Speaker 1: I will call to order this meeting of the Natick Planning Board at 7:02 PM Just to note, this meeting is being recorded. It's being broadcast on Pegasus. To comment or ask a question, use your raise your hand function. If you're on a phone, press star nine. An individual wishing to speak during public speak or during a public hearing must display their first and last name on their screen before their microphone can be unmuted. Make changes in your name as it appears on the screen in Zoom. Click on participants to open the participants menu.
Hover your cursor over your entry and click on more, and click on rename and type in your first and last name. First order of business is public speak. Any individual may raise an issue. You'd think after all the times I recite this, I, I I don't have to read it off the paper. Any individual may raise an issue that is not included on the agenda and it'll be taken under advisement by the board. There'll be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting. The section of the, 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. Do we have anybody showing up online looking to speak? I see Doen here raising their hand to speak. So we'll move forward Development review public hearing. Mr. Meyer and I apologize. Doing street Speaker 2: Accept. Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sorry. You wanna do the street acceptance first? That was second. Speaker 2: I, Speaker 3: Sorry. The street acceptance is, that's August, not tonight. That's for the 13th. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Thank. Sorry. Thank you. We should invite these people
in, right? They're all here for this. Speaker 3: I think a majority, but I think there are, Speaker 1: And we have to open what's needed. The hearing. Speaker 2: We should. Okay, Speaker 1: Sir, Speaker 2: Thanks for being proactive with the other agenda. Speaker 4: On Wednesday, July 30th, 2025 at 7:00 PM the planning board will hold a hybrid meeting in the Edward Gilot meeting room, located at 13 eighth Central Street, Natick, mass. The applicant has applied for special permit for open space residential development and site plan review. Per the Natick zoning bylaws, the applicant proposes to develop an open space cluster, improved with two family dwellings, a new roadway preserved open space and associated site improvements.
The property is located at 52 Everett Street and located within the Residential Sea Commer Zoning District. A copy of the application can be reviewed in the Community Economic Development Office. Virtual meeting will be link will be located on the posted agenda per order. Na planning board. Terry Evans chair, Speaker 1: Thank you very much and welcome to everybody. For those of you who are coming to a, a public hearing for the first time, just a few rules of the road. First, don't think everything is going to happen this evening. This is the start of the process and,
and the end will eventually come, but generally with a complex application, it takes, it takes kind of time and, and attention. The second is, while this meeting was posted for this date, the next meeting, there will not be a, a posting that shows up in the newspaper. You should note that at the end of this specific hearing, we will move to continue the hearing to a date certain that's the date that you need to mark in your calendars and remember to come back for, because once we start, then we, we turn to you.
If you can't remember or lose track, feel free to reach out to community development and ask for the date of continuance. But it's, it's, it's one of the important things that sometimes slip slips by and I don't want anybody to be disappointed. So with, with that, we have, before I say the application, 4 52 Everett Street and the applicants here present, if you would like to introduce yourselves. Sure. And then from that, take it as you will, but give at least a kind of 40 feet in the air view.
Speaker 5: You got it. Green light. Speaker 6: Green light on the, Speaker 5: Great. So I am Ben Stevens of Trask Development. I'm here with Matt Stevens of Trust Development and Mark Kalac with Kalac Associates. Our representation, what I'm probably gonna do is have Mark do a brief introduction of the, the open space filing process and what we're filing under. And then I can do a brief description of the project itself. Speaker 1: Wonderful. And if I can just add one more thing for, for others who are attending, there will be a,
an opportunity for the public to ask questions or make statements that will come after we hear a presentation from the applicant. After a board members give an initial comment or, or statement and then we will come back to the public. Just a quick question, Doug. Y'all need to have you in, in the mic. That's the other thing is that No, no, no one can talk to notes. Speaker 7: You'll be presenting notes of the meeting so that we can look it over. So whatever they present, we'll be able to review and others who aren't here Speaker 1: Can review the document, the
documentation for the application. Yes. And those are actually available? No, the meeting tonight. For the meeting tonight, correct. It's recorded by Natick Pegasus. We will eventually be producing a set of meeting minutes, but I'd encourage you to, to find it on, on Pegasus and you can actually review the entire presentation hearing. It's just handwritten notes though, we'll be given. So no, Speaker 4: They're, we're not, we're not making any handwritten notes? Speaker 1: No. No. Okay. So, alright. So, Mr. Stevens. Mr. Kala?
Speaker 8: Yes. Good evening everyone. Mark Kala. I'm an attorney. My offices are in Westboro, Massachusetts. I am gonna give an overview of the project and then Ben is gonna give a little bit more specifics about what is before you tonight. As the chair mentioned, this is an application for a special permit under the open, open space residential development section of the bylaw in connection with the special permit. We are also asking for the board for site plan approval. So there are two permit applications that are gonna be discussed tonight. As we go through the presentation,
there is a visual presentation set of slides that will be shown on the screen and we'll walk through that as part of our discussion. This is 52 Everett Street. The property comprises 7.12 acres. It is currently improved. There is a single family house with accessory structures. There are actually two residential units currently in use on the property. The proposal before you, excuse Speaker 4: Me one second, I just wanna let people know. You can also see it on the screen back behind you if that screen is the same screen as up there. So if you want to just follow along, you can also look backwards too. Thank you. Excuse
Speaker 1: Me. Thank you. Speaker 8: The proposal before you would be to remove those existing improvements and to construct eight duplexes for a total of 16 units, there would be two unit types. 75% of the units will be less than the 2200 square foot requirement under the, under the bylaw. So in this special permit, as the board knows, and for the information of the audience, there are, there are certain dimensional requirements that, that must be met in this district. And one of them is that 75% of the units can't exceed 2200 square feet in area.
So, so we do that in this presentation. The other aspect that is essential to this district is that there has to be open space and as part of the proposal, the eight building units will be nested close to Everett Street so that the balance of the property can be clipped, kept clear and open. It'll result in 4.2 acres of permanent open space in, in the town with a walking trail that will allow access through the duplex units to the back. The property is served by municipal water and sewer.
There is a affordable unit component. As part of this bylaw, we are proposing a fee in lieu of constructing affordable units on site. That fee will generate a substantial amount of money for the town's affordable housing program. The zone by right would allow single family homes on 40,000 square foot lots. This proposal allows the clustering of units at a greater density toward Everett Street and the planning for the open space parcel. In the back, there are nine visitor parking spaces
that are shown on the plan. As we walk through them, each unit would have two parking spaces for each residential use, and the condominium site will comprise roughly 2.9 acres. So of the 7.12 acre parcel, 4.2 acres will be kept open and roughly three acres will be developed. That's the overview. And with that, I'm gonna have Ben walk us through the slide presentation. Speaker 5: Thank you, mark. As you can see, it's a, a awkwardly configured parcel of land.
The back section, the open space section currently has about one acre of an isolated wetland on it that's been identified. We've worked through the Conservation Commission to confirm the boundaries of that. And just for reference, the due south or so left on the project, the left barrier on the, on the plan you're seeing does abut the back of a house on Elliot Street due East or down on the plan is an adjacent, privately held parcel.
I think it's about eight acres collectively owned by a house with an Everett Street address to the west is the rear of the Windermere Lane lots. So you're seeing the tails of the back, tails of the Windermere Lane lots. And also to the east, there's a house, it's a red house now, I'm sorry, to the west. That notch, well, right behind it is a house that's been renovated and I think it's currently owned in the market. It's a red house. You can kind of see through the woods
and you can also see that house when you drive down our Windermere Lane project. We did spend some time under with, with design review committee, with some of the departments in town. We did float some various concepts, some of which involved utilizing the land in the back, under the open space, but sort of spreading the project out. Quite honestly, we maybe had five or six different options and none of them seemed to make a lot of sense from an, from a infrastructure, from an open space
loss, from tree removal. So what we ended up discussing through the design review meetings was to try to consolidate the de development into the previously disturbed area. So that 2.9 acres out front is currently where you see the buildings, you see the fields, there's a pool, there's four buildings. One building is really large, it's a center barn house in the front house on the right, another barn on the back right of the property. And then another shed on the way back of the property.
Obviously all the buildings, all the pavement, all the impervious, the pool would be removed as part of this project, we think there's only one tree that has to be removed as part of the project, and it's an evergreen tree that's near the pool. So our, our impact is greatly reduced by bringing the whole project forward. And with that, we can end up with a 60% of our project is now open space. So the ma the requirement I believe is 35%. We're at a 60% open space at this point.
And essentially at, we're, we're a little over two acres, two units per acre. So essentially we've, we've dropped down to one unit equals 20,000 square foot. But we are in a zoning that is one, one unit for 40,000 square feet. So essentially we've brought this down into a different zone and then clustered the development out out front in the disturbed area. We recognize it has an impact on, on Everett Street. So we tried to, we did have a couple of layouts that sort of worked with driveways off of Everett Street. That didn't seem to make a lot of sense.
Engineering wasn't a big fan of it because you had multiple car accesses and driveways on Everett Street. So what everyone decided was the best entrance for safety, for sight lines for a but impact was to move a single entrance as far away from the Cottage Street intersection of Everett Street and Cottage Street so that the sight lines would be clear, known would be pulling out one entrance while someone was taking a right on cottage or vice versa. As for that, the units comply with the setback requirements
of the open space development 25 feet minimum from all the abutters, I think we're about, for the most part, 30 feet and 35 feet from the street, they'll all be approximately, the limitation is 2200 square feet, but that does include a garage. So net effective is they're two, they're 2000 square foot units with a single car garage in 12 of the units. If you could go down a little bit to the
Speaker 9: Keep going. Speaker 5: Yeah. And then if we go one more now we did recognize this was a, a change for Cottage Street, I mean for the, for that intersection and for Everett Street. So we've designed houses that are about 31 32 feet tall. They do sit in the ground. And then what we're proposing across the front is about a two and a half to three foot high stone retaining wall like the wall we built along Elliot Street in front of our Windermere Lane project. And we're proposing a full sort of heavy line of
AEs on top of the wall. And if, if you've driven down Elliot Street, those are bigger houses and some of them are walkouts near the street, so they're higher than the AEs, but I don't, not even sure this picture would do justice as to how well it would be screened with the stone wall. There is no sidewalk in front of Everett Street. So we discussed with engineering and DPW taking the, the sidewalk at the bottom of Cottage Street, installing a painting, a crosswalk across Everett, and then continuing the sidewalk in front
of our project so that if anybody was walking down cottage, they, they could walk across Everett onto the sidewalk and then they, they, the public can access the open space so the public can come through and we'll be invited with signage to walk through the project and walk out into the open space in the back. Sorry. We did, I did talk quite a bit with two of my, my direct abutter across the street. They have some concerns, which I respect. We talked a little bit about the screening.
I'm not sure they're here tonight. I talked to 'em this morning. They were on the cape and I did talk to my abutter to the east, who is the, the house right to the left as you look at the project. And we agreed to continue the stone wall up the property line her property line and, and continue the plantings up that property line as well to provide a visual screening for her house. None of the walls or the or or the trees will affect sight lines. We have, we have no sight line issues at all from a infrastructure. We do have sewer sewers there. It's not a problem.
We have water. There's been a suggestion about an ex, there was an, there was a ma an extension when Cottage Street was done, they brought in a new, I think believe it was a 16 inch main and they put a T in at Everett Street with the intention that that 16 inch main would keep going up and down Everett Street. So DPW expressed that one of their concerns or one of their requests might be at a minimum I extend that 16 inch water line up to my main entrance before we do our own water line.
There is gas in the street. I'm not sure we will use gas. The new energy code has come through and it's sort of transitioning the way we're building now where we're doing all electric. But we have no sight lines issues, no sewer issues, no water issues, drainage. The drainage is slightly compromised on Everett Street, which we found out during the windy mirror project. So talking with the bill at engineering, I'm sure he's gonna be looking for a robust drainage system. Fortunately the entire front
of the lot has no groundwater table and beautiful soils. So we have the, we have the capability of it essentially meeting our requirement and exceeding our requirement for drainage just because the system's large enough, but it, it tends to get a little compromised when we have these heavy downpours. So he's gonna want us, I believe to contain more on site a little bit longer. All the utilities will be underground, no electric poles. And like I said, all the units will be market units and we will pay a fee in lie
to the town based upon the formula established in the bylaw. And I think I've covered the highlights and we'll take it from there. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you very much Amanda. Is there anything that you would like to add? You were obviously working as part of both on this project. I know as part of the, just the review committee. Speaker 3: Yeah, just real quick. So the fire department police, DPW or Department of Public Works building Department Conservation Commission have all been reviewing this and continuing to work with the applicant to make sure that the project is in compliance
with their technical requirements. So as of right now, it is in compliance and I think there was just one item with the fire hydrant, if I remember correctly. Just making sure that that was not creating the stump and it was just a continuous, so, Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Board members questions starting in. Andy can I Speaker 4: Start with you? Thank you. Thank you. I don't see any waiver requests. Are there any waivers being requested? Speaker 8: Yes. So based on the bylaw and the calculations of the various air
land areas on the plan, the property would yield 14 units with the 10% bonus without any waivers. We are requesting a waiver to increase the 14 to 16 units. The benefit of that is getting more housing on the site, obviously, but also additional funding into the affordable housing trust. Those additional units push us up to, I believe, paying for three units as opposed to just two. So there, there is a waiver as part of this application for density. Speaker 4: Okay. This cluster bylaw
that we're using has evolved over the past generation. Really when I first joined the board, we had one version of it. We've consolidated those, we have subsequently improved the process for clusters. And here we are, we have, we have an application that is looking for one waiver. The things I look for in a development of this type would be, and these are traditionally questions that we've asked in the past that have challenged developers, but here we are open space, there's a considerable amount, a walking trail.
You probably knew that question was coming. So that's why that's probably there an affordability component. The idea of a cluster, which is one way to create not only a contribution to the affordable housing trust fund, but also housing units have be less expensive than their single family counterparts. You cross the way. So there, there's a lot here that we have had to fight for in the past that's already being offered. So I consider that to be progress and I think it is a represent representative of a good cluster bylaw that we have come to
adopt in our town, which is a good thing. Specifically the things I, I do like are, are the Stonewall. I think that's a nice touch. But I do have a couple comments of things I'd like to see if we might talk about. One is the Arbor, ie. I'm, I'm sure we can do better. I'm sure that there's better landscaping options than, than Arbor, ie. I'm speaking for former member Glen Glader on that one. The ghost of Glen Ggl. The second thing is on the view that says view from Cottage Street. If we could flip to that one. Yeah, that one.
