Speaker 1: Planning board Wednesday, March 12th at seven o'clock or 1900 if somebody is more familiar with that. First on the agenda is public speak. Speaker 2: Who's got the echo? Speaker 1: Me? Speaker 2: Keep going. It was my laptop. Speaker 1: Oh, I thought of my hearing aids. Public speak. Any individual may raise an issue that is not included on the agenda and it will be taken under advisement by the board. There will be no opportunity to debate during this portion of the meeting. This section of the agenda is limited to 15 minutes
and any individual addressing the board during this section of the agenda shall be limited to five minutes. And because I omitted it at the just prior to we start starting a public speak. Oh yeah. This meeting is being recorded. This meeting is being broadcast on Pegasus. To comment or ask a question, use the raise your hand function. If you're on the phone, press star nine. An individual wishing to speak during public speak or during or during a public hearing must display their first and last name on the screen before their microphone can be unmuted.
To make changes in your name as it appears on the screen in zoom. Click participants to open the participant's menu. However, your cursor over the entry and click on more. Click on rename and type in your first and last name. Now we can go back to public speak and I know that one of the board members, Glenn, you had something you'd like to share with us. Thank you. Speaker 2: I'm gonna come sit out in the comfy seats. Speaker 3: Thank you Mr. Chair and members of the board. I'd like to start by expressing my condolences and my sympathy to the family of Dr.
Keefe. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Keefe during my time as a town meeting member and always enjoyed speaking with him and hearing him speak eloquently on a ri wide range of topics. May your memories bring you comfort. This is my last planning board meeting as I have chosen not to seek reelection this year after 18 years on the board, it's time for me to say goodbye. I wanna say thank you and goodbye to the past and current members of the planning board to the former members with whom I've served. Ken, Bob, Susan, John, and Julian.
Thank you for your guidance and patience. I learned something from all of you to the current members. It's been an honor to serve with you. Some of you have been on the board as long or longer than I have, and I respect and admire you all. Thank you as well for your guidance and patience. Thank you to the community development leaders, Patrick, Jamie, James, and Amanda. And special thanks to Annie Grill. I know that working with the board and me as an individual isn't always easy. I appreciate your professionalism and I thank you for all the time you took to help me understand complex issues. Finally, to the residents of Natick, thank you
for electing me and reelecting me multiple times over the years. I've done my best to represent you all as I've deliberated the issues and projects that we've had before us. I'm proud to have served you and our community and I thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. I realize it's not part of our system, but I know you, I'm sure you did not receive our approval to do this, to, to get out of here, to leave. This is not fair. But wishing you all the very best. Thank Speaker 4: You. Speaker 5: The trees in Natick will miss you.
We'll have to call on you for, you know, occasional advice. Speaker 3: Occasionally. It's okay. Speaker 1: Alright. Anyone? Speaker 6: You have one other person Speaker 1: On the Josh Ostroff. Josh, Speaker 4: Hello. Board members, can I be heard? Speaker 1: Yep. Yes, you are. Speaker 4: Great. I just drawing you tonight. Following up on the previous speaker, Glen Glader, to thank him for his great service to the town, Glen, you'll be missed. You really contributed so much to the planning board and to the community and have really spanned different
generations of, of members. And I know you've learned a lot and you've also contributed a lot. And to me, you embody the, the best in what citizen led government has to offer by, you know, coming in with just a, a good head in your shoulders and a great perspective on what it means to be resident of the town and acquired the expertise needed to really function at a very high level on the planning board. Natick has really benefited extraordinarily from the work of, of you and your members over the years. And I, and I'm personally very grateful for that. So I do have a, a gift for you.
You'll just have to guess what it is. But that will have to come after your service to the board. And as the chair just said, there's no opportunity for a debate here, but I suspect that seeing the applause you just received in my sentiments are, are shared by your current and and past colleagues. So I thank you for your, for your friendship and your service and look forward to you joining me in retirement where the, the pension is. Well, let's just say it's countless. Do double the salary. Speaker 1: Thank you Josh. Speaker 4: Easily. Well, maybe 80%. You know,
Speaker 1: I think having an arbor for Glen is the right, is the right the right gift though? Speaker 4: Yeah, I have right that, that might be the second choice. But I've got something else for him that I know he's coveted. Anyway, thank you all for your service. Thank you Josh. Speaker 1: Thanks Josh. Speaker 4: You bet. Speaker 1: Amanda was there another, another? There were three initials below. Okay. There was no other members or anyone here other than anyone here in the audience for public speak. If not, we'll go on to the next agenda.
Item 54 Highland Street. You have anyone on that? We're not opening it, are we? This is no, the, oh, I'm sorry. Is Speaker 7: That Dr. Keefe? The ear, nose throat doctor. I'm sorry. Dr. Keefe, is that the ear, nose and throat doctor? Dr. Keefe? Speaker 1: No, Speaker 8: He was an educator and superintendent here in town. Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Speaker 7: He's also my EMT, but maybe not the same guy. Speaker 1: Oh no. Speaker 7: Okay. Different. Dr. Keef. Hi, I am Steve Mart regarding 54 Highland Street. Speaker 1: Is there, well I haven't seen the meeting on
the tape. Speaker 7: So this is a follow up from the meeting two weeks ago in which there were two outstanding items. Okay. I've addressed those items by submitting responses to the portal and now I'm hoping that you're all ready to vote and approval. But I'll be here for questions if you have any Speaker 1: For the sake of updating, if you just review what the two items were and what your Speaker 7: Sure. Sorry. Speaker 1: Yes. You said you haven't watched the video. I did that you have I did. I even signed the papers. Speaker 7: I'm always happy to speak, speak about it. We, we have a home kennel
and we are here to, to request a home kennel license. We came in front of the board last time and there were two remaining outstanding issues. Number one was plot plans that demonstrate where our fences are and also what percentage of the indoor home will be used. And I've submitted those. The one of 'em is called a site plan and the other one is called addendum number two. And then the second item was a resolution for how the yard waste will be disposed of. And we've signed contract
with a company humorously named duty calls and we've confirmed with their executives that all of the yard waste is handled responsibly through a commercial waste hauler. And so we believe that those two issues are the last ones that the board had requested. Speaker 1: Okay. Amanda, we have the, I'm looking for the site plan. Speaker 9: Yep. We have everything. It was uploaded into the folder dated three 12, I believe it said new items three. So we did receive that. We have received all comments. DPW did provide a letter of comment
that they basically had no comment. And we do have the addendum, which was also uploaded in the packets. Speaker 1: Everything Speaker 9: Should be there. Speaker 1: Anyone on the board have any questions, comments, or suggestions? Glen, Speaker 3: I don't have any questions, but neither have I had an opportunity to see these new things. So I'm gonna take a look at them while other people ask questions. And if I have questions I'll let you know. Speaker 1: Thank you Terry. Speaker 10: Thank you. No, I appreciate the, the fact that you all prepared the things that we asked for to kind of fill the gaps. I think technically it's referred to as a home occupation kennel.
Thank you. Yes. As opposed to a home kennel because it's, you're right, that's true. It's a subclass or a subset of home occupations. Speaker 7: Yes, that is correct. Thank you. They're all Speaker 10: Official guidance. So just to clarify and no, I, I did not see anything else that, that caused me concern, Speaker 1: Doug? Speaker 5: Not at the moment, Peter. Speaker 1: Okay. And Alan, Speaker 11: Just more of a curious question and maybe it's more for Amanda. I noticed that it asked, that, it said about the waste has to be in individual bags that are then put in a bag. Is that something that we, Speaker 9: That was just when it was waiting to be picked up. So if they're only having someone come once a week,
that the waste isn't just accumulating on their property, so they put it in like a container to be thrown away. Speaker 11: Okay. But that's, that's based off of what the bylaws say. That's not what it's, we decided, right. Speaker 9: That we've, we've done before for other projects. Speaker 11: No, I think I, I saw the site plan. I think you could kinda use letters to kind of indicate where certain things are happening, you know, where what it's surrounded by. I think that kind of works for me, so Speaker 7: Great, thanks. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. And I have nothing, think of just verifying the airlock is
sort of like a sally port coming in. Speaker 7: Yeah. The idea behind, if you've been to dog parks, you see that Speaker 1: Right? And someplace to, well the one dog can come in and close behind it. Speaker 7: Yeah, that's correct. The idea being that the dog is on this side of the other fence before the first fence is opened so that the owners can leave without their dog sneaking out behind them. Speaker 1: They do that, Speaker 7: Don't they? They do. They try to. Speaker 1: Alright. Anyone else? Speaker 3: I do have a question. Yes Speaker 1: Sir. Speaker 3: I'm a little bit confused. Happens easily.
The duty calls contract, they're gonna come once a week and when it says collecting you, it doesn't actually mean collecting. I assume that the pet waste will be collected more than once a week, but this company will come and take it from you once a week. Is that They'll, Speaker 7: They'll also do a survey of the entire backyard and clean anything that they still see. But Speaker 3: Is that the only time that the backyard will be surveyed and Speaker 7: No, no.
I will do it myself as well, but part of their responsibility is to do a survey of the backyard and anything that's accumulated since the last time I've done it, they will also pick up and waste haul. Speaker 3: Okay. But the plan, your plan is that you're gonna go out daily to multiple times a day. How often are you planning on surveying your yard and picking up the waste? Speaker 7: I mean, probably every other day at the longest. Right. But I, if it is a lot of activity out there, I would be, I would be quicker. Speaker 3: Okay. I'm just a little bit
concerned about, especially particularly in the summertime. How Oh yeah. Speaker 7: Yeah. Speaker 3: How quickly things can grow on the waste and how intrigued dogs are about what other dogs digested food is. I won't get grosser than that but Yeah, yeah, Speaker 7: Yeah. The idea is to act responsibly for certain. Speaker 3: Okay. And, and so when you collect it every other day and presumably bag it or put it in a, a bucket or whatever? Speaker 7: No, not a bucket. I use individual bags
and those bags go into another bag and that is the bag that the company will take. Speaker 3: Okay. And is that put into some sort of sealed can or something to prevent the odors from drifting Speaker 7: Your Yeah, like a trash can to Speaker 3: Your neighbors, like a trash can. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. The pleasure of the board and the motion. Speaker 3: I would like to understand why things are highlighted in this copy of this thing that we got. Awesome. Speaker 9: Thank you. So one of the copies you received a paper copy of the draft decision, which was also circulated earlier.
And so there are one, one set of items that are highlighted. And then there was another set of high highlighted items on page four, on C two. It was just, I was unclear as to the year they started operating. I could, it said a few years and I thought it was 2015, but that was just a question for the, Speaker 7: In printing. 15, 20, 15. Speaker 9: Okay, perfect. So that was just one, just remember to go back and find that one. And then the other one that I did have was, it was in the previous edition, but it's now gone, was Mr.
Tson filed the Mulin rule. So I had the date highlighted, but now it was today. The other item was just based on a conversation with the applicant earlier today regarding the number of dogs. So were we, Speaker 7: I'm gonna drop that issue. I brought it up when I thought the fee was different. Oh, Speaker 9: Okay. So therefore remove the highlights around the eight. So there was a little bit of an issue earlier today, actually. Both applicants did receive this. So if you get a fee request from me requesting you to wire funds in excessive amount of funds,
do not do that. Both applicants that are here tonight received a email that supposedly came from my email, but when you look at it, it's actually not my email asking for an invoice of, I think yours was $10,200 of like environmental assessment fees and some other things. It has been notified, but great. So yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. So that's my business. That is what I do for a living. That whole email, bogus email thing. And it's, it's one of, I'm not writing Speaker 1: Them Speaker 3: Detecting them.
It's, it's one of the downsides to the, to the transparency of the municipal process is that they can go on the portal and see that you've applied for a permit and see that Amanda is the person that's dealing with it. And it's very easy to spoof an email address and everybody needs to be vigilant. And if it looks like something, you know, if it looks too good to be true, it's the what used to be the expression. If it, if it looks like something that no one would ever actually ask you, they probably aren't so, but good job asking instead of wiring money.
And it's very sad that that's the case. Speaker 9: So therefore all the highlights actually are no longer since it was clarified. Speaker 12: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: And at this point, would somebody like to make a motion Speaker 10: I move to approve the application before us for a special permit for home occupation dog kennel? Speaker 1: Second. Second. Second. And let's see one here. We'll have to go through everyone's name. Speaker 5: No, we're all here. We can just, Speaker 1: No. And Andy's not Andy, not Speaker 3: Andy's not voting. Speaker 1: Oh he is not voting on, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Alan can actually, Speaker 1: Yes, you're on. Sorry, this is my last one too, Alan. Aye ye Aye. Aye. Aye. Speaker 3: Aye. Aye. Speaker 1: And Peter Aye. Mountains and aye. Alright. Speaker 3: Pass. Do we need a motion to sign the decision if so, so moved. Speaker 10: I've never understood. We don't have to, why we have to make a motion to sign a decision, but I do have to make a motion to close the public Speaker 3: Hearing. Second. Speaker 1: And all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, aye. Aye. Speaker 7: Thank you all very much. This has been a smooth process. You've all been very helpful in what you've done,
especially Amanda responding to all the questions and I really appreciate seeing how it worked and meeting you all. Thanks. Good luck. Good Speaker 1: Luck. Thanks. Speaker 5: Is it ready to be signed, Amanda? Or just you wanna Speaker 9: Wait? I can actually just send it to the printer. So while you're doing the other one I can bring it up. I just didn't pre-print it 'cause I didn't know one who was gonna be here and two, Speaker 1: It would've been highlighted anyways. Right. Wow. 1235 Worcester Street. Is this, this is opening, Speaker 5: This is open the public hearing, so Speaker 1: Where is it? Speaker 9: Okay if you flip the tab. So I printed everything out.
