jump down. Jump down. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. I'm a Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat.
Jump in. Jump in. Come on. Down. Heat. Heat. Good. 2619706, a review of the draft 2026 Malbor
forward plan with public comment being allowed and we asked for comments to be sent to the city council. I do not believe the council was sent any, but I was I received an email from a constituent that I will discuss as we
move forward. So, we have with us tonight the writers of the draft tomorrow forward plan. Uh MEDC's executive director is also with us. So, Meredith, if you want to come to the well with
Eric and Eric, introduce them, please. They have some slides to present. Thank you, counselor. Um, thank you all for having us tonight. We're excited to um talk about the forward plan. We've
been working on this for about a year, I would say, a little less maybe, but somewhere around there. Um, but excited to talk about what we're considering um the addition. I don't want to say addition, but the the new plan from the master plan from 2011.
So, without further ado, I'm going to introduce both Eric and Eric from RKG, which is the consultant that MEEDC has been working on working with um to update the 2011 master plan. So, I'll turn it over to you guys. >> Great. >> Thanks.
It was working when we were sitting there. I guess there you go. >> Okay. Thanks. Hi. Good evening, council members. Um Eric Halverson, principal with RKG Associates and joined also by my
colleague who helped uh with the project. Um Eric Wis, also a associate principal at RKG. Yeah, we've uh we've got a long history uh working with Morrow um that even sort of I've been with the firm 10 years. It's predates predates my time. Uh
worked on a lot of projects with the city. So, we're really excited um when Meredith and the board contacted us about helping to update uh the plan and sort of looking forward over the next uh 5 to 10 years for MEDC. Um can you go to the next slide? Great.
point the computer down at the bottom. >> It's okay. It's okay. >> Um, it was a a really interesting road plan from 10 years ago and it was going
to, you know, largely be focused on MEDC and and efforts around economic development. I guess through discussions with staff and council members and board members, it kind of morphed into a little bit more than that. Hopefully you you see that when you read the plan in that it
kind of is more of a a forward-looking strategy not only for MEDC but for the city. um as you all are grappling with different I think key questions um not just around economic development but also around housing around land use around the impact of development around
um operational and capital capacity in the city. So a lot of really interesting topics uh that we have dealt with in many other communities uh and we're really excited to to dive into. Um so that's really what the forward plan tries to do is kind of provide a roadmap
for hopefully for decision making uh kind of at a citywide perspective. So I thought I would just go through um a couple of I think we have maybe seven sort of key economic trends that we saw um that kind of shaped our goals for the
plan and also the strategies that we put forward in the plan. Um, and I'll sort of just hit on kind of one thing on on each of these slides. Hopefully go pretty quickly. Um, I think one of the biggest things, and I mean having lived in Massachusetts for quite some time, I've sort of known this about Marbor, but it's always impressive to see the
data. You know, Marbor really is a regional employment and retail and sort of recreation hub out here in Metro West. Obviously, there are larger cities like Worcester nearby, but Marorrow, I think, for its size, really punches well above its weight. Um, there's a lot of
people who enter this community every day. Over almost 33,000 folks who don't live here, but work here, that enter the community, um, you know, on a daily or at least sometime during the week when they're working basis. And there's only about 16,000 Marro residents that are leaving each day to work somewhere
outside of Marro. during the daytime, you know, your population sort of remains high. Uh but it's a totally different group of folks who are coming in here and they're contributing to the economy in a in a unique way. Um over the last uh 5 years or so,
basically from 2019 to 2024 uh to 2026, you know, Marboro recovered relatively quickly from the pandemic, unlike a lot of other cities and towns around the country. And I think over that period of time, you actually gained about 5,000 jobs. So the even though CO did you know
it did slow things for a little bit you know you're on the recovery and what we see in terms of the economy in MRO is your strengths continue to be in company headquarters that want to be here because of your location uh the availability of real estate and land uh
transportation accessibility centralness in the state and also workforce talent. Um you also have a lot of sort of administrative services that are in support of a lot of your key industries. Um and there are also large hubs in things like manufacturing which is that
big red dot that you see. You have a specialization in manufacturing even though about 300 jobs were lost over that five or six year period. Accommodations and food services. So that would be your hotels and your restaurants and your breweries. uh retail trade of course you've got the mall and you've got a lot of other you
know major retail centers along Route 20. So the diversity of your economy I think is a huge strength and something that as we go forward uh you will I think you'll want to sort of concentrate on continuing. >> Can I get a quick question?
>> Uh why don't you wait for to hold your questions till we >> I just want a definition on this screen. >> All right. Go ahead. >> Okay. Admin and waste services. What actually is that? >> It's it's uh not so much on the waist side, but it's more on the admin. So, it'll be a lot of the support services
for like office jobs. So, it might be an administrative assistant or folks who are sort of helping with more administrative duties within the economy. >> And the waste is which? >> Yeah, it would be I mean it's a big chunk that's why I'm asking. >> Yeah, but um sorry. So, the biggest
chunk in there is going to be the admin services piece, not the waste services piece. But the federal government, the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps those codes together for whatever reason. >> Okay. Yeah, >> thank you for the clarification. >> Appreciate that. >> Y Okay. >> Um and just to sort of back up what I
what I was saying too, we pulled some um data on the number of businesses as well as the employees that are associated with those businesses in Mombro. um across some of your your sort of big subsectors. Um professional scientific and technical services is a is a really
big sector here and very unique to Mombro given sort of your location pretty far from Boston by all means, you know, an hour away. There are 240 businesses and 3,800 employees that are working in that sector. And those are your sort of higher tech, higher
education, higher earning jobs in the sciences, engineering, uh IT industries, um life sciences, things like that. So great to see that sub- sector have such a presence here. IT and tech services is another one, 38 businesses, but 670
employees. So not as many businesses, but larger employment base. That's everything to do with computers. There's a big advanced manufacturing uh sector here. So 2900 employees that's um you know your semiconductor manufacturing
that's uh navigation aeronautics systems and then of course healthcare um another big one at 1700 employees. So, a lot of diversity, but also in sectors that are very strong in Massachusetts and also if you look at the statewide economic
development strategic plan that was released, sectors that align really nicely with where the Commonwealth wants to go and and what they're trying to incentivize in terms of jobs. Um, just shifting gears um from sort of the traditional office employment, industrial employment, just to talk
about kind of your amenity sector, your retail, your restaurants, your hospitality. Um, Marorrow is also unique in that for a city of its size, it has a number of different retail areas that we looked at um, and studied them more closely in the larger plan. But just to
touch on them, you know, Route 20, major east west spine that runs all the way, uh, across the across Marorrow and into connecting communities. It also um, comes right through the downtown as well. So along that stretch you have kind of a mix of very smallcale walkable
retail centers like downtown but then you also have larger scale sort of retail centers with your traditional big box stores, your power centers, your retail centers. Um you also have really kind of unique retail places like the arcade center which has a awesome mix of restaurants and entertainment and
different types of businesses. On top of that, you also have this whole Donald Lynch Boulevard area, sort of the mix of the mall as it transitions over time and a lot of the big box development there. So, a lot of different offerings that Marro has from a local and regional
perspective. And when we Sorry, I'm sorry. And uh when we took a look at um we were able to get data on visitation, so folks who are coming to Marboro from other communities, where are the highest numbers of visitors coming from? The
darker the red color on the map, the higher the percentage of visitors to Marboro in a given year. And you can see communities like Worcester and Hudson, obviously along Route 20 in the case of um of Worcester and Shrewsbury. Uh and then obviously north south, good
connections into Hudson. Marbor on a daily basis is drawing a lot of folks from the immediate region because you have things that many of the other communities may not have or you have quantities of things that they may not have. So a really unique position. Um, a lot of those visitors are high-income earners. So, they're coming to your
community bringing disposable income. And the employees are also bringing disposable income for things like I need to go to the grocery store. I might get my dry cleaning done here. I go out to lunch. I go out to breakfast. I go out to dinner. So when we combine Marbor resident spending, all the employees that you have on a daily basis and the
visitation that the city is experiencing from those who live outside, um there's a lot of there's sort of a great story about I think why Marvel's retail and restaurant sectors are doing really well. Um I know there's a lot in the slide. uh it was sort of pulled from the plan, but
on the right you see a list of the um sort of the top 15 or so highest visitation locations in Morrow um over the past year. So you'll see the RK Center, it's drawing 4.4 million visitors. Those aren't unique visitors. Those could be somebody visiting
multiple times, but just in terms of volume um to the downtown, the Village District, 2.6 million, Marorrow Commons, 2.3, Post Road Plaza. So again, a lot of your big retail uh and sort of walkable center districts are bringing a lot of people in and they're spending time and
they're spending money. So building on that, we also looked at the village center downtown um as its own kind of place and area. And we expand upon this a little bit more in the report, but that generation of over 2.6 6 million visitor trips per year is
the second highest next to the to the Arcade Center and the Apex area. Um, and you can see this heat map that we have on the bottom left of the screen. The darker the red, the higher the percentage of where those visitors are coming from. So again, it's very hyper
local. A lot of folks that are living in Marboro, living in Hudson, maybe on the adjacent areas of surrounding towns, those are the folks who are coming more often than not to uh the village center for various reasons. Not so much when
you get further away because as you get further away, particularly toward uh toward Worcester, as you get closer to Boston, a lot of towns have city downtowns or town downtowns that offer maybe not the exact same thing or the same quality, but they do have restaurants and they do
have places to go, but I think it's it's really unique sort of the concentration of folks who are local and are coming to your town center, your city center, I should say. Um, another trend and probably one that we'll spend some time talking about I'm sure uh is sort of the impact of COVID
on real estate sectors. The first one we wanted to look at is sort of the older office and the transition of that older office and flex space and sort of how it's been performing over time. The thing I wanted to draw your attention to on this slide is the graphic in the middle and the orange line that's
running from left to right and up and down. that is um historic and current vacancy rates for the office sector um in Marorrow's subm market. So Marorrow and its surrounding communities are part of kind of a larger economic subm market for office and you can see you know
vacancy historically has hovered in the kind of 12 to 15% range. um postcoid uh we had sort of some corrections and a dip and then all a sudden you know sort of after 2021 middle of 2021 vacancy starts to climb as folks haven't
necessarily returned to work full-time um businesses begin to rightsize the amount of space that they have and the amount of space that they need and today as we sit in the subm market we're sort of at record high vacancies around 17% um or so. So that sort of leads us to
the question of is this a sustained trend and if it is how should Marorrow begin to position some of those older office assets. Um this map which unfortunately got shifted uh up a little bit so the circles aren't exactly where we had them in the report. Um the uh circles should
sort of be over areas that correspond with um parcels that are colored in a more darker color as well as dots that are of a darker or of a lighter color or sorry of a darker color. So dark and dark where those overlap those are your most distressed assets right now. So
those would be your older office assets as well as office assets in terms of buildings that have the highest vacancy rates right now. And a lot of that overlaps with the southwest quadrant area of course because that's where you have the majority of your large office product and a lot of it that tended to
be built sort of in the 80s and the 90s. Um so we'll talk a little bit more about that but we sort of did this to start to identify what and the interesting thing when we when we dive in a little bit more this is just a a little slice here of the
southwest quadrant. you know, we see sort of large footprint buildings where the floor plates are quite large. Um, and then they're surrounded by a lot of surface parking. At the time when these were built, that was probably the most efficient way to deal with buildings and the most efficient way to deal with
parking. And you had a lot of land out here compared to, you know, more of a Boston or Somerville, Cambridge city environment where people are going to underground or deck parking. So, this is the kind of development pattern that we have out there. Um, and as we're thinking about repositioning assets, it's sort of a I think it's a good thing
in some ways because we have a lot to work with. We don't just have the building, we also have the parking. So, we could potentially think about intensifying the uses or intensifying the amount of development in these areas to try to maximize revenue for the city over time.