I think it's, and I don't know if these are, you know, exact representations of what the units will look like, but I do think it's very important that the two units that are gonna be on co on Everett facing Everett, like for example, the one in the left. That, that, that face is the side of the building, but it's gonna be the front of the project. I think that has to have a very much more forward facing design. Almost looked like the front of the building. Nobody's gonna wanna look at a big blank wall like that. So we, so there are two units that would be facing
Everett Street and I think it's really important that they have a very homelike architectural appearance so that it, it blends much more into the character. The rest, you know, the, the, the utilities are underground. There's a lot here that I would have asked for in years past to try to improve the project and they're already being offered. So I, I consider that to be a, a good, a good starting position. And I, I, I, I'll think a little bit for myself about the waiver, you know, whether three affordable unit payments offsets, two more units that are kind of, I think will be sort
of buried in the project. I, I'm not, I'm not sure it'll be easy to notice two additional units on this. So the waiver might be something that, that I would personally support. But I wanna think about that a little bit more. But thank you. Okay, Speaker 10: Peter, thank you. I think the presentation was quite complete at this point. I, looking at the, this particular elevation, I totally agree with Andy and the appearance of the elevation that's facing Everett. I happen to live in a small complex that has a unit right on West Central and the rest is off West Central.
But that particular elevation definitely fits. I don't really have anything specific. I'm just looking forward to further development. Speaker 11: Okay, thank you Doug. Yeah, thanks. So I mean I was, we had a meeting on this with the dr was it the Dr T meeting? It was a working group. Working group, yeah. So I was part of that working group meeting initially and everything that was presented tonight is totally consistent with, with that meeting. So yeah, thanks for the presentation. I do have a few questions probably coming off a little bit. What Andy was talking about, some clarifying things as well. So just going down the list, no particular order
for sale owner occupied units correct. Speaker 8: Sale? Yes. Speaker 11: Yep. So Condominiumized, yes or yes. Okay. With the HOA and all the Speaker 8: Stuff BF Condominium association and I think past practice has been that the board wants to review those documents and we would, we would certainly honor that. Speaker 11: Okay, great. In the type of units, give us sort of a comparison with like Graystone or Windermere or even, what's the project in Sherburne, kind of going south towards the center
of Sherburn on the right hand side is give us a feel for what this is. From a design Speaker 5: Perspective, they're not as well the 2200 square foot units. The, the units on wayside, for example, are bigger. They're probably bigger than the two, the two duplex that, that are the larger units in this project. So comparison, everything on Wayside and Graystone, even the townhouses in Graystone were, were bigger. We built, we have some units on Malden
and Milk Street right now for sale. That is a lot closer. Conceptually they are duplexes, they're, they're even bigger than this, but they're at least sort of the one car or one slightly oversized garage. If you just go up union go up Malden milk, you can't miss it. There's six new units right there. The project on North Main Street, Sherburne, those were first floor masters. They were a little bit bigger because they were first floor masters and they had two car garages. So they were, they were not duplexes. They were singles. Yep. Cottagey nice. And they, I believe probably topped out around 2,600
plus the garages. Okay. But they were first floor masters, so. Okay, Speaker 11: Thank you. The stone. So the stone retaining wall. Why the need for a retaining wall when you're not just, why can't you just come up to grade? Speaker 5: It's, it's not really a retaining wall, it's, it's, it's a, it's more decorative than anything else. Speaker 11: So there's no, there's no fill behind that face of the wall. Speaker 5: Yeah. Right now there's no sidewalk. So essentially we're coming off the street, six inches up for a sidewalk, three feet for a wall, a planting berm. Watch it mark it goes back down. Speaker 11: Okay. So Speaker 5: It's, so it's just to elevate the trees.
Speaker 11: So the first, the finished floor of that closest building is great. It's not sitting on top of Speaker 5: A mile Speaker 11: A fill. Speaker 5: It's, it's a, it, it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't look like that. But I'd have to get the, Speaker 11: I Speaker 5: Think there is a little bit of fill, 'cause it looks like you're at about elevation 1 74, at least that unit that is closest to the street and everywhere around it. 1 74 and then I think 1 74 at the top of the retaining wall. But the road's at about Everett street's at about 1 71. Right. And I think your road is
1 72 in the middle of the driveway. 1 73. So looks like you guys are up a little bit higher. Slightly higher, but the, the lawn itself will probably, the first floor might be that elevation, but the top of concrete would be a foot lower than that. Yeah. Yeah. And the, the ground would be a foot lower than that. Okay. So there is a slight ride. The property does rise to the back. You, if you have the grading plan there, you'll see it kind of rises to the back Speaker 11: From, from the street edge up? Correct. Okay. Speaker 5: The tree line in the back is sort of the, it it, it's almost a crest of a hill
then it starts to go the other direction. And quite interesting. That's where the soils change. The land in the back is more the, I'm gonna say not so good soils that we had at wind air, the land in the front transition to gravel and now we have much better drainage options in it. Speaker 11: So And is that where, so is that where your drainage is gonna go? You have infiltration Speaker 5: Right behind the where and this actually, and by mounting up a little bit, it gives us even more volume potential on the drainage. Yep. Because we can stack the system. If we're gonna raise another foot or two, we can then get a little bit deeper calex
or you know, switch to a concrete structure for more volume, that sort of thing. Speaker 11: Yeah, there's a tension between that I guess. I mean, I don't know. I would encourage you to sort of look to keep the first floor of that building closer to the grade of Everett Street so it's not popping up. I don't know if you can try to work that a little bit better. I think that would be a good, a good exercise. And just a little bit more about the storm water system itself. Can you just kind of describe it overall? What, what are you that it's all, it's all infiltration. Is any outlets anywhere to back wetlands or?
Speaker 5: No, the, the rear wetland is actually five feet higher than this elevation. So it's a perched going the other direction. But out front we, we didn't want to do an open base and just for looks and aesthetics and maintenance. So, and since we found the gravel soils out front, it'll be a Caltech system. So whether it's a, whether it's the plastic Caltech system, which I think probably maxes out about two and a half to three feet high depth of a system. Or if we want a bigger, deeper system, we can go to the concrete structures 'cause they're structural,
but it'll all be buried and it's all, you know, it's very similar to what we do just about everywhere. It's just larger systems than we are, than what we're doing for houses these days. And we've done 'em in subdivisions and other towns and this drainage would be part of the HOA. So the maintenance of it is HOA, the cleaning of the catch basin is HOA, the plowing of the road. This is all not HOA but condominium association from the first drive in, if you will. Yep. Okay. So Speaker 11: Thank you. And then I guess, yeah, last question, last comment.
I'd echo Andy's Arbor, Heidi and Glen, the ghost of Glen hanging in this room. Yeah, I think we can do better than a row of upper buddies. So looking forward to seeing what that might look like. Okay, thank you Allen. Speaker 5: I think more, some clarification probably. So you mentioned that 12 of the units are gonna be about 2200 square feet. How about those other four units? How big are those gonna be? They're about 2,700 right now. Okay. Then you mentioned that the top is gonna be about 31 feet high. Is that from, that's from the ground around it. Right. So that's assuming about a one foot difference
between ele ground elevation and first floor concrete. Now obviously some might be a little more, some might be a little, well they can't be more than 35 i I could check and I can provide the elevation of that front building both top of ridge, top of porch top. So we can sort of get a better handle on that. Okay. Depending on where the grades end up. So mostly because just even taking that, sorry for hitting that since we're already talking about it being a three feet higher than Everett Street. And then if we're gonna kind of go higher, you know that I think having, knowing that elevation might be important,
especially I think for those units close to Everett Street. This might be a question I noticed on the, yeah, this might be more of a question for you, but when we went into the files under traffic study, it just had a link to the site plan. Do they have to submit a traffic study for this? I mean it's small enough that I'm not that bottom. I don't think they need to chew on this one. Okay. I just noticed that under that link it had the same site plans walking path. It shows at least on the front part that it's gravel path, at least going through the circular. And then when it goes to the back, what is it gonna be when it goes to the other areas?
Is it just gonna be worn, whatever, or is that gonna be gravel or, well, like we did at Graystone, we set up the cutting of the path through the meadow. There's a meadow back there. Okay. A nice meadow under this project or the previous one? Pre both. Okay. This project, the backfield is a meadow. Okay. The owners, the collusion family sort of kept, maintained it every two or three years. So it's sort of a meadow. The, the wetland is more of a wet meadow. It's not a wetland system per se, it's just a grassy area
that holds water. And even that was being cut, which, and similar to that at the Graystone project it was the same thing. It was an open field with a wet meadow wetland. And we work with the conservation to put that on. The condominium association maintains that. So once a month, or I think I had it over there, I have it twice a twice a month in the summer they take the mower and they cut the, they, they reset the trail. Okay. And once a year we haven't cut the whole field
and that's the same condition here. So the field doesn't become a, you know, invasive half grown up, not attractive area if you will. And that's what we're doing at, that's the same thing we're doing at Greystone. Okay, thanks. And my last question was just as far as the sidewalk looks like you have it, you mentioned that you're having it to the new crosswalk. Yeah. But then it ends there. Have there been any discussions with the town DPW or town engineer about if there might ever be a chance? I get a sidewalk along Everett Street. I just don't wanna, I, yeah, I, we did talk
with the town engineer. He didn't know of a back desire or schedule or some future plan to do it. I did mention that we have, there's three parcels between four parcels between this project and my Windermere project where we have a sidewalk. And he thought that might be something Taiwan to explore. Explore. But he was, he's like, we're not gonna do it if that's all we're gonna do for the next 50 years. So is there ever an intention to get a sidewalk on Everett then maybe there'd be some discussion about that.
And I said, you have, you do have some property. I think Everett is only a 40 foot right away and it kind of slips in and out of the right of way several places as we found on wind tomere. So I said you do have a, at least one property owner that has very large pine trees and I think you don't own, you know, I, the sidewalk would have to be on his property because you don't own enough on the edge of the road because they belied the road too much. So, and I said, I'm happy to look into it. I told my engineers, when you're out there, locate everything. So we know what the facts are,
but we do have multiple private owners that we'd have to, it'd have to be thought about. Okay. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 1: And yes, I think I was the, at least one of the board members with Windermere who made the point about trying to get a sidewalk on Everett Street because it is, it is a very natural place where people can walk for the sake of connectivity. People who are coming up, who, who want to walk up Cottage Street and so forth. And so I'd be interested in seeing as much as can be
possible to, to put in sidewalk, sidewalk or possibly other pedestrian, you know, paths that are, are not formal sidewalks. I understand what you're saying about not being able to have a sidewalk every, everywhere. One of the things that I have learned in my thousands of years on the planning board is that there's always time. If you, if you get 20 feet of sidewalk here, it puts you 20 feet closer to, to the next project. And I, I think that is something we aspire to,
especially because walkability is becoming more and more desirable. So I would, I I'm not gonna say anything else about Arborvitaes because I think we've spoken it except to say that when you got to that point of the presentation, I I did, I I was, it was a Glenn g Glader moment. So it's an opportunity to do something that is, has some, at least echo of a New England environment as opposed to large bottle brushes or kind of the, the what, what they are,
sorry, state of the current project. Do you know when, and in part I'm thinking of it in terms of sidewalks that are being proposed for Everett Street from the current project. What's the schedule for that, for that project? Speaker 5: For Windermere? Yes. I think all the Everett Street sidewalks are done. There was, are you talking about around the, the new entrance there with the main sidewalk on the main roadway is one third done by the fall would probably be 85% done Speaker 1: By this fall.
By the, yeah. Okay. So we'll keep you, we'll hold you to that. The other, we talked a little bit about trail. What is the proximity of other dedicated open space from other parcels, not necessarily your own to this project Speaker 5: Right now? There is, there is no, between that section of Everett and Elliot, other than my neighbor, my, my ne fieldstone, the one on the sherburn line field, I think it's Fieldstone. They have a large open space, but it's not public access.
My understanding that's, that's on the west side of the Windermere project. But in that section of, between Everett and Elliot, there is not any open space. There is a developable parcel that the owner doesn't want to sell that does have access to both Everett and El Everett and Elliot. Presumably if that parcel was ever developed in the future, there would be a linkage that would come from our project or come from Elliot Street, Everett Street and,
and come out at Elliot Street. And at that point you're two households away from the Audubon. So you're, you're, you're close enough to start thinking about connecting the Audubon to the center of the town for whatever might be. So Speaker 1: Oh, thank, thank you. I'll note, and I understand that the point that there may not be public access to open space, it's still open space. It, it is for, for some of the four-legged visitors who don't need permission to cross.
And I think so, so I'll, I would not underestimate the value of that sort of proximity. I was disappointed with that. The idea of having the affordable housing as funding into the affordable housing trust in part, and I mean it as no disrespect to, to my colleagues on the affordable housing trust, that I feel that there's an urgency in in, in developing units and securing units and, and we have an obligation in the calculation of
affordable housing that doesn't look at what money we may be accumulating to in, in the future. Secure open space or, or secure affordable housing. It's actually trying to, to get that happen is a reality. So I, I'd like to keep that, that discussion going. Feelings as to why, why you strongly present the, for for the fund. Just simply for the funds. Speaker 5: Yes. Built two or 300 units of 40 B housing and it is a constant struggle. And it was a constant struggle when
the value an affordable unit was 300,000 and the value of a market unit was 650,000. And we had a, we had a prorated condo fee and we had issues and now we're talking about a unit that's 300,000 in a unit that's $1.2 million and we're not talking about a big project. So you don't have 30 people to spread a condo fee out. You have 12, 14, 16 people and these condo fees can quickly get up to a thousand, $1,200 a month. So it, it just, we found it's,
it's economically very difficult in a project like this. If these were, these were in downtown or they were near downtown or they were smaller units at a different price point, the math changes completely. But here you're talking about a huge delta between a market unit and a and a, an affordable unit, Speaker 1: But it kicks the can down the road. Speaker 5: It does. I understand that. So, and you know, I I'm not quite sure what the solution is. I, I think there's solutions that no one wants to listen to me. Well, no. Speaker 1: If Speaker 5: You, Speaker 1: If if, if you had told me that the extra two units
that you're, you're seeking to incorporate contributed directly to the affordable housing, I'd say well that's a great opportunity and if it doesn't then I don't see it as a great opportunity. Understood. So I I, I kind of feel that that link to use this as a mechanism for securing affordable housing. Other, other than that simply making more housing, period. Thank you. It is, it is useful for our purposes.