Thank you for you as you requested, but perfect. I put the public hearing first. Speaker 1: Thank you Amanda Bruce. Have one of those moose crossing signs. Speaker 5: All right. Na. Planning board notice of public hearing for the property at 1235 S-H-P-F-I. What? What is that? Speaker 9: It's because it's a sub parcel. Got it. It is the Lauren and Taylor is actually separately owned from the mall. So it has its own assessor's number. Speaker 5: I'll just say assessor map 24 lot 1 0 1 a on Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 at 7:00 PM The planning board will hold a
hybrid meeting in the Edward h Delott meeting room located at 13 East Central Street, Natick, mass, and virtually via Zoom to review the application of Natick Mall LLC and Raymore and Flanagan, the applicant. The applicant has applied for a modification of a previously approved decision of the planning board, which was decision 16 dash oh four as amended pursuant to section six dash DD and a special permit for building and wayfinding signage under section five dash H and section five dash DD of the Natick zoning bylaws.
The application proposed to replace the existing facade and landscaping of the former Lord and Taylor unit and add new signage. The property is located at the Natick Mall at 1 12 35 S-H-P-F-I, Worcester Street Assessor Map 24 lot 1 0 1 a and is located within the commercial two zoning district. The Regional Center and Mall Center Overlay District and the Aquifer Protection District. Copy of the application can be reviewed in the Community and Economic Development Office and on the community and economic development website per order. NA board. Peter Sson chair.
Speaker 1: Thank you Amanda. Did you wanna prep us on anything here, Caleb, before we get to, Speaker 9: Not really. We have the applicants here. We do also have a representative of them all here if there were any additional questions, but they're well versed in their project. We have had a development review team meeting. We also have received all the comment letters from all of the departments, which are in the packets as well. There was very little comments and what you will see in the packets is two response letters. One response letter is to the Deputy Chief's letter of comment and the second letter of response was
to the board of health directors letter of comments. So those are all in there, which were follow ups. All the other comments were, no, no comments. Speaker 1: Okay, fine. You're on. Speaker 3: Thank you Mr. Chair, members of the board for the record. Chris Rainier from Goldstein in stores here on behalf of the applicant, Raymore and Flanagan. And it's just a real pleasure to be back in front of you. And, and just before I jump in, I just wanted to extend a, a, a a, an expression of thanks as well to Mr. Glader. I've had the pleasure of working with him for his entire tenure on the planning board.
The Natick Mall has gone on for a long time. I started the project, I had no kids. My baby's now a senior in high school and, and it's, it's, it's been a real thrill of my career to be able to be here and, and, and watch them all change and succeed and grow and appreciate the opportunity to present to you tonight. But I also wanted to extend a, a, a a note of, of thank you to you, Mr. Gla. Thank you. You've been hardworking, dedicated, thoughtful, tough, but fair and very committed. And I think the town's been very lucky to have you and I've really enjoyed working with you all these years. So thank you.
Speaker 1: I seconded. Speaker 3: Thank you. So I have to my left my colleague Jess ano and, and just briefly, I will turn it over to her. Jess has been involved in the weeds as they say on this project, pulling together the application, working with Amanda. Thank you Amanda for all your help on this. Working with town staff, the DRT process went very well, so I'm here as well. I, I recognize that sometimes with the Natick Mall there's questions about history, our context, I've got some of that. I know me many members of the board have that as well. But I'm gonna turn this over to Jess and the rest of the team to do the presentation.
Of course I'm available for any questions and thank you again for your time tonight. Speaker 13: Thanks Chris Turnon, members of the board as Chris mentioned, my name is Jess cno. I'm here from Olson in stores as attorney on behalf of the applicant, Ray Morton Flanagan. We are very excited to be here tonight to propose a retenanting of the now vacant Lord and Taylor Building. As you know, this is a very prominent location at the mall and we're excited to propose bringing in a dynamic new use, really updating what is currently an outdated facade and and really bringing some economic viability back to this area of the mall. This is consistent with the mall's efforts.
Recently to do similar repositioning with other anchor buildings. You know, the Sears is now populated, the former Sears is populated now with Lucid and level 99. And so similarly here we're trying to bring in a new dynamic use that we think will be complimentary to existing uses while also attracting a new customer base. Here I am joined tonight with a number of members from the Raymore and Flanagan team. So I did wanna do a couple of introductions. Adam Goldberg if you want to come on up 'cause that'll be our next part of the presentation. Adam is a principal at Raymore and Flanagan. We are also joined with Sunny Ruelle, a senior vice president from Raymore, as well
as Mike Marinas from Insight Engineering, our civil engineer for the project. And I know you have all met Chris who is here in the event that we need any historical questions answered. So as mentioned, the idea here is to reposition the now vacant Lord and Taylor building into a new flagship Raymore and Flanagan location. The project at a high level includes some building footprint modifications, largely as a result of accommodating facade improvements, including some articulations, some bump outs, and the installation of some windows. The existing building does not have any exterior windows,
so the hope is to really maximize the customer experience, bring in some light infiltration associated with that. We are also looking to do some sidewalk repair work and some landscaping largely with the idea of improving the pedestrian experience at building entrances. So there will be some reconfiguration of sidewalks, some infill of landscape area there, some replacement of existing landscape materials as well to really bring in greenery that we think will thrive in the area be sustainable in the long term. The overall result there is actually a decrease in the overall IMP impervious area at the site.
And finally, we are looking to bring in some new building identification and way finding signage on the building, largely to swap out what was the Lord and Taylor signage with some new strategically placed Raymour and Flanagan signage. The goal there is to make sure that both at the pedestrian and the vehicular perspective, it's easy to identify not only the building itself, but where proper entrances are and the like to really improve both vehicular and pedestrian circulation at the site. So as proposed, the project does require some zoning relief. Specifically we need a modification of the existing site plan, special permit that governs the Natick Mall to reflect
of course those footprint modifications. The landscaping, the sidewalk, the signage associated with that is an updated waiver from the landscape buffer requirement. There is already a waiver in the existing site plan, special permit, but due to the footprint work, the updated sidewalk and landscaping in certain areas, that buffer will get slightly narrower despite the overall increase impervious area. So we will need an update on that waiver. And then also a special permit for the building and way finding signage that was just discussed. So as I think you'll definitely see throughout this presentation, while this is a large interior modification
to the building to accommodate a new use, the exterior modifications are really very limited here. There is no proposal to increase building height or gross floor area or any of the parking spaces. There's actually a net decrease in the impervious area, a net decrease in total signage, square footage as composed to what as opposed to what existed with Lord and Taylor. So overall with, you know, some minor adjustments, we really think a great improvement to what is a prominent location at the mall, bringing in a really dynamic, economically viable tenant. So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Adam who can give a little bit of company background.
And then from there Sunny is gonna give a bit more on sort of building component and then we'll move into the technical aspects with Mike. So Speaker 14: Adam, thank you. Sure. Thank you Mr. Chair. Board members. Thanks for having us tonight. I did come out from Syracuse with two, two goals for today. One was to visit our store that we opened last Memorial Day down in Assembly Row, which is our first store in the greater Boston area. We have stores in the Providence, north Attleboro area, but that's as close in Millbury, as close as we've been to the Boston area until assembly row open.
So I did a, as the family does, we visit our stores every week. We're in our stores, interacting with our people, talking to customers, seeing how we can improve the experience. And then my second goal for today was come here to, to meet you all, to introduce ourselves on behalf of my six other family members who are very active in the business. We have very productive, healthy family board meetings, sometimes family plus others like Sonny, who's been with us for almost 20, 25 years maybe. We're fortunate to have him with us for that long. And that's really exemplary
of the type of company that we are. People join us, they stay with us, they grow with us. And and that's really what we envision for our, our hopefully soon to be flagship location here in Boston. But just by way of a little introduction, my grandfather and his brother open to a small store called Rain Wars back in 1947. 'cause they needed to put food on their own table. And they were the merchants, they were the salespeople, the credit lenders, the delivery people, the service technicians. They were, the two of them were everything. Their store burned down three times.
They rebuilt it with their own hands. They brought money from family and friends. And I, I had the incredible fortune to be born in the family that I am and learning from my father, uncle and cousin, the second generation that, that owns the business. 100%. We have no outside investors. We report to ourselves, our people, and our customers. And that's very much our intention for years to come. As we have for 78 years, 78 years young we say. So we, we don't report to anybody. We take things in stride as we're able
to take them on and do them. Well treat our people well, treat our customers well, treat our communities well. This Natick location specifically, we're very excited about. We've heard a lot of great things about the Natick community. People come to Natick from all over. My cousins who live in the Needham area, come here. When we told 'em we were looking at it, they said, absolutely. It's a, it's the spot to go. So sure enough, here we are. And it, it's, it's a major investment for our company. As I said, we're, we grow organically. We don't take in investor money or any of that.
We, we, we keep it simple. We're, we're from Syracuse, New York. We still live in Syracuse, New York today. And that's where I'm headed back to go to, to my kids who are some of them in diapers. So that Speaker 1: Snow out there, Speaker 14: There's not, that's why 75 degrees yesterday at 2:00 PM and seven. That's 72 Speaker 1: PMI. Too much passes. Sorry, I thought, I thought I had a, a weak Speaker 14: Link. Speaker 2: Now you're jealous, Speaker 14: Neil. And you know, lastly, we, we are a great place to work.
Certified, certified, great place to work by the Great Place to Work organization for seven years running now, seven years in a row since we started applying. And we're excited to bring, we, we believe we'll bring really 35 to 60 plus full-time positions. Well paying to the area, to this specific store over the next few years. And, and just for example, 'cause many people don't know it, we don't do operations out of our showrooms. It's strictly a showroom for people to come in, experience the furniture, experience our people, our brand,
pick the furniture they want, and then we deliver it to their home. White glove delivery service in three days or less next day for mattresses, if any, you need a new mattress. We still have time for tomorrow's deliveries, but our sales professionals can make really anywhere from 70 to a hundred thousand dollars or more. And they, they do every year. So these are well paying jobs with plenty of career growth that we're looking to bring to the community as well. And really the facade that you'll see is critical to the success of this store. We're, we're introducing ourself to the community and the, the city.
And also we want to come with a very strong presence and, and one that inspires people to beautify their homes. Thank you. Speaker 15: Thank you. Speaker 14: And I think, yes, wonderful, sunny. Speaker 2: Sure. Excuse me. Speaker 15: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. I have been with the company about 20 years plus and I've built about a hundred of these locations. And I would tell you this one is very exciting. We've spent about a year in design process trying to make sure that the impact to the mall in the, in the community is as little as possible. For example, keeping the existing electric components,
keeping the existing service lines for fire suppression, domestic water, et cetera. This is a tight site. If you look at your aerial drawing, you'll see that we are the dark gray building that's roughly planned center, right in the middle, middle with the parking adjacent on the right and the Lifestyling Center, if you will, that's been developing to the left. With the ring road being right around it, I thought it was very important for us to, again, try to stay within the confines of the existing building. Again, if we were getting into something like a waterline, six feet underground in that road,
that would be a lot of work. It would be a lot of disruption to the mall and, and the, you know, the constituents of the town. We've tried to, in the full design process keep within the existing building. I think that's something that I discussed with your building commissioner a couple times. It, it, it's a big part of what we try to do is not be too impactful. The building as it is, the, the existing Lord and Taylor, I, I would call this one of the projects that we do a, a good job with kind of a blight to light. This has been dormant for a while. It's aging it. I've already replaced the roof on the building, working with the building commissioner, saving this building
and saving the structure is important for us. The existing building is more, looks more like an armory than a retail center. There's I think zero windows other than side lights. The signage again was, was grand. It was large. I'm, I'm trying to keep something that's proportionate to the massing of the building. It's hard to understand. But this building has three sides, over 600 feet. That is 28,000 plus square footage of facade. So when you look at what we're requesting for signs, it is less than the preexisting. I know it's larger than the code, but it's also a massive structure. This is a big building. We've also made sure
that we're not looking to go to the limit of the code on height. It's tall enough, the building, we're trying to keep the massing to be fa furniture and fashion forward. Again, the purple is a, is a trademark color of ours. It's, it's, it's, it's part of our marketing campaign trying to keep it an omnichannel where people that don't know us yet, but that are hopefully going to know us, will see the consistency in that brand. The plan on the facade does involve changes that are taking down that two story structure, the vs. There and, and making it more of a flat mass.