As we think about maximizing revenue, we kind of looked at revenue generation for the city in in two different ways. So this map here shows the total assessed value of every parcel um every private privately owned parcel in the city of
Morrow. The darker the color, the higher the total assessed value on a on a total value um scale. So you see if I sort of direct your attention to the southwest quadrant area, there's a lot of dark gray in that area suggesting that those
parcels are very assessed at a or are driving a lot of assessed value compared to other parts of the city. If we look at it a different way in terms of how do we measure development intensity against assessed value which is the next slide
um you see a very different picture and if I was able to interact with this map I would zoom in on the downtown area where the parcels are very small and the colors are very dark gray suggesting that smaller parcels with a high intensity of development on a per acre basis are really driving much of the
value in the city and the area in the southwest quadrant the parcels are much larger, the buildings take up a smaller percentage of the parcel and parking takes up a lot of that area. Um, we see on a per acre basis that development or that assessed value coming down. The
interesting thing before Meredith goes on is uh in the green district, you'll see that little quadrant there uh in that southwest portion of the city, those parcels continue to pop. Um that's sort of partially because the intensity of development on those parcels with the
multif family residential is a lot higher than the office and the rents are very high because that development is very new. So it's interesting to see that pop compared to a lot of the other um sort of older developments in the southwest quadrant. Shifting gears a little bit toward
housing. We were asked to um to sort of do a housing needs analysis as part of the forward plan um because I know there's been a ton of interest and continues to be in housing development across the across the city. Um you know, sort of driving that are a couple of things. One, your population continues
to grow. You've had about 3,300 new residents um and or you're projected to grow by 3,300 new residents and you have grown by about um 1,398 um over since about 2020. So, you saw a bump with COVID. Um, that's kind of
flattened off over the last couple of years, but you are a growing city, which is not the case for a lot of places in Massachusetts. And when when things are built, particularly on the multif family housing side, when new units are delivered to the market, they are
absorbed very quickly and they have very little long-term impact on the vacancy rate. So in this case, the orange line that's going up and down quite a bit. Wherever you see that line going up, that typically um means that a large
building or development was delivered to the market. But then the vacancy rate drops pretty quickly within a quarter or within a year or two back down to historic vacancy rates hovering in the 3 to 4% range. meaning somebody builds something, they put 100 200 units on the
market about three 3/4 of the year later those are all absorbed. Vacancy comes right back down to historic rates. And that's been the pattern. This is not unique to Malbor or the subm market. We see this all over Massachusetts. But it's kind of why people are continuing to build. Um,
and the other thing that's driving uh some of that demand is single family homes and sale prices are really expensive. The graphic on the left, uh, the red line there shows Morrow's, um, median sale price going back to 2015,
you can see basically by 2020 and going forward, the prices went from just under 400,000 on average or the median sale price to over 600,000 in just a couple of years. Um, it's also compared, we just compared here to the Boston metro and also Middle Sex County just to see
sort of where Marorrow stacks up. So, you are technically still a more quote unquote affordable option than a lot of other places. Um, certainly in the metro and middle sex county. Um, but your housing prices continue to get less and less affordable to people of certain incomes. On the rental side, which is on
the right, you can see a very similar trajectory. Post 2020, things have escalated substantially. That's both rents just going up in general because of demand. Um but also new product that is entering the market is also driving that rent up.
>> Meredith before you can you go back uh councelor Naven has a clarifying question. >> Yeah just one more slide Meredith if you could. Um the the stat that says 60% of homes are sold over asking what's the time period of then that was um kind of calculated and have you guys seen a
shift just from when the report was completed? Just trying to have a better understanding of that. >> Yep. So that is that's Redfin data from 2015 to when would you say about >> sometime in 2020. Good good question. Yeah.
>> So those are just some of the key economic trends again in the report. There's a lot more detail. So once we had all those on paper, discussed some with uh Meredith and staff and the board, we started to look at well based on all of these trends that we see both
some both positive and and challenges, what are the opportunities that are out there um that we see and that Marbor may want to focus on going forward. Um, one that I think is key is just continuing the good work that the city has done to
keep Marlboro top of mind and make sure that everybody knows that we are a regional employment hub for this area uh and for this portion of the Commonwealth and we want to continue to do that. So, some of the strategies we have will back that up. Uh the second one is as we're
looking at older properties or the opportunities to reposition properties, you know, how do we do that strategically and how do we then market to and invite in the industry sectors where we have uh existing strengths and strengths going forward, life sciences, uh tech, advanced manufacturing and
we're appropriate thinking about introducing residential or mixeduse development. Um the third one is around continued housing demand and population growth. So, as the sort of regional economy continues to expand, demand for housing I don't think is going anywhere. Um,
people continue want to want to live both in Mboro as well as in the Commonwealth. So, continuing to focus on that and, you know, thinking about housing where it makes sense. Uh, given the visitation to downtown and all the work that's been going on in downtown, I
think continuing to strengthen downtown as kind of that walkable mixeduse center. Um there's a lot of folks from around this immediate region that are coming here and visiting that downtown. Um and then the last one is just leveraging your transportation connectivity to uh state highways and
also interstates as well as the infrastructure that you have serving some of your primary growth areas. You have water, you have sewer, you have power, you have transportation, you have public services. There are a lot of communities that are certainly smaller than you that don't offer all those
services or don't offer them at the level that MRO does. Um, on the challenges side, I think the structural challenges, changes to the office market are really important to pay attention to. Um, as I mentioned before, I think managing the transition
of some of those employment districts. You all are on the sort of front lines of that transition like in the southwest quadrant, right? You have seen some proposals in the past. I think you're seeing more that are sort of coming before you. So, just thinking critically about that and thinking about some of the strategies we have in here as you're
weighing what you want to do as a city. Um, making sure you continue and I think you've done a great job balancing growth with infrastructure and service capacity. So, sort of trying to mirror or um to marry those two. um and making sure that as you expand what kinds of
land use and zoning decisions, development decisions you're making um as a city and council, you're sort of mirroring that with infrastructure investments and making sure that you have those in place. Whatever you can do on housing affordability uh always helps. We have some suggestions there.
Um a pressure that's facing us all over the Commonwealth. And then just thinking a little bit about the aging housing stock and also the limited housing diversity. So there's a lot of housing in the single family and sort of two and three family range in Maro and more
recently a lot more housing on the larger multif family side. But in most communities that we work in there's what they call the missing middle. It's sort of the the middle stuff that we used to build a fair amount of like small town houses, small apartments, multiple homes on a lot. those kinds of things that I
think could fit well in Mao, particularly in some of the areas in and around the village center where you already have a little bit of that housing stock, but maybe loosening some zoning restrictions and getting a little bit more of that. The reason for that being um it doesn't always have to be rental. The sort of missing middle could
potentially be um sort of entry ownership housing stock as well. Um if you can get the density in there, the housing prices could come down a bit and make some more entry-level housing. Um then we wanted to do something a little different with this plan and we
kind of decided to build it around um five different themes that we could carry the strategies through and these are sort of repetitive to the opportunities but again Marorrow is a regional hub reimagining those under underperforming places thinking more about downtown village center expanding
housing and then guiding growth and infrastructure alongside each other. Um, I won't spend a ton of time on this, but one way that we were starting to think about this and and working with MEEDC and the board on was thinking
about like what is the value not just of the city of Morrow, but of the places within Morrow. Each of the locations that we've talked about from the area up by the mall to the village center to your different neighborhoods to the southwest quadrant
to parts of Route 20, they all play a role in Marorrow as a city, Marorrow's economy, Marorrow's housing uh sort of housing position. We wanted to try to quantify for each of those places like what the actual value is and how you can either maintain that value or expand
upon the value of that place over time. And that's how sort of how we structured the strategies. One way we tried to um identify places was uh Eric developed uh this model for uh for RKG in house and it's called our sort of our our urban
form model but for Marorrow we called it place types and it looks at all the buildings in Morrow all the parcels of land in Marorrow and all the streets in Malboro and it compares every single parcel and building to its nearest neighbors and other neighbors around the city and then it groups them by are the
buildings similar in size and in height and in scale and in density. Are the roads of similar size and shape, lane width, side, do they have sidewalks, do they not? Are the parcels of similar size, etc. And the model essentially does machine learning, does what it does, goes in circles, and then comes
out with a map that says these places are like other places. The reason we did this was people may not think that the area around Donald Lynch Boulevard is the same as the southwest quadrant, but sort of from a built environment perspective and an infrastructure perspective, they kind of function in
the same way and they kind of have the same flavor. Same with your neighborhoods, like we have neighborhoods that are colored in a darker purple that are a little bit more intense in terms of their density or their housing types. And then you've got the more traditional kind of city suburb neighborhoods in pink that are a little
bit more spread out, a little bit larger lots, a little bit bigger homes. Um, so we thought by grouping them together, we could give you strategies that sort of direct you toward, well, if we're going to make a change in this kind of a place, what might the effect of that be across
the city in these different places? Not just neighborhood A, we're making this change. That change that in neighborhood A might be appropriate in neighborhood B, C, and D. So as we start to think about the themes and some of the strategies um one for MEEDC uh is really continuing the great
work to target industries for MARO. So we provided some focus industries that I think align nicely with where you are today and where I think the Commonwealth wants to head in the future. So continuing to press upon professional scientific technical services, healthcare, um publishing industries,
which is really software publishing, so not books necessarily, but computer software. Um you have your computer, electronic product manufacturing, uh which is big in the city. Um that's like your Rathon and Hologic. Um continuing
to build those. And then the one we added here, which I think it's a little bit outside the norm or the tradition, is recreational industries. um you've got a lot of folks who are coming here like to play hockey for example. Is there some way you can continue to build on Marorrow's sort of regional position and maybe add some things that would
pair nicely uh with that with what you already have going on? Um the other one uh the next one's just around reimagining those underperforming places. So here it's sort of identifying a pathway for redeveloping those buildings which may be obsolete today or
which may be quickly becoming obsolete in the future. Um, so thinking about potential zoning changes, barriers to permitting, um, if there are challenges for redevelopment, maybe revisiting the zoning the zoning restrictions and thinking about how you might want to
make it a little bit easier if that's what you want to do in certain places. Um, and then sort of maintaining the attraction the attractiveness of the commercial and industrial districts. So considering um just making sure that that resoning doesn't conflict with
existing uses um and then encouraging mixed use uh where conditions support it. Uh one area where we think it probably makes sense to take earlier action than later just given the focus on the southwest quadrant. So we spent a little
bit of time thinking a a little more deeply about this part of the city. Um particularly the areas along Forest Street, William Street uh and sort of Nickerson Road in Ames. And I think Meredith if you go to the next slide. So we took a look back at where you had
where the city kind of has those underperforming office and industrial assets and they aligned with kind of these three areas that we have pointed out. the area we're calling east of 495, which is the sort of forestry area. I know there's some talk about uh development in that area. Then there's
the Nickerson and Ames where you've got several parcels that have those larger office buildings with parking lots on them and quite a bit of vacancy. And the interesting thing with that road is a lot of the parcels are owned by one or two property owners. So there might be an opportunity to actually work very
closely with property owners to think about what is the reinvisioned future there. Then the other area sort of next to the apex uh center just to the right there along Route 20. One idea that we had was you already have some some good and interesting uh
overlay districts that allow a lot of different uses already. Um could you potentially think about just uh expanding those overlay districts across 495 into the east of 495 or up into the Nickerson Ames if you thought that made
sense. Those could be sort of quick hit changes that the city could consider that might unlock some potential um in those areas without a ton of extra work. The other area was was Donald Lynch Boulevard that we looked at. We know the mall is kind of in transition with new
ownership. Um there's really good zoning in place there already. So, I think it's just continuing to evaluate the effectiveness of that relatively new overlay district, talking with property owners, sort of seeing what comes out of that, um, and just making sure that that is aligned with the direction that
property owners would ultimately want to take. Um, moving to downtown, I think there are some zoning changes that you could consider to uh lift what might be restrictions or at least perceived restrictions in the zoning and
continuing to sort of expand mixeduse development in the downtown core. I know you've you you have some of that going on already and some more that's coming. You know, are there opportunities to transition some parcels and buildings in the downtown to kind of a higher and better use where tax production would be
even better than it is today? um around expanding housing opportunities. We've got a lot of strategies in the report around this. Some of it is looking at increasing the housing supply in general. Again, being strategic about where that might happen. Maybe some of that is in that southwest
corridor area, but there are other places in the city, as I mentioned before, kind of in the peripheral neighborhoods of the Village Center District where I think some zoning could potentially be loosened to uh open up opportunities on parcels for some of that kind of missing middle housing. And we have some suggestions for that in the
report. This is just a map sort of illustrating where the city may want to begin to focus. It's kind of in those again those peripheral what we have on the map the sort of purple more densely uh populated neighborhoods where you already have some of those housing typologies.