Affordable housing is, is a greater priority and I, and I feel strongly that we have to take that forward. So, and I think that is all for me. Peter, you said you had something else. Couple Speaker 10: Else quick things. I understand from what was said that no traffic study has been done. Typically we found project of this nature, I think it would be who you to take a look at a traffic study. There's quite a few homes there and there to just to totally ignore what's going
to come out on, on the street. So in terms of sight line, you're going to talk about a stone wall and shrubs and bushes. I think it might be a little problematic. Maybe it's gonna be a different sight line. You get all the landscaping in the wall and such than it is right now. So it might, you know, to look at that. Also. Is there any, have you looked at any need for or spoken with anybody at the town transportation stop? Some kind of either public and or student or something like that for a pickup.
But there's probably gonna be a few children in there too. So I think that would be something to include and where that might be located. That's it. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay, so with kind of this, this first run from this board, I'm happy to Yes. Speaker 11: Where do we stand with comments from DPW Fire? What are those coming Speaker 3: In? So we do have comments from Health DP or fire, we are waiting on DPW conservation. So those the and Oh the ones,
because usually sustainability doesn't really weigh in. Speaker 1: Yeah, they'll be pretty critical for the ones, the ones that were, that are still pending are probably some of most Speaker 10: Critical. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 10: There was no, you didn't mention police there. Speaker 3: Police did, I believe provide a comment and they had no comment. Speaker 10: They've already submitted or you hit that on your list to do Speaker 1: I think. No, I think Amanda Speaker 10: I didn't hear that. Speaker 3: I don't believe they had a comment. Speaker 5: He was at that other, that last meeting. Lieutenant Loza I believe was, Speaker 11: We only have the board of health comments here, Speaker 5: So, so I I he might have just verbal comments, not written.
Speaker 3: There should be two other comments. Oh, one from the fire department with the turning radius, which they already had. And then the other one was, I thought the police. I see it. So. Speaker 1: Alright. And at at this point we will turn to hear questions and comments from members of the public. What I'll try to do is start from one side and sweep across to the other at identifying you as, as much as I can in, in order, when you speak two things you need to state your name and address for the record.
And I will ask that if someone, by, by the time I get to this side of the room there are many questions that have already been asked and I'd ask not to necessarily simply repeat the question but if, you know, put something kind of into the mix that is, that is new or that has not been covered by previous speakers, that is really helpful for us. So, so I will say if you, if you wanna be, if you want to raise hands and I'll start over here Tuck and I'll work my way across Tuck. Yes.
Speaker 3: And then if you could announce if they are online, if they could have their full name. Speaker 1: I Speaker 3: Did. You did Just a second ago. Yes, I Speaker 1: Said name and street address. Speaker 3: Okay. Just a reminder Speaker 1: We just said that. Oh okay. Speaker 3: Okay. I was trying to make sure That's Speaker 1: Okay. Yes, Speaker 5: Welcome. But make sure you also speak into the microphone because otherwise yes Pegasus will come out and, Speaker 12: Hi, I'm Michelle Freeman, I'm here with my father Richard Graham 40 Everett Street. I'm 18 Jefferson Street. So I have a lot of things to say
'cause I was here back when we were talking about the whole wind mirror thing and artists coming in. So back then our big concern as the abutters was that we are changing single family residential or they're looking to change the one part of Natick that is currently single family residential. Right. It's the only part of Natick that is still single family residential. So that was part of our argument when we were trying to, you know, fight artists coming in and putting in assisted living. Right. Our whole thing was like we just wanted houses built
on the flag property where Windy Lowe was and that's what TR came in and did. But I do feel like now we're getting duped, they're now coming in looking at it in a budding property talking about my father's property that they might be able to develop in the future. Which has never been something that he said he would do. They come to my house asking me to try to convince him to sell the property. So that's not okay you're talking about 16 units on seven acres. There's only 2.9 acres that they're talking about. They're actually gonna put this unit on
because it's all wetland. That's all that they can actually develop. You're putting 16 units on less than what my father's house is currently sitting on. Right. Currently on that property there is a house, a pool, a garage and an outhouse and you're gonna put 16 units there. There is a reason why they wanna put that stone wall. It's because it's a dangerous intersection. People don't stop, they have to have a flashing stop sign. Abe had to put large boulders to prevent people from driving onto his yard and then people have missed those boulders hit them
and also gone into the neighbor's yard that he was talking about taking out the mailbox, hitting a tree, that kind of thing. It's a dangerous intersection that's why you need a stone wall. There is no grade thing going on that that, that's ridiculous. Sorry. So talking about drainage, there is no sidewalk talking about drainage. They had an issue with drainage over at windier. They had to re redo that 'cause that was affecting the abutters. So you know they don't really have a plan right now. Their plan for the house that they built across the street from me
where they put in a duplex was to have it go into the underground system though that feeds Doug Pond, which then floods my yard. So that was their backup. So I had to go to DPW to have them cap the drain in my yard because of what they did to build their house regardless of the neighbors. So I'm not confident whatever their drainage system that they're proposing is not going to affect the neighbors. So like this is personal for me on two different levels 'cause I've experienced what they've built and now they're looking at another property
that my family is involved with. That being said, the house that they built, I'm friends with the people that live there. They've had to replace cabinets. They've only been there for four years. They've had to replace cabinets, water heater. They currently don't have any air conditioning, they don't have a basement because of the drainage issue that was known when they built it. And so their solution was to feed it into the underground pagan brook system, which then feeds my yard. So it's not quality that they're building, we are looking at single family residential. That is what we want to stay putting in this development
that they're talking about is not good for the neighbors. This is, Speaker 13: That's the current Speaker 12: Plan Speaker 14: Of that whole yellow area is all south. Speaker 12: It's all south natick. Correct. And then where is the parking for the walking trail currently? There's no trespassing signs. So where are we supposed to go to these walking trails that they have that we're not allowed to access. Where's the parking gonna be for that Speaker 1: Mean on wind mirror? Yeah, where the ones on wind. Speaker 12: But like where Graystone? No like you're talking about wind mirror, like they like this whole thing is supposed to be like you,
you only more than half of it is supposed to be open space and like, like you said, yeah my father has deer in his backyard. You have all of nature back there. That is open space. Which he's maintaining for that purpose. Right? Not for the community. Just for open space. So currently there's no trespassing like that and this has been going on for five years and they still haven't finished that project. We still have yet to see what that's going to look like. You know with the affordable housing, like how many of those units are going to be affordable. You just build Graystone. We're building Stonegate,
we have this thing on Union Street, the thing next to U to a casinos. We keep building the stuff, the MBTA rules and stuff of having affordable housing. How is South Natick affordable for anybody? It's not. So what do, like what is this gonna end up being? The traffic study. You need a traffic study. I am on Natick moms group. I'm on Natick Talks, I'm on Natick Community group. When they started doing the wind mirror project, the number of people that were complaining about the traffic going down ever street and that wasn't even supposed to be access from Everett Street, it was supposed to be access from Elliot Street and this is gonna be a hundred percent on Everett Street.
Let's talk about what that's gonna do to Everett and cottage and already the traffic going down that street, they're coming down that at 40 miles an hour and then cutting onto onto Cottage Street. Like you need to do a traffic study. Let's be honest to the neighbors, you owe it to us. This is not good for the neighborhood. You know the property that Abe is selling, you could probably put two, three houses on there and be fine with it and it's gonna be okay. But putting 16 units, that's not good for the neighborhood. That's not what your neighbors want. And again, I'm speaking from, I've been here a number
of nights fighting the artist thing. I also am a a butter to a current trash home and see what they produce. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you very much. Speaker 12: It's not good. Speaker 1: Thank you. Alright, next coming across. Yes sir. And then are you going to after him there's a couple of us. Okay. And just again name and address please. Speaker 15: Elliot Zackham. 45 Everett Street. I would be kitty corner from the proposed development at the beginning.
Theresa, you made the comment about folks newer to the meeting here. I'm one of them. I just wanna articulate and kind of expand on Michelle's point about the lack of a debate that I feel that the public's been given and invited into about the opportunity to look at potential single family home solutions versus multifamily. I feel as though I'm, I'm stepping into this room, I'm seeing the dynamics of the board and then the developer and there seems like there's a lot of familiarity here
and it feels like you all are trying to get to a yes on this development without us having been part of the discussion and just sitting here and observing. That doesn't really feel good as a resident. Speaker 1: If I could just stop and I just wanna say we work very hard for this not to be an adversarial relationship, but kind of cozy trying to do certain things without public participation is the farthest thing I can imagine this board doing. Okay. I, I appreciate how it appears but I just, I feel pretty strenuously that I know
what we put into trying to, trying to kind of rattle things and kick tires. Okay. And to understand. Speaker 15: Secondly, the commentary around affordable housing felt purely performative. If you want affordable housing in this town, I don't think that you engage with a developer like Trask in a specific site like the one in South Natick. That was probably the one. The one thing that the gentleman here said that I agreed with is that the dollars and cents don't make sense there. If we're looking for affordable housing, we should be looking and trying to invite other developers and building it closer to to town.
That just feels like that was a non-starter. Those are kind of my two main comments and perspectives having attended the meeting here today. Okay. Speaker 1: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yes. And next is there a next speaker? And we do have one on line, Speaker 7: So I got a card. Speaker 1: Sorry. Hello? Name, name and street address please. Oh Speaker 7: Name. Catherine Dylan. 9 35 Everett Street. Anyway, first time I heard about this whole thing happening, this a little card in the mail. So to know that there was some kind of meetings
before this that I was not invited to. I mean, or that you guys seem like again, like the former gentleman said No this Speaker 1: Is, this is the opening hearing. I, I promise then Speaker 7: Like you said, there seems to like you guys have already discussed it without no. No. Okay. Alright, well fricking group, I'm all four. There's Speaker 1: No working group Speaker 7: For health Natick or where we are in Natick open space. Where's the open space? Where's the, where's the preservation committee? Like where are we preserving open space? I don't get it. Where's the traffic study? Where's the environmental study? I've seen turtles. How are you gonna like get the turtles
to cross the road When they do do that? I see them squished on the road as it is and there are special species like the box turtle that I have seen on crossing over over there that I don't know that you're actually allowed to build when they're trying to like cross the road. I don't know. Anyway, is there any kind of, what about the children that will occupy this space? Where's the space for the buses? If there is gonna be a space? Alright, basically, lemme see from my notes here. You have 16, you wanna go from 14 to 16 units. So let's make it even more densely packed. The open space that you talk about is mostly mushy land.
So why, how are we supposed to walk on the mush land? And then I see that there was a study done by the conservation committee. Where are those notes presented here? I don't see any notes on the conservation. This is the, this is the, has there been environmental? This is the opening hearing. Okay. There are any number of things that will be presented going forward. Okay, so environmental study. What about the the animals, the box turtles, the coyotes, the deer and all that open space that's currently, how do they get from the Charles River
where they drink a lot of their water all the way up and into my backyard where they are constantly nipping my tulips. Anyway, I guess I'm kind of just upset with the whole idea that we'd have this, we have this I bought into 30 years ago into a neighborhood where it was open space. You know, going from densely packed Newton to this beautiful, you know, open space. And everywhere I go a house gets raised and a big huge mansion McMansion gets built up.
They had the beautiful little house on Cottage Street. They squished it down and they made the whole Graystone ugly thing. Now we also have Windermere from Wendy Lowe's where like again the deer used to go traipsing through and that's now all that beautiful nice houses I guess. But again, they didn't decide to use Windermere as their place to put a whole bunch of little cluster housing. They decide to plop it at the end of Cottage Street where I've seen cars go and into those that you know, hit the rocks and go over
and plow down stuff. So definitely a traffic study's in order. I didn't have my notes from what you guys said too much, but I mean like all this for the glory of an almighty dollar as far as I can see. 'cause oh we can get 16 units and charge a million dollars a unit. Oh we'll give a little bit to the poor people that need to, the funding for affordable housing. My daughter here is a single mom, can't even buy a Natick, you know? I dunno. But anyway, you know, and oh, wouldn't that be nice if you're gonna build this 14 units or 16 units? Could she afford to go there, be across the street from me?
No way. I bet Jeff. I just wanna know how much do you Mr. Trask think you're gonna make from this deal? And how much are you willing to like give back to the community? Are you gonna be putting up extra houses? I mean extra things from memorial school if the children go there? Are we, how are you doing dealing with that? You getting more people, more for the firemen, more houses now? Is that the fire department gonna be able to, again, every time you build another one of these winder mirrors another one of the graystones, another one now of potentially cluster
housing right next to us. How does a fire department like able to get, if there's a fire at Windermere, is there a fire at at anywhere? Are they gonna be able to get there in time? We built a whole new fire station on the other side of town to accommodate all those huge buildings that we have in Natick. Now for the apartment buildings that are on that side of the, of the city or no city was still a town. That's right. I moved from a city to a town. I guess these waivers again, that was I. So the waiver for the, from 14 to 16 that I'm kind of very much against that if you have to do that at all.
But you have, again, the other thing I had kind of an idea about was currently where I am, if I wanted to expand on my house, it's a tiny little house. I have to have 30 feet behind me and 25 feet to my side yard. If you are in a butter to this current property, are you gonna have that same cushion? And then let's dollars six. How many 40. So you probably could get like three houses on the current space. I mean how can you give us that number? Like if it wasn't gonna be 16 units on,
one little on this space, how many actual houses could you, single family homes, could you fit? And like just the look of going down the street, it's all single family homes and this open space and whatever happened to like the preservation of open space. I know that's a thing. Again, I'm gonna mention Newton, but I'm also paying a preservation tax and you know that home is like old, the one that's there. Like we keep losing all like there was another pretty one across from where they made the trash thing, they squashed it down and now we've got another big house. But there's none of the beauty
of an old house around anymore. I dunno. I'll let you go along Caitlin. You're the next I guess. Okay, thank you. Speaker 16: Sorry. Sorry. Speaker 7: I think all of us, my name Speaker 17: Is Caitlyn Na. I live at 35 ever street, grew up in Natick, lived here 30 years. So I think we all kind of echo the same concerns with, you know, single family versus opening up into these, you know, condo style units. It's kind of just like a leeway. So when we do one then we say, well what's the next one? You know, is it gonna be the next house down the street?