Again, we've reduced the amount of impervious coverage. We have not increased FAR and everything we're trying to do is to blend into this existing structure, but make it a, a, a little bit more relevant to today's retail. As you slide through these, you just keep going through the, the building that does look much worse than this. Now you can see the acid rain stains all over the building. We've tried to, in this design, keep a lot of that brick and a lot of that structure because of the impact during construction. When you finally get through all of the Lord and Taylor signage and facade, you know, you, you get
to the site plan, et cetera. I'd like to talk to the facade a little bit. Again, taking, bringing some more natural light into the building, keeping the construction materials somewhat subdued but classy. That will stand the test of time. The joy in this facade is that it should look not dated for the next 20 years. We're using materials that are gonna be resilient, including the existing brick, just with an elastomeric coating. We're trying to make the signage again, massing. When you look at that, that facade, again, 40 some feet high, hundreds of feet long
as you look at this, I think proportionally it really works. The signage on this side of the building is prominent to Route nine. Unfortunately, the signage on the right side of the building is blocked by the parking garage and the solar field and the parking garage. The signage on the left side of the building, you do get a, a vantage of coming up Route nine. But again, it's with the lifestyle, the Cheesecake Factory, et cetera, sticking out. You, the real prominent sign is that facade. When we talk about these projects, we, we are always trying to better the, the community. One thing that Adam didn't speak about that we've done a lot
as a company is we've hosted Boy Scouts and veterans. We've hosted a lot of these community outreach events that I'm proud. I gave the name to Community outreach many years ago. We reach out to the community, we hold these events in. Sometimes it's an art show, sometimes it's, it is part of the community. We do tend to try to interact with the community whenever we can from a standpoint of, of entrance, egress, et cetera. Keeping the existing parking garage, keeping that existing structure. Again, all part of trying to keep is to minimus the changes
that we're gonna do to the mall and keep the impact. I think that's why at the DRT discussion and, and when in speaking with board of public health building commissioner, et cetera, they see this as we're gonna be as minimal impact as we can during construction. From a standpoint of interior design, again, we, we are reclaiming all the existing space trying to, we've already completed the demolition. That was again, a part, a permit that was issued to us prior to this applicant and that's also moving along quickly, we're almost completed
from a standpoint of investment strategy. It's all about the building being as economically and environmentally safe as we can be. I've, I've built about 65 energy star rated buildings at my time at Raymore. We've won an energy stewardship award from the vice president's office years ago, right up with Toyota and Marriott Corporation, little Raymore and Flanagan. At the time we had 50 stores. We are looking at solar for the roof. You can see from the aerial how much solar is, is on this entire structure. We've done about 10 megawatts
of projects now in three states. I lead the energy commission on our team, again, trying to do that. When it comes to the landscaping, I would tell you that we are willing and able to work with a town as needed. If there's certain species or things we want to deal with. The trees that are around this building now, if you looked at the photos, don't even look this good. They've never really been done by an arborist. They're out of control and I don't believe I can save them with the scope of work around the perimeter. So that's really why we've went to lower growers, many more plantings. But if there's certain components of that that want
to be adjusted, we we're more than willing to do that. If you have any questions for me, I'm Speaker 13: Otherwise we can turn it to Mike and do full questions at the end, if that works for the board as well. Yeah. Speaker 15: Okay. Okay. Michael is an engineer that's worked with us for about 12 years now. He works for us in almost all, all the states that we've practiced in. Again, he, he knows our culture. He knows what we're looking to do and when he was involved in this project, again the goal was to create more pervious and to make this a betterment, not just a project. Thank you. Speaker 13: Thanks Lenny. Just lemme know. You want me to start? Sure. Go over the Speaker 3: Good evening.
My name is Michael Marinas, licensed professional engineer in the Commonwealth. Like Sonny mentioned, I've been working with Ray Moore for over a dozen years, so I'm very familiar with the way the company works. Just, yeah, going to my site plan, just to give you an overall, as mentioned, we're on the south side of the mall between parking deck C and the Cheesecake Factory, there's approximately 72 parking stalls to the west side of the building with a DA parking there. And then on the other side of the building, as you know, is the parking deck c which also has a DA access to the, to the site. The entrance doors is sunny mentioned are gonna
be modified presently. They kind of enter diagonally into the building. We're gonna be entering perpendicular straight on to the building. The existing loading dock is located on the west side of the building. Yes, that's, that's the existing loading dock which will maintain, be maintained and was not mentioned before. But we don't expect more than one truck trip per week to this site. So we're expecting that would be a, a decrease in any kind of truck traffic that you had with the prior store. To be clear that the lease par, this is a lease parcel and if you look on the site plan, the property,
the lease parcel extends essentially along around the curb. So the, the property that Raymore will be controlling is, or controls is essentially just the outline perimeter of the curb line, which is a total of 1.6 acres in size. All parking and access are, were is therefore across the surrounding mall property via a lease agreement. The improvements that we're proposing are therefore limited to the rainwater planning and property itself, which is this, the sidewalk curb landscaping adjacent to the building.
There's no other improvements beyond the, the lease parcel itself. As Sunny mentioned, the building footprint is increasing slightly due to the modifications of the, of the bump outs. But we're not adding any floor area. It's just strictly thickness of construction of the facade itself. The net in, there's also no, you know, so there's no net increase increase in floor area. The increase in building footprint is about 1300 square feet. Give you an idea If you could go to the planting plan, as also was previously mentioned by removing some of the sidewalks in, in front of the entrances.
We're actually decreasing the impervious area of the property. We're reclaiming about a thousand square feet of sidewalk to landscaping and we're proposing about 200 Holly and Boxwoods for evergreen plantings around the foundation. As Sunny mentioned, we're happy to, you know, work with the town. The specific species that you'd like to see we're replacing what I've suggested, but we are trying to provide an evergreen statement around the building. I, I think as was noted before, we are looking for a waiver in landscape depth, but I want to note that that's an existing condition along
the south side of the building. It's not really, presently there's an 8.6 foot landscape gap. The code requires 10 feet. We are modifying it down to about seven feet just in the entrance area and that's the only place where the landscape width would be decreasing. As was also previously mentioned, we did have a meeting with the development review team. We received some minor comments from the health department, which we responded to and I'm happy to go into the detail if necessary. We also responded to the police concerns about some
questions about access, which we also responded to and we also just received a letter yesterday from DPW that there is no effect to utilities or they agree that there's no effect to utilities or traffic flow. If there's any particular questions about the site plan, I'm happy to answer them. Speaker 1: I did. Anybody else? Speaker 3: Was that it for the presentation or I didn't have anything else. Yeah. Speaker 13: Great. Thank you. So with that, yes, we're happy to answer questions. That is Speaker 1: Alright. Lynn, do you, Speaker 3: Hi. You said that there was some changes to the footprint Yes.
Around the entrances specifically were boxing out some areas as opposed to eliminating the wall, we'd be boxing out the areas. Can you explain what that means to other people? Not me Sure. But other people who don't know what that means. Yeah, Sonny's a little bit more fluid. Yep. As long as you're at a microphone when you speak. Absolutely. Speaker 15: If you go back to the facade, this axonometric view that has the parking garage on the facade of the building, there's the two large protrusions that stick the vs if you will.
They stick out from the main facade into that, into that buffer area. The same is on the right side. What we've basically done is we've taken, if you look at the this massing, this loop to match the facade, we've boxed out that that dead area that's in there, taking this structure down is a tremendous impact to the building, the parking garage and the trafficking plan. This is many weeks of work, it's 16 columns, eight beams. It's a lot of work. So what we've done is we've just framed around it. You can see that on the, on the, on the plan view.
Where can you get to that drawing? Yep. Speaker 13: I was just trying to share Speaker 15: Where we basically just create a little l that creates this massing so that we keep the a DA entrance, the egress, everything from the second floor. We straighten out the facade and basically just build around those two big vs. So they're squared off to match the rest of the building. Speaker 3: And that goes to the ground, right Speaker 15: To the ground. There's a foundation wall structure, there's stone behind it. Like I said, there's no additional floor area. It's just making an architectural element to save the impact
of that, of taking down that, that, that giant structure. And then when you do that on one side of the building harm harmoniously, you want to do the same thing on the other side. So we're basically doing that. To me that was the, the easiest way that I could design around a pretty odd condition without major impact to such a small area on the site. Speaker 3: And how does that affect the footprint? Speaker 15: The footprint goes up by that many square feet, but it does, it's not floor area. It's literally just taking the negative space that was there around the v and and and,
and enclosing it in, in a building mass. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 13: But as sunny mentioned, it's not an increase in the occupiable square feet of the building. It's not an increase in gross floor area. It's just a matter of the building materials to square that up, occupy physically Speaker 3: More footprint on the ground. Understood. And, and that is all done on what is currently impervious conditions. Right? There's Speaker 15: We're actually getting a concrete there. Reduction in impervious. Speaker 3: Yes. No, I understand that. But but I'm speaking specifically about the boxing. I can speak Speaker 15: That the, go ahead. I can speak
Speaker 13: That. Is that mic active on it podium? Speaker 3: As long as the, as long as the green light is brightly lit, make it sure. To specifically answer your question, we're talking about 1,290 square feet of boxing out and it's, we're, we're, we're able to reduce our impervious area by eliminating some sidewalks around the entrances. Primarily Speaker 15: It's on the sidewalk that when you walk out diagonally. Okay. All I've done is square Speaker 3: That off. That, that was my question. Yes, sir. Okay. So now I do understand that you said that the signage was non-compliant.
In what way is the signage that you're proposing non-compliant? You said it was better. I, I'm sorry, I don't remember who said that. You said it was better but not compliant. Yeah, Speaker 13: Absolutely. So there is a total reduction in nets in total square footage. So the existing Lord and Taylor signage itself exceeded the, the number of signs allowed as well as the total square footage allowed. So the dimensions, when you square out the square footage, as well as the total number of signs here, while there is a re go Speaker 10: Ahead. Sorry. What And what is that number Speaker 13: For Lord and Taylor? The existing signage was approximately 1200 square feet in total.
And for us it's approximately 1059 square feet in total. Is that right, Mike? So there's a total net decrease of approximately 140 square feet in total. So our, Speaker 10: And the number of signs is also Speaker 13: A total number of signs is actually higher because we have added a, a sign over the pedestrian entrance to be very clear as to where our building, you know, pedestrian building entrance is. But again, the total square footage of signage is still an overall reduction in square footage. So we require relief for number of signs, as did Lord
and Taylor for dimensions in total square footage in signs. So while it is a total number that is greater than Lord and Taylor, the overall signage impact in square footage is a reduction. Speaker 15: And the way finding signs that were, that are added are actually part of the discussion we had at the DRT where that is a, the confluence of two tractor trailer loading docks on each side of the building. So the, the police chief had asked about signage and, and this one sign that's on the right side of the building here is so that when you're driving down from the level 99, et cetera,
you see a sign directing you to the building and left, meaning you can park and go left on the other side because of all the restaurant uses. There's a lot of pedestrian traffic there. Again, same thing was to get people out of the parking lot to that entrance sign. It's a small sign over the, if you go to the other left hand elevation, Speaker 10: I, I know that we'll be going through signage probably separately as one package. Speaker 15: Okay. Sorry. Speaker 3: So should I stop asking questions about it? Oh, Speaker 2: No, no, I just, I figured that we probably want to march through Speaker 3: Okie dokie things at a time.
I'm confused by the boxes on sheet. An identified number, Speaker 2: The signage, Speaker 3: This one Okay. That have boxes around the signage Speaker 2: On the brain. Speaker 3: It's the second to the last, second to the last page in our packets. Like Speaker 2: It's the looking Speaker 3: For Mike Yeah. That the, the one that Amanda or somebody has up on that screen, whoever's sharing, I'm confused by those boxes. Why are there two boxes and why do they have different numbers? Speaker 2: I'm gonna see that drawing. Yeah, I need to see drawing. Speaker 15: When signage is done, typically we try to square off the perimeter. It's not the same amount of characters.
So when you square off the sign as one, one item, that's the aggregated square foot Lord. And Taylor was a script and stretched out. We did the same squaring off process as that. That's just fairly typical I guess. Speaker 3: So I just don't understand. I'm sorry for interrupting you. I don't understand the squares. So one of them seems high and one of them seems wide and I don't know why they're high and why they're wide. It, it, it looks like area is being measured. Speaker 15: Yep. Speaker 3: That is more than the sign, more than just your lettering. It Speaker 15: Is, it's, it's just squared off from a standpoint
of tally. If you, I could take this dimension in and go tighter and smaller. I I just was trying to say that that's the extent of the sign, the full width and the full Speaker 3: Height. But are those the numbers that are being used to tell us the total signage? Yes, Speaker 15: Absolutely. That's, Speaker 3: Well, I think that's inaccurate and it's inaccurate to your detriment. So I I I think that you should have a box around the letters and I will tell you that it has been the practice of this board to not count what was referred to
by a previous member as the dangly bits of letters in the sign space. So for example, looking at your Raymore and Flanagan furniture pipe mattress sign, you could cut along the top of the A-Y-M-O-U-R as the top of the sign. We'll, we'll give you the top of that R because it's an uppercase letter. And then unfortunately you can't do much for the letters down below. But, but I would say bring that top line down. Bring the, the, the line
up against the end is already up against the end, but bring the line on the left as close in as possible and then, oh, I see you did that with the dotted line one and then calculate that, that size and use that as, as your calculation. The, the goal of this board is going to be to have your signage compliant. Always. We work towards co compliancy. Yes. Understanding that you're making it more compliant and that is absolutely a good thing. But if you can actually make it compliant, that would be a better thing. I, I understand your point. Yes, thank you. Thank you.
Okay, so that's my question about signs and also when we do talk about a sign package, I assume that you're gonna work with the mall on some sort of signage on the signs that are out at the street level, way, Speaker 15: Way, site way, finding Speaker 3: Way, way finding signs. Yes. Speaker 15: We have a couple of those in the lease. Those are currently dedicated to other tenants, but it's not, it's not extensive. Speaker 3: Okay. So last but not least is the landscaping plan and, and hoping not to insult whoever put that together.
I would hesitate to call this a landscaping plan. This sounds like, hey, we've got some dirt and we need to put plants in it and we don't want them to obscure this absolutely stunningly beautiful building we're gonna put up. So we don't want tall trees. What can we plant that's low and might survive Holly and boxwood, although I'm not so confident that boxwood will survive, but I I, I get it. But I think that if you have a landscape architect on staff, or if not, if you could hire a landscape architect on staff,
I think that they could probably be more creative about low attractive, maybe flowering in the spring. Maybe something just to make it, make it pop a little bit more. I mean, look, even looking at the, the rendering that you provided, which has, I assume the holly and, and boxwood plants in front of the building, it looks very boring to me. It's my opinion. I'm expressing my opinion also in this rendering. There are are deciduous trees at the corners that are not on the planting plan.