Um the other one in housing is more focused on affordable housing. So deed restricted affordable housing in this case. Um the city is currently above the 10% 40b threshold um according to your subsized housing inventory but you're at
10.8 eight. So, you're you're just you're just over, but you are over. uh therefore you're not subject to um friendly or unfriendly 40B developments, but as you have new housing added uh to the city, just making sure that you're maintaining that percentage and also
just keeping an eye on any uh deed restricted units or 40B developments that you do have and seeing if those are going if those deed restricted units are going to expire at any point because if those expire and revert back to market rate, that's going to bring your SHI number, your 40B number down. So again
just some suggestions on sort of monitoring uh short and long term. Uh and then around guiding growth and evaluating capacity. So um we did put together a whole fiscal impact model for the city which we had shared with MEEDC and the board sort of looking at the
revenue versus the costs of different types of new development that might come over time. And we also met with every department head and did interviews with them to talk about operational capacity as well as um infrastructure and capital capacity. So we have some um
recommendations here around capacity. I would say overall I think the city's doing a really good job and what I learned from the department heads is there continues to be studying of infrastructure and the capacity especially around things like water and sewer. I know there's a lot of questions there. Um, I know the the schools, uh,
you know, you're sort of tackling that right now with the new elementary school. I know there's conversations ongoing about the what to do about the fire station and do we have something in the west district. So, I know there's a lot of really good conversations going and a lot of good analysis by the department heads happening. So, a lot of
this is just recognizing that work and continuing to to follow through on that. Um I won't spend too much time here but if you looked at the report um we did sort of a comparison um along Nickersonson and Ames and the and the
mall site just to what would happen if you shifted um land use or you allowed a different type of development to occur in these areas versus what there is today. So in this case, we said what would happen if like multif family development happened here at a size and scale to what's been approved more in
the green district area and you kind of had more of that in the southwest quadrant up by the mall site and just to show there could be a significant gain in assessed value and tax delta here um to the tune of several million millions of dollars um if that new growth was was
something that you were interested in um it could have a uh a nice effect on revenue and not a huge effect on services. And lastly, I'll just leave you with um more for MEEDC, but also for the city. We had um put together some sample
evaluation measures that uh MEEDC could track over time just so that as you're moving forward with the forward plan, um you are tracking things and making sure that the strategies that are being enacted are actually um you know, resulting in the kinds of positive
change that you would want to see. That's it. >> So, no, I went fast, but happy to answer, of course, any questions. >> All right, we'll see if there are any questions. First, I'm going to now give the opportunity for the public to give comment. I didn't see a lot of people
here, so uh I thought I might have to limit time, but if you would like to go around to the podium at the front for this one, so we can not have to turn around and look at you. Please make sure that that mic is on and um that you give
us your name and address, please. >> Sure. It's Damon Michaels, 93 Chase Road. Uh so I spent some time uh reading the report the other day. I spent some time reading it again today. Uh it's very comprehensive. It's, you know, it's well
done. Uh some of the comments I have are just minor little things. Other things are questions and other ones are just kind of some feedback to you know what I believe a lot of people are saying at least online and the few people that I talk to offline. So take them for what
they're worth. It's uh no big deal if things don't change and um one of the questions I had was do you somehow account for people like me who who work from home? I know there's a whole bunch of meis out there that that work from home and a lot of it is in the
software industry. Do you ever capture numbers from people like me? >> Do you want to go ahead and answer? >> I'm happy to. Yeah, I didn't want to step on toes. Um, yes, absolutely. Okay. Um, yeah, the census has um numbers that are a little bit lagged, but they do talk about folks who work from home.
>> Yeah. Well, I've been working from home since 2006, so I'm not new to it. Um, one thing, another thing is very minor. Uh, Rathon doesn't exist anymore. It's RTX. It's not even a company anymore. Um,
uh, you know, we all know that Solomon Pond Mall has been dying, been dying for a few years. It's definitely not a destination anymore. Um, but I think, you know, you're right. It could be again, you know, with the right use cases in that area. I mean, that whole strip along Donald Lynch there is just
ideal for it. You don't have many homes in that area. You're not going to run into a lot of opposition from people to like reuse that kind of area, you know, and I think it's really primed for it. I mean, there's a lot of what appears to be empty space where DCU used to be, for example. Um, so though it's not
currently a destination, I think it could be again. We got that 290 exit right there. It's a large capacity. So, um, I also wanted to mention that there are multiple RK businesses in town, not just the one that you called RK Center.
And I think maybe the one on Denzo Boulevard at Route 20, maybe. I think RK owns that as well, >> right? RK owns that and RK owns where they're putting the McDonald's in, stuff like that, right? >> Eventually McDonald's is gonna buy it.
>> What? >> Eventually McDonald's buys the building. >> Yes. That's the way they do all their uh all all of their properties. They own their stuff. Apex isn't listed there. Apex is uh pretty big. It's huge
attractor in my area. I live in right across there. I see the huge volume of cars going in and out every day. Um, this is a question. So, he's had raising canes at 1 million visits. Now, I know there's lots of Caniacs, and I'm really
uh well aware of how many people like uh canes, but it seemed to me uh 1 million uh non-unique visitors was huge number. And I was just wondering that's on page 12 wondering where do you get that data from because I went out hunting for the
data today and probably unless I pay for it I couldn't find the data. >> Sure. >> Um so I don't know does it come from raising canes? Comes from some other source. >> Yeah. It comes from a um and and that million may not it's sort of an estimate but it's as close as they can get. Um
it's a source called Placer AI and they use um cell phone apps to trap trap >> what's the name of the company? Placer and >> Oh, Placer. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah, they do the cell phone tracking. >> Yep. So, they cell phone track and that's how we get the >> I bring that up because I posted today on one of my Facebook groups and and people were kind of shocked by the
number and couldn't believe the number. So, I want it see but however having living in the area I I saw the huge burst of activity especially at the beginning. Um also like to point out um recently been doing trash collection. So, it's great that we have new
restaurants and stuff in town and you can't control what your customers do. I understand that. But they were the number one trash by volume on Boundary Street this year. And I've been collecting trash there since 1997. So, you could see that that in fact
there are a lot of people doing it for them to become suddenly the number one trash by volume at least on one street. My daughter suggests that it's probably teenagers who are being jerks. So, um, on page 12, it listed off, I think, a Shell gas station. I'd have to look
about 600,000 visits. I wasn't sure which Shell gas station that was exactly. >> Um, this is more feedback for the city councilors, which I'm sure you've heard numerous times. Um, so people here generally seem to have
gravitated now towards they don't want a billion huge apartment buildings being built here anymore that they're kind of tired of it, especially with the explosion of ones that we've had in the community. You could just see it online. I've heard it offline, too. It's on page 17. Um, the other day when I was here,
they were talking about uh mixed use and one of the developers was here and they were talking about having uh they want people to stay in that area. So where the mixed use is and to me that doesn't really help the rest of Malboro. If you're having everybody stay in one
area, yeah, I'm sure they'll come out and stuff like that. But the fact that the developer wants them to and and says that they want them to probablyes and I'm and I'm sure that they will, but the fact the developers pointing that out is
something great to keep there to me that's not great. Um I also really liked on page 30 uh the the GIS data that that you pulled out. So that's one of the things I do uh at my company. Um, I was I looked at it a
little bit more closely, compared it to actual GIS images and I'm doubting the accuracy of it. I'm saying maybe 75 to 90% accurate. And and here's why. I'll give you one example that I was able very easily find. Uh, the the city sewer
water facilities on Boundary Street on the west side were considered suburban residential. And I can assure you that those are definitely not suburban residential. There's probably other stuff going on there, but I think by and large, you know, it's a pretty accurate map of what's going on. But just so
you're aware that, you know, within 10 seconds, I found a hole just because of just because of my local knowledge. And I'm sure you could probably find other holes. So, probably keep refining that model. Um, uh, for example, my area was touted as
being transitional. Um, well, I can assure you it's not very transitional. We're locked in a neighborhood that although our neighborhood has um and I looked up what you how you guys define transitional, my neighborhood has yes sidewalks on both sides,
but in order to es and and the neighborhood next to me also has sidewalks on both sides, but we share common streets and these common streets don't have any sidewalks and are very dangerous to walk on and I would advise nobody to ever walk on. At the same
time, the residents on those streets with no sidewalks don't want sidewalks. So, I don't know how you solve that issue, but my neighborhood, Chase Road area, is not transitional. I'm we're trapped in there. We're trapped by Millian. Other people are trapped in by
Elm Street and different other areas. So, there's probably some more modeling that could be done in those areas. Maybe a finer grain definition be like, "Hey, this neighborhood is transitional, but they can't move out of their area. it's only within this little spot and this little spot and this little spot and
there's no way for us to come out. I uh that's something that I saw just in my area. I don't know how many other areas are like that, but I think it's a really really handy tool. Um some uh feedback for city councilors. I'm sure you've heard this before. U
page 41. Uh probably not a good idea to change the height the stories in downtown and not reduce the parking requirements. We all heard what happened with the buildings that went down here. A lot of talk online about heights of buildings, number of stories, and
parking. So, I would advise do not under any circumstances reduce the parking. I don't know if what was put in on page 41 is a reduction or an increase. I'm just saying don't reduce it. Um, now again back to my neighborhood on page 43
where you talk about transitional neighborhoods and putting things on the edge of them. Um, I picked my area because I don't like dense housing. So, I wouldn't be a big fan of dense housing moving into my area. uh things like you discussed before about you know town
houses, condos, those are a little more palatable but anything bigger than that and I'm sure you're going to get a lot of feedback from residents who really would not like the concept of anything bigger than that. I mean I moved into my area for how it for how it is now and I don't want to see big huge things built
up around me. Really don't. Um and on page 45 this was interesting. Um, why was there a discussion about uh taxing a multif family as commercial and not residential? I didn't really understand why that line was thrown in there. Um,
that could be fairly controversial to people own multif family homes. Um, I just don't understand that part and I think it would be good to get clarification on that part at some point. Um, this would seem like a really
big transition to change a multif family that was a residential to suddenly being commercial. Probably not going to be very wellreceived. So, that's all I got. >> Thank you, Mr. Michaels. Did anybody else in the room have any questions,
comments, suggestions on the plan? >> Yes. >> Would you like to go up to the microphone again, introduce yourself, give us your address, please? My name is Steven Beino and I live at 47 Reynolds Court here in town. We were uh
I was a work from home from 2014 to 2019. Uh now I'm a retired from home which works out even better. Um some general comments. I I'm thrilled that there is a plan a foot um because it has
been it has certainly seemed as a relatively new 10 yearsish resident. I couldn't find a plan. Nothing made sense to me. There are just overly large buildings being jammed onto
lots. And I'm contrasting what the our downtown and how it's changing with the downtown right nearby in Hudson. And they aren't burdening their downtown with these large buildings and
pretending that one parking spot per housing unit is going to be sufficient because in America that's science fiction. Um the um there was also this enormous proposal
for a development on Robin Hill Road and I think that was around 300 units that appeared and there were hearings I didn't get to attend because I was traveling for business. It seems to have vanished. I tried to find out what the status is and it's not easy to find
things on our website. Um I have a particular comment on page 46. which is um it's the one that was right towards the end and it showed a proposal for making use of the uh slowly dying
Solomon Pawn Mall and some of the other things on um I almost said Daniel Webster Donald Lynch uh Boulevard. Um, as somebody who would be significantly affected by that probably, although
we're on the other side of 290, I still think it's a great idea, you know, to make use of that property, especially for rationally sized places. There's an enormous amount of space that I mean, the parking uh at Solomon Pond is gigantic. You could put apartment
