewall no like a split you're going out the garage and you might have another door you got to add and that's it okay it's not a lot we're also seeing issues around utilities and again we're trying to no I'm just trying to say
you're kind you're you're throwing up the fire you're throwing up the firewall as a real impediment but it doesn't sound like it's an imped well you got to bring you got to bring you got to bring a water service in the three or four um okay why don't we get back here let's can read we do have a couple of I would say we have uh we
always have about one or two enforcement actions moving with illegal units and if if getting the firewall were as simple as what we just discussed I'm not sure why these properties aren't getting their act together and getting compliant there seems to be some other issues
involved that that in real world make maybe a little bit more complicated than that and again what we've and Josh was hinting at um developing these new out of the box these I would think and our staff building Commissioner's Office included feel that these are more
involved to create than an effa that financially that you you need to bring more investment to the table in order to get through our process here than an e would normally require and that will be a that Financial impediment
May slow some people down but time will tell so I want to see if um I'll step aside in case I want to see if any members of the public have any uh you know questions or or comments I see Nova hand first you identify yourself
for the record thank you all for your patience as well sure it's Nova Sam town meeting member Precinct one I I just W to also uh Echo what Tim and Josh just said that not everyone has the money or the land for this kind of thing I know
that I am not necessarily a money hungry capitalist I will not be putting one of these on my land I don't want to be a landlord not everyone wants to be a landlord not everyone is looking to make as much as possible off of their property if and if some people do great
we could use more housing I know that if I had to buy a house now I could not afford this town I bought 20 years ago when I could um and it's great and I love it but there's no way I would be able to afford to buy a house now so I think it'll be okay I think it's gon to
be all right that's all that's just my opinion I think when we over the past eight years we rezoned the Maple Street Corridor Maple Street downtown and High Street Corridor and there was all kinds of discussion about oh my God there's going to be all these giant buildings
they're going to go up we've had one built so far there's there's a couple more in the plans but we've had one no one is forcing anyone to build these things it's just it's an opportunity for
people and you know there's lots of talk of you know this is my land I should be able to do what so there's got to be a balance between what we want to allow people to do with their property and what we think is too much for them to do with their property but
we can't just say no you can't do that anyway thank you thank you any further any other questions or comments from members of the audience oh sure go ahead hi Lauren Steves um Town meia
member Precinct 3 I talked at the housing production meeting um so I'm not going to replay my whole speech but um kind of the the sentiment that Erin say that the the two family rezoning all the residentials for two families um I I
don't agree with it I not sure what other people's opinions are but I think with the adus right now as we have them I don't see the necessity of rezoning all the residential districts to be all two families um some people might want to live in a single family neighborhood
and that should be their choice when they're deciding where to live so I think taking away that choice completely um it's not fair to the people who chose to live where they're living now or the people who might be coming to look to buy a single family home in this town
um additionally just to add to the survey that kind of propelled the housing production plan it was a survey of 284 people out of a a town of 28,000 that self- selected into this survey so
um that's some skewed data to work off of for an entire plan to be recommended is my opinion on that so that's all I have and that thank you L I just want to pick up on a on on one of the things you said Aaron um mentioning about the survey y
so like did is the is what is are the stats in terms of the number of households and the sort of the the burden on the households in terms of you know what they're what they're paying is that that did that come from that was all derived from the Census Data yeah so
the survey was um more an impression that people gave us about their situation theyed to um with their property there was a question about adus I think there was a couple of questions um again I
think Miss Steves brings up the point of the number of respondents um we're not happy with 280 responses we wish we had 28,000 we're doing a transportation survey right now we hope all 28,000 of you that are watching at home with baited breath please check out
our website and take that Transportation survey that would be great especially if you're concerned about the process because if we only have the self- selecting like you know the housers or the open space people or the transportation people then we're missing a huge cohort of the community so if you
have concerns about things you I know one member this a town we drive Town take the survey tell us that so that we get that information but again our goals for public engagement through survey is very we want much more than what we've
got I felt that we were in betwix and between if we didn't do the survey or we did the survey but didn't share the results because we didn't like the number of respondents I think we were kind of would have been in no man's land so that's why I want to just make sure that the that the that the the data from
the survey in terms of that sort of surprising you know the number of people who are you know were burdened in terms of you know that that was that that those are solid numbers as opposed to coming from the survey okay okay and also a question I guess too just before just picking up on one of the questions
that Lauren had asked as well in terms of the uh if if one were how how this works with Adu if you were to have two family let's say as one of the you know I know one of the non-highlighted recommendations the two families a matter of right which you I have some concerns with as well in terms of the if
that were implemented how does now Adu that means you could add to that correct yes it does okay okay thank you um I have yes um Lis McKenzie Precinct 3 town meeting
member um I just wrote down some notes so um part of the reason for this um housing protection plan it seems to be a lot of it revolves around grants being having met all these
requirements to make sure that we can still get the state grants I know with working with the friends at OT Park that a lot of these grants most grants have a lot of strings attached to them so you got to really look into them and see is
it worth it do we really need to do this so that we can get this kind of Grant from the S the state or whoever one I dealt with was not a state Grant and there were all kinds of attachments to it um we've already met like you