And there are evergreen trees that look suspiciously like spruces that I don't think you're ever, ever gonna plant in those places. So, and, and there's flowers on the corners, ground flowers that are also not in the landscaping plan. If the, if the plan could actually reflect your intentions so that we get a better understanding of what it's gonna look like then I think that that would be helpful. I do think having a deciduous tree on the corners is, is a nice touch. You don't have that on your plan. You know, I think something like a, some tree that flowers in the spring and then just looks pretty
and turns red in the fall. I think that that would look really nice. Some, you're right, the trees that were planted around the building, I don't think that they were ever intended to grow as old as they have. Those are, those are trees you plant. You let them, you know, if it's not in your yard, you let them grow for 10 years, 15 years and then you come and dig them out and put new ones in. And that step was skipped by whoever. But I think that you can't have deciduous trees along, if you're putting windows in.
You can't have deciduous trees in front of the windows. That defeats the purpose of the windows nose. But not that I'm gonna be able to, but I would love to see a landscaping plan that reflects some creativity and reflects what is and a rendering that actually reflects what the building's gonna look like when that landscaping plan is executed. Speaker 15: The, the, the flowers is something we do on the, in the spring. We don't, I consider that more of a seasonal main. I I run maintenance too, so I'm sorry, the, again, I, I said a couple times earlier I testified that we would work
with a town if there were certain species you want. I I can hire a large landscape architect. The challenge with that is, is just making sure that it's what this town is used to seeing. There's, and, and want to see. Speaker 3: There's, sorry for interrupting you. There's nobody in town who's going to tell you what we want. There's, there's nobody that holds that position or that power. I, I come, I'm the person that comes the closest to that and, and I don't count for diddly. So I, I think that that what we need you to do is plant native plants. That's, that's what we look for. It's in our bylaws, plant, plant native plants.
They have a higher chance of surviving and they have a, a lower chance of causing any sort of damage if they escape, you know, and, and send seeds off flying somewhere else. And otherwise, I would say just be creative about your, about your plantings and you know, on a landscape plan, if you've got a flower bed, it, it can be marked as a flower bed. It can be, you know, drawn off and seasonal flower bed, whatever. And I don't know who, the mall has to come clear the snow off that sidewalk. But you want, might wanna make sure
that whatever you put there is going to, is gonna be protected. Boxwoods, I can tell you from personal experience, do not like having snow piled on them. And so, you know, keep that in mind too as you, as you figure out what you're gonna, what Speaker 15: The thought of the boxwoods and the, and the Hollys was year round green and not having things looking like these do in the winter, looking to have a color and a basis to the building year round. But we can take that Speaker 3: And understood. Understood. But nothing in New England looks green year round. And, and so I, I think it, adding the green is nice,
but I, I have snow that falls off my roof and onto my boxwoods and I have broken boxwood branches all over my front yard right now. So they're, they are sensitive plants. That's all I'm saying. The holly is, Holly is great. There are native Hollys that you can, that you can plant there. And I don't know, I, I think it's great that this building is gonna get, I'm thrilled that you're coming to town. I've said, welcome before I have no, no problem at all with what you're proposing, the boxing and all of that stuff. I, I, I've always thought that, Lord, Lord and Taylor building was just
a touch on the warehouse, the ugly side. So I, I'm, I'm thrilled with what you're, with, what you're doing. And again, if you can make almost everything compliant, reduce the number of waivers that you're asking for from this board, then I think that it all, I'll go more, more smoothly. Speaker 1: Thank you, Terry. Speaker 10: Thank you. Hard act to follow. Speaker 1: He's tactful too. Speaker 10: And I'm chop liver. Right. Don't answer that. Okay. So a question on the signage and,
and I wanna try to parse that we are, how many signs over the limit? 'cause I know that we, we allow one on each exterior face, correct? Speaker 15: Right. There's, there's two, again, both for the way finding components. Speaker 10: So a total of five Speaker 13: Signs, two in excess of the one per Speaker 15: We, we don't have to have the two extra signs. These were part of discussions that happened with the, the township where they were, there was concern about pedestrian and vehicle traffic. So we can pull off the two way finding signs.
Those are not mission critical to me. That's us trying to be responsive to the board. I, Speaker 10: Amanda? Yeah. Could you fill, just fill in about that? Speaker 9: Yeah. It was just because of the, where the two locations were, it wanted to be very clear as to what was happening and also to give the pedestrians notification that there was going to be kind of activity there and it wasn't just a turn. Speaker 10: So those two extra ones are very specific to wayfinding. Speaker 15: And that was their intention because Speaker 10: We have, we have a kind of a separate, a separate place for that. Speaker 9: Yeah. It, it's Speaker 10: Exactly that reason
because we want people to travel safely. Speaker 9: Yeah. It was really just for, they didn't need it to announce that they're there. Like they're at the pedestrian. They have right here it was, you can see it actually. Yep. Right where the hand is. Yep. Sorry. That you can see. So like when you're coming around that corner, because the sign is up top of the bridge, you wouldn't see it as well. But also there is other activity going on in that intersection. And it's the same thing on the other side. So it was more like a police public Speaker 10: Safety kind of thing then. Yeah. And I, and I mean, I think we have language in,
in the zoning bylaw about way finding signage. I believe Speaker 3: We do, but I think it limits the signs to being one foot by one foot in size. Speaker 10: But they still, they have a, a home and a category because this is, this is a different circumstance. Correct. Speaker 11: Are those shown anywhere as far as what they actually say? Speaker 15: Yeah. Yeah. If you look, if you look at, show them the overall Speaker 10: At the end, yes. My own, my own mic. One on Speaker 14: The left side just says the word entrance. Excuse me. Can Speaker 15: We have pick up a light Speaker 14: More than welcome to talk? You just need to take a,
Speaker 15: The mic. Yeah. There you go. Please share. Speaker 14: Yeah. So on the Cheesecake Factory side, the second smaller sign says the word enter or entrance just so that people know where to go. 'cause our logo is off center, which is intentional to pull people in from the route nine traffic going eastbound. Speaker 10: And the average size of those way finding signs. Speaker 15: Yes. That's on here. The, this is about three feet tall by 11 feet across, over the door. Again, high enough that if there's minivans,
et cetera, parking, you can see it. And then this sign on the other side, and I just apologize from the screen print again, this is over there without loading docket. Speaker 10: You just need to get near a mic or take the mic with you. You, Speaker 3: If you walk over, it's 110, Speaker 15: Sunny a hundred. It's the, the smaller one on the right is 110. Okay. Speaker 11: And that one that's on the right, that's kind of, is that aligned with where the crosswalk comes outta the garage Speaker 15: That is aligned with the, with the road coming down. Okay. Between the parking garage and that again, that was commented on by, by tongue.
Speaker 11: Okay. Sorry, Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question before we move off that topic? The one on the side that just says entrance, doesn't just say entrance. It says Raymore and Flanagan entrance. Does it need to say Raymore and Flanagan? We were trying to distinguish the, you know, Speaker 15: Again, we don't need these signs. We can pull these from the request. They were done as, as a response to being mindful of pedestrian vehicle traffic. Speaker 3: I'm going by the rendering by the way, which may be inaccurate. The, the, do you plan on putting the name of the store on the glass doors at all? Speaker 15: No, that's not, that's not typical.
This is an upscale fashion. Forward facade and, and, and investment. It's a, we, we, we don't do a lot of that. Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah. Alright. Well I don't have a problem with the name being on there. I'm just saying that it doesn't just say entrance. So yeah. Speaker 10: That, that probably the word that should pop out more on the way finding something is entrance. It could, I would see it having the store name, but not so that it reads as advertising. But rather Speaker 15: As, and and again, I'll I'll just say if, if the number of signs is a problem, those two signs are not a requirement for us.
I, I'm easily, I would easily pull them off the request. Speaker 10: No, and I, I appreciate that. And I, I understand from Amanda the, one of the reasons that we do that with our professional staff is to flag the things that they know on a day-to-day basis are improved safety, improved traffic management. Yeah. So, and then the, the solar array that there would be on the roof. Speaker 15: We're, we're investigating that now. Okay. I won't say that I've signed an agreement, but we, we've got 12 megawatts in three states. We've been doing solar projects for 15 years.
It's kind of one of my things. And Speaker 10: You know, we have the, obviously there's the array on the parking garage. Speaker 15: On parking garage. And there's actually more, if you look at that area there, there's a lot. But Speaker 10: One of the things that I wondered is just because there's a complex to the, on the north side of the mall, I don't know if there's anybody who would have a site view of the roof of the old Lord and Taylor building, but of this kind of pad site that would, Speaker 15: This building has a parapet. So, you know, so the roof is down about four feet. Okay.
And again, the solar arrays, I'm not asking for in this meeting. I'm saying that we see them throughout the mall as we are looking at these drawings as we're developing it. And I see that there's a large component of that. We, we are inclined to, to be environmental wherever we can. So we would be looking for that. We would have to pull a building permit. And I don't, again, I don't even have anything there. I'm saying that we would have the intention of doing it if it's something that the town, you know, is interested in. Well, Speaker 10: And I think we've been very inviting to, to applicants who are looking at adding solar arrays. We just want to make sure
that there's nobody being adversely affected by it in terms of the aesthetic of what they're seeing out of the, Speaker 15: So, so this building, the roof is down here and the walls are up four or five feet. Yeah. Speaker 9: Thank you. And Terry, if you look at the aerial, you can actually see there's already existing closer to the Novell site. 'cause Novell is up in the corner. Speaker 10: No, and I remember when those were being installed, we went through and the may, we went through the comp, we went through the question. Speaker 3: There was a lot of concern that reflection would end up in the windows of the buildings. But I think that the location of this building has a,
it has a very clear south facing side. And I think all of those panels are going to be angled to the south. Okay. And the building is to the north. So if anything, they're gonna see the back top edge of a panel. There's not gonna be but no nut glare. Nothing is gonna reflect toward them. No, no, no problem with that. I can't even imagine that. Speaker 15: We did reach out to the condo association adjacent, offered an opportunity to discuss the project I offered my, my personal cell phone, et cetera. They did not respond because it really doesn't have a true line of sight. Okay.
Speaker 10: That then that actually the fact that you reached out and they didn't say. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to, we don't need to know. So, alright. Thank, that's all for now. Thank you Speaker 15: Doug. Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you. Having just been in Syracuse a couple weeks ago on a college tour, the coldest windiest snowiest day. My daughter loved it. So it was a very good, it was a very good tour and it showed well, so I don't envy your, your ride back. I do appreciate very much the, the, the presentation here, the thoroughness of it. Chris, Jessica, thank you so much.
This is what we like to see an organized, thoughtful, thorough presentation that also kind of steps through exactly what you're asking. So much appreciated on that. So I have a few questions. I'm not gonna, I'm not a, I'm not a pushover on signs, but I'm not gonna, you know, quibble too much about it. So I think we've, we've covered that. So I will have Speaker 10: One last question I forgot to ask later. Speaker 5: Okay. So I actually have some curiosity questions about the, the business and the operations a little bit. And then a couple about the, the plan. So when you, so a flagship store, what does, what does
that actually mean in terms of, you know, comparing to your other, your other locations? Speaker 14: We've spent a year on designing the inside of the store. So's really taking the outside. We, when we say flagship, I mean, in fairness, we do have a, a couple quote flagships, but I'd say for this one, the, the level of investment that we're making to, to acquire the property, the size of it, we, this is 110,000 square feet of retail space.
That's, that's literally double the average size of our store. Got it. Wow. And we've got 149 showrooms. So we're making a major investment, different technology. Our our salespeople and associates will have top of the line technology, credit card payment methods and, and all. So. Okay. Speaker 5: Alright. Yep. Those are Speaker 14: The primary factors. Speaker 5: Alright, thank you. Yeah. I'm just wondering, you know, your, your market area here, you've got a bunch in Massachusetts, you, you're up and down sort of the Mid-Atlantic. So where do you, where does this sort of sit in your market?
You know, is it, I mean, I know rooftops here income is, you know, a pretty good demographic. So where, where do you, where do you see this particular location in the sort of the, the, you know, the array of your, your locations Speaker 14: As far as Speaker 5: Just market catchment area? I mean, are we drawing from, you know, New Hampshire? Yeah. What is the sort of market area? I think Speaker 15: I can, I just, I think this is, this is our second store in the greater Boston suburb areas. I think our intentions would be to continue to grow when we go to a market.
Just 'cause I've, I've done this a long time. We typically will go to a location, but 5, 6, 7 stores in the market. Geo, you know, geographically, sau, August, you know, et cetera. Yeah. So Natick for us is, is key because of the, the, the skill of that mall. How that mall has recreated itself as, as Chris said over the years is excellent. The, the, the, the per capita income, the cost of a new home, the aggregation of all of the people driving to and fro from, from Natick is good. We have a store, we, in Somerville, we have another store in Millbury.
Yep. We're in the process of, of securing a warehouse in Lowell area. We're trying to grow into the Boston market. That Speaker 5: Was my next Speaker 15: Question actually. I think what you'll see is five, six stores probably over the next couple years. Depends how successful we are in, in acquiring locations and getting them done. Okay. But that's, that's probably what we're, we're looking at. Speaker 5: Yep. That's perfect. I was gonna ask you about, you know, your sort of your operations on, on warehousing and where that comes from. Local where, where, I mean, looking at Lowell kinda, Speaker 15: I walked the building today in Lowell that we're in contract. Yeah. Speaker 14: Okay. Yeah. We, we, we have kind of a hub and spoke model.