buildings in there, turn Sears into something that could be useful again. That would be great. But I'm perplexed about the math on page 47. It says um uh sorry 46.
It says that there are it said it can is capable of 444 housing units. I wasn't completely clear as to how as to whether each one of those is a multi-unit dwelling or those are each
each one is a family unit a a single uh place to live in. But the math threw me. It says that the number of people with 444 housing units that says that that will prod provide 31
additional students. I can't make that math. I looked at and and if I'm reading something wrong and my engineering degree has completely fallen out of my head and I can't do arithmetic anymore, please forgive and correct me.
Right now, the city has uh data pulled off. Um, well, first off, one of the things there was a note on that slide that said, "Based on our analysis, the recently built multi-unit dwellings produce Z.07
students per unit. That doesn't fit with the rest of the city. Number one. Number two, those kind of housing units generally draw younger couples. And the one thing
I know about younger couples is they tend to produce children. Um, the ones that I know certainly are. We're grateful to one of our sons for giving us grandchildren. Um, and he's not at the 0.07
number. Um, the if you look at the numbers now, we have roughly 17,000 housing units. Uh, all this is all derived. I have the primary source material for this. I was surprised that there was no primary source referred to
just a number to it. We have 17,000 units roughly. We have 4,750 K through2 students according to the data that I found. And you take 4750 students, divide up by 17,000 housing
units and each housing unit has.2794 students, roughly.3 students. If you put 444 housing units in there at.3, that's not 31 students. The number is a whole lot higher than that. It's about
seven times that number. If you take the Nickerson area, which can handle supposedly 1,122 housing units, and you have it be the actual number, it's not 78 students, which is what the
plan says. So unless these housing units are all 55 and above who produce very few children um or you're providing birth control with every apartment and it's mandatory
these numbers don't fly and I think I think that is when I find and again correct me if I've missed something. I've missed many things over my years. Steve, I won't correct you, but I will sort of stop you and I don't know if they want to
comment, but I I believe the numbers that they used are the same numbers that were put into information from the campus that come from the superintendent of schools who gave us the numbers when we were asking how many students are
actually in the new developments that we have approved that now are full, getting full, even the brand new ones. ones and those are the numbers that are the real counts of students coming from those
apartment complexes that they're projecting. >> There should have been a reference to that in the document to substantiate where the number came from because it seemed like there's a good number. I'll go with that one because I can jam more housing units in if I can tell the nice people that they won't have to build another school. So, I I appreciate being
illuminated on that. However, I will counter by saying going back to the point that I made earlier, condos and apartment buildings tend to draw in younger couples. The I the I would be
shocked if that 07 per unit number is true 5 years from now. And if you look at the housing stock in the city right now, you take the number of students, you divide it by the number of housing units, you've get a number that is 7
times larger than the math that was used. And I don't I'm not looking for a resolution to this. I'm saying the numbers don't work. and they can either explain provide primary data to indicate that in
other similar municipalities. They built a bunch of large apartment buildings and in two years after they were opened up they were producing 0.07 students per unit and now 20 years later they still are. I'm certain that data is
not out there. I think it's totally different data to it. My only concern that I'm raising is the number just doesn't make sense without substantiating data and forwardlooking data. >> And the forward-looking data is hard to
come up with. I mean, we we can look at the apartment complex that were built in the 1980s and know that they are full of children. Will the apartments built today at probably twice the rent
of those apartments in 20 years be full of children? Who knows? They may be >> the past is generally prologue to the future. And if the if the city is going to plan based on a set of numbers and put in a
plan that goes out 10, 15, and 20 years, there should be reasonable predictions and forecasts based on some sort of factual data. And you just articulated some factual data from apartment buildings that were built in the not
overly distant past. And that's not a 07 students per housing unit. So, all I'm trying to get at is we need to have the numbers explained and have it have it explained to us why those numbers are the numbers that we should be thinking
about in approving a plan that from very simple arithmetic is going to require us to build enough classrooms to hold another 500 students if we were to build the Nickerson and the Solomon Pawn Law properties. I'm not
opposed to building them. I just want us to be planning for it so that we when we look at the tax revenue coming in and all the rest uh roads, you ought to drive around on some of our roads. We have a lot to apologize for
and it is not getting better. I've corresponded with the mayor's office, received basically a form letter emailed back, and they still have done virtually nothing except slap a bit of pancake batter on uh Bigalow and Elm and wished
us God speed and hope we'd stop calling. Um we have serious road problems and sometimes you just have to face that. That's my comment. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh your road comment is certainly appreciated and I think all of us that live in Marble agree with you.
However, I I drive all over this area and maybe not the whole state, but it's just as bad everywhere else. So, uh it's an issue. >> Plan the forward plan for I know a lot of the roads won't get
fixed, but there's a plan to do um maintenance. So madam madam chair so hang on hang one Steve you're not next to a microphone so no one can hear you okay that's and and this is not the discussion time for transportation we
can have that when the mayor brings down plans but I know that the roads are an issue that we talk about as a council um offline all the time we get the emails we drive the roads we we totally understand that um
>> understanding and fixing are regrettably very much a part in this city right now. >> All the >> the city could at a minimum publish on our disjointed website a list of what roads are going to be fixed in what
order. >> I believe that's there but I again this is not the time to have that discussion. So thank you very much for your comments that are there. I know um specifically with the students I I think demographically
um across the country and in Malboro less families are having children. Um the city of Marbor is losing children. Um so there may be a reason why specifically around federal issues. It may just be
that we're losing children because they're not here. Um, that's an argument we could have at it another time. And I think that the issue of what we've built, what's being brought to us to be built is a discussion that each of us as counselors needs to and have had the
discussion of how many children will it actually bring. Um, it's a guess. So, >> can I just comment on one other comment about that there's no good place to find information on developments that are being proposed. We've actually done a lot of work over the past couple years
of of aggregating that data and any active proposal that's in front of the city council. There is a we call the developers communication page on the city website that you can go and find any active special permit application that's before this council and happy to
to follow up with you to send you a link. Find that >> it's on the city's website. >> What how what do I search for to find it? >> I can give you my card before we leave and I'm happy to email you a direct link. It's on the city council page, but how it does not talk about projects that
have been withdrawn, which is the case of the Robin Hill project, >> just active projects. So, you are correct. You can't find it anywhere because it is not before the council right now. So, but you can find information with summaries and all the the correct information about any active
project that's before the council. >> Does it at least indicate that for example that the Robin Hill project was withdrawn? >> No, it's only useful information. >> It's only active projects that are before the city council. >> City council staff can tell you where it
is. A city council could tell you. I I have a list of all the projects for multiple years and know whether they've been withdrawn, um whether we denied them, um whether they were approved. So,
the status is there. All right. I'm going to um I did not read the mayor's letter. I had that sort of buried here. I don't know technically how important it is. You all
got it in the original packet. Um so what I will give you is the email that I received from um Becky Smi on Blazewood Avenue, 32 Blazewood Avenue. She was very
um outspoken, that's the word I want, when the uh Boston scientific project was before us, another one that was withdrawn. Um so her comments were really about the fact that the open
space and recreation plan that was recently adopted does not seem to mesh with the forward plan. um which she the forward plan um or the open space and recreation had
qualitative values on page 29 where the plan included the summary of achievements for the open space plan and overview of the city's cultural history an inventory of the community's natural resources and inventory of lands and conservation
an analysis of conservation and recreation needs within the city and a list of goals and objectives. I pasted this here to emphasize the importance of the open space plan and wonder why it was not mentioned in the Marbor forward plan in any comprehensive
way. Is there a way that these two critical and well-developed plans can work together to truly position our city in the best possible stance for the future? So, I guess I would agree it is they are two separate documents that
would probably have to work together. Um, and I don't know if there's a way to mesh them or keep them as separate or if you have >> I mean I would assume that Priscilla spoke about the open space plan. We can
certainly share it with you guys. But yeah, I mean they they spoke directly with the department heads about those types of things. >> Okay. And then um I just want to kind of begin for people who do not know um because I
I guess I I feel a little like one of the speakers that the master plan was approved the the first draft. Um but I have never looked at that over almost 900page document or
even the 90page synopsis as we have either reszoned or we have had projects come before us. So it's a document that we adopted. We adopted a preamble um that says a lot of
nice stuff but I don't think it's been a working document for us. So my hope is that if in fact this new forward plan does get adopted that it becomes more of
a tool that we really do use. Um and I don't know if there are things in it that we need to clear up, things that we need to decide if we agree with as a council. um a couple of points were brought up by our speakers um that I
think need to be clarified. So, um I know back in people talk about it 1985 there was the original master plan was presented by then mayor Cusan Hadad
and I do want to read um where it stated that the challenge for all citizens of Marble is to understand our city and the economic, demographic, political and other related forces at work so that we can direct growth and development in a
bicial beneficial pattern as well as cope with the related impacts of that growth. That's why the master plan was presented to the city council. I think those are still true today. Um he further stated the plan is not a specific solution that will
automatically solve our problems. The strongest and most valuable part of the plan is the statement of goals. These adopted goals represent our shared beliefs and values. So they the master plan had um multiple
goals that if you look at them today, people would argue that most of them were done. Some of them were not done. Some of them that were in there were to continue with the planner and to continue updating that master plan,
which obviously never happened. It went from 1985 to 2011 at the urging of MEEDC to come up with something to help guide us. So there does seem to be a desire to have some
that we can look at as we um get projects before us. My concern with some of it, especially with the Southwest Quadrant, um is that things are before us now. Um, and so it's hard to figure
out where to go. And somewhere in here I have, it was fun going back. I know I I tossed tons and tons of stuff, but I have Marboro Southwest quadrant analysis from
2015, uh, done by MAPC, which kind of says the same thing that we're talking about now. that's where our growth should be happening. Um, so it's nice to know that that's still a consistent idea. Um,
>> Madam Chair, can I just just our our entire goals and objectives of our organization are based on that master plan. So I it it was the economic development master plan. So I just want to I just want to make sure >> the city council as a council did take I
mean I didn't watch all of it. It was referred to, interestingly enough, um, >> operations >> operations and oversight. Thank you, Owen. Operations and oversight, but they did adopt the plan as the city's
council's master plan, but it sat on a shelf and never was really used. You used it as a organization to bring growth to the city. We didn't use it as a
zoning special permit authority body to say, "Hey, look, this is what we said we were going to do. Are we following that or are we not following it?" Uh, and yes, counselors have changed since 2013
and definitely since 1985, but I don't know that we did it due diligence or do justice. Councelor Oing. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. So, so I'll just disagree a little bit. So, so the the 2010 master plan was set up, you know,
2011 or 2013 whenever it got approved, um, as the roadmap to basically, and I'm going to quote, to improve economic opportunities for Malber residents and businesses leading to stabilizing the tax rate. All right? And if you go through the 900
pages, which we have a couple of I call it abbreviated versions and look at some of the uh shortened recommendations, we did pretty good. And it w it the intent wasn't for every development to come before the city to say where does it fit, excuse me, fit in this master plan.