You know, Everett Street is actually a connecting road between 16 and 27, which is this traffic study concern. I think we all echo that, especially we've heard it from many people, but people do go extremely fast as we've all seen. I have a 4-year-old who doesn't always listen great. And you know, it's very dangerous. That road can be. So I can agree with what you've said about like the sidewalks and safe places. So I think, you know, traffic itself, like how many more houses, I mean how many more cars are you gonna have per unit
that increase That? And echoing back to like what you said for the schools is this zone, it would still be for memorial, I'm guessing. I am not a hundred percent sure. We wouldn't know yet. Speaker 1: Can't Speaker 17: Tell you. No, not yet. Okay. Just because of all the Speaker 4: Other, we also can't make any decisions. There's, there's a fair housing federal law that prevents us from making any decisions about these things with regard to children or families that are gonna move in because it's considered discriminatory. So we, we can't, we can't really take into our calculation about potential number of kids.
That is strictly for Ben for us to talk about Speaker 17: That. Really? Yeah, I think it's just a concern because of wind mirror. We have Graystone, we have that new in Auburn Street by WA in South Natick as well. They're trying to develop that. So all of the, my concern is, you know, try, I know that the overall number of children in Natick public schools has gone down significantly. But we're, if we're bringing all these new housing, then what would be, you know, the busting situation. I'm sure that's something we're all gonna think about later on. But you know, Speaker 1: And again to Mr. Meyer's point, there are limits as to what,
Speaker 17: To what you can think about in the future, Speaker 1: The kind of children. But it's Speaker 17: Just a concern in the back of our heads, you know what I mean? One of the things you have to think about, 'cause memorial's also the oldest school and I believe the next one to be rebuilt but hasn't been rebuilt yet. So also was kind of upsetting when I heard about the affordable housing, how that would be their two extra units. Like that kind of seems like a slap in the face considering if you look at their Graystone building, I don't, I'm not even sure the total number of units, someone else can correct me, but there's a lot of houses and a lot of side-by-side communities and all they put in was three, three housing
that three houses that you know, were for affordable homes. That kind of is disappointing for such a large area of land. And now you're trying to squeeze us in a very, very small area of land. More affordable housing and changing the overall scenery. This is from the Natick Town website right here. This is like South Natick and where we're talking about right now. So all of this land is single family houses. The rest of this is all developed. So that's what our friends, the grams were talking about is that all of this land is not, is all single family homes.
So what else? I didn't, do you not have the comments from fire and police or like you haven't re released official statements from them? Like what was the Speaker 1: They have, they have not submitted them yet. Like Speaker 17: An official comment. Okay. Then there is, oh can we read those? Speaker 3: Yeah, they're online. They're in the OpenGov portal. And then you also have, oh, Speaker 1: The one packet. Oh, the ones that we have gotten, Speaker 3: Yeah, from the board of health, fire and Police. We have not received it from DPW conservation. Speaker 1: Okay, Speaker 17: Okay. Yeah. So then my next question would be, I, I kind of read some
of the stuff like bringing CPA in on this. I know the house was built in, I believe in 1894. So that there's, you know, there's that aspect to things also we were talking about, you know, the green open space. A lot of that, you know, echoing is marshland and habitats for our, you know, animals and our furry friends. We've taken out that in Graystone, which is less than a mile away, taken that out in wind mirror, less than a mile away. And if you think about it, less than a mile away is the Audubon. So where are these animals going to have like a safe space to cross, which we've talked about.
We've actually seen an increase in number of like coyotes and other animals in the area because they just have nowhere to go. It's, it's hard 'cause you know, you're trying to keep your children and your animals safe as well. And we wanna preserve those kinds of communities, like that aspect of our communities, I should say. Especially where we're building up a lot of other aspects of our town. And I know that Everett Street is actually half in Sherburne, their minimum build requirement is one acre. So if you think about that, I think he was saying of his buildable whatever, two acres of land
that he was going to smush all of these in, I think he made a comment that like they'd all, if you put it all together, it would be, you know, two houses per acre, but the rest is marsh land. So it's all really just cluster housing if you think about it. What Speaker 1: Else? And I, I don't mean to, I don't, I don't mean to run to run you off, but I know there are other people who want to speak. Yeah. And so I'm just, I'm trying to, Speaker 17: Yeah, if I have something else I'll come back. Okay, thank you. Speaker 1: So and then next coming across two online. Speaker 3: Oh, Speaker 11: There's online people
Speaker 1: Too? What's that? Oh, online people. Online. I have not forgotten you people online any Okay. So from this half of the room, anybody? Alright. And you, you know the, the rules of the road. Yes. Speaker 18: Hi, my name is Linda Lloyd and I'm a 53 year resident at 1 28 Everett Street with my husband. And we've seen a lot of changes and I think Mr. Seat Steven should be commended for some of the wonderful projects that he has produced in Natick. However, this one really does not fit the culture of the neighborhood.
And my greatest concern is, and I know it's been mentioned, but it, it's worth mentioning again, the traffic situation. We have seen it increase from nothing to a throughway. And it's a cut, it's a cut across street and it's very unsafe. We have people walking that road from five o'clock in the morning until eight 30 at night and beyond. And bicyclist mothers with small children and carriages. And I can't tell you the number of times they've had to,
you know, go off the road to let two cars pass and to add 16 units at that end of Everett Street. Where as Michelle mentioned, you know, the road is narrow. People go before Abe put those rocks there, they would go right onto his lawn. It's, it's uncontrollable there. So I would, you know, like to see some adjustments made and you know, we would welcome single family homes there some nice single family homes that would fit in
to the character of Everett Street. It's a scenic route. It has been a scenic route and we would like to maintain it as such. All those, you know, a lot of these older houses have the character and we'd like to maintain that, not with a cluster housing. Thank you. Thank Speaker 1: You. And next coming across anyone? Anybody. And if there's no one else who's seeking the floor, I will turn it over to say one more thing actually,
since you've already spoken, let me just see if I can get the folks who are following along online. Okay. Speaker 19: Kelsey Hampton. Kelsey Hampton. Kelsey Hampton. Speaker 1: So, alright. Kelsey Hampton. Speaker 18: We just Speaker 1: Have to, if you could, Speaker 20: Oh, can you hear me? Speaker 1: Yep. Yes. And we just need your address. We, we, we know your name obviously. Speaker 20: Yeah. Kelsey Hampton. I live at 1 74 Cottage Street. Thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to speak tonight. Like I mentioned, I live at 1 74 Cottage Street, which is just a few houses down from the proposed
development on Everett. I really want to echo the concerns that have already been spoken about and kind of express my strong opposition to the proposed application for that development in our neighborhood, which as we know is currently zoned for single family homes. And while I understand the importance of housing development in our community, I feel that the scale and the scope of this particular project are just not appropriate for the area. Part of the desirability and charm of our neighborhood is
that it lacks developments like this. To be perfectly honest, our neighborhood in South Natick in general is already experiencing some rapid and pretty significant development from when I initially moved in. And many people who have spent quite a bit of their lives here and raised families here, this increased activity has led to growing concerns for all of the neighbors about traffic congestion and safety. Particularly on the small winding road that is Everett Street that just wasn't designed to support identity living like this.
Adding such a large scale multi-family complex would definitely exacerbate these challenges and change the character of our community. I strongly encourage you to look at the traffic in the area because similar to the other comments this evening, it's extremely dangerous part of the road and intersection. I have four young kids and even with the sidewalk on Cottage Street, the flashing stop sign, I often don't feel safe having them near that intersection, seeing how fast cars come down, seeing that they've gone off the road at times. So to echo some other safety concerns,
the South Natick fire station is the smallest fire station in our town staffed with only one firetruck and three firefighters. And given that there's such an increased development in South Natick with Graystone and Windermere and now the Auburn Street Project, I think this is definitely something that needs to be considered when looking at the scale of this project. Sorry, I urge the board to consider the long-term impact of this decision on the people who live here and who have invested raising their families in this neighborhood. Not just the interests of the developers.
We trust that you'll make decisions that reflect what is best for our community, livability, safety, and long-term cohesion. And thank you for your time and for your commitment to the thoughtful community centered planning around this. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next we have, I'm Speaker 3: Gonna mispronounce it so I apologize ahead of time. Cosmina Cosmina. That's right. Speaker 21: Kamina, she one. Speaker 1: So Cosmina, if you're there, they just have, if you could include your last name on, on the screen. Speaker 22: Can, can you hear me? Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 22: Okay, great. Could, Speaker 1: Could I just get your last name? Speaker 22: Oh yes. Mina Cosmina Schulman 1 24 Everett. Okay, Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 22: So I'm the mom of three small children, obviously living on Everett. And I'm one of those people, Linda's neighbor who walks every morning at five 30. The traffic is ludicrous as it is on Everett Street. I am outraged at the lack of questions from this board. I was urged to like, not even fight this because there's a previous relationship with Trask in the planning board
and folks said that, you know, that the citizens have not been heard in the previous developments. And these seem to always go one way. And I gotta be honest, I've felt that tonight there were no questions about traffic, there were no questions about safety, there was giggling about trees, which I think is like really unfortunate. And I would really encourage this planning board to think about the folks who live on Everett Street, the reason why we bought houses in South Natick and the safety of our children. 16, if you've driven by this, like it is wild
that we are even having this conversation. 16 houses on that small plot of land, is it, it shouldn't even be a question. So I, I am with Elliot who, you know, it feels like there's been some conversations before. I keep hearing you say there haven't, but you know, as somebody who's watching this, this has been crazy. You guys are destroying the beauty of South Natick. And I would really, really, really encourage this planning board to actually think about the families who already live here and not just the bank accounts of, of, of the town. Because, you know, these waivers
and putting money in the bank for affordable housing. I, I I I agree, like I haven't really seen much affordable housing being built and a traffic study needs to be done. But I would hope that for once the planning board actually listens to the people in the community and votes a different way than they have in the past for a lot of these trash projects. It's just, it's deeply, deeply concerning. And yeah, that's it. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. And just, I, I want to mention at this point several people have said that,
you know, they expressed concern that we hadn't talked more about traffic safety and so forth. This process is beginning, and I emphasize that because it is not that these issues are not coming up, this is the start of the conversation. This is the start of the review of the application. The reason that we want to hear what everyone has to say is because we, we want these things raised, we want to hear it. And so I don't, I don't want people to think because something wasn't said in the first 45 minutes of a hearing that something will not be brought forward.
Appreciate the comments, they're helpful and substantive. But I just want to offer that assurance that it's not, this didn't, this hasn't gotten said, therefore nothing's gonna be done. We are, that, that is, that's not the standard to which we work. Speaker 4: Can I add one thing too? Please? Yes. I'm always sympathetic when people come to a planning board meeting, maybe having never attended one. 'cause I was in the same boat. I started coming to planning board meetings when I had an issue in my neighborhood and I didn't really understand the process. Now that I'm on the other side of the table, I still remember what it's like to show up. And maybe you feel like this thing is, you know,
it's a dirty process or the decisions have already been made or you know, I don't know, maybe there's corruption involved and all that stuff. I just wanna say there's, there, there really is none of that. The, the gentleman in front of us has a company that has appeared before us before he owns the property. When you own property, you have property rights and you can develop them according to the local bylaws, the bylaws aren't passed by us. They are in fact passed by town meeting. And the bylaw that he is submitting this under was created and approved by town meeting. So it's, it is, it is the law of Natick to be able
to develop a housing plan like this with cluster housing. And our job is to literally uphold the bylaw. That's what we are sworn to do. So we compare an application that we receive versus what's allowed under the bylaw. And we compare it there. There's only one waiver being asked. And that, as you heard, was to go from 12 to 14 units. So that is, that is something we have to think about. I I, I'm sorry to to say this to folks, but when there's only one waiver, you basically have an an approvable project because it complies with the bylaws.
And that is exactly what we are gonna do. We're gonna compare the project to the bylaws and ultimately if it complies with the rules, we don't have any way to say no to it because the applicant would appeal the decision, they would win and they'd get, they, they would put us through a very expensive process. So we have to have really substantive reasons why what is being proposed is not allowed under the bylaw. So we don't know that yet. We're just get, tonight is night one. So we are going to hear from the fire department, we've never approved a project
that the fire department wasn't comfortable moving their trucks through. There's not a doubt in my mind that that's, that this will also receive that type of approval. We're going to work on drainage from the town's engineering department who's gonna review everything. We are not, I'm not a drainage expert. I wait until our town engineer says, yeah, this, this works from drainage perspective. In terms of affordability, it, I, I know that it can be met with a lot of skepticism, but the, the units that get created, and I do hope we create affordable units as opposed to a contribution to create affordable units.
Those are in many of the towns and cities in Massachusetts. And those are available for people who qualify to go through a lottery system to end up owning a home that is less than market unit. And if it weren't for processes like these, that type of opportunity would not exist. So there's something really valuable about these affordable units that get created. My preference is to create an affordable unit as opposed to the, the cash contribution. But that, that is something that remains to be seen. So I hear the frustration and I hear that people are saying that we should just deny this tonight. It just doesn't fit. This is wrong.
You know, just vote it down and I'm just being as honest as I can. There isn't anything in here that would support us voting it down. I thought they were Speaker 14: Asking for specialty permit. Yes. So a single family zone for single family. Is Speaker 4: It not? Speaker 1: Sorry, just, I don't wanna get into a practice forth, Speaker 4: Right. We really don't wanna shout back and forth, but thank, there is a, there is a, something called a special permit, which the board has to grant, but it's being applied as part of our cluster zoning bylaw. It, it, it's, it, it's, it's the law of Natick and this is a legal application
and we will take our time to review it. And there, there really, there is, there just isn't any o other than the fact that I think the neighbors don't like it. And I'll be honest with you, I've set up this board a pretty long time. The neighbors almost never like it when it's new. And I get that I was in the same boat. I, I totally understand. But in terms of our planning board, we need to compare it to the existing law of our town. And we, there, there isn't anything tonight that would compel us to say no because it, it, it, it it, it comports to the elements of the bylaw in almost every case except for one waiver. So, sorry, sorry.