explained the 10% we have the adus which are going to throw a monkey wrench in all of it because you're going to require more if you get more housing and I absolutely do not agree with going from a single family zoning
to multi throughout the town it's like Lauren said there are many people out there that chose this town because they like the appeal of the character of the town which with what's
going on downtown is changing dramatically I know she says there's only one built there are more multiple coming at danver's Hardware they're are coming down on High Street where it's being built right next to a four square
building he the designs I I walked there all the time this guy designed I think it's a three-story building on a lot that was now has a house on it um and in there's always to mention that
well we don't have the housing if you look on any realtor site you will see how many rentals are available right now maybe they're not considered affordable housing but that's the cost of living in Danvers I couldn't
go to live in in Boxford or North Andover I couldn't afford it so you have to look elsewhere and this is how people have to make decisions through their lives I'm not saying that you know I feel bad for them yes but not
everybody is capable of getting exactly what they want when they want it's just life and as far as um you know the the other thing was the expansion on the downtown the density zoning I think we've reached far enough
out I know people that live near the downtown and they're afraid of all these buildings being built up right next to their houses and they don't want it that's my piece and that was I think one
of fill yeah that was the other thing to we buy all this open space because people in the town want open space we need more green space and there's T of taking the Town Forest and putting affordable housing there next you know they'll take
the a lot down at Sandy Beach so I think the consultant in general I would just say the consultant does their deep dive they don't know the community well and they they come up with a plan and that's where our community for
better for worse that no consultant can read our minds we have to go through this process of figuring out that goals and objective uh chapter and what's right for us and that's what the task will be over the next couple of months to kind of go to all the various boards
and committees that have a say in this and hopefully achieve something of a consensus on to what we want to do any other um questions or comments by members of the public okay coming back to the board any further questions
for for Aaron I know we're not making a decision tonight I mean so that we'll continue our continue this conversation so I'll work with Josh on scheduling that I don't know if it'll be in two weeks um it might be a month out or sure but I'll have to uh check in
with the consultant and I have the Housing Trust next week we had a the last month's Housing Trust meeting was the first presentation of this right and we haven't had a chance to digest that so we'll have a meeting uh in in a week to talk about the plan in more depth and
then we'll start the process you've heard a lot today and you've heard you know you heard a little bit of the sort of the preview couple weeks ago that has other comments please let us know we really do want the feedback I can I can put it online yeah could you
yeah yeah could you actually put that's a good suggestion yeah could you put the PowerPoint online because then if someone wants to read the hund and something Pages or the PowerPoint either you know or they could do both so yeah yeah that was yeah great absolutely all right all
right so this will be nothing formal we need to do on this one this will just be to be continued yeah just administrative matter Erin we don't need to continue this there certain dat certain right or anything okay all right our next agenda item here is the minutes uh from our last meeting
I believe this was on the 25th of February uh everybody was in attendance I think except for Tim so did anyone uh I had one minor comment on the minutes there was a misspelling I believe Lois McKenzie's name was was said Lewis
McKenzie so I believe she should correct her name to a correct spelling okay go there what's that going no no so no but um that's the only um that was the only just a typo um uh move to
accept the minutes of February 25th 2025 has been made by Jim second second okay second by Jean all in favor please say I I I I any opposed none okay next next um because we're actually still meeting so if you could just yep so um next items
what do we have coming up for next so our next meeting is on March 25th so two weeks from tonight it will be here okay um it will be the uh the 50 Independence Way Chick-fil-A item which we discussed tonight got continued to that meeting
okay um the uh the partial release of Covenant for the TR Lane okay got continued to that even evening and uh there's also uh someone from MPC is coming to talk about the transportation
needs assessment the survey that Ain alluded to earlier so um and I'll send that out to the group um tomorrow by surve still um yep still yep it's at least till March 20th so okay that would be great um and so we'll have a convers
a conversation about that um someone from MC is going to come and talk about that that evening um and then I guess there's potential for this housing conversation to be continued to that evening but Aon and I will um talk through that okay and I and
I I'd say again if if anyone does have any further comments questions please direct them to town staff both members of our board as well as members of the public yep um okay anything everybody um March 25th are we everybody planning on being in attendance or yeah mik was not
I'm not you'll not be okay very good I just have a question on the trash yes didn't we determine that we don't have any standing in that there's no jurisdiction due to the fact that the Covenant has expired we have a legal opinion on that why why are we having a
meeting um well the they the the applicant developer applied for an application and so but it was deemed that we have no Authority we have no jurisdiction so why are we why are they on the agenda we got a traffic peer
review right yeah traffic period I think that they asked about they they they would still like although we you know from Town Council and I don't want I don't think we should get to the weeds too much because it's not on the agenda but um because Town Council said you know I
know that the Covenant had expired but the development team alicant would still like to move forward with you know requesting a partial release of the Covenant for you know their uh title purposes for title
I'm assuming I think that was mentioned was that mentioned at the last I'm trying to remember at the last meeting I think they talked about that they want that that they still wanted to right work with it so right so so we're just you know that they're they want to move forward so that's why we're going
through the process got it I forgot about that part y it's fine thank you yep all right anything further at all entertain a motion to adjourn so so moved oh who second who second it I think Jim first and second by Mike very
good okay all in favor please say I I I any opposed none have a good evening everybody