It doesn't work. No one has that crystal ball. And if you do, you're in the wrong business because you should be making a lot of money somewhere else. All right. the the the the whole intent of setting up MEDC was to stabilize the tax base and bring economic development to
increase commercial assessed values to ultimately keep our tax base stable. And for the last 15 years, except for last year, and that discussion will take place next week when we get the budget, we've kept the
average single family house tax bill under $200 for 15 years in a row. We have increased the economic value of the city of Malro by over $833 million from 2011 to today because of the work this
group does. If you ask any planner or any other municipality, they want what we have. All right. Now, you can argue you don't like the roads or you think there's too many buildings. Okay? But no one tells me says cut teachers, cut firefighters, cut
policemen. It's, you know, don't build, don't bring new growth in. Well, I it doesn't work that way, ladies and gentlemen. You need new growth to provide the services. $10 million a year, the budget's going to be
going up. I don't have new growth to offset it. And state aid is not coming. We are getting zippo increase from last year in state aid. All right. So the alternative is local revenue. So that's excise tax,
water bills, sewer bills. Well, we're not going to go jack up all those rates. So it falls on the property owner. And for those that say, I want to change, and this is where I'll disagree with the mass the forward plan, changing the
commercial or multifamily to a commercial database will the people paying rent. All right. So, so to me that's a non-starter. It's being talked about in Boston and I get it. All right. Because they're all looking for ways to get
revenue, but I wouldn't be supporting it because that is going to the people that pay the because what do you think the the commercial built guys going to go pay another 300 or $3 million in taxes and not pass that cost on to somebody?
Anybody want to take a guess where that cost is going to get passed down to? the people that pay the rent. So, so, so that's that's a non-stop. So, the forward plan had input from all our department heads, had input from the
executive committee board, and we're looking for feedback from this board. If you're looking for that prescriptive build here, build there. So, why build in the southwest quadrant that they knew in 2015, that they knew in 2010, that they knew in 1985?
It's the only place we have space. So, where do you think we're going to build? If I mean, if if you don't think that's the case, you're not paying attention. I can't go build it down on Chase Road. They're kind of a little tight right down there right now. All right. Yep.
So, so this isn't a surprise. So the question in my mind becomes what's the rational approach to build at a rate that the city can sustain both budget-wise and the proverbial I
don't want too much building. Well, if you don't want any building, that's okay, but I want you to follow it up with I'm going to be willing to pay a boatload in taxes. And I have yet to hear that comment. >> All right. And thank you, Madam Chair. I think that is where we wind up as 11
individual counselors with our decision on voting yes or no on projects. And so that's our dilemma. Um I'm going to go to councelor Naban. I saw his hand and I'll get you councelor Det. >> Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Um thank you for being here tonight. Um thanks for this work. This is uh it's a
great document. Um I really enjoyed reading through it. Um I enjoyed you guys walking through it in your presentation and kind of mirroring the report because um it does make it a little bit easier to understand. Um just in response to I think the president's comments and councelor uh
Robin the chair's comments um you know for me this presents I I don't have a problem kind of squaring the circle as it as it were for having this document approving this document and you know adopting this document for me it's a menu of possibilities for the things that we could be doing um you know I
think as the president just highlighted one of the areas that I think most of us would disagree with um is switching the commercial um switching to a commercial tax rate for the multifamilies, but it's always good to have one lightning rod in there to make sure you know you kind of toss that out and then you know everything else is
great. Um as as as someone who used to own a multif family property, I think I would be uh I think we would argue that some of the two and three families have undergone some significant tax rate raises um over the past several years. Um but that said, you know, there are these are all good options. This is if you were to go in to, you know, make
these recommendations and someone said, "Hey, I need more revenue. I need to find other ways to do this." this is what you would do. And so for me, this is great. Do I agree with all these things? No, absolutely not. Do I agree with some of them? Yes. Do I both agree and disagree with some of them? Yes, I do. Um, but I think it's really helpful.
And so, I really appreciate that the work that you've done and I find it really interesting. Um, my first question, Meredith, for you is after this goes forward, after this finishes this phase for you guys, what's the plan to publicize this and share this with
the community, both our residents and kind of the business community at large? >> I mean, I think that's a work in progress. Um, I think this is our first, you know, introduction to the community. I don't even know that the f the master plan back in 2011 had more than council.
Um, but we we certainly could take it on a road show. We It's not in final form. It's still in draft form. If we wanted to get it in front of Rotary clubs and the chamber of commerce, for the business community, some resident neighborhood input. We're we're happy to do whatever you guys want us to do.
We're happy to do that. I think it's very important for the conversation that we keep having here for the conversation that the the residents who have come here tonight to talk about um highlights it highlights both the our strengths as a community um both our from our infrastructure and from like our community and the people who make up our
community and the businesses that make up our community and it kind of highlights our strengths and our challenges but at the same time how we do grow and how sometimes we have to recognize that those are often in contrast to one another and how do we kind of move forward And I think people really kind
of taking a pride in the fact that we do have great restaurants, we do have all these different quadrants, like it's something to be proud of, but then it also kind of says, okay, well, where do we kind of prioritize that growth? So, I think it >> I think from the residential side, I think it would be helpful even if it's like you said, Rotary clubs, get down
to, you know, it's not hard for you guys to get to a local channel, uh, local cable access taping, I don't think so. Um, be able to do something. I So, I do appreciate that. Um, this is going to be a little bit um, biased, but you talked a little bit about water and sewer
access um, and how it's a benefit structurally for us. It's a benefit for people who are coming in. Was it identified by others outside as a reason to locate? Did you have any data? Did you guys find anything about that or is it just basically your knowledge and
understanding and your experience knowing that access to clean, reliable and abundant water and wastewater sewer services is >> I would say the latter. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Okay. That's really helpful. Um you highlighted um potential quick um quick hits for zoning changes to unlock
additional development when you talked about the parcel west of Apex and then kind of taking that a little bit further across 495. When you say reszoning for those parcels, what is the do you mean for multif family residential development or do you mean for are there other things
that could be potentially for those areas? >> Yeah. Was um so the parcel that is just to the I guess to the east of AP of Apex uh that we had identified I think in the purple um area. Y
>> I think the idea was to take the overlay district that I think allowed Apex to come in and do the unique mix of uses that it has and just sort of mirror that on the other side and see what that could open up on the frontage of Route 20 for the Forest Street area and then maybe eventually the Nickerson Ames area
would be taking the it's like the RMU overlay district there which is more residential mixeduse I think and flipping that to the other side of 495 and >> you know maybe I mean there's a lot of discussion amongst the uh MEEDC uh
board about like which ones would you do first? Would you wait on Nickerson because that is a larger area. It is all owned by uh primarily by one property owner, but there is a mix of them and and another. So, if you were to reszone that, you'd
want to do it thoughtfully and probably in partnership with them. And maybe it's a phased approach thing, but the other two, you know, you've got over on forestry, I think you've got a project in front of you and then the other one just seems like a maybe a potential short-term opportunity. >> Councilman, we we struggled a lot in our
conversations of okay, so the office market's tough today. >> Yeah. >> We don't want to give away the farm and in 15 years from now the office market comes back and now it's all residential. So we struggled a lot with that of how do you realize higher values today
without giving away future value. >> Yeah, absolutely. 20 years from now. >> I think you're reading my notes. >> I think that was a question that got asked on the um forest public hearing >> and was brought. >> And so when you have that when you have that particular question about where do
we target the office space? Is it the class B office space? Is it the is your older stock that you're like, okay, we can probably move on because we have had no bites at this in the region for quite some time. >> That's exactly the analysis we tried to do and highlight to the to the board to MEDC was
there's a lot of acreage in that southwest. So, it's not like by making I call them small changes. I'm not trying to minimize the the change, but smaller areas compared to the overall acreage, you still have a lot of commercial industrial land that I would recommend
you hold on to, right? And you know, if there's vacancy over time, like hang on to it, you know, and hopefully things will cycle back around again. But there's definitely some of those distressed properties, I think, where vacancy is really high where if you did make that change and a developer went in, you could realize new growth revenue
to the city. you hit a little bit on it when you talked about kind of a phased approach and how you kind of look at some of these different zoning changes. One of the things I struggle with is when we're trying to find new projects and we want to have this new growth and
we look at it and there are some great project before us but they are in a pool of what I would call you know different projects that may not be as great. Um, and you have that kind of that choice that you have to make between I'm going to only pick and choose and then maybe
the ones I only picked and chose the best ones and maybe they don't get built and the other ones would have, right? And so that's always and we've heard from developers that you know the market will kind of help solve some of those issues but do you kind of have recommendations on you know is there is
there a prime have you seen in your work is there a target number that you want to then come online that both will support the market but then also not overburden kind of the the coming online both from an infrastructure point and from the rental market point. like is
there a kind of a target in a community of our size that you would think will support that new growth consistently and in a sustainable manner? >> I don't know if I've seen a target per se. I guess what I would say, and I don't
know if this answers your question or helps you reconcile with this, but if I'm a private developer and I buy a piece of land and the city grants me the opportunity to bring on, you know, let's say it's a huge project, it's 600 units.