I, you know, I I I might, it might seem like bad news, but I just want you to know this is an open evaluation. It's an ongoing process. We need more information, nothing's gonna be rushed and ultimately that's kind of how the process will unfold. Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you Andy. I do wanna pick back up, sorry, just so from the folks who haven't had a chance to speak yet and the next one is, there's no more hands. I don't see any more hands. Oh, there aren't anymore. Okay. No, there was only two hands. Okay, great. So yes. And just briefly, if you wouldn't mind, since you've spoke spoken previously.
Speaker 23: So Speaker 1: Two things. Wait, wait, wait till you get to Mike. Speaker 12: So two things again. My name is Michelle Freeman, 18 Jefferson Street, also with my father Richard Graham at 40 Everett Street. So I guess just clarify for me, 'cause looking at the map that Kaitlyn had this area south Natick, which that area is, is currently zoned single family B, Speaker 1: The the, the letter B, there's an A, B, and C and that the difference is the size, the minimum size of the parcel of land, which is what, Speaker 12: What Speaker 1: Is B Speaker 12: One acre Speaker 1: Half acre and this, this, this is in, is it RSB? So yeah. So it would
Speaker 12: Be not cluster housing. Correct. Speaker 1: The cluster housing is part of the Natick zoning bylaw that says if it's a a, a residential single family zone, here are the rules that apply. If you want to cluster your development, in other words, put houses closer together so that you can aggregate the open space. It's Speaker 11: Five acre minimum in the RSP. Yes. Speaker 12: Five, eight, I'm sorry. Speaker 1: Five. There's a five acre minimum qualify Speaker 11: To apply for a cluster for open space residential development. You have to have five acres in the zoning district that we're in.
Speaker 12: Okay, so they have seven acres but only utilizing 2.9. Correct. That's what they're saying. So like, that's like a play on words. Speaker 11: That's the open space bylaw tries to achieve is Speaker 12: Condensed housing, though they have seven acres, but they can only develop open 2.9 Speaker 11: Open space is the resulting open space. And that's what this is. Speaker 12: But the open space is what land Speaker 4: Seven acres is the key number though. It, it's a large enough parcel to legally apply for this type of development. Speaker 12: Correct. But like looking at the amount of space that they're looking to put these houses is cluster of houses is legit less than three acres. So if we were going with like half acre per house,
you're looking at six houses and they're looking to put 16 Speaker 1: And that Speaker 12: Is like, that's a lot of houses. And the thing, my concern is, again, speaking from experience with Trask, and again like I'm, I'm coming at it from personal aspect. They bought the house across the street from me for 610,000 110 over ask the person who was the executor of that property had to sell to them because it was in the best interest of the trust. They said that they were going to live there and put on a second floor. Instead they tore down the house
and put in a two family took out a hundred over a hundred year old tree. And there's nothing the neighbors could do about it because it was within the parameters of ick zoning and bylaws. So again, I like, I, it's fine if, if any of them wanna speak to me about this and like come back at me and tell me like why they said and then said one thing and did another. But they have a history of not, of misrepresenting to the neighbors, I think. And then not following through with that. I think you Speaker 8: Can't go down that road Speaker 12: That's Oh, but what, but I'm going down that road Speaker 1: On something. Speaker 12: So let's, I went down that road
and what I'm saying as a neighbor having experienced from how they've behaved in the past, now they're looking at putting in 16 houses. You have people here that are saying that they are not for it. And I'm saying there's a reason why you shouldn't be for it because they are not trustworthy. And Speaker 1: You sir, Speaker 4: You Speaker 8: Know ma'am, it's, this is borderline defamation and I, I won't, I won't even allow my client to respond to it and I would insist I not ask that we stay on point in this hearing. Speaker 1: I would not ask your client to respond to that, that, but Speaker 7: On top of that, Speaker 1: Ms, you're, you're making a statement or, and you have said your piece.
We understand the position you're taking and appreciate if you take your seat. Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 1: So, so yes. What's the action? Sorry, sorry, you have to speak in the mic. Speaker 7: So I guess Catherine Dill and I 35 Everett Street. So I guess I'm kind of confused. Where are the, what's the action items that you guys have from this meeting? Like, so a traffic study B, environmental study C It is currently, I don't understand, I still don't get how, if it, if the Natick has its own for single family,
how can you put in cluster housing on, I understand you said minimum five acres, but it's not five buildable acres. I again, is it like if it's marsh land? Okay, so you, you Speaker 1: Asked your question pause enough. Let to let us I know, I Speaker 7: How excited. I'm sorry. Speaker 1: Okay, so first Speaker 7: Time at hearing shut up. Speaker 1: Done. Okay, so five acres is a, is a minimum to work doesn't have to be five acres of buildable land. It has to be a parcel of at least five acres. The, the open space cluster language was developed to yes, move houses closer together
so that you can aggregate the open space and have meaningful open space. And that, that was the most Im important thing for us to do is to find a way to, to maximize the preservation of open space while we are develop developing residential properties. Speaker 7: What about the preservation committee? Who, who, like we are paying all this tax to preserve the old houses, the open space. What are they saying? Are they involved? Is that the next, is that part of the next step? Speaker 1: It will be and, and I, and I will, I will say that I
represent the planning board on the open space advisory committee. So I un I really understand what we're, what we're talking about here. I Speaker 7: Guess I'm kind of confused with Wendy Lowe, that whole thing, like talk about Wendy Lowe. I'm kind of like that was open space. It was a chance for the town to make a park Speaker 1: This. But you know what it's Speaker 7: Is, this Speaker 1: Is, this is, I know let's say it's, it's today, this is not windy low. It is the project that we have before us. We space, our job today is to hear the presentation, understand what the applicants are proposing,
hear the questions from the board, things that we want to be able to look into that we think are open questions or opportunities that that may be presented if, if we follow a certain strategy and to hear what ev all of you have to say. What we want to do is we want to hear what your concerns are, what your expectations are. It doesn't mean that that all of them will be met, but it means that we, we hear them and understand and try to, to kind of make this the best project that it can be.
No, you know what, you guys, you've talked, you talked plenty. I got the other hands up sir, Speaker 24: Can I just hit Speaker 1: Here? Oh, I need to at the mic name and address. Speaker 25: This is on Na Speaker 5: Pegasus, so they need to be able to yes know who's talking? Speaker 26: Mike Barbera. 1 23 Everett Street. What was the square footage of the units? Speaker 5: I think it was around Speaker 26: Point the proposed units. Speaker 1: Oh well 75% of them are 2200 square feet or smaller. Speaker 26: When you say smaller, how much smaller? Speaker 1: A max? It just says a maximum of 2200 square feet Speaker 24: And the others are 27. Speaker 26: Okay. So I thought under the 2023 zoning rules,
Speaker 1: I promise Speaker 26: Residential units may no more than 25% of the units shall exceed 1800 square feet. Speaker 5: If, if I could, that was the previous version and then we said 2200 square feet, including garages. So, so Speaker 1: Is that, are you looking, because, so you're not looking at a co current copy of the zoning bylaw Speaker 26: Open, open space residential cluster. I understand February 21st, 2023. Speaker 1: No, what's the date? Speaker 26: February 21st, 2023. Speaker 1: Okay, that's, Speaker 24: It's Speaker 26: Old. Okay. Yes. What's what's the new rule then? Speaker 1: It is 2200 square feet.
Speaker 26: And that is above, these are all above grade. There's no, no below grade, no basements, nothing like that. Correct. Speaker 1: That's, I don't I think Speaker 5: The definition is 2200 square feet, including any garage area on the first and second floor. Thank. Speaker 24: Okay. Speaker 1: Alright. Yes sir. Speaker 25: Tom Lloyd, 1 28 Everett Street. I just want to build a, my wife Linda and Cosmina said that about the safety. I wanna get into something a little bit different. And you mentioned this in my proposal of you like the idea of sidewalks, the southern side of Everett Street,
like I had my lot at 1 28 professionally surveyed when I bought it in 1972 from the builder. And it's like a 50 foot legal right away. Most of Everett Street, at least the western end is, and right now my lot is, my house is 50 feet off the town, off the line property line. And, and now the in my lot line is about 10 feet off the pavement to the street in all of our houses in the western end, they were all at least 50 feet back from the, the street. And it would be very easy, I know the town would be an expense,
but for safety reasons would be very easy to put sidewalks down the entire Natick section of Everett Street, the western side, at least from the development we're proposing tonight, all the way down to the Sherman line. It could be done, it would be, would the town appropriate the money? It would be a great safety issue. Speaker 1: I I I take that point, and I know we've talked about, I, I had advocated I think when, when we were dealing with the previous, with Windermere about the idea of securing, even if it's not a complete sidewalk, that we get some sidewalks on Everett Street as can be.
It could, as can be accommodated. It's Speaker 25: Just that the town have to appropriate the money Speaker 1: And, and securing rights to, and other, other private properties if that's the case. But yes. So anything further if, if we don't have any more questions, Andy, just one sec. I no, I I would just like to hold off on that right now. So I want, we should, we should try to figure out when we next meet and what some of the issues are that we, we have a number of things we can follow, but I wanna figure out some of the ones that we want to
take up sooner rather than later. So, Andy, just Speaker 4: One quick question on thinking about this wave for the 14 to 16, I'm, I'm not sure that's decided, but would you consider the two additional units being built so that they could be handicap accessible, like blocking for bars and bathrooms? I I, I don't think it's practical to ask you to build like single floor units, but we have very little housing that is for people who would like to age in place. But I do think that there are ways to have
doorways widened or like I said, blocking for things. If you were to propose the two extra units being sort of like ready built for handicap or a DA accessibility, I think that would help tilt me towards considering the waiver. But like, like I said, ideally we'd have some single floor living maybe. Speaker 1: Oh, well I, I think you said, did you say something about first floor masters? No, not, not in this project, Speaker 4: But if there were a couple that could be built that way, I think it would be an additional, a nice addition to our housing stock. So that was my question. Thank you. Okay, thank
Speaker 1: You. So among the issues that we know we want to be addressing, I'm hearing safety issues, especially at the intersection with Speaker 4: Cottage Speaker 1: Thank you. With Cottage Street, we are probably need to go over, that's, that's the one that strikes me first. Speaker 4: Would that be like a police safety review? Are you talking about a traffic study request? Because here are my thoughts on that. We, we have seen a lot of traffic studies from a lot
of very large, a lot of developments. And again, this may be unwelcome news. The one I'm thinking of is the FedEx building, which behind the Hampton Inn when that was being developed, the, the argument was the, the beetle back area is, is just gonna be gridlocked. It will never move again due to the FedEx trucks. When we got the traffic study, it actually showed that even all of those FedEx trucks have negligible amounts of impact on the local roadways. In fact, you almost never see FedEx trucks unless you're, maybe they're five in the morning. But I, I can predict what a,
what a specific traffic count study for, for 16 residential units will be. It will, it will not show up on the graph compared to the other traffic that comes through. That's in terms of raw numbers, traffic count, 14 to 16 units of cars coming in and out of a development. Just, it just doesn't show up on, on the graph as, as any kind of a significant factor. However, however, I would be interested in knowing about some specific information with regard to traffic safety. It's loca and, and Allen, you're the expert here. It's location near Cottage Street
accidents that are in that area. I, I don't know if it could be targeted, not so much in terms of just raw numbers of, of traffic flow, but in terms of the safety aspect of people coming in and coming out, I, I think I'm, I think I could guess what, what the outcome of that would be. But I think it might be good to take a look at it if it it, can it be, can we be narrowly focused in that manner? Yeah, Speaker 5: I think the more information we can give 'em the things that we're really interested in and yet to speak to the regular crowd. I do a lot of traffic studies myself. Residential usually isn't really a high generator. It's not like this is gonna be a shopping center or something like that here as far as total number
of volume, you know, people coming in or out. So it's not really gonna be so much a impact to the capacity. But I think where we're talking about is looking at the safety, I think specifically the intersection of Cottage Street, I think very much the new driveway. We definitely wanna make sure that they have good site lines that actually laid out on a plan, especially since we do have a wall there, we wanna make sure we have good visibility. I think pedestrian safety in this area is important to look at. And the traffic study could look at existing crashes that are out there.
It won't necessarily pick up on near misses or stuff like that, but we could look at any crashes that are happening at that intersection or anywhere along the, the frontage really of, or any, if there's anything else we wanna specifically look at. But it won't necessarily be a capacity. I think we could have it focused on the safety. So, and possible improvements if, you know, there are certain items, you know, where we notice that there's trends or anything like that as far as crashes. Hmm. Well I'm certainly a meanwhile to have in my traffic consultant look at the exit entrances
and then I could probably have him look at the intersection of cottage and say, are we making it better? Are we making it worse? Or is there something that would make it better that might be in our control. The location of the crosswalk. I don't know. Things like that. I don't think there's, as you know, there's nothing on the, on the generation that's going to change much. But I'll certainly could have him take a review and then he can, he can work with Lieutenant Luon on that. But that would probably give fire police comfort level on site lines and the intersections as well.