We have three major, major distribution centers, you know, 800,000 feet and they push product out to satellite delivery facilities, which the Lowell one is. But again, we deliver seven days a week. White glove in three days or less mattresses next day for 75% of our mattress customers getting delivery the next day. So Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 15: There's, there's maybe 2% of the product that leaves our store in people's cars. It, it, we would prefer to deliver it. Yeah. Speaker 5: Okay. The parcel,
you said it's a lease parcel, right? So what is it part of the larger who, who owns it now? I forget. It's not GGP anymore. It's help me. Who owns the larger parcel Speaker 9: And actually Jennifer's here from the Natick Mall, so if she wants to unmute, she can actually explain that the best. It's Brook, Speaker 16: It's Brookfield Properties and we own the property. It's, it's a ground lease. Speaker 5: Okay. So it's part of a larger except for Macy's, right? Correct. Correct. The, yep. Okay. That's, it's Speaker 13: A uniquely shaped parcel, but yes, it's part of a larger parcel that is, is owned by Brookfield. Okay,
Speaker 9: Got it. Correct. Speaker 5: Okay. From a couple. So a couple of questions here. From a construction staging point of view on the ring, on the front ring road in particular, when you're gonna be doing the boxing out, putting the new facade on traffic management where, talk to us about the lay down area and sort of the impact of that on, on the ring road for cranes, whatever you have to do to lift the stuff up there. Yep. Just talk about that if you could. Speaker 15: Okay. So on the main facade that removal, that two story v structure, that's a three week project.
We have prepared a drawing. We went over it with the, with the, Speaker 5: I Speaker 15: Can pull it up the police chief, we can pull it up. There happens to be a pedestrian trafficking right outside of that. So we would block that off, allow pedestrians to go across to the, across the, the, the paved area over to that other existing landscaped and and pathway. There's a, a paved pathway there. And then return back to the building to get to the lifestyles adjacent. There is a drawing. Yeah, I Speaker 5: Could just show that. Sorry, I'm pulling Speaker 15: Right now. That was at the, that was at the bequest. Speaker 5: So you're not gonna stage anything in the actual roadway?
Speaker 15: In the roadway. We may have a half a lane just for, again, during construction periods, the steel would be erected and placed in one, one lift on the left side of the building. That's one of the really the Oh, I see. Okay. Beauties of the project is that it's studs, it, it, it's, it's, it's just a, an exterior cladding that goes around those, those those vs. The rest is glazing pretty quick. So the staging area right now, per the lease is the dotted area on that right side. Okay. I, I don't see us using all of that,
but that's, that's the extent of what's in the lease. So I, I, I showed that I have no really other justification for it. Most of the work of this building is the inside. Yeah. The outside is, is, again, it's a lot of, like, wherever you see dark gray, it's paint, wherever you see the wood, that's a, a engineered product. It's a, it's, you know, eight foot sections of wood. The, the main work is that main mass on the facade and that will take some time. It's a four to six week process, but it's not more than that again. Speaker 5: Yeah, I was just getting Speaker 15: At, I've built a hundred of these, so I got Speaker 5: It. Just making sure that we're not disrupting traffic flow,
making it too much of an issue there. No, Speaker 15: It, it, this plan, you know, basically shows how the traffic goes across for pedestrian and around, and again, the, the, the impact to the site will, will be as minimal as we can make it. Speaker 5: So on that, keep that plan there for a second. So that, that entrance facing route nine, that's a big investment you're making there. I just, I talk to us about the prominence of that and do you really think that's where people are gonna enter the building? I mean it's the parking fields to the right and left and it just, it's always seemed to me like
a little inhospitable. So you, Speaker 15: I talk to that based on what the deputy chief of police, he was concerned about the amount of foot traffic now. Yeah. Because of all the lifestyle restaurants, they see x number of hundreds of people. There is a lot more pedestrian traffic that goes across there than in the past. The facade prominence is about the impact of route nine. It's, it's truly about showing what we're, we are about traffic. If I, if I told you exactly what our beliefs are, and I've spoke with Jennifer about it, we think 25 to 30%
of the traffic is coming from the second story parking deck. People with children don't wanna walk across the pa the the paved area. 25 to 30% is coming from the lifestyle area and maybe 20% is coming from the mall. I agree with you that that facade gets limited traffic. But from a architectural standpoint and from a, the, some of the comments, again, working with town staff, there is a lot more pedestrian traffic across that facade than there may be has been in the past. Fair Speaker 5: Enough. Fair enough. Okay. One of your other upstate New York retailers was attendant in this
mall, Wegmans. And when they, you know, took the lease there from JC Penney, it took a long time for them to figure out the structural impacts of, of what they were gonna propose. What is the structural analysis on this one? From clothing to heavy furniture? Is there any Oh, any kind of issue on loading you, Speaker 15: You can put a 3,500 pound lift with two electricians on it on the second floor and have another one 30 feet away. The, the, the load can capacity. This building is pretty insane. Okay.
Speaker 5: Just making, okay. Yeah, that's it. That's it for me. Thank you. Thanks Doug, Ellen. Speaker 11: Sure. Just want to, before getting, before criticizing anything, just wanna say, I really appreciate what you have done. I love the glass, the windows. I think the facade looks so much better than what's out there right now, which I think, I don't know if you're the one who said armory. I was gonna say bunker, but it, it definitely looks like a big upgrade and I appreciate that. So now I'll get into some, I guess questions or more the landscaping.
I know Glen had more questions about closer to the building. One thing that I noticed, based on the rendering, it looks like you're taking down trees that are between Ring Road and the Route nine ramp. Speaker 15: No. Speaker 11: Okay. No, Speaker 15: The no, I, I only own, we only own in the lease the curbing perimeter directly around the building. Can you go back to the sub plant? Yep, I'm doing that right now. That's only our affected area. Speaker 11: Okay. I think the renderings there. There's tree that looks like some birch trees that are shown that are, yeah, Speaker 15: I want you to be able to see the building. So there's a little artistic license that if you had questions about what, you know,
'cause if you layer on all these existing trees, it's tough to see the building. Okay. Speaker 11: We Speaker 15: Could talk about that, but Speaker 11: No, no, it's, it's good to hear because I also know a lot of retailers that are worried in real life about trees that are gonna impact the ability to see their building and they'd like everything to just be cut down or short. So that's great to hear that those, that that's gonna remain. I guess my next comment is maybe, I don't know if it's more for you or for them all, but I think a, a big, obviously a lot of people that are gonna come here are gonna park over in the garage because there's never any spaces
available over on the other side. I was there about two weeks ago and one thing that I noticed was in that garage, the lights that alert where there's open spaces, they were saying that they were all available, even though they were not, they were all occupied. It was, I don't know if it was because of that, but definitely the things were a little congest congested in the, in the garage because those weren't working. So I would just encourage you in the, in the mall to kind of work together because when they're working, it's great, you know, you're able to find the parking much better.
I don't think anybody wants people even circulating through that spot to the right because the, again, they're, they're never gonna find open spaces over there. So I think the better thing that things are operating in the garage, the better for everyone. Speaker 15: Jen, Jennifer, could you speak to that? Speaker 16: The, the program, the, the Red light green light program, which we call is Park Assist. We've had, unfortunately the software systems are becoming obsolete, including the cameras as well. So it's going to take a significant investment on our end
to get up to speed. And unfortunately some of the issues that were coming across is the companies that started these programs don't exist anymore. So we're kind of faced with and discussing what we're gonna do with those, that program in the long term. Speaker 11: Okay. Speaker 3: May I, Speaker 16: It's been quite a challenge to say the least and quite sort of an embarrassment for me to not have that operating correctly, including the wayfinding signs where all the dots are. So it's been been a little difficult to say the least. Speaker 3: Can, can I just throw in that if they're not working
and they're all saying that all of the spaces are open, maybe the system could be turned off and people can use their own smarts to see whether there's a car in a space or not. Speaker 16: Correct. If if, if it were that easy, I, I would've done it already. We're just, we're, there's some electrical technology and stuff that we don't, they have license too, I guess. So we're, we're sort of battling with them a little bit on what we can touch and what we can't. So it's been a little bit of a challenge, but Understood. Speaker 3: Thanks. Speaker 16: Sure.
Speaker 11: The, I kind of to keep going as far as parking, are you guys gonna be telling people where to park, like on the website or, you know, if you, if you click on the, you know, this particular store, would it just say we're at the Natick Mall, does it say, you know, park in this garage? Is there anything that, have you considered that? Speaker 15: I mean, being that we're a leased property, I have to be careful of that kind of thing. So we could work with Jennifer on that. I think the intention would be a new occupant of the, of, of the mall. We could say parking garage adjacent, something like that.
But it's harder 'cause we're a tenant. Speaker 11: Okay. Mostly, again, I mentioned that those spaces are all full. So are the other ones on the other side of Cheesecake Factory. That area is just always full. I've told many people go to the mall park on the other side. There's tons of spaces. Whereas here, you know, you circulate through a bunch of times and then end up parking on the other side. Anyways, Speaker 15: We, we still are going to maintain the two major entrances. First and second floor, 25 foot wide spaces. Those will stay. So we, we certainly hope we get some traffic from them all. Speaker 11: You got a bunch of residents, right? There'll be your first customer, say when you've reached out.
I figured that's why you're reaching out. The width of the sidewalk coming around the front, is that staying the same that it is right now? Yes. Okay. Five foot men. Okay. Do you know how wide it is? Five feet. Okay. Plus the Speaker 15: Curb is another six inches. Speaker 11: Okay. And the last question is, how long about is this gonna take to construct where, where things are gonna be under, not, not so much, you know, start from now, but more when there's gonna be impacts and people are gonna have to kinda walk around. How, how long do you think that's gonna take about? Speaker 15: If I could be non-committal
because I'm gonna be held to it. Honestly, my goal is to get this open for Black Friday. The roof is completed, the entire inside is demoed, including 110,000 square foot of marble floor and underlayment. I have the escalator on order for months now. We're, we're, we're hoping to open this for Black Friday. That would be our goal. Please don't tell your father, but that's our goal. We're very quick with, we make, we make it that way. Okay. Speaker 11: I think that's all that I had Speaker 1: A couple of questions. The pedestrian traffic, I guess on the south side you say is gonna be, that's a, I
I'm wondering where is the pedestrian traffic on the south side that you were talking about coming across from somewhere. I'm Speaker 15: Okay. You, you can't speak to it. So on, on the left side of the peninsula, right. The the, the store sticks out like a u on the left side. Okay. You, you crossed to there across and then back and then over. So, and you're Speaker 1: Anticipating a lot of pedestrian traffic through that walkway. Speaker 15: I think that's only during the major construction. The lifting of the steel, the pouring of the concrete. That's a three week process.
It's only during that, other than that the sidewalk will be reopened. Speaker 1: Alright. But you've got a fairly significant roadway going east to west. Speaker 15: Yeah, we, we committed to the deputy police chief that we would've traffic guards signals, all of that included during that time. That was part of our answer to that Speaker 1: Police. And you'll have at least one lane. One lane, you'll have one lane of traffic being able to go past that. Yeah, yeah. Because it's not a matter of stopping the eastbound Right. It's the westbound that's gonna be pretty heavy. Correct.
Speaker 15: Yeah. The, the goal would be to always have contiguous traffic across. There may be a guard that's switching, you know, tra traffic guards on both sides. But the pedestrian traffic is, is an easier compliment because you have a traffic guard to stop. You have queuing area coming off of the, the route nine little exit near the, near the parking garage. You have queuing area around the corner and then on both sides. So with the right traffic control, this is not as invasive as a, you know, as a, a main, a main road on, on, you know, in, in a township. But there is traffic there to manage.
But again, being the dimension of that, that road out there, you, you we're only looking to close maybe half of one lane for a couple weeks. How, and it'd be open when we're not in construction. Can you Speaker 5: Provide that plan to Amanda, Speaker 13: The pedestrian? Well, the pedestrian safety plan was submitted to, Speaker 15: It was not, it was verbalized but we Speaker 1: Didn't submit the plan. Could you noted, Speaker 17: Could you provide that? Absolutely, Speaker 1: Easily matter uploaded as I under, as I see it, the majority of traffic coming, anybody coming from the west framing them and west, they're gonna come around.
They have to come around. No, the loop, they'll go right past that south entry. And I'd foresee having been there a lot for better or for worse. The, it's, it's gonna be heavy. And I don't know how far out your construction will come when you're doing that whole facade. Yeah, Speaker 15: It, we have the buffer of the entry and then there's the sidewalk and then there's two, the, the, the two lanes. The, the goal would be to have a, a contiguous traffic at all times. Okay. Just, just signalize, you know where the traffic traffic,
Speaker 1: Alright. See the building overhang that's over the service. The receiving area. The truck truck Speaker 15: Talk. Yeah. I'm not touching any of that. Yeah, Speaker 1: But that's, that's what that overhang is. Yes. Is okay. Well it's outstanding to me that you've got a tremendous amount of architectural interest in the south elevation. Tremendous. Thank you. And yet it's, I can't believe it's gonna be any kind of a major entry at all because there's no parking there. People are gonna come right by it.
And I know for, for, for my sake, I usually just go right past it and into that parking lot that's shared with cheesecake and 'cause it, well for me there's some handicap spots there and it's, it's great. I can't understand when you put up the such a prominent entry and sign and design on that south entry and it is a big entry but it's not gonna be used. I don't see that pedestrian use at all. And you and other than somebody coming
and dropping someone off there, which could create wreak all kinds of havoc as far as a backup quickly onto Route nine. I can't understand that. I'm not sure that, I think I understand why Lord and Taylor put a huge sign on. Well, what you are referring to as the left side, I guess it's the Yeah. Yes. The, the left side, they put it closer to route nine. It's not over the entry. Yeah. Speaker 15: I mean this is the facade of the building. It's no different than the facade in any major retailer or your home. I don't know how many times I walk in the front door of my house.