I'm just making up a number. I think they're unlikely to put 600 units all in one trunch. They'll probably phase it because they know the market absorption is we'll put 150 or 200 units on. We have a sense from looking at historical market absorption data and maybe other
developments they have in the region or in the state um where they know that 200 units is going to take a year to lease up then they might come back and do the next one. >> So I don't I think it would be unlikely that it would all get put on the market at once and sort of >> you know because that's not good for
them either. It's not good for their investors. It's not good for you all. Right? If you got high vacancy they've got to start offering concessions. I mean none of that is really good. So, I would hope that they are savvy enough, I'm sure most of them are, to sort of phase something like that in. But if you're talking about a project of, you
know, 200 units here, then maybe another one over here, I mean, I think it will get absorbed just based on how things have been going even the last 10 years. >> Yeah. Okay, that's helpful. Um, this touches just quickly on the target growth, the short term. I see you guys have some homework in here as well. Um
so some of the target on the target growth industries obviously biotech has seen a stunning stall um in the market. Um I'm sure you guys already saw this but I just saw um looks like Mass Bio was just touting the fact that um Governor Healey signed uh an agreement
with the um Spain's um uh uh VC fund, excuse me, um to support Massachusetts biotech >> at that event. It was very exciting. >> So great great. I just wanted to flag that. That's yeah, I'm going to brush up on my Spanish and uh see uh
>> you know, see if we can uh bring some of those folks. And then the last piece, I just wanted to touch on the student one. Um I think everybody, as we were kind of going back and forth on the student piece, uh I try to make this argument a lot. Both things can be true. The apartments of today, and Katie, you kind of hit on it.
Um excuse me, Madam Chair, you kind of hit on it. Um these these new apartment buildings are not a problem for our school system today. They may be in the future and those, you know, at some point these are not going to be the new fancy apartment. Someday a golf
simulator and a bar may not be the hot new thing. I don't know why. I don't I can't imagine a time in my life where that would not ever be appealing, but um it's possible. Um and so those may not be those apartment buildings, right? Royal Crest, when I was a kid, you know, when apparently Mayor Hadad was in
office, I just learned that today. Um in 1985, right? Like Royal Crest was the newer apartment. Um, you know, and I, you know, there were some kids at school that lived there, but not like they are today. And so, you know, we could be building, this is going to sound a little bit too
far, but this we could be building a ticking time bomb with some of this housing all coming online. And so, they can both be true, right? Um, Council Fill, you note all you've noted these numbers a lot. They are not big numbers currently here. I don't know how they could be with a one-bedroom at $3,000 a month, but at some point as these get
older, the companies who own them sell them, rents will come down or, you know, the market will go and surpass them. So, I think both things can be true and we should be thoughtful as we're doing it. And I have taken up way too much time. So, again, I thank you all for your your thoughtfulness and your work. Meredith, continue to just crush it. Thank you.
>> And I I I'll just throw out I believe in downtown Marbor, we did put a limit on how many units we could do in a year. We have also if you the original results way mixed use was a 100 units and then they came back and asked for that to be
revised and we did special permit for the second part. The green district has been phased phase one phase two phase three hopefully they'll come back for. So we have done phasing. Um the problem becomes the one where one is here and
one is there and they're both 300 units. Do we say, "Well, I like this one, but I don't like that one." >> Um, and that's we have reszoned Donald Lynch Boulevard well before Donald Lynch. We reszone 20 East. Nothing.
Again, nothing has happened on 20 East. We hoped that by reasonzoning to allow for mixed use that that would actually become a place where we could see apartment buildings with the mixed use with stores. Um, and it's not happened.
So, councelor Ducet, >> thank you much madam chair. Um, and thank you folks for doing the presentation and this a lot of work was put into this. Um, just in in just summaries. I hope the next time we don't have to wait how many years uh you know
uh 20 >> 10 15 years >> like to see something here like every five years what's going on as far as reporting and capabilities. That's just my opinion for that because I think that's important. uh the as far as the size of the presentation itself I think
is fine a 900page doc which used to be the normal things back in the 80s or something you know uh we realized that you know even with Tik Tok they're trying to get in videos in under how many minutes right um but a couple of things and I don't necessarily want to
get into uh some details but um as far as downtown goes you know you we're talking about making it walk accessible, right? So, the problem that we have in downtown Marro is that the current bike
trail ends in downtown Marro and bike trails should never end. They need to continue someplace else for transition and stuff like I got, you know, I got on a bike, I got on the trail in Malboro, I
got through Malboro, through Hudson into Sudbury and came back, right? But I went through the town on the trail. Right now, the trail ends here. And if you want to talk about walkability and stuff like that, we have to talk about what are the paths to get to downtown that do
not involve that trail because people will come from the trail and other paths and vice versa, you know, and if we can get something to go south to the train station as an official path, I know there's an informal one that you were working on, but I think that's an to
formalize that to say, "Hey, there's a trail that you can take to go from downtown Malboro to the train station in Southboro." Um, that would be huge for bikers and other types of, you know, foot traffic activity type stuff because
I'm seeing overall a lot of people just getting onto the trails like, you know, I' I've been doing it for a couple of years, but now that the Mass Central's been paved, the place is extremely busy in a in a good way. Um, but I think we
need to somehow pull that traffic into here because there's lots of opportunity with foot traffic and stuff, but you know, when you're trying to get out of downtown, it's tough to get, you know, reasonably far out of the neighborhood.
You know, you don't want to stay on 20. You got to figure out the back roads. People who know the back roads do it, but we need to make it more formal. Um I think the some of the other things um on page seven your review of the different
businesses didn't include retail and it would be important to actually include retail because there's a lot of retail businesses in Malboro. Okay. Um and uh you know as far as office you know the office buildings is the issue.
Um you know we do have two tax rates. I think putting, you know, any type of housing into the commercial tax rate is suicide. No way I'm going to vote for that, you know. Um, but on the other hand, I don't also want to see these
commercial properties getting converted to housing because that also reduces the rate long term. So, you know, again, the question is basically how, you know, what are the businesses that we can attract to the city that can take the
benefits based upon location, proximity, and everything else. So, you know, we're cheaper than Worcester, we're cheaper than Boston, but you can get to both easily. Um, I think that's an important part. And, uh, I think you brought it up once before, and I I think it's going to
be emphasized. uh you know basically lowincome owner occupied housing you know entry-level housing I mean we had a conversation with one of the developers and they're like oh I want to do apartments it's like you know we have
plenty of apartments coming online we don't have any owner occupied housing that's the real shortage even if it's condominiums or anything else we need to get that type of housing into the city because I I think the be um you know
houses with lots we you know those become expensive McMansions but either town houses or garden style condos you know single floor living I think that's important to to be addressed going forward as part of economic development
but you know I I think it's also important to get different industries to come into Malber because I think one of the biggest problems s that we had faced in the past is that we were relying on one or two businesses. You know, Digital Crim
Corporation had 23 buildings. Fidelity came in, bought out deck, then moved to Rhode Island, left us in a larched, which is why you guys were developed. You know, really economic development came out of that. Um, you know, so I I think that Malber Economic Development
Corporation has been an incredibly valuable asset to the community and I I enjoy what you guys do. Um, I think the first phases of development that were done over the last 10 years. There are a lot of hotels that were thrown into the development. Uh, a lot of the reasons
was to support the um New England Sports Center and other activities for recreation and kind of building up a recreation industry within our community. And it worked. But how do we take that same model and possibly
identify other potential industries to grow, nurture, and expand within this area? So because you know the hotels help pay fund you guys going forward too. So you benefited with that growth. Um but I think we have enough hotels now
but how do we get other industries to come in here and identify the opportunities of having Malber at home. So that's about it. Thank you. >> Other counselors with questions comments on the plan. Councelor Presiato.