I think I would probably have them run, run the trip generation for completeness rather than us saying it's not gonna be that much, but actually to document what the expected increases would be. It's not a big, big ask. Speaker 11: You say operations at Cottage Street in Everett. Speaker 5: I mean, I think we might wanna look at the operations. So I wouldn't Speaker 11: Accounts on Everett Street Speaker 5: And Cottage. I would look at just the intersection, maybe run a morning and afternoon capacity analysis, which is gonna be more of an existing issue then what you're doing. But that might kind
of factor in a little bit the safety too. Speaker 1: What what's frustrating is there's an ama a surprising amount of through traffic that is not originating in that part of Natick and it's in the destination. It's not that it, it's vehicles that are cutting off corners coming from places south and west. Speaker 5: Yeah. Which of course we have a lot in town. Yeah. You know, all over the place. It's not necessarily, you know, that's not unique. People say if we don't do any developments in Natick, it's like, well people are coming from some towns going to other towns, they're still coming through through Natick. So, Speaker 1: So I also do want to look more closely at the, what's
what would be proposed for the, not for the affordable housing, for the open space to actually weigh those against the factors of, of the nature of the land and so forth. I think we have an open conversation to talk more about concerning the character of affordable housing, whether it would be, whether it is funding, whether it is units and I, I understand that the, the, the challenges that are there. But again, if you're looking for 16 unit, I mean, to look,
to look to add units without creating anything that is affordable is really challenging because we are faced by the state with numbers to meet affordable housing and that 10% minimum for the town, that's not an enormous ask, but we have to do it one building at a time, one project at a time. And somewhere the, the the can the, there's no more room on the road to kick it. So, sorry, were you about to say something? No. Oh, okay. Fascinat. Speaker 5: Hey, I have a, I guess another question is as far
as the open space that we have behind that will be created. Yes. And this is, I'm kind of new to the sport by the way. Is there obligation or should we be checking it to, I mean right now we've kind of looked at an aerial. That's what I, they say it's great. We've also heard it's very swampy. No. Do we need to check to make sure it's, it's worthwhile, I guess. Speaker 1: Sorry, that's what I was trying to refer to about examining what they're actually cons looking at. Yeah. In terms Speaker 5: Of, I wasn't sure if we should walk around it or something like that. You know, I'll Speaker 1: Talk with, talk with the conservation agent, but yes, we, we, we, we don't want to pig it and poke.
Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 1: So, Speaker 11: And I, I would just be, I wanna spend a little more time with a grading issue on this. Not sold that there's a gotta be a, a retaining wall of any kind around there. So let, let's, let's give some thought to that from a design perspective and I'd like to hear a little bit more about the stormwater, particularly from Bill McDowell. Yes. On that. Speaker 1: So, and Bill McDowell is the town engineer. He's a professional registered engineer Speaker 11: And an updated landscape plan. Speaker 1: Yes. So I think that's the next step. And what we'll find is that at a, after our next meeting, there will,
there will be other items to address and take forward. So again, it is, this is the beginning of a process. Keep your, your questions and comments coming. It's, it's important. At the same time, I would ask your forbearance in, in recognizing that we are here as, as volunteers who believe as you do in the town that we live in. And it is as important to us as it is each of us as it is to you. We are balancing the development process, which has made Natick what it is today
and retaining the community spirit. That I think is what makes this an astonishing place to live. I'm not from here originally. I have lived here now a very long time. I cannot imagine living anywhere else. And I, I am as invested in it as any of you. And I have to say that on a very personal level. So I thank you. Yes. Speaker 10: This is a very large project and it's just being put down on the map as this is the project. Our consideration will also be, this is not in a vacuum, this is a part of, it's attached. The roads go through from other places that we,
that aren't on the drawing, but they're there and they're a part of the issue. Ultimately the issue of a successful project. We will be looking at things like that. We are still bound by the native town. Bylaws. Bylaws, but it it, and this too much to the dismay of some developers including Mr. Trask, Mr. Stevens, I'm sorry Mr. Stevens. Some of these meetings become more frequent than is, is wished for. They'd like to get them through, get 'em done.
There will be as many meetings as necessary to identify the appropriateness. The proper of this project, which will be taken into consideration tonight, is has been said over and over again. Tonight is not it or holds your peace. Don't worry about it. Speaker 1: So Amanda, next meeting is the 13th. Speaker 3: Yes. So we have a meeting on the 13th and then a meeting on August 27th. So I don't know which one works better. Speaker 11: 27th. Speaker 1: 27th. So Speaker 11: I'll make a motion to, Speaker 1: Okay, I to continue to Speaker 11: Continue to August 27th. Second. Speaker 1: Second. Speaker 11: So it's a we same time, same place. Wednesday
Speaker 1: The 27th. So this, this is mark your calendars today. August 27th, 7:00 PM Double check. It should be in this meeting room. But I always say to check because every so often the select board kick kicks us out and, and we have to go upstairs to the school committee room. So on that, that motion to continue Mr. Meyer? Speaker 3: Aye. Speaker 1: Mr. Speaker 10: Aye. Speaker 11: Aye. Speaker 3: Aye Speaker 1: Aye. Alright, so we, we, we stand the public hearing stands, adjourn continued and we will see you back here or are virtually on the third. On the 27th
Speaker 10: And a request. We do have other things, other items on the agenda. So I know there'll be a lot of discussion amongst you folks. Would you be kind enough please to take it out? Speaker 1: Thank you. So, alright, so now we have fall town, our fall town meeting warrant articles. I'm good. And, and I understand they have been, that the select board has assigned, assigned them over to us. I don't know that they've landed Speaker 3: No, Speaker 1: They, I think they may be voting to do that today. Yeah, Speaker 3: But those ones are not until August 13th.
Speaker 1: So, no, but it just that Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 11: What's in our Speaker 1: Packet tonight? So West Natick. West land, okay. Yes. Speaker 3: All right. Just pulling this up. Speaker 11: Anybody want water? Want water? Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll get it. Andy. Yeah. Speaker 24: Anybody some water? I check you one. Thanks. Speaker 11: You have two. You have two hands. Speaker 1: You want it? I, I wanna see how many he can carry. You know, Speaker 11: Just goes back to his waiter days. Speaker 1: Did you know Everett Street was the street that George Washington Road Speaker 24: Down Speaker 1: Heading back to New York after, Speaker 24: After Dochester Speaker 1: Elliot. That was still a swamp. I'm, I'm a welcome. Useless information. Alright,
so we're waiting for Andy to come back in Speaker 24: Our packet. Speaker 3: Is that in our packet? Speaker 24: No. Speaker 3: Oh, I was trying to print it off and let me put it in your pocket right now please. Speaker 1: This one? No. Oh, Speaker 24: I, Speaker 3: I thought I printed it off and it only printed one page. So, Speaker 1: Ah, technology can't live with it. Can't count. Okay. Did you say you're putting it in? Speaker 3: Yeah, I just, I wanted to save it as a PDF 'cause sometimes when I put it into Google Drive Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: As a PowerPoint presentation it gets all messed up. He doesn't always love the, Speaker 24: Okay.
Does that or does that Speaker 1: Not look like a brata source now? You'll never unsee it. Speaker 24: I will not unsee that. Thank you Speaker 1: If you have Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Speaker 24: Thank Speaker 1: You. Alright, we're back and reassembled and Amanda, shall I turn it over to you? Speaker 3: It's just uploading into the, okay. Alright. It should be there by now. If not it refresh. I think Speaker 24: It's the west Na. Yeah. Yep. Speaker 3: All right. So yesterday or the day before, I forget which day it was, I had emailed out
a copy of the draft. This is not an end all Speaker 1: Be all. Sorry, can we just give for anybody following at home? Yeah, just a smattering of this. This is talking about issues related to zoning and development in West Natick. Speaker 3: Alright, so West Natick, west Natick is, and you'll see a series of map in a few seconds. This is a topic that came from Natick 2030, which was discussed multiple times on making it a pedestrian and also a mixed use kind of corridor. This is a very linear corridor.
We're stretching from the Natick Framingham municipal line all the way to an area past the dog park. So we are calling that the Na West Natick corridor. In that what we are gonna try to do is one create one zoning district known as Natick, sorry, neighborhood corridor. But then within that we're actually going to create transects, which basically look at the uniqueness of each parcel to allow for more density on certain areas while less density on other areas in looking at one the topography. Because as we've kind of talked about, it's easier
to build a shorter building on a higher peak and a taller building on a lower peak and they actually can become the same heights. So that's what we are looking at. We do have a consultant coming on board who will be building a profile from the Framingham Natick municipal line all the way to Mill Street on the north side to look at that profile and kind of test scenario. So we will have them coming along. So what you'll see on the screen is the West Natick corridor. As we've talked about, the various colors are going to correspond to the various transects.
The one transect that we have, sorry, Speaker 1: Transect for any, Speaker 3: Oh, it is probably the sub-district within the larger district based on the uniqueness of the parcels, the topography, and then also the neighborhood that it kind of sits in. Yeah. So you'll see it travels along 1 35 or West Central Street, also known as the marathon route. Also a major corridor for people, transportation, foot, bicycle, and vehicular. Also the northern boundary predominantly except
for the two blue intrusions that go over the commuter rail line. Basically the rail line is our northern border. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: So looking at it at a closer angle. So what you have in front of you is a map of the area. And when we look at this in terms of transects, what we wanna talk about is these different areas. So just to orient you here in the central part is 1 35. Basically the northern perimeter of this area
that we're looking at for rezoning is the train tracks. So if we start here, this is the Framingham Natick municipal line. The most western edge. So what you're gonna see is a series of colors. The black in this case, or the dark gray, which is right at the West Natick train station that includes a series of commercial buildings is going to be T five. And what T five is, is neighborhood center. So what we're trying to really create is a center hub for this area, which is where you would see the most amount
of density, more multifamily, commercial kind of types rather than the single families. We also are gonna be looking at T five in the area on the east side of Mill Street. This is this other black cluster here. And then it would run basically along to SP street and a little past SP street. This corner right here is where CVS is located. So we'd be going three parcels past that. On the south side, is there a cursor? Okay, yeah, right here. Yeah. On the cell side of that,
what would also be T five is the parcel that is currently home to roach brothers and the commercial strip plaza, those would all be t fives. It does not mean that these parcels are going to change or redevelop. It's more of one bringing them into conformance with the intensity regulation schedule. So if things were to change, they would be conforming. Two, allow them to have increased uses through the use regulation schedule to either one, keep what's there and maybe add more or amend it in the future.
So that is T five and we'll get into the design shortly. T four is a neighborhood connector and the best way to think of T four is its connecting the centers along 1 35. So the areas that we will be looking at is the Framingham Natick municipal line. This is the salmon. This is the salmon color. Yep. So it's Framingham Natick municipal line all the way up to where the Wendy's is. So you have on the north side of 1 35, you have a junkyard or a waste yard, you have a medical office building, and then you have a Wendy's on the south side of that.
When you actually look at the south side of 1 35, we actually have a lot of parcels that are in common ownership, which creates an opportunity for one, a smaller scale multifamily or a commercial type development, which is why we were putting it into the connector. And then if you travel along across the street from home street, there are a series of commercial parcels that would also be neighborhood connector. Currently there is like School of Rock, planet Fitness, the tire location in addition to across the street you have Cohen's gas
and then you have a couple smaller commercial buildings. So we would travel that up all the way to the backside of the shopping plaza within the Roach center. If you continue across Bean Street, which is the line right here, and if you see where it says Fisk Pond, there is a couple smaller buildings, but these parcels, the reason why they'd be in T four is because if you look at the irregularity of the lots, so although they may be long, they actually become narrow because of the way that they get pinched between fist pond and the railroad tracks, which is why we were looking at them
for T four in that area. The next color that you would wanna look at is like this green color and the colors will change to make them better. It was just trying to figure out what colors to use for this T three, which is neighborhood residential, which that is actually focused more on residential than commercial. And the reason for that is because existing uses are two, three families or townhouses and townhouses that have been built within the past 15 years. So again, Framingham Natick municipal line, when you look
behind this area of south of 1 35, these are all two families or three families existing. There's maybe one or two single families. And those are kind of the outlier within that neighborhood. As you cross 1 35, so you're between now the Wendy's and NA Crossing, which is this other green mint area, you actually climb a hill and there's a series of two family and three families there. So we would want to keep that in that consistent because also the height, as you travel along east on 1 35, you'll see another mint area
to the south of 1 35. These are actually single families, two families in a lot of townhouses that have been recently redeveloped in the past few years. So what we want to do is to keep that kind of plan together and then continuing along, it's kind of like in the corridor between Mill Spring, Speen and 1 35. These are a series of either Natick housing authority parcels. So you have multifamily already existing or you have a lot of two families or homes that may have opportunity to be redeveloped
to be like the neighborhood that it's already existing in. So the last one that we're gonna be discussing tonight is T one, and that is neighborhood open space or conservation and open space. And so the parcels that are actually identified are parcels that would not be able to be developed. And so the idea of this is, is to allow a developer, if they do have an affordable component or if they want to opt to provide more, they can do one of two things. So one would be they might have a base
of providing 10% affordable and they have to provide 10% open space. However, there would be a bonus which is attached to increasing the open space or the affordable units. So they can go above those two minimums. And the idea would be either to create the open space on the parcel or they could purchase or put money towards the creation open space that actually connects to T ones. So it may be something that's not T one today, but they might find, like for an example,
and I'm not saying this is what would happen is this parcel right here, which is P-C-D-P-C-D may not need that as their open space requirements. They do, but just for discussion purposes, they could actually purchase a piece of this or put it into T one and have it be part of the open space, therefore creating more open space within the corridor. So that is something we would discuss. Looking at this a little bit more closely, these are just kind of aerial. So you can see what we are looking at for T five.
T five is the neighborhood crossing. You have the commuter rail station and the parking lot. You have a series of office buildings and right across the street is home street, which is where you transition into more townhouses. This other cluster is a series of small commercial buildings or commercial like plazas. And so what we'd be looking at is those for the T five and I don't know why it's not flipping. Oops. All right. So T four. Yeah. Alright, great. T four is just looking at it closer. So you can see in this north one we have the junkyard office
building and Wendy's. And then you have a series of commercial buildings. You do have Beaver Dam Brook that does kind of cross in this area. So that is something that will limit that type of development on the south side. Of 1 35 and then you continue. But these are again, two and one, two and three FAMs. Same thing. The connectors between the open space, you have Obi Hill, you have a couple office buildings, you have Planet Fitness and then the tire location. And then the same thing on the south side for T three. Just looking at it more closely,
you can just see the multifamily, residential townhouses, et cetera. And then T one really, again, these are already wet, not developable, but looking to actually build upon them for potential parks or open space land for natural resources. Okay, so here is all of this. What we're gonna be doing is deleting limited commercial 'cause. Limited commercial currently kind of goes in and out of this area. However, with that discussion, there is actually a parcel of land that is across the street from the Mercedes dealer.