It's not many. We have, these are all pre-existing entrances. A DA co compliable entrances as part of the existing pedestrian trafficking plan. I don't think it's wise to reduce those. And to be honest with you, this is adverse to us. We typically have one or two entrances in a store. This store's gonna have five, Speaker 1: Which is Speaker 15: A challenge for us operationally, quite honestly. So us doing this is, is really about the feedback we've got from the mall, the feedback we've got from town us. I've been in this building, I dunno, 35 times in the last year.
The amount of people I watched today, 15 people walk across this front that I keep saying to myself, there really is a lot of traffic there, there is a lot of pedestrian traffic. I do think with an open and engaged environment with, with the end, the architecture that's there when you walk by the first set of windows and you see furniture, you're going to be more inclined to come into the building. I, I think I, I had children. I would not want to come from the parking garage on the first floor. I'd be going to the second floor. The people come around that there's always a tractor trailer there. I think at the end of the day that storefront is gonna get more traffic than we think. I do think it's gonna be predominantly the parking garage
second floor and with any luck left and, and the mall itself. But I do think there's gonna be a decent amount of traffic that comes through that facade when you come in that there's an entire design motif set to receive you. It's, it's, there's an an an aha experiential moment when you come in the building and you're gonna see that through the glazing. Speaker 1: Yeah. That's when you come in. My ma I would not say eliminate the door. Yeah. But my main, the way I envision a, an entry, whether it be your home or this building. Yeah. I want to know from some distance
as I approach it, where's the entry? Where am I going? Yeah. The same thing with the front door of your house. I see so many the driveway's over here and the front door's over here. And how the devil do you get to it? Speaker 15: Well that's the awning, ironically, the black awning that you see protruding. That's a sense of arrival in architecture. That's an experience. So it's like a marquee. And I built a building for us in Ozone Park in New York City in 1835 theater. I kept the marquee, I wanted to keep the landmark tradition again when I first got into school, I spent a lot of time in restoration. I I'm an old school guy like that. So that marquee that that, that's basically what
that awning is, is when you come under that you're under a sense of space. You're already feel like you're in the building. So that's what that entry kinda like a portico, a Greek portico. Speaker 1: I won't say it again except just the one last time. The only people that the primary source of pedestrians going in there, as far as I'm concerned, are gonna be people who have to be dropped off. And I don't see a lot of pedestrian traffic. It's just gonna be people dropped off and that's gonna be re wreaking havoc. 'cause they don't have any parking there. Where you want to bring in and get them to the entry is where they can park.
And the garage is one, a lot of people will go for the side, the left side. Alright. It's, that's Yes. Oh, Speaker 10: Go ahead. No, I when when you're done, I just had, I'm Speaker 1: Two small things done Speaker 10: Just, and I apologize for coming back. One of the things that I remember specifically with Lord and Taylor is that we were talking about plantings and which, what plantings are appropriate and so forth. And the biggest problem that I remember with Lord and Taylor was that they didn't tend to the plantings and the plantings, pardon my French, looked like crap.
And they, whoever was kind of caring for and and maintaining them wasn't, and it just, it it kind of brought down the whole facade. Yeah. So I assume that that fall because it falls to the, the store. No one can see Speaker 15: 'em from the, you see, it actually falls to me. That's the beauty of my position. I run design, engineering, construction and property management. So my team takes care of this. And again, being a flagship store, meaning we want this to be one of our top five six stores. Believe me when I tell you this will be as pretty location as we can possibly provide from the additional flowers and growers.
This is gonna be a beautiful facility. I I I would tell you that it will be maintained absolutely. Speaker 10: That, that that would be a refreshing change. I have no idea. So thank you. And then the last was about the actual, whether, whether the signage complies with letter height and the extent, I realize that that's detail to go over. But in terms of how far set back you are from the roadway from Route nine determines what what letter height would be. Lord and Taylor was an exception because it was a signature. And so that that looked as it did.
But I just wanna find out either if that meets that requirement or if it doesn't, then in fact, that's why we have a special permit language to allow that if it, it feels appropriate. But I just wanna make sure we go through that channel. Speaker 5: Were were you asking them about lighting? I'm sorry, can I ask the question? Did you, maybe I missed it. Is the, how is the sign lit? Speaker 15: The, the sign sign or individual can letters that are lit from the rear. So the sides of the sign are black. They protrude about that much. Yeah. And the sign, the lighting comes out of the sign. There's up and down lights.
The little black things that you see that just are ambiance. It's just to show some of the architecture. Okay. Some of the, some of the really, so each Speaker 5: Individual letter is, is illuminated from the, from the internal. It's nothing. It's not like off the off and backlit. Right. Speaker 15: Okay. Right. And the got, and no, it's not a backlit sign. This is three, four times the money. These are individually crafted can, can letters with LED technology behind it. Okay. The, the uplights, again are just for ambiance. Speaker 13: And if I may, going back to the lettering question, I understand practice of the board with the mall and for larger signs is to kind of exclude, as you said,
sort of the top of that r draw a straight line when it comes to height of lettering, things of the, like are you looking at the smaller space as well? Yes. Okay. Speaker 15: The ask would be much less based on Mr. Glad's. Speaker 10: But it, it's interesting because we have a very helpful clause in, in our signed bylaw, the silent sign section of the bylaw that says if it doesn't meet these requirements, then certainly the, the board can consider it and say it is an exception. And that's why we have that as a special permit. So there's an accommodation to it.
I just wanna make sure we follow. Right. Speaker 15: Some, some of this truly is the mass of the building, the, the size of this. It's hard to show it tally, but this is 40 some feet high and hundreds of feet long. So the signs gonna look. Speaker 10: Yeah. You need to have something proportional so it doesn't look like Exactly. Thank you. Speaker 13: The little plane on on the paper. Exactly. Speaker 10: Thank you. And and I, I appreciate what my, my colleague Mr. Sson said, but I have to say, I, I find the facade, I actually think it will draw more people than, than you, than you might expect. But also it makes this remarkable statement
because even, even if someone doesn't choose to enter that, going by and seeing this kind of presentation is the sort of thing that creates a sense of invitation to the store as a whole. And then they'll figure out which way they're coming in. But I'd much rather see that than to kind of be staring at a, a blank wall or what we had with Lord and Taylor where it did feel like, like an insular facility that you weren't intended to be kind of entering. So I I I thank you for creating something that actually offers a, a good form and invitation. Thank
Speaker 1: You. I I clearly support that. The, the elevation, the look of this building on Route nine is gonna be fantastic compared, especially not compared to what it is. 'cause what it is isn't now we've had a great presentation. Very good. I I think you're all the drawings and all that three Ds and so on are terrific. And the understanding of the folks, the family. Do you know what? We're gonna come, you're gonna be coming back. Do you know what you're gonna be coming
back with? I don't want, Speaker 15: Yes. I need a planting plan representative of local species. I need a trafficking plan that we've edited to and commented to actually supply and provide. I need a little more detail on the signage. Speaker 13: Yep. Signage front. I think it's almost remeasuring sort of what we have. And then looking at it in Speaker 15: That sense, it'll be less of an ask. Yes. And then I just need counsel on whether I'm losing the way finding as they are an ad. It's another request review. Or I go back to just the three signs on the three road frontages. Speaker 10: And my sense is that especially if what, and I assume that it was Brian
and others who remarked on it for, for safe traffic safety reasons. And mine is just that it not be presented in such a way that it, it reads as extra advertising. Speaker 15: Very good. I think the one on the right, just because it's an arrow, I think that one I have to have a name or people, it doesn't really do anything. The one over the other entrance. I agree. I can make it just entrance. Like having Speaker 10: One that says this way and you go, Speaker 15: I know that showroom entrance, something like that. But Speaker 3: The, but the name can be smaller and the entrance can be bigger and in case it can be way faring like can nuance
Speaker 15: It. Speaker 3: The the bylaws are very specific about how big the letters can be in signs. So if you're fewer than 200 feet from I do we measure from route nine there's from the it's not the internal road. Speaker 10: No, it is, it is from route nine. From the, from the edge of, Speaker 3: From Route nine. Yeah. The layout, not the service road. We're 101 foot from the right of way to route nine Speaker 10: 101. Speaker 3: Correct. Okay. So you are less than or fewer than 200 feet. So the letters are not supposed to be more than two feet in overall height exclusive
of ascends and descenders. Speaker 15: But we are going to be looking for a variance for the site. Speaker 10: No, no. It's not a that's not what you need. We act it is the social permit is language that says Yep. If this board finds that to be appropriate and I'll get the citation. Speaker 3: I'm just saying, you know, close as close as you can get to what this says here. And if you can't then you can come and ask whoever the board is when I'm not here anymore to, to give you that permission. And then all Speaker 10: We then have to do is add that the special permit to to that we do Speaker 13: Actually have a request for the special, the signage special permits in our application as well.
And we advertised for Speaker 10: That as well. And that's perfect because it, it was designed so that for things that are exceptional. Yes. And we look at it and go and if I think it says if it's appropriate, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. Speaker 13: With the facade here. Yes. But totally understood that we will try and trim in those numbers as much as we can try to modify the way finding signage such that the focus is on the way finding aspect and including the raymore branding as needed. So it can serve its purpose. But we hear you. Speaker 1: I see a hand up. Yep. The mall. Speaker 16: I just, I'm sorry, I apologize. I was not at the meeting with Deputy Lanne as it relates
to those two additional signs. Nor did I see them. My only comment or concern would be to place signs in, in very active or near very active loading docks. It could be a little, it could lead to be a little bit confusing unless you do have that arrow people, the things I see with signs inside the mall, you know, we don't want people walking over there is what I'm getting to where you do have that, you do have a crosswalk from Sea Garage into that lower level east side entrance. Obviously the first and second level. So it, you know, if, if the signs are not needed, you know,
I just have concerns about people walking towards that active loading dock. It could just be a little confusing for folks. Speaker 15: Jennifer? Ma'am? I would say the sign is a position specifically to the left a little and the arrow is, is large. Okay. And that was the request. Alright. Just one of the police. Speaker 16: Thanks. Just wanted to add that. Thank you. Speaker 13: Thanks Jen. Speaker 1: Was there anyone else? I don't Amanda. I don't see any other hands. Speaker 9: I don't see any members of the public's hands, so. Speaker 1: Alright then we'll call for continuance continue to To Speaker 10: The 26th. Speaker 1: The 26th, right? Speaker 9: We can have materials.
Speaker 13: Yeah, you gave us the agenda right? Speaker 1: So yeah, Speaker 9: I gave you a prospectus and tonight's agenda. Yeah. So we only have one project. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 10: Okay. So I am motion to continue to March 26th. Speaker 1: Second. All favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Wonderful. Thank Speaker 13: You for your time. Thank you very much for Speaker 1: Your time. Thank, thank you for yours and your preparation. Thank you Speaker 15: Mr. Gladder. My brother's a planning commissioner and I've been in right to build for 35 years and anyone that has 18 years sitting behind the table, congratulations. Oh, thank you sir.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys very much. Is, he hasn't been there for 18 years. He gets up once in a while but it seems, it seems as though 18 years is a long time and it is. However there are people on the board who have been significantly longer. Longer. Speaker 10: No, no, no. He came in Speaker 15: Just before so it is so rare. It really is. Speaker 10: Just after it's Speaker 1: Excellent. Congratulations. Well it's, I hate to say it but it's probably for the big bucks. That's all. Speaker 13: Thank you guys very much for your time. Bye. Speaker 1: Do you? Okay. Alright. Speaker 10: Oh tell me. Speaker 1: Alright. Town meeting zoning articles, article 21.
Amanda, can you start us off on that? Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely. So what was emailed and in your packets tonight is an update to the use regulation schedule and I'd like to pull that up right now. So what we were doing was updating it based on the conversation that we had at the last public hearing. This was a continued public hearing. So for the purposes of presentation, I have reviewed this with the Building commissioner and then other individuals. So what we are looking at is this is the clean addition of
what was previously sent out earlier today. Just for the purposes of showing it clean, everything else, everything is pretty much exactly what we had talked about. The only additions that were made was the addition of laboratory. A lot of communities actually specifically call out laboratory because research and development, you can either leave it as research and development and laboratory or you can call out a new one. So that is a question for the board. So it'd either be J one would include laboratory or we could create a new line
and have it be just laboratory. The use as you can see are the same. The only place where it might be different is in the hospital. Because I guess the question comes down to is typically hospitals do have some form of lab Yeah. Associated with them. So we didn't want to preclude that. So that was one question for the board. How, how would you like that portrayed it? It doesn't matter to us, it just, Speaker 5: Can I ask a question? Sure. I'm sorry. So, okay, so that would,
if you came in with an R, like the conversation you had last time, if you come in with an RD facility Yep. And a lab, you wouldn't have to ask for two things right? Under that J one. Yep. Speaker 9: It'd be the same one. And laboratory is not the manufacturing, which we did align based on the conversation last time. With this use, you would not have to. And the other thing is research and development doesn't always mean life science. It could be technology, it could really be a lot of different things. And a laboratory doesn't always mean wet or dry labs. It could be something very simple as a robotic center or something.