>> Thank you Madam Chair. Um, thank you guys for being here. Um, so I had just a couple questions or a few questions. Um, with this plan, is is there a consideration for like the infrastructure to build out these
industries or build out these these these proposed like you know the southwest quadrant and and also expanding the canon development in other areas. Um are we prepared for like the influx of that population to be moving in? Um is the city is is because this
plan does not address any of that, right? It just addresses like just solely economic development but not really like the barebones the the the backbone of of supporting that. >> Um so we did two things around services
and infrastructure. I think that's what your question's getting at like city provided infrastructure and services. So, as I mentioned before, we did an initial round of interviews with all the department heads to try to identify um what's going well, but then more importantly, what stresses what
stressors do they have within their department, either personnel, capital, vehicles, infrastructure, whatever it is. Um so, we took that into consideration as we were starting to think about areas of the city where you may want to in encourage investment over
time. Once we had sort of settled on, you know, like Donald Lynch and the and the downtown area and certainly the southwest quadrant, um, and we had started to develop like at least for a couple of those areas, some of those preliminary housing counts that were in the report for like Donald Lynch and,
uh, like the Nickerson area, we circled back with the school the the school district superintendent as well as DPW and engineering to double check with them and sort of give them like a hypothetical. what if I think we I think we said like 16 15 or 1600 units came
online in the next 5 to 10 years would that stress the system? So we did circle back with them and double check and I think by and large with the new elementary school that you know is I think coming online in the next couple years that's going to have expanded capacity. Then when we talked about um
like water and sewer capacity for example, there's a a couple of studies that are going on and DPW and engineering continues to work on like infiltration issues into uh the uh sewer system from storm water runoff during heavy events and things like that which
if those are addressed over time and a couple of small tweaks to the system uh that they had identified um they thought that there was the capacity to be able to serve. >> Okay, that's that is good to know. Um I know that we had some issues with wastewater you know a few years ago
before we had the the the updates and um so that is good to know. um in the sense of um you know alternative transportation as as my council member here had mentioned bike paths um I think it would be imperative to be able to to
connect these these new areas of growth right with alternative transportation methods either whether that includes public transit with buses or or shuttles or or bike bike paths or or what have you um is that something that that we should also be investing in right now
and I know there's not really like a plan for any of this right now, but um having that set in place would definitely I think help promote these areas. >> Yeah, I mean certainly I would say when it comes to sidewalks and bike infrastructure, those are things that
the city could, you know, you've been doing it and you could continue to do it and think uh you know, maybe more holistically about um where those connections could happen and where they make sense. The public transit one is always a tough a tough one because if
you truly want to go the public transit route you're going to have to rely on I don't know out this way like Worcester I guess which one right or the commuter rail. Yeah. But sort of like internal to the city to get around the city it would probably be like the Worcester Regional
Transit Authority if they make it out this far. Or you'd have to think about some kind of like a circulator shuttle, maybe a public private venture, but those are really challenging financially because they don't pay for themselves. So there's >> We have our own transit, the Metro West
Regional Transit. >> Oh, you are in that >> and they are actually increasing the routes. They're not increasing. >> They are. It's just it hasn't I was just going to say if Linda's watching at home, I apologize. We're not supposed to announce it until Monday, but there the shuttle service that we've provided since 2019 is being implemented into
their their routes, their permanent routes. So, you'll have direct transit to the southwest quadrant. That that is good to hear because um you know we if if we are going to be building you know housing units or or or any of the stuff in the city especially around Main
Street like and we're only providing certain amounts of parking like a lot of these people are going to rely on this transportation. Um so I you know it's great to hear that there is expansion on that. Um >> just don't tell anyone. All right >> I I won't tell anyone. Um >> but but even the other the the normal
routes that go through the city they have expanded the hours the the numbers of and as we have approved apartment complexes we have put in the special permit that they need to provide information about those. They need to
provide a bus stop if >> the problem was that the the 7C did not go to that area of the city. Yes. So we've now our pilot program is now becoming a permanent route which means that it will go through the southwest quadrant to the downtown. So that is one
>> that is good to hear because you know we we are a small city but we're also a very large city right. So um that's something that has been I wouldn't say lacking but definitely needed. Um so that's great to hear. Um >> kudos to the mayor on that because he's been working with Jimny at WM trying to
make that happen. But to your point it it does come with a cost. So >> yeah, >> thank you. Um and uh a point to add to to to just make about um schools and and students like some of the counselors do have a point where, you know, we built
these developments, you know, in the city and and and they might not have had kids, you know, back then, but now they're full of kids now or or students. Um, so that is, I think, definitely something to look for in the future because as there's less and less housing
in the city in in downtown, in this area. Um, these families are going to have to go somewhere, right? And and if they can afford it, they're going to move out to these new developments. If they can't afford it, they're going to move out somewhere else, right? They're not going to stay in the city. So, um,
that is definitely something to consider. and and that 007 number I believe is what it was. Um is obviously going to fluctuate, right? It's it's not a steady hard number. Um so something to definitely take into consideration as we continue to expand
um our city. Um in that southwest quadrant, I I I was looking at the open space plan. um there isn't much there that is highlighted as as either protected or or green space or or anything. So um it it is interesting
to see because looking at a satellite image, right, you see you do see a lot of green space there, right? Then and then you see the the parking lots from these these warehouses like DuPont and and all these other industries. Um um so I'm kind of wondering like what that
expansion actually looks like. Like who owns these plots land and and like um like are are we wanting to add housing as well as like industrial or like is is it going to be kind of mixed use kind of kind of plan. Um because there is potential there to have that open space
element. Um so I don't I don't know if you can expand on a little on that. Yeah, I would say, you know, the southwest quadrant's a unique area where it's traditionally been more commercial, industrial, and I guess you could argue as a city council whether that's an appropriate
place for like an expansive park system or something or whether that money would be better spent on parks where people, you know, live and are and have better access to. But I think in an area like let's say for example like the Nickerson Road area that we talked about. Let's say that in the future that's reszoned
and you're working with the property owners. I think it would be a great idea to say to them you have a pretty big area in which you could think about redeveloping. We would love to see some kind of central plaza, central park because you're going to have people living here as well as people working
nearby. So there may be way, you know, in that area. So that could be an option where the city doesn't necessarily have to pay to acquire land, pay to build it, and then ultimately pay to maintain it. >> Understood. Um I was also just reading up on that 40 uh chapter 40B. Um so we
are pretty close to that threshold. Um what are your thoughts on providing affordable housing to our residents? Because um I believe it's Metro West Housing Coalition or something like that. I don't remember the acronym but um they had a presentation where they
pulled a quite a few residents in the city. Um you know a lot of the burden financial burden is cost of living and and actual like being able to afford where they live. So I think I believe it's like 75% of the people interviewed had to make a choice between paying their rent or paying the mortgage and
paying you know other bills. um is is how how do we as a council support those residents and and provide for potential new residents that would pro possibly need this this um affordable housing?
>> Yeah. So, I mean like as a city you're sort of limited in the options because you don't build you know like say doesn't build housing, right? So, there you're sort of limited in the options. So one is, you know, the city has an inclusionary zoning policy where a percentage of new units in a
market rate development have to be set aside for uh households, I think at or below 80% of the area median income. So as new market rate developments are built, some percentage of those units will be set aside for deed restricted affordable. Now those are at 80%. So
household incomes at 80% in Massachusetts and the Boston MSA are still pretty high. >> It's tough, >> right? So the folks who need the most help are typically 50% and below. Um that's often the piece of the market where like housing authorities come into
play. So, one of the suggestions that we had was sort of to work with Marorrow's um community housing um organization to try to figure out, you know, does the city have uh excess land that you don't need that you could potentially dispose of for affordable housing development
either for them or maybe done by the private sector through an RFP process? Um would the city want to come to the table uh with any kind of financial resources or tax abatement resources to sort of encourage affordable housing development? You could go the route of a
local initiative uh project, a lip, which is sort of a f you hear like the term friendly 40B. So it's like a city initiated 40B project working handinhand with a developer where that would count both on your SHI and get a larger percentage of deed restricted units than
your inclusionary zoning would. Um, the city could offer its own sort of like a section 8 HUD program, but it could be a local rental voucher program. >> But again, it's all it costs money or it has some form of city resource that
needs to go to it. So, I think the council just needs to think about, you know, what what do you want to do? What can you do within the financial means that you have to work with? I mean, there's a ton of options and we listed a bunch of them in the in the main document of the plan. >> I I didn't see that. Thank you so much for being
>> just a couple quick comments. I, you know, I don't want to echo a lot of my colleagues, but just a big thank you for putting this together. Um, I know a lot of residents that I've reached out to, they've had a lot of questions, especially concerning, right, evaluating capacity in the city, having some forward thinking, right, ideas about where where we're going and what the
next 5, 10, 20 years could look like as a city. And so I think this is the start of many conversations that we've already been having as a council, but an opportunity and councelor Naven touched on this, but to you know get some um community feedback, work with the community. I'd be happy to work on that, you know, both in my ward. I know other
counselors would as well. So um you know, yeah, let's put our heads together and see how we can get this out there to the public. Um more specifically speaking, um one of the things that you touched on early in the presentation that I really appreciated was diversifying our core industries, right, as a city. Um, and so kind of tying back
to economic development, um, on pages 35 and 36, he listed a couple of the target industries for Malbor and kind of where we should be looking and where we should be going. Um, and obviously, right, we're looking for industry that, um, you know, we're going to see employment growth and is also regionally competitive. Is there anything kind of
that we should be targeting right now? I know you gave a couple of examples. A lot of them we kind of already have ties into, right? Whether it's software publishing or manufacturing in some capacity. Is there kind of a unicorn out there that you think we should really be, you know, giving some some focus to or is this a conversation to be had later?
>> Um, I don't know if there's necessarily, and Eric may disagree with me, but I don't know if there's a unicorn per se, but one thing that's not in the main body of the plan because we we developed it more for for MEEDC and staff was um we did a deep dive into all those target
industries and we provided MEEDC with a ton of information about each of them. So, where are they located, who are the big targets, um what are they looking for? But the other thing is the supply chain up and down the supply chain. So if you have a software company that sits in the middle of that supply chain
because they're developing software, they have things that are coming in as inputs and then certainly they're selling a product as an output. So in those targets, we actually suggested like synergies and supply chains. So you might only be attracting or housing one
component within that entire target industry. There might actually be other things that want to colllocate with each other. So we actually focused a bit of effort more on that than saying oh yeah you should go and design some kind of an incentive program to attract this thing
>> like I don't know you know not that I'm saying you should do this but like data centers right that's the big thing everybody's talking about. not a lot of jobs, tons of revenue, but comes with a lot of potential challenges as well. Like we don't have something like that in the report. Um, >> no, I appreciate that. I think that gives a better glimpse as to how we're
thinking as a city, right? We're we're being holistic in kind of what business exists now and how we can branch out and kind of support what's already existing while also diversifying um, you know, our own portfolio as a city. So, um, kind of moving shifting gears back to housing a little bit. I appreciate the
answer. My last question, um, you mentioned the missing middle, you know, kind of what is what does that look like? What are some examples of that kind of housing, um, that we could see and are there other communities that are tapping into this, at least in this area, maybe in this Commonwealth, that kind of already, um, you know, laid a little bit of a framework that we might
be able to work off from? >> Yeah. Um, so missing middle is typically anything from like a triple de like your classic New England triple decker up to maybe a smaller apartment building with let's say it's 15 units or less or 20
units or less. So it's not the single family and two family and it's not the 50 plus unit multif family, right? That we're seeing those ends of the barbell. It's like everything in between for a variety of reasons are it's just not being built or it's not allowed. So, it could be um as we heard some of the
counselors say before like a town townhouse development that lines the street. Um it could be a garden smaller garden style apartments that you know like I lived in Malden for example for a long time and you would walk down the streets that closer to Malden Center in the downtown. You would see these like
six or eight unit brick apartment buildings that are nestled in between a two family and a single family and a three family. It's stuff like that. And again, that style of development may not be appropriate in every neighborhood in Morrow, but there may be select locations where it's on the edge of a
district that's a transition between like, let's say, the Village Center, which is a little bit more dense, and a traditional Morrow neighborhood. There may be like locations in there where that could be a good fit. Um, I'm trying to think of like places that are successful with the kind of missing
middle. Um, I'd have to think a little bit about that. It's hard. So there's Yeah. >> Yeah. Sure. Sure. Well, no, I really I really appreciate your time. I appreciate the answer to the questions and thank you, Madam Chair. >> And councelor Irish. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh good evening. Um I definitely like the key economic
trends, you know, going forward for the city, though trends can certainly change here or there. Um one of my comments certainly was when Hannerford's uh decided not to lease any more space down uh Route 20 West. Um I I was the residents were very happy that someone
else is going to be coming in to take over that space. And so the the the thing and I know it's not the the most most important thing certainly when you're building software or engineering departments and things like that, but a lot of residents do have that that fear
that are they going to lose their local supermarket. And I do know that when people were shopping at Hannerfords now when it was closed, they were no longer utilizing some of the other stores. So, I didn't know how that trend is. Is it just by population? How that trend? Because I know when I was a lot younger,
there was always these neighborhoods stores >> and so I was very happy to see that we would be able to retain that down west end. Um, I don't know if you have any updates on when things could be turning around, but that was certainly important for the residents. >> Are you asking when is Shaw's opening? >> Yeah. >> If if you can,
>> wasn't it on Facebook? >> Memorial Day weekend. >> Couple more weeks. End of May. Yes. and and that and again that was really important for the residents because when when that closed like I said a lot of residents weren't be able to go use our local you know utilize those stores. So I do I I support this and I do like the
economic trends. You have to have that forward thinking on on all facets of any kind of economic parts. Thank you madam chair. >> Council Ducet. >> Thank you much madam chair. This is more uh trying to understand the process going forward from here. Um you said this is a early draft of the
presentation. Are you going to come back for another draft or are we going to accept and place on file this one? >> Well, I I guess for me what I thought would happen is sort of in looking at what they did in 2013.