And I'm not trying to expand the scope, but we've gotta also think about this because we delete lc, we've gotta rezone with basically four parcels. And then it is actually a couple split zone parcels that are oddly enough, a strip of commercial two, but they're predominantly RSA. So they must have at one point been commercial two and then the lines didn't match up. So we would be cleaning all that up. There is opportunity also long route nine for a couple parcels that we were approached several meetings ago about
how do we clean up the area basically from the McDonald's all the way to the Wellesley line. Lc or limited commercial actually creates an opportunity for you to do that. So what you could do with the lc zoning district is, which is what is being shown up here, is rezoning the McDonald's, what was Joanne fabrics, which is now vacant, the gas station, the what was a auto place, but has a gentle mover's truck in it. And then an office building to limited commercial.
Limited commercial, you would actually limit that. In terms of commercial, it would be restaurants, retail office and that would be it. So you could allow for the redevelopment also, you would decrease the dimensional for that because currently the dimensional don't work under their current zoning or in the lc zoning district. 'cause you need like 40,000 square feet plus you can go 20,000 square feet on different caveats. So that is the summary of what we would be looking at and in the actual zoning map.
So again, it's the Framingham Natick municipal line all the way to the dog park. Predominantly staying right along 1 35 with a couple ups and downs. So in the packet, and this is again open for discussions as always, is what you received is a two documents. One is the use regulation schedule and you'll see the use regulation schedule is broken up. So we've added, where is that? It should be in the town meeting folder in the Okay. Packet for tonight Speaker 24: Town Speaker 3: Meeting. And it was also emailed out to you. Speaker 24: I see the town meeting folder. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna ask the same thing. Oh you know what? I didn't save it 'cause I emailed it out. Hold on one second. And this is also for, I should have mentioned this, it is online. If you go through the planning board's webpage Speaker 1: And town meeting. Oh crap is Speaker 4: Now it's under West Natick. Speaker 3: No, I've gotta add it in there now. Oh sorry. Speaker 1: But the town meeting docs are under the one in the town meeting folder. Speaker 3: No, those are just the ones that we've advertised. Speaker 1: Okay, Speaker 24: One second. Speaker 3: So while I'm putting those over there, so there is going to be two documents. One is going to be the draft zoning,
which was you would have in your email if you were looking at that one as well. And then Speaker 24: There's, Speaker 3: Okay, so the zoning is in there. Speaker 1: My west folder looks Speaker 24: Empty. Speaker 11: Yeah, she's putting stuff in it. That stuff that was emailed. Okay. Speaker 1: I always assume I've done something. Speaker 24: Okay. Speaker 3: All right. They should both be in the use or in the packets. Speaker 1: Okay, so there's two docs. Speaker 3: Two docs. Yep. So there's one for use regulation schedule and the other one. So the one for the use regulation schedule. So what you'll see is we've taken the existing use regulation schedule, which is section two A two, and we've updated the limited commercial to reflect
what we just spoke about with making that very limited to restaurants, retail in office. But that's not restaurants with drive-throughs, not retail with drive-throughs. Just straight res, sorry, Speaker 1: Not traffic heavy. Speaker 3: Traffic heavy, exactly. So then what we've done, instead of putting all this in the zoning bylaw, we wanna make sure everything stays in the use regulation schedule. So that is why we have now created basically the nc, which is neighborhood corridor. And then we took in sub that out to be T five, T four, T three, T two, T one. We've gone through an identified special permit
or SP, which needs a special permit for the use. N is not allowed and Y is allowed as a right. But that doesn't mean that there's no review. It may require site plan review. So it goes through all of the various use schedule that we have actually been working on. One thing that I did do, because we are working on the use regulation schedule for the fall town meeting regarding motor vehicle, industrial and wireless utilities, I had those in here. So we were looking at the same document all the way through.
So when we update those, I'll update it in this as well because I don't want us to be using two different documents since we are in two different sections. So if you flip to the zoning bylaw, the zoning bylaw is broken up. This is a lot, there's more language in this bylaw than what we've typically been putting in because of the complexity of having the five different transects. So we have the purpose and the reason why I've highlighted blocks is because I don't like the word, but I can't figure out the word to use because we can't use neighborhood, we can't use district cluster sounds.
Weird nodes. What's that? Nodes. So a node is more of like, I've already used it as a center and then we have connectors and it's like what do you use? So anyway, that's not a big deal. It Speaker 1: It's almost like a magnet. It's, it's like what's the core of something? Speaker 3: Yeah. So that's why that's highlighted. Other than that, alright, so the use regulations schedule similar to what we've said at the previous. You can allow two or more uses as long as it's identified in the use regulation schedule. And so we are gonna keep with that, they have to comply
with the inclusionary housing by law, which is the units have to be created on site and right now it's 10% with the ability to allow for density bonuses if they provide a more affordable or open space. Then you have the transect districts, which this basically outlines what the ultimate goal is for each one of these and just kind of trying to make it much more clear. So if you continue down the intensity regulations, I do have to update this. This should be section noman numeral four C.
So because the use intensity schedule, sorry, the intensity regulation schedule doesn't fit perfectly into our existing intensity regulation schedule. Instead of putting the intensity regulations within this bylaw, we're putting it underneath the existing intensity regulation schedule, which is a different part. So it was just kinda looking at that. And then we had the design standards. So each of these design standards are unique to the various district based on getting open space, but different types of open space. So maybe something that's much more developed has more pocket parks and kind
of more pedestrian friendly while something that is more like a T three where the public won't be going onto the sites. Those are more private, but making sure that the units have it. So it's looking at those items. Also making sure that the street scapes do provide and promote pedestrian mobility. And then also making sure that landscaping is required along the frontages specifically along these to make sure that we are creating a a tree line street frontage in addition to the buffers, but then also being mindful of everything if you're on the north side of 1 35,
making sure that the buffer is a strong buffer. Because we do understand that this is going from more of a commercial type of development to a single family residential, which is why the density and the layout actually lends pulling it more towards 1 35 and away from the residential. But putting step backs in the back rather than the front and then transitions because we're looking at a corridor length, there would be transition allowed. So if your parcel may be T five a certain length of your parcel, you could actually step it down if you chose
to or if you were in a T four, you could step it up or down to transition into the abutting districts. You wouldn't be able to do it as if you're in a T four and T fours are on your sides. It's only the ends Speaker 11: 50 feet meaningful though. What's that? Is 50 feet meaningful? Speaker 3: No, that was just kinda like a space holder. Speaker 11: We should think about what that is, what that means. Speaker 3: Yep. We're gonna have Jeff Sassier look at that and see. And then the findings, this was just to help kind of formulate when we have, because we have our site plan review, we have our special permit, but this is findings unique
to this district. And then we have the densities. The last few pages are just other sections of the zoning bylaw that need to be amended. And now that I've actually pulled this through, originally we were gonna have this be Noman NUM three N, but if we actually delete Noman 3D, which is the lc zoning district, we can actually put this into 3D instead of creating a three N. So that would change as well and pulls it earlier in the book. Yeah. 'cause if we're just gonna rezone those parcels up on
nine and keep clean up the ones on North Main Street, we actually don't need to have a section specific for limited commercial because everything is in the use regulation schedule and the intensity regulation schedule, because that's all that exists in LC today. Just basic cleanup on those. And then you'll see on page eight of that document still working and still testing the numbers. You'll see the intensity regulation schedule, which would be a new nomen normal four C, which would live underneath the existing intensity regulation schedule
for DB. And then we have to look at the off street parking making it similar to what we allow for the DM and the center gateway parking for residential. And then the affordable, we would have to amend, I'm not sure if we're gonna need to amend special permit site plan review. So I did put that to be determined if necessary. And then the other question is, is center gateway downtown mixed use, although very different than the West Natick was there had been previous conversations about having the design review board help with the review of those. So that'd be a question is if the board wanted a, the DRB
to help advise, that's up to the planning board because they are advisory to the planning board. Yeah. So that is the summary, like I said, or collecting comments and working on that. Speaker 1: It's a lot to a lot to consume Speaker 11: What is, alright. So West Natick station. Yeah. The MBTA communities. Correct. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 11: Tell us how this makes a district compliant with the MBT communities law and buy. Right? Right. We have to have buy right uses. Speaker 3: So this does not need to be in compliance with the MBTA,
Speaker 11: But aren't we trying to do that? Isn't that one of the Speaker 3: No, we're not trying to because we're already compliant. Speaker 11: That is not my understanding at all. Correct me if I'm wrong. We, we talked about doing a planning study a year ago where we were promised a product that would take downtown Natick and West Natick and create MBTA compliant zoning districts around them. The consultant failed to produce that report for us, which is why we only concentrated on downtown. And my understanding is this next phase of zoning
around West Natick was going to take advantage of the MBTA community's law and create a compliant district as well. Am I misunderstanding that? Speaker 3: So two things, west Natick, this draft would be compliant, we don't need it for compliance. Speaker 11: I understand, that's what I'm asking. So is is what we are proposing here consistent? Nevermind the word compliant, is it consistent with what we're trying to achieve for MBTA communities? I understand we're compliant already. I get it. Okay. But West Nick is, is this gonna be consistent
with the MBTA community's law where there's buy right multifamily allowed in this district? Speaker 3: So that is the question of the planning board. So the reason why I say that is the question of the planning board is because yes, 10% affordable, compliant number of units per acre compliant area we're compliant. But the question comes down to is that if you want straight multifamily in the entire district, then you need to make some changes. Otherwise, right now we have it mixed use residential where it has to have a commercial component on
certain T fives. But then other areas it can be straight multifamily because those are the connectors. So that is a question. Is Speaker 11: It by right though? Is any of it by, right. Speaker 3: So the mixed use residential is by Right, right in T five. Okay. But multifamily is not allowed straight multifamily. Speaker 1: And that Speaker 3: Actually, if you're in T four Yeah, it's allowed, so it's dependent on the district. So you need to decide, do you, if you want straight multifamily, it's dependent on along this corridor then. And also, Speaker 11: You know, that's why we have the transect
idea, which I like, right. Which I like. But in those places where we want to have multifamily. Speaker 1: But you know, one of the things that was, I think we were trying to follow as this was taking form was the idea that we're not looking for pure multifamily. That what we, our priority for West Natick is mixed, mixed use where you'll have multifamily above and commercial on the ground Speaker 11: Floor Speaker 1: And that, because that's, that's kind of the ma the magic formula.
And I think that made sense. Did I, I mean that, that's my understanding. Speaker 3: That was the direction that we've heard from. Yeah. Like the neighborhoods and the community. So, but Speaker 4: The mixed use is compliant with the MPAs? Speaker 3: Yeah, we could actually, you can comply with a straight multi mixed use multifamily. You just submit an extra form to the state, which is what we did for Main Street. And the other areas. Speaker 11: Again, what is by, right? What is, what is proposed here? That is by, right, Speaker 3: So if you look at the use regulation schedule, yep.
It'll tell you write down what is allowed by, right. What is allowed by special permit and what is not allowed in the different transects. So in T five, T four, T three single families are not allowed because what's existing today is in the T three is two to three, FAMs, two fam Speaker 11: Four and three, four and three. There's BuyRight multifamily, sorry, I'm reading that correctly. Yep. Okay. Speaker 1: So in the, in the places where it's most appropriate then,
then we wanna encourage it. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 11: Got it. Speaker 3: So it was like, Speaker 11: You're answering my question. Speaker 3: Got it. But like, it was just looking at it in terms of those types of uses and then also the uses elsewhere as well. Speaker 4: Can I jump up one level on, on a or are we still answering that question? Nope. Oh, labeling this the West Natick neighborhood corridor. I, I am finding it hard to get into that, that expression. There was a West neighborhood,
a West Natick neighborhood association that was real active when the mall was being built and when Core golf was going in. And they really, they, they had a lot of public beings and did a lot of good work that was, and I think they considered themselves the West Natick Neighborhood Association. This feels like the West Natick corridor as opposed to neighborhood, which has certain connotations. Yeah. And when I, and I see that T five is labeled as a neighborhood center, and maybe these are new definitions, but they, they feel more like development centers
as opposed to neighborhood centers. And I, and I don't, I mean, you know, there's sort of this traditional sense of what a neighborhood looks like. This is a linear layout. And I'm just wonder, I mean, when, when you hear neighborhood center, you think I, I don't know. I I think there's a connotation that, that even though I like the Transect concept and I, and I, and I've been a fan of how this is broken down, I'm thinking these are like, T five is more of a development center and T four is more of a development connector. Whereas T three is actually a residential neighborhood.
I mean, those actually will be like, you know, and, and T one would be a, a co you know, conservation open space. I'm just, I'm just wondering if we aren't maybe sort of subliminally misdirecting people into what their expectations are When you hear, when you hear neighborhood center, you don't think of, I mean these would potentially have mixed use at most, but it, it could, it could really remain just as it is. And it's, it's, we're not really, they're not really housing projects, you know, it's very much a mixed use development type concept being,
being kind of stitched together in this quilt, which I, which I do appreciate, but it's Speaker 1: Very neighborhood like stitching, I mean literally that notion of stitching together. Speaker 4: I I think of a neighborhood as, as more of a residentially focused. I mean that's just kind of a common connotation and it maybe it's appropriate for T three, T two and T one. But the first two, I'm just wondering if they aren't, if there's just not a different word, sort of like a, I mean I keep thinking of development center Speaker 1: And, and Speaker 4: I don't know, I mean something else, but it, it, it, it's, it, it just, it just doesn't strike me as the traditional use
of the word neighborhood. And I'm just wondering if people won't have some notion in their heads. They, they, they think of what a neighborhood center would look like and like, well that's not this, I dunno, maybe, maybe a little wordsmithing. There's just, it'd be nice to have something that just clearly expresses what this is. You know, it is mixed use. There are different things going together. Is I, I read the definition two or three times. Is housing allowed in T five? Speaker 3: If it is mul mixed use residential. Speaker 4: Okay. So that would be retail below it. Kinda like our center gateway. Yeah. Okay.