So it better, those are the two items. So Speaker 1: Clears Speaker 9: It, it really, Speaker 5: I guess I'm leaning towards not saying and laboratory. Okay. And keeping it separate. I wouldn't want to have the ridiculous argument with somebody that you come in for research and development and you didn't have lab. Speaker 10: Sorry. So what? Right. So what, so what I'm looking at here? Yeah. And what we're looking at. I'm just make sure I understand just the Speaker 5: Clean version. It's the clean version of what was in our packet. Speaker 10: Okay. And I'm, I'm looking at the red line. You can Speaker 9: Look at the red line. It was just for this purposes, it made it a little easier just
to highlight the changes. It says Speaker 10: J one is research and development, Speaker 9: Comma and lab Speaker 5: And lab. And I'm saying don't, don't get rid of the and laboratory 'cause you have it down below in the next one. Good. Speaker 9: Yeah. So it was the, I Speaker 10: Looked at it and I said, why would you No, Speaker 5: I, I get the logic. I just, I think it, it was Speaker 9: Really, I put it in both places so the board could see it. So we could decide do you want it in the same line as J one research and development or did you want laboratory in a separate one? It it Speaker 5: Really didn't. Laboratory is defined. Speaker 9: I believe it was, let me double check on that. If it's not, we can get the definition in Speaker 10: There and, and the other,
the other thing in in splitting it out. So taking away the end laboratory is just that then there's not a question about which thing that mentions laboratory. That's what I should this be in. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 9: Okay. And that's great. Yeah. That's what I was hearing. Speaker 10: Just Speaker 9: Wanna check. That was just a question also when you go up to number, sorry, I should have started with I one, the question comes down to is it current? Like a lot of people either or communities call it office, they don't include professional, some include business and professional.
So it's just this question of what is the preference of the board for clarification purposes. Because this is like a professional office or a business office. It's not like a doctor's office. 'cause that's classified as something different. So it's just in terms of wording, a lot of communities do different things is what the board feels comfortable with. Speaker 10: I I, I can see professions including business, but it's hard to see business including professions. Yep. So I would probably err on professions. I agree. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 9: Professional. So professional office. Okay. The next one was adding the, so we did have this previously,
not in our current bylaw. This is a new use. It should be I two, sorry. Business incubator space. And so that is kind of what it says. We do have a definition for it, but it also is defined as flex space. So it was just, does the board wanna have the open flex space or does that not need to be as we do include it in the definition? Speaker 5: We do or do Speaker 9: Not. We were including it in the definition. Yeah. But it was just, if you were looking at the table of use, is it helpful to have that extra word Speaker 10: And flex space is defined for us? Speaker 9: It is not defined because it's defined
as business incubator space. But it's just, if you were Speaker 10: So Abey Labs. Speaker 9: Yeah, well ABEY Labs would fall under research and development. Flex space is more of like, you have a lot of different Speaker 10: Yeah, no, not for, not for flex but But as an incubator, I mean that's certainly, that's certainly how they, they quantify Speaker 9: It. Yeah. It would also have to get a permit for research and development because that it's also being conducted there. Speaker 10: Okay. So for our purposes, we wouldn't be looking at it as incubator space. We'd be looking at it as r and d.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Speaker 5: Right. Flex what, what, Speaker 10: What would qualify for incubator space or what would be appropriate when you're, if you're not talking about labs. Speaker 9: So incubator space, which is also in the definition. So incubator space or flex space. A place where an individuals, small business owners or employees, remote workers or freelancers can work alongside one another in a common space or in a business incubator where individuals working to launch a new business can rent space in which to perform office work and have access to share resources such as printers,
scanners, and other tools and services such as financial counseling, management training. A flex office may also be used for light manufacturing or makerspace. So it's kinda like a WeWork. Speaker 10: Yeah. Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean sometimes flex space is used in, in warehousing. Yeah. Yeah. Such a vague term. Yeah. So I would say no don't show the parentheses. Speaker 10: Agree. Cool. Speaker 3: I'm curious about what you just read. Why are we referencing technology that if not already outdated is going to be outdated in about five minutes And we're gonna have to update the zoning bylaw again?
Yeah. What's a printer? Speaker 9: It was just trying to give examples. A 3D Speaker 10: Printer. Speaker 3: I Exactly, but that's my point. So you know, can we say office equipment? Can we say something generic? Speaker 9: Yep. We can say resources such as office equipment or other tools. Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean I haven't used a printer in probably four months. So. And what's a scanner? I don't have one of those either take pictures with my phone. Good point. Just saying we don't need to build in obsolescence. Obsolescence into our, into our bylaws.
Speaker 9: And then if you continue down, if you go to K Late manufacturing uses, so what this was is, oh I updated the footnote 'cause it was reading I think two which was already used somewhere else. So it was just updating the footnote that was previously on there. We were adding, we were talking about commercial kitchens. So if you go to K three and there was conversations on how does a residential she'll actually have a commercial kitchen within their home. So as Andy had mentioned pre last week, it is much more complicated than just doing that.
So what we do have currently, you can go to the board of health and get what is called a retail residential kitchen, which is basically the preparations of cottage foods. And those would be allowed in the residential district. However that is really limited to things that are non heat controlled or time controlled. So you can't produce things that are sensitive to Speaker 10: Heat Speaker 9: Or Speaker 10: Example. Speaker 9: So you could not do a cheesecake because of the storage isn't just regular storage.
You can't do pickling because of the temperatures associated with it. You can't do anything with raw meat, fish, leafy greens, melons or those kind of items. So you're really limited to cakes, cookies and jams and jellies. Breads. Speaker 10: But not pickles. Speaker 9: Not pickles, no. Speaker 10: Okay. Not even dill. No, not absolute. Speaker 9: I was bummed when I read that. That's wild. Okay. That's what you can go to the board of health with today. Okay. So with that being said, I don't know if the board wants to hold off
on K four at this time and we continue to research commercial kitchens or do we remove commercial kitchens? K three and K four altogether. Because there, if you expand commercial K three commercial kitchens, it's talking about the conversation that we had last time, which is nonprofits having kitchens within the residential districts. But then a retail residential kitchen, you can already do that if you go through the board of health without having to come through us. And then it's like what are we even looking at from a
planning board perspective, if you're only doing cakes and jams and jellies. Speaker 10: Yeah, I do not wanna spend my time together and Speaker 9: You can only sell it on the internet or mail white people or farmer's markets, which you can already do. Speaker 10: And I that, that would lean heavily towards dropping it. Okay. Speaker 9: The other ones that were added was that we talking to the building commissioner that we do not need, which was K 10. This was new general manufacturing because all of our other items actually capture general
manufacturing and the definition for light manufacturing captures what is currently in practice for manufacturing within. So we do not need general manufacturing. So it would be proposed to delete that one. And then what I did do was 'cause manufacturing and industrial uses, when you actually look at it and what they are, they're very different. Like industrial uses are much more like kind of dirtier uses compared to manufacturing what it is today. So with that being said, what I, what I am showing is
actually taking what is existing as other uses N and or was M putting that as N. The only thing that lives in there is accessory use. Open normally incidental to permanent use. Putting that as N. So we'd be creating a new use header and then taking M and making that M industrial uses. And that's where your warehouse contractor yards, commercial mover, municipal waste facility, private waste facility. And junkyards would be located. 'cause those are really kind of in a separate classification. Dirty,
Speaker 10: Dirty industrial. Speaker 9: Yeah, exactly. And those were under other uses before? No they weren't. They were in manufacturing. Manufacturing, okay. And industrial uses. But it was just trying to, with one Speaker 10: Of Natick's, I was looking at one of Natick's first zoning maps from 1931 and it was where the MM M1 zoning districts were, you know. Yeah. It's like, of course it literally was named manufacturing. Yeah. And at some point in the course of the evolution of bylaws, they became industrial. Probably did cast a wider Speaker 9: Net. Yeah. And it was contractor yard.
We didn't, so that was one that's very controversial in a lot of communities. So putting it as no across the board, because we currently don't allow exterior contractor yards. So it's a question of if it's not in here you, it's not allowed. Yeah. But do you want to call it out and say that it's not allowed? Speaker 10: I think the beauty of not having it so you can allow it if it doesn't exist. Speaker 9: Okay. So we'll remove M two and then the other one that was just a question of M three commercial mover
with Associated Storage facilities. We currently don't have that. It's one use that the board may be interested in. I mean in the u Speaker 10: And we, and we have had it certainly in my time in Natick. Yeah. There, there have been commercial, commercial Speaker 9: Movers. So it's a question of if you want to have that with Associated Storage facilities or not. Speaker 10: It creates, it, its creates a kinda a significant warehouse use when they're there. Just, or, or the parking field for trucks and everything else. But there was one on, one on 1 35 on West Central Street for all very long time.
Oh yeah. What's Speaker 5: That? There was, yeah. Speaker 10: Do you know Dirk Coburn? Yeah. This is what his wife's family Oh. And I think they moved it to Holliston. Okay. Speaker 9: Yeah. A lot of those businesses moved to Ashland in Holliston. Yeah. Speaker 10: But they, they, they could still come back. Do I think it's likely to? No. Speaker 8: There's a commercial mover theoretically that has a spot in Route nine. Speaker 10: Oh. Speaker 5: With the, with the trailer. Speaker 9: They're not supposed to be there. It's a residential use. Speaker 8: And yet they've been there for Speaker 5: Years. For how long? What Speaker 8: Kind of enforcement power do we have? Speaker 5: It's like a billboard sitting there. Yeah. Actually
Speaker 9: That's a building commissioner question. But yeah, that parcel is zoned residential. Is it Speaker 5: Really? Right up on Route nine? Yeah. Really? Speaker 10: Which is, sorry, which is this? Speaker 9: The one with gentle mover by? Speaker 5: Oh, Speaker 10: It's an old no, and it's not actually there. That truck is just there two now advertising. The trucks are there for advertising, but Speaker 8: I imagine that they, Speaker 5: That's a billboard. If that's true. That that is a billboard. Speaker 10: It is. Speaker 5: That is, that is an off-premise sign. It is. Speaker 3: We've been through this before though. 'cause there's lots of other places that park their vans and trucks up away from their facilities. But in there are parking lots. So for ex example, if you go past,
I want to call it Sherwood Plaza, zigs often parks their delivery van right up next to the entrance to the very visible from Route nine. It's like putting a sign there, but they're just parking their van in the parking lot. Speaker 10: Dover rug Speaker 5: Does it. It's on premise though. Speaker 3: Dover Rugg has done that for years. Yeah, Speaker 10: But it's Speaker 5: On, that's on premise though, Speaker 10: That, Speaker 3: That, well that's why I'm saying I imagine that, that that company must, must, I'm saying must lease that little spot so they can park a truck in it. One of Speaker 10: The problems with that parcel is that it's kind of zoned
to not, nothing works in it. There is, there's almost nothing that it is zoned to be useful for. And that's why it's been sitting there with a derelict gas station and we get a I'm Speaker 11: Sure nobody wants to start digging too. Speaker 10: What's that? I'm Speaker 11: Sure nobody wants to start digging onto that parcel too. Speaker 10: Well, no, but but there's a problem with it. It had, it lacks locked up to do pretty much anything. Yeah. And it, and it butts up on a residential neighborhoods and you're never gonna get it. Yeah. Speaker 3: If I remember correctly, the truck that was parked there used to be not have a registration on it.
And I think that, that they got wise or somebody made them wise to the fact that that was very illegal. And the truck that's there now does have a license plate on it. Yeah. So, Speaker 5: Alright, back to the question. So yes. On the commercial movers, right, Amanda on to Speaker 10: Retake, keep that. Yeah. Speaker 5: On Amanda, back to M1 warehouses, ex excluding retail warehouses. Yeah. Speaker 10: That is Speaker 9: Like a FedEx Speaker 10: No, no, that that is in there for Home Depot. Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Well, for Home Depot was it Sam's Club too
or was that a re considered a retail? That was retail. That was, Speaker 10: That was retail. But yeah, it, it, because Home Depot was not in a retail in it zone for retail. It was in there for industrial. So they had to more or less show that it's, it was a lumber yard and incidentally like selling things, it, it was the biggest stretch. And it has been that way since before I joined the board is a very, this is the reason why we, we would periodically kind of scold them for Oh, there's that man that would scold them
for spreading out their displays all over the place. Yeah. 'cause technically that was all supposed to, that that's kind of warehouse for all the plants. Speaker 5: It's retail. Speaker 10: There's another Speaker 5: Solution. So what is this land? What is this actually doing then? It's saying And 3000 square feet is tiny. Speaker 10: Yeah, Speaker 9: Tiny. It's currently a thousand. The separation is a thousand in the Kas and then the other one didn't have one. So Speaker 10: It may be worth looking at the zoning for the, for the,
the application, the original application for Home Depot because, and figure out that we're just so that we don't end up doing away with something that is a thread of which on which, you know, their approval hangs. Speaker 9: So the existing, 'cause we don't really have a definition for it, I don't believe. Yeah, we do not have a definition. But what is in the use table? There's three lines for it. It says warehouse and it's open print, excluding retail warehouse for the storage of any personal property with no sales taking place on the premises.
And open storage yards of lumber, stone, brick, gravel, cement and contractor's equipment or other bulky merchandise which may be sold on the premises that has not been updated since 1996. And then there's a KA or K six, a warehouse of less than 1000 square feet gross floor area K six B warehouse of more than 1000 square foot gross floor area. And the new definition would read a facility engaged in storage and distribution of products, supplies and equipment where no sales to the general public taking place on the premises.