I think our homework is starting on page 34 with the theme one going through the rest of the report where there are actions. Um some of us have already identified a few we do not agree with. um what do we agree with? What do we
want removed from here? So that if we adopt this as a council's master plan, it's what we want. MEDC could disagree, but um I I see another meeting um where
we take a deeper dive into this. And I don't even know if um I mean there is the the piece of the um kind of putting it all together with who's the lead entity and the short-term, medium,
long-term. Um what is the short term? What does it mean? What what just because there's an action streamline permitting, what does that mean? How do you streamline the permitting? You have to go in and redo the permitting.
So, there's a lot of actions that I see almost then need the detail of what exactly is that action and is there a timeline to make sure that it's done? Do we if we never do it then what was the point of having it as an action? So, my
homework for everybody would to take these each of these themes that then have um some action to it. Are there other actions you want? Are there actions we don't want? And where do we go? And
councelor Naven, I see your hand. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, a couple of things, but um, to just answer to that, one of the things I want to be careful of or I think we should be careful of is, you know, again, approving this document, accepting this document, making changes to this document, I think
are all well and good. Um, again, there are pieces of this that I don't agree with wholeheartedly. There are some things that I don't approve of. Um, I think we could all probably, right, we could we could throw out the the commercial tax rate for multif family homes, but I also think we should be careful to
there are there there are good strategies here and again there are good strategies that I don't agree with, but I wouldn't want to shortch change the potential for future people who are silly enough to run for city council and sit in these seats. I don't want them to
not have some of that information just because I don't agree with it and I don't want to see it happen in our community. I don't think we should only be taking the good. Um, so I I agree I agree wholeheartedly we should definitely come back. We should have a further discussion about this. We should talk about these things, but I'm
I guess I'm just careful. I think we should be careful about the next steps and we should be thoughtful about the next steps because I do appreciate having the whole picture um of that piece. Well, I think much like the mayor's CIP, which is a five-year plan that's then looked at for the next five
years, I don't want this to wait for 12 years before we see the next plan. So, if there are things that we remove from here, that doesn't mean that a future council couldn't add them back in or even things that we put in here, if we don't accomplish that they could still
not accomplish going forward. >> No, I agree with that. I guess I would just also say right so just because it's in here doesn't mean that it's going to we will use it certainly for talking points when we argue about the next housing proposal but it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to do something one way or the other. So I'm
just I I do wonder it's a nice it in this regard I think it becomes you know a a a compass document for us about the direction we most of us want to head but so I I agree I think we should um I
think we should do that. Um just a couple other um comments and questions I wanted to make. One I love the logo. Um I think it's great. I think it's clean. I think maybe uh >> I can't take credit for that. >> Maybe uh I love the logo. I mean, a couple more Malrocentric buildings added into it, I think, could have been, you
know, um, you know, if there's a stock image of Malro buildings that are drawn, that would be awesome. >> There's no tower, >> no water tower. >> Yeah. So, um, but no, I like that it's clean and it's it's good-looking. So, the other question on housing, and this
is this is where my mind went to when you guys talked about the middle um, that doesn't exist, is we talk about the need for single family housing. talk about the need for, you know, starter homes. I saw somewhere, I know the
administration filed in one bill about basically like starter home zones where, right, it would be limited to like 1,800 square feet. The frontage would be reduced, things like that. Not that we've got huge swats of land, although there is one in particular that is a very large parcel of land in our
community that may have a housing uh proposal. are one are you seeing that anywhere else and is that an opportunity to kind of say you know and it is there right this all comes down like everything else it all comes down to economics it all comes down to whether there's a
developer that can make some money to build the project and then is there a buyer but are there any opportunities for that are you seeing that anywhere >> is that applicable here >> yeah that's a good question um I think the starter district is relatively new
so I'd have check and see if anybody's adopted anything. >> I just didn't know if like the the proposal came out of like a successful use case or anything like that. uh and I think it was state you know sort of the administration trying to figure out you know how do we
move the needle on some of these things that you know we just can't >> it was state had not actually created the order but for us to investigate looking at adding it to zoning because I do think it is something we need to think about. Um, and I I agree that
there are some potential um, lots that could fit into the scheme of things. And I think that it does then allow a developer to rather than take a small piece of property like the subdivisions that we've seen um on
Pleasant Street on Hosmer and on Stowe where they're taking six and seven acres and sticking 10 or 11 houses that are costing a million dollars because that's what it's costing them to buy the land and to build the housing. They want their money back. Can
we wind up with a house that is really affordable for that middle that is a $400,000 house? >> Yeah. Right. >> Would someone build it becomes the bigger question. Um because they they
want their money and all the the costs are all the same for the infrastructure. The building permits all the same. The materials are the same. They need less material because they're building less house. any less land. But yeah, it's >> I I think that it's it's worth the
conversation. So, I haven't gotten to that point yet, but um as far as I know, nobody else has actually adopted the regulations there. There are two communities, I think it was Lexington and I forgot the other that have it on
their plate, but haven't done it. So, it's too new. >> Um do you need a motion to postpone? >> Um >> Oh, sorry. No, never mind. Councelor Presciiano. >> Thank you, madam. Um, so what I see with this document is I I
essentially see like this piece, you know, as a piece of a larger, you know, map for us, right? We have other plans we can work off of. I agree with councelor Naven that you know we should keep this here for future
reference in some form but you know th this could work as a big jumping off point for something that we would want to develop for ourselves and and and really customize you know for for our needs. Um you know I think you guys did an incredible amount of work. Um but it
is missing some of the some of the you know the elements like you know we we should consider the open space plan in in in it you know um as well as you know other other factors. Um so you know I I I would also like to see this going to the public as well. Um so you know a
nice little tour u of of the of the plan would be amazing. Um, and I can also host um community. >> I would appreciate everybody's help to to find ways to get it out to residents in particular, the business community. We've got that covered. But residents, I would would love to partner with any of you.
>> Yeah, I would I can help facilitate that um because you know, a lot of the residents in W 3 are being um directly impacted by a lot of the the um the expansion that's happening because a lot of the expansion that's happening is in W 3. So, I do get a lot of emails. I get a lot of phone calls um probably more
than anyone else here about development. Um but um but I would love to to to help Lahan in that and that's I know I did try to get the community advocate to advertise the forward plan in this meeting tonight. Um they did not put
anything in the paper unfortunately. I I used Facebook. I used as much as I could to provide the public the opportunity to do input tonight. you saw we had two people. Um, so I don't know how much I
hope it's not lack of interest. I I think the word is out there that this meeting was available. Um, I don't know if this is just too much information to sort of absorb and figure out what to say exactly. There is a lot there. Um,
the two people that spoke did great jobs of of reading and and bringing points forward to us. So I don't know how much we I mean to me we have two options. We can say thank you MEEDC it's your document move forward with it um and
we'll cooperate as much as we can or we as a city council can also adopt it as our plan in which case I think we need to take a deeper dive into this so that we are in agreement with the action
plans and if we're not then why are we approving it? So, Councelor Ducet, >> thank you very much, Madam Chair. Um, I would like to see any responses from taking this show on the road, getting feedback from the community, business
development, etc. So, not only are we providing input and modifying, but we're also getting feedback from the community through you folks. So, what you presented here is just today's draft. you know, at some point in the future
after you've done your dog and pony a couple of times, there's a different draft that we may need to go look at and then also put our comments in as well. So, this, you know, input's coming from multiple places. We're just one of them. We're not the only ones. I just want to
make sure that that that type of input from the community is still getting involved in involving this presentation. So, >> and it's I know reading >> so I assume you guys are still going to own the final the current drafts going forward. So, more drafts come to us, right?
>> My understanding from the 2011 plan was a lot of public input and I could be wrong, but I thought in reading the beginning of it, it talked about meetings with stakeholders and not just business stakeholders. So, I don't know
if that was a little bit different the way it was done versus this. >> I wasn't here, so I can't really speak to it. I know that when they did the two the 2014 downtown zoning, there was a lot of public input. Damon was actually very active in that. >> Yes.
>> Um, but Lind Linda was, so I can certainly ask her in the office tomorrow how they did it. >> Yeah. So, I don't know if that was your plan to take this as to the on the road to the public and then bring back a
revised something or >> honestly, we're looking for for you to tell us what you would like the plan to be because we we're doing this on behalf of the city. We work for you. Um, so whatever you guys would like it to be, that's what we're going to char be charged with doing.
>> All right. And I I guess I don't see this as something that has to be done by a date certain. Um although it would be nice to have it because as I said, we do have projects coming to us um that sort of impact what we might think about
doing differently if they get approved, how that fits into the scheme of things. Um >> the one last comment I want to make that this is all made possible by the that planning money that's in our budget. So, I just want folks to understand that that's where those funds are going directly towards these types of efforts.
>> Yep. And I I think that's pretty clear uh that that's what's that that's what that's for. I know I may have a use for your next round of planning money on a different project, but uh I'll get there. Councelor Naven. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um so, right
until up until Meredith made her second to last point, um I was this I had a different comment. I'm going to make the same comment, though. Um perhaps they're not mutually exclusive, right? You had kind of you had kind of alluded to the fact that like we can adopt this as our guiding document or we can say good luck
MEDC and you know this is yours. Um, I'm going to motion to postpone, but I also think we should all kind of think about that. It can be both, right? If we want to put right, I I I still think there is a value in having the
information out there whether or not we all decide that we agree to adopt all of the tenants of it or not. And so perhaps there are two paths that we go forward. And I think that at the next meeting when it's not 20 to 10, we can all um have some thoughts about that. And so,
um, with that, I motion to postpone to a future meeting. >> All right. It's been moved and seconded to postpone. I will, um, work with Meredith, talk to counselors to see how we want to move forward with this. And, uh,
with no further comments, all in >> we got to vote first on the motion. >> Postponing. >> Okay. >> This and and set a date for a future meeting. We'll do that first. Uh, everybody agree to postpone? >> Y
>> right now. Oh, I guess we'll take an official vote. All agree to postpone. 1 2 3 4 5. All right. Now, we can move. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> It's been moved and seconded to adjourn. It is 9:40.
We'll say 9:39. All those in favor? 1 2 3 4 5. Thank you. We are adjourned.