And no outdoor storage of materials or products. Speaker 10: I just want to, I just wanna make sure that what we're not doing in changing this is somehow leaving them as, as kind of a business without a home. Speaker 9: Well why aren't they classified as retail? I Speaker 5: Know they should be Speaker 10: Because it, because how is that zone now Speaker 9: Industrial I think isn't that industrial two, if I Speaker 10: Remember correctly at the time, and again this predates me retail, Speaker 9: But then they Speaker 10: Was only allowed incidentally. And so that in theory is what Home Depot. Oh, was
Speaker 5: Approved as a warehouse with incidental retail. Yes, with Speaker 10: Incidental retail Speaker 9: Opposite. It's also in the RC overlay regional center overlay district. Which does allow for the retail. Speaker 5: Retail, I believe. Yeah. Okay. I thought, Speaker 10: I thought that, I thought that the overlay districts only worked if that use was already in the underlying zoning. Speaker 9: No, it's additional uses in the use overlay to allow for more. Speaker 5: What about self-storage? Speaker 9: We didn't have one of those actually. Speaker 5: So Speaker 10: Actually, you know what I'd say one person, a good person to ask about some of this is Andy, because he's remembered our various go rounds
with Home Depot. And I would, I'd probably encourage you just to check because he may remember the kill your story that was Home Depot in their zoning. Speaker 5: Would self-storage be warehousing? No. What would be, if someone came in and there is water treatment, Speaker 10: The description of warehousing sounded like self-storage. Speaker 9: So. Speaker 5: Hmm. Speaker 10: I just don't want to rush it. Yeah. And I know it feels like 11th hour, but we're talking about it now for something that we're,
we're trying to do very quickly. Yep. And I just don't wanna screw anything up. Speaker 8: There's two. Speaker 9: So one thing that we can do is add a under M three at a new M four bunch, push everything down, commercial mover with associated self-storage facilities and then create a new one for self-storage facility if you want to introduce that use. But, Speaker 10: So what, self-storage. Yeah. But why would warehouses not include that? Speaker 5: I would ask Dave. Okay. If a, if an applicant came in with a self storage proposal,
Speaker 10: Why would you not? Speaker 5: What would it come under in existing existing bylaw? Speaker 10: That'd be interesting. 'cause I, I'd Speaker 5: Assume it would, I think it would fall under your warehouse if it wasn't anything specific. I would say it might be that. Okay. 'cause it's not retail. Speaker 10: Yeah. I mean, and and it is Speaker 5: Storage. Yes. Speaker 10: And it's there specifically for the purpose of storage, which is what a, a warehouse does. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, Dave, Dave will know. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 5: What do we need to do tonight with this? Speaker 9: We go to the fin calm next Thursday, which is our last meeting. However, the accessory dwelling unit, just
that minor modification to align the definition needed to be advertised. So that's not gonna be on until the 26th. So I don't know of, of March. So we won't have that ready for them. But that's, again, that is just to align it with Speaker 10: What definition Speaker 9: With this. But with this, so there's two things that we can do. We can either make a recommendation, we can chunk it out. And, sorry, what, Speaker 10: Which part? The warehouse. Speaker 9: We could re Well we could, if we feel comfortable, we like
I professional office and like Jay, we could just take those two at this time. We could just defer this to the fall town meeting. Let's, Speaker 10: Let's do, let's do the I and J. 'cause I think we're all, we're all kind of good with that, right? So you'll get, get things done that we, you'll feel comfortable and know that, know that it's not gonna screw something up to B Speaker 9: Or we or Yeah. 'cause the only reason why, like K is kind of ready, but like, the only thing is, is if you move K forward, some
of these uses, because they're toge, they're together today in manufacturing and industrial uses, it creates the chaos. If that makes any sense. So Speaker 10: I, I don't think she meant the pun. Oh, Speaker 9: So we could, the ones that I would say let's, if we are gonna chunk it out in, everyone feels comfortable with this is I, which is professional and medical office use. J research and development laboratory and technology use. And then hold on. K leave M as it was with other use, which is accessory uses.
Yeah. Normally incidental. And then we'll deal with current M note K, which is industrial manufacturing in the fall. If that's like not Speaker 5: What else is gonna be in the fall? Speaker 9: The fall. We just have to finish footnotes foot, not footnotes of this. Because we've really actually deleted, done a good job. All of them. Yeah. The only thing that we have to do do is Dimensional ranks. Dimensional ranks. Yeah. So what we have for the fall, like this is what we've got less for our footnotes in this. We need to delete all the reserved, but we didn't wanna delete them because we had the other sections
and with the numbering things, so we just left 'em as reserve. So in the fall for the use regulation schedule we have, we would have K and then we have the two like auto use ones. So that is G and, Sorry, I should know this off the top, top of my head. H which is transportation, communication and utility. So that's all like the wireless towers and stuff like that. G, which is motor vehicle related sales and service uses. So those are the two last sections. And then it would be expected in the spring of 2026 that we would do one more like comprehensive review
to make sure everything points and everything was done correctly. So we have that also in the fall, what we were doing was looking at the footnotes of the dimensional re, sorry, the intensity regulation schedule. Right. And then also looking at the West Natick as the whole corridor. Speaker 10: That one I think we wanna make lots of room for. Speaker 9: Yeah. But Speaker 10: Because we're gonna be kind of teaching people a whole new Speaker 9: Vocabulary. Exactly. But if we are not there yet with M we're already working on M so we actually could get it
put away pretty quickly. So I don't know if the board is how you wanna proceed or we can just wait on the whole thing. It, it's, we're not, there's no pressure on this. It was more of we've got momentum, we've been doing this, we were taking a chunk. But like I said, we could, if you would like to, we could just move forward with IJ and current and other use. It's up to the board. Speaker 5: And I'm not a ton of any member. So I mean,
I'm fine with that proposal. And the warrant article wasn't specific to all of this. We could still fit Speaker 9: It. It was it. I think we did address, I can pull it up, but there's nothing saying that. We have to bring it all forward. We can, the motion is where you would, and we would explain just it. This portion wasn't ready, these were it, it was a larger grab because we, we've only been doing two sections at a time. Speaker 5: Okay. So motion for recommendation on to favorable action. What are we doing? Favorable action on Yes. This part.
Speaker 10: Recommend, recommend favorable action on the subject matter. Speaker 9: Yep. IJ and M as amended. Yes. Speaker 10: And M Okay. Speaker 9: No, no K and and the associate associated definitions. Speaker 5: What she said. That's my motion. We Speaker 1: Great. Okay. Your motion made. Second, second. Second. All those in favor? Speaker 5: Aye. I don't, I'll vote.
Speaker 1: Aye. Aye. Do I even have a vote? Okay, Charles, well he Speaker 5: Is standing in for Andy. Can you vote? Speaker 1: No, that's why I left. It's not a special pair of it. Okay, that's fine. And then next I was gonna show you next, no, not even next week, it's Is that after the UX weeks? It's after. Okay. Next meeting. All right. Review and discuss 9 27 transportation project. The other side has a Speaker 5: Quick update on that if you would like. Speaker 1: There was a, I listened to it and it's the first time quite a, quite a discussion on it
as far as it seemed as though, the last thing I recall hearing was we were trying to decide on a letter to write to someone. Speaker 5: Yeah. So the select board took this up last week at their meeting and they are moving forward with writing letters to the Mepa office and to mass DOT. So I think we are, we're here for support. And the select board is Speaker 1: The Speaker 5: Issue. Speaker 10: They're, they're voting, I think at their next meeting on the letter.
Speaker 1: Now how these two departments being, the letters being written to they, one of them, the.is the one that's, shall we say, violated the, has avoided one particular step that you're saying was, and the other department has what? Speaker 5: They're the ones who didn't enforce it being done. So, so the MEPA office is the environmental review office of the state. Speaker 1: And I go by there and it appears as though there's work going on. There's equipment now there's a fence up in there.
So there're moving along. I'm wondering if we would be well advised to try to get ahead of this even further and maybe write a letter to, I think the, is we discussed the state auditor person who's responsible, the state is responsible for the money that's being spent. What struck me is a hundred thousand, a million dollars. A hundred million dollars. Excuse me. Was that it? A hundred million dollars for the project versus what has been done in Wellesley for ten four.
Even double it. Triple it. There's so much money. Why are we, would it be well, would we be well advised to try to as a town write Speaker 5: That would be the select board's prerogative? I think Peter, I think at this point I agree with their approach. It's, it's, it's to the point. It's to the people who will make that decision. But Speaker 1: Haven't they already made that decision? Speaker 5: Who These Speaker 1: Two Not, not, not they've made the decision to go ahead Speaker 5: With it. No, no, Speaker 10: Because they're being, they're being asked to say,
does this, you know? Right. Kind of from your understanding, does this meet that requirement for Mepa? Speaker 5: That is the question that's gonna be asked. Yes. Speaker 10: And that is the Speaker 1: Question. That is the questions. Speaker 10: And that's, that's basically, you know, and, and you're not asking it of mass DOT right? You're asking it of, of the secretary for energy and environmental Speaker 5: Affairs. So I personally think it's in good hands at the moment. Okay. And let's see what happens. Speaker 1: Those who know far more than I do about this thing and a lot of this, I'm fine. Anybody have have any other questions on it?
We go on to 20 2025 spring annual town meeting warrant review. Speaker 10: Oh, is that for our next meeting or is this the one where we say here are board articles? Yeah. Speaker 9: At this time, I think if anyone has any articles that the board would like to weigh in on this would be Article Speaker 10: 24. Do you guys know what Article 24 is? No. Speaker 5: Tell Speaker 10: Us if I, if I may just It is, the title is Town Council and New bylaw section.
And it says, add a new article to the bylaws consistent with article two, section 11 of the charter, blah blah, to establish a standing committee for and or of town meeting to study review and report on zoning bylaw changes in advance of town meeting action. And to determine the composition method of appointment term powers and duties of such a committee amend article 22 of the bylaws to require and to provide for the appointment of legal counsel with specialized knowledge of zoning
and land use matters to provide the method of appointment qualifications, powers and views of such council, including but not limited to advising the representative town meeting advisory committees of town, meeting the planning board and or town moderator or otherwise act on. Speaker 5: Can we make a motion to of unfavorable action on that? Or Rocky one or the other? Bill Conte. Speaker 10: Anyway, so that, that is being put forward by Mr. Er and Mr. Janet. Speaker 5: And so what would you like to, what would you like to discuss about that? Speaker 10: Well, I think what we wanted, I assume that we're, we're,
we're gonna all do these at our next Speaker 9: Meeting. Yeah. So if you would like someone to come talk with you about this, let know Speaker 5: I would love that. I would love that. Can they please with the, with the proponents of that article, please show up before the planning board. Yep. That would be terrific. Speaker 10: Good one. You could have one, one might have missed it if you want wanted. Speaker 5: Thank you for bringing that up. Speaker 10: Cool. And it was, somebody flagged it from my attention. Speaker 9: I don't remember any other ones that we wanted Speaker 10: Other than the ones that are all ours. Yeah. It's, it's a very, it's a relatively light one. Yeah. That, which is perhaps one reason why that that pops out so simple, including the idea of having their own town council specific to this.
I'm thinking Speaker 5: They have a budget item along with that. Or Speaker 10: What this does is it puts it in the bylaw that it can be established. So it doesn't need to ident for this passage. It doesn't need to identify a funding source, but to, to indicate that there is the capacity to have a, an independent town council. Right. Good times. Cool. Speaker 1: Okay. On that. Yep. Speaker 9: Next agenda item Speaker 1: Planning board meeting committee assignment reports. Yeah. Speaker 9: Awesome. So I think one of the big ones that Terry
and I would report out, and I can let Terry speak where it as well is the community preservation plan is moving forward for a public hearing on April 1st, which will allow the public to comment on the plan. So the CPC has been working quite a bit on collecting information and putting together the plan. And so now we have a draft as to how the procedures will move forward. So April 1st is the first public hearing for that, which will commence the process. And Speaker 10: I, and I would, I welcome anybody's comments on the
plan if you want a copy. And I wanted to take this opportunity to, to give a shout out to Amanda because Olivia had been the staffer kind of shepherding this. She slept and moved to Florida. Amanda has done an astonishing amount of work to wrangle us and kind of get everything moving forward. And I, I can't thank her enough. I really can't. Speaker 9: It's a team effort. Speaker 10: She has stars. Speaker 9: Well, we're lucky. We also have John Marshall
who worked in Arlington and Belmont, who is CPA, so he worked directly with them. And we've had Claire Rundel who's been really helpful at staff side. And then we've also got Lauren and Angela Snell over in, I always mix it up 'cause I always think it's parks and recreation, but it's recreation and parks. Speaker 10: So, Speaker 1: And was Go ahead. No go. Was there anything else? Yes. Speaker 5: Sorry, I knew where you were going. The Memorial school. Yep. Speaker 1: We Speaker 5: Need committee. Yep. Is that something, I mean, they, they need to have somebody appointed from the plaintiff board, is that correct? Speaker 10: Yes. And Peter, you, you as chair, like,
actually I think we all got that memo, but that they had asked the building committee to have an appointee from the planning board and so we did discuss it. Oh, that's right. You watched the video. Speaker 1: I saw you watched. Yeah, I saw it. Yeah, I saw it. So I thought there was an Allen and I was mentioned. Speaker 10: No, just be, it was because you were chair. Oh. So we figured we do want to Oh, okay. Make that call because you're chair. Speaker 1: Oh, alright. Speaker 10: And, and we really didn't want to give Alan time to think about it, but, but we, we, we, Speaker 5: The guy had the youngest kids, Speaker 1: Kids on the board. So Speaker 5: Is that something you wanna do?
Yeah, I think that'll be interesting. Speaker 10: I mean, and in no small part because you have, you have kids right now who, Speaker 5: And that go to Memorial, but No, and I, but I also think it Speaker 3: Probably a good thing and you've got relevant experience and you've got a fresh view coming onto the board and Peter's not gonna be chair at the next meeting either. So Speaker 1: Does that make any difference in It Speaker 3: Doesn't, I'm just, I'm just saying we need a Speaker 5: Motion to appoint him. Speaker 10: I don't, I I think we can do it by consensus. I mean, I, I'm happy to, I will move. But Alan be the, this board's representative to the Memorial
School Building committee. Speaker 3: Second. Speaker 1: Okay. Motion. Aye. Aye. You can probably your I Speaker 3: Myself. Aye, move, adjourn second. Speaker 1: All in favor? Speaker 3: Aye. Aye. Speaker 5: Congratulations. Speaker 3: I wanted to say that one the last time.