So do you call it a living center? Do you call it a development center? Seems kind of corporate and cold. But you know, you, you, I mean I Speaker 11: Just Oh, good point. I mean I, yeah, Speaker 4: I'd just like to sort of capture people's imagination in a phrase that they imagine. Okay. Connectivity, bike paths, commercial, some multifamily, you know, what, what do they call, what do they call the thing over the what? Ikea and Somerville and Assembly Square. Is that, is
Speaker 5: That, oh, like they call like lifestyle centers and stuff. There you go. Instead of calling a shopping center, Speaker 4: Lifestyle center's kind of a rotten name, but, but it is, it is a living center of, you know, life center living. I know it sounds like a nursing home. I don't know. Let, let's keep thinking about it. 'cause the, the neighborhood center to me connotes lots of lawns and fountains in the middle of it. And a place where you go meet your neighbors and walk your dog and throw a Frisbee, you know, kinda like, let's go to the neighborhood center, like a town common. It's kinda like the neighborhood center of downtown Natick, you know, it's the city life center.
Well something, the Metro West Lifestyle Center. Speaker 11: We'll get Don Draper on it. We'll we'll have the, the A man come up with that. Speaker 4: Let's have some drinks and some d Speaker 11: No, it's a good, I take your point. And I think that's, that's, that's a good point. And I think we should maybe come up with some ideas to throw in there. Brainstorm. Yeah, no, Speaker 4: Because the guts of it is in, this is a really, I'm trying to think of your, your regular town meeting member who will probably only see this the night of town meeting, right? Sadly. Yeah. And they're probably not gonna go to FinCon meetings.
They're gonna see it and Amanda's gonna stand up there and I, I'm sure the presentation's gonna be longer than she just summarized for us, but it won't be much longer. 'cause you, you know, you get 10 minutes, maybe you get up to 15 or 20. It's gonna be a lot to throw at people. And if the, if, you know, people are gonna almost have to immediately imagine what this might be like. And I think a little bit of that is in, is in the, the labeling and you know, the description of it. Well Speaker 11: I think the graphic presentation of this too, as like you started out with Amanda, it's one district.
So on the map, let me ask you this question. So on the map, is the NC district gonna be the outline of everything in totality here? Or is the map gonna actually reflect the transect boundaries as well? Speaker 3: It's going, so the idea was it would actually show the transect and then we would put the district either within the map or a sub map. Speaker 11: Could it be an inset, could it be something like an inset on the map? Yeah. Because I think granularly granularly, if you look at the zoning map as a whole
and you try to really fine tune that it, Speaker 3: You're not gonna be able to, it's not gonna read. Yeah. Which is why I was thinking that it would be the whole entire boundary. Speaker 11: So your Boston zoning map is a collection of, you know Yeah, Speaker 3: Yeah. Sheets, like pulls out kind of thing. Yeah. So Speaker 11: I would highly recommend looking at that. Yep. Speaker 3: Because these are not overlay districts, Speaker 11: Right? It's not an overlay. Right. That's also, it's a district with sub-districts within it. Speaker 4: One other concern I, I wanted to share is it was what, maybe 10, 12 years ago, there were a couple citizen petitions to rezone this area. Yes. A couple local attorneys did. Yes.
And the first thing that somebody did was calculate the potential for units. And I think they sort of spread the word that there could be, what was the number, like 6,000 housing units along, along this mile and a half of roadway. And there was universal fear and dread of it because it just sounded like we were just gonna have 10 story, you know, apartment building. So that there is very much, you heard it tonight, this sense of like, you're killing us with development. So I think we just have to be prepared for some estimates on
what Max build out could look like, what the timing of that's gonna be. Because obviously some of these places might change quite a bit under this zoning. Others like the, the, the childhood education center that we just went in, they're not gonna knock that down. And so a lot's gonna stay, a lot's gonna go. But I think there should be some description of what a max buildup might look like in terms of units that might get built. I think everybody likes the idea of new, new shops and retail and stuff like that. But I, I think you're gonna run straight into, you know,
what does max buildup look like in traffic, in terms of traffic, in terms of people there that the, the weather vein is kind of pointing in very much an anticon anti-development. Of course that's been blowing that way for a number of years here in Natick. So development ha and, and density has to be met with design, you know, the capacity for the roadways to, to, to get people there and not scaring people. Speaker 1: When we went through working on 2030 for the, the master plan, two of the things that were striking, and you may remember at town meeting we had these posters
and ask people to put stickers on the types of, of, of like building types that they, they liked and didn't like. And like mid height mixed use was, was great, was terrific. Buildings that were entire housing top to bottom, surprisingly not popular. And then ones that were very tall of any, you know, the, the, the more height the, the kind of more it put people off. But it was, it was striking how people consistently
liked and didn't like, they didn't like the, the extremes of height or even single, single use. Speaker 4: I I I, well obviously people don't, people aren't even big fans now of retail below and mid-level buildings with, you know, more condos and natick. But I think you could make the argument that the traffic impact is gonna sort of net out to be not too different. I mean this is a corridor that already has tons of housing on it. It has tons of commercial property.
I mean we might be, we might be net net increasing the traffic somewhat as as it goes. But I I think you could Well I, I think the level of development is gonna be improved, but I, I don't think we're selling out the, the roadway and just pumping in, you know, three x four x times the amount of traffic. Speaker 11: I think it's I Lydon Square in Wellesley. Yeah. I mean remember what that was. That was Roche brothers on one side of the street. It was deal lumber on the other and transformed. Right. And same thing, Andy. I mean it's like that's a nice
designed, densely dense and there is some housing in there as a matter of fact. Yeah. But yeah, I mean I, it's, it was a well-designed roadway. They, they can, you know, at the intersection where the Starbucks is, they considered a roundabout that, but they ended up putting in the, in the signal there. But I mean that's kind of what I see this being achieved. Lynden Street, good analogy in Wellesley is a, it's a parallel core. It's not a, it's not Central Street through downtown Wellesley, but it, it gets its fair share of Speaker 1: They all left Central Street and moved to Lynley. Speaker 11: They did. That's exactly right. That's that's true.
They actually literally did. So it's, that's what I kind of imagine the agree. Speaker 4: I agree. I think, I think those are the better types of developments. I I I wonder how your average Tian is gonna feel about a comparison to the Linden Street development. Speaker 11: Nian, is that a real Speaker 1: Word? No, it's not. Speaker 11: You just made that up. Okay. Speaker 4: Maybe I did. But I mean a per, i I don't, I am, I'm very curious to know what the average citizen of Natick would feel about something being developed in, in the manner of Linden Street is a
place I go to quite a bit. I like it over there. I think, I think it's great Speaker 11: Caffeine attic. So I'm there every day restaurants Speaker 1: And, and, and I know it's just, it's a, a fussy point, but we have to be careful about how we throw around the word condos. 'cause I live in a condo and it's, it's, it's half of a two family, but technically it's a condo. So it would be great just to kind of start using the language that's more representative as it's not, it's not apartments, it's not condos. Speaker 4: Well I use that term because it's becoming a bad word. Speaker 1: I know. Speaker 4: It, it's very interesting how that's becoming a bad, you know, it's, it's becoming three syllables condo.
So, you know, I I I get that that's happening and there's nothing inherently wrong with condominiums, but it's, it's just, I'm, I'm, I'm just trying. Well, Speaker 1: Well it conjures up a, a, a visual image again. Technically I live in a condo because it's, it's a, we have a duplex and we own half and our neighbors own the other half. So technically it's a condo. And so I, I'm trying to get away because I know it has a pejorative kind of taste to it. So if we, if we wanna talk about kind of mixed residential and, and commercial, if we want to talk about, you know, all residential.
But I, I just wanna be careful about getting tangled up in the charge that is the word condo. Speaker 4: Oh, I'm, I'm well aware. Speaker 11: Can I nitpicky on T one for a second? Let's just, something I just noticed here on in the sort of definition of it. Yeah. Section E right? Three E we say the development of these areas is limited to trails and support open space amenities. But we've got in the table of uses, which is correct. We've got religious institutions and schools and things like that. So let's, Speaker 3: So my question comes down,
that's when I've gotta check with Caris. Yes. Because can the town say no even if the zone doesn't allow it? Isn't that Speaker 11: On what, on what types of uses Speaker 3: On Dover Religious? Speaker 11: I don't think so. Speaker 3: So like, that was what I was trying to figure. Speaker 11: I mean, we could say, I'm just saying in in the definition where we say it's limited to trails and support we Yeah. With the exclusion of, you know, Speaker 3: Yeah. I've gotta talk to Caris Speaker 11: Protected uses under Yeah. Section three of the zoning act, whatever, whatever it comes up. But yeah. And then so that, tell me again what this little
on the map, the T one that is sort of mid between roach brothers and the GE station. What's that on the north side? What is that parcel? Oh, Speaker 3: That's where the cobbler shop is. Oh, Speaker 1: Oh, Henry Wilson. Yeah, Speaker 11: It's that big. Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good size a lot. Speaker 11: Yeah, Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And then right next to it actually is the high tension wires. Okay, got it. And Obe Hill. Yep. Speaker 1: It runs right up to the train bed. Okay. To the rail bed. Speaker 11: I didn't realize was that big. Okay. Speaker 3: And then the blue one that's directly south of
that right there. Yeah. So that one is actually owned by the NA conservation. It's pretty much wetlands. And then south of that is in Hawaii. We weren't looking at, it was Na Speaker 11: Ball field or something. Yeah, yeah. And what's this one way at the end? Oh, Speaker 3: That's Raney Woods. There's a bunch of trails. Maybe it's not the name of it. Speaker 1: Is that the one that is Speaker 11: Yeah, that's Speaker 1: Owned by Speaker 4: Of turmeric. Speaker 11: Oh, Speaker 3: There's a bunch of land. So it's owned by Framingham, but it's in Natick. It's weird. Speaker 11: It's owned by Framingham. Yeah, but in Natick. Yeah. Really? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, I, I remember when that came to be. Speaker 3: But there's a lot of trails in it. I think it's Zi Woods or, Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so. Speaker 3: Yeah. That's odd prize. Speaker 11: Something new. Okay. Okay. Speaker 1: So, Speaker 5: So do we actually, being that most of those are are public, do we have to call those out even? Speaker 3: What do you mean? Speaker 5: It's just, I'm just, we're kind of, we're reasonable coming up with a zoning definition for majority of those are actually town owned parcels or they're literally ponds. Speaker 3: And we might not, but we would wanna,
the reason why we also were highlighting this was because in language I have to make it stronger is that you can connect to them Yeah. And expand upon 'em. But then also because they're currently, they actually are currently zoned like RSAI think, and RSB or C, sorry. So it was just trying to get them in the district so they weren't Speaker 11: In there. Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't wanna go because Speaker 11: You don't wanna have po like pockets sitting in between Yeah. Not zoned in the nc, right? Is that, Speaker 3: What's that? You wouldn't, Speaker 11: You wouldn't want to have a pocket of whatever
that is sitting in the middle of nc. Right. Speaker 5: Rather than, so it would've been zoned that was, Speaker 3: We Speaker 5: Could have for our single family, even though that was not paycheck by being Speaker 3: A, we could have gone up and taken out or not taken out, but the Lake Chu, but then it's like, where do you stop? Like, you know what I mean? Like Yeah. So that's why I was just, you can't develop like picture to it. Speaker 11: Are Speaker 1: We good? Are we taking questions? It's Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah, if you want it's, you're the chair. Speaker 1: Well, I know it particularly because Martin Kessel was here and we were talking about open space. So, but yes. So for those of you who have actually followed,
followed along in what we're doing here, que questions, comments, clarification. And Martin, Speaker 27: Thank you Martin Kessel, chair of the open space advisory committee. And as you may guess, I, I'm here to talk a bit about open space and I know that hasn't been talked about yet too much. I kinda wanted to get on the table as soon as possible and I find that I, like many people are just trying to make sense out of this whole thing, which is rather a complicated set of, of, of bylaws. So basically just a first impression.
So the open space committee has talked about the west end of corridor, both in terms of finding open space to serve the new residences, but also there's a deficiency in West Natick in general of open space. And I'm not sure how much of that we can actually do. So my first thing that I didn't quite understand was how do we ensure that there, the open space requirement, which is given as percentage, a fairly low percentage is gonna not just have landscape buffers and, you know, grass near the buildings,
but some usable open space. So we often call it usable open space, perhaps pop pocket parks. So in the definition of T four, it does mention pocket parks as a desirable goal, but it also mentions 200 square feet as a, as a possible size, which doesn't really seem to me like a pocket park. What I've read generally pocket parks usually refer to like house lot size and leading up to an acre, 200 square feet is kind
of the size of my living room. I wouldn't, it might be a nice little place for a bench, but it's not really, I wouldn't call it a pocket park. And let's see, I keep coming back to as a way to, you know, in terms of the definition of open space with a 20%, 30% open space, it's refers to anything that's not building cover and asphalt for cars. So it can be bushes, it can be small patches of grass that are really not usable. How do you encourage that to get into some usable size open
space, a pocket pocket of sort. And I keep coming back to the proposal that our committee worked on way way back, I think it was 20 years ago with the hoop district in which there's a requirement for certain percentage of open space. But if you provide a public park that gives one and a half credits. So basically if you, if you sur if you provided a, a pocket park of let's say a thousand square feet, you'd get credit for 1500 square feet of open space. So that's a way to encourage larger tracks that are actually useful if you define the larger
tracks well enough. That may not be the answer, but that's sort of one thing that occurred to me. And, you know, looking for other kinds of ways of encouraging that contiguous open space. In the hoop though, there was 35 to 45% on open space requirement for the total open space. So it was much more to work with. And this proposal, there's only 20% open space required in T four and 30% in T three. And I think those are the two districts that have the dense housing that we're more concerned about open space. So I'm a little concerned that those may be too low
and I dunno what the right number is, but I kind of would like to look at what that might be. And you know, basically how do we, you know, maybe look at increasing the open space percent and also at finding a way to ensure that some of that is, is, is actually usable parks and not just, you know, buffers with the roadway and buffers, but the, with the walkways. So that's, those are my first thoughts and I, I'm sure there's the hopefully more, a lot more discussion to be had on this. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Others,
please and just introduce yourself and your, provide your address please. Speaker 28: Sure. Good evening. My name is Jamie Faye. I'm with Fort Point Associates representing Gable's Residential and working with Lou on his property. Just to put that on the record, I am a planner as well and hadn't really planned on giving any comments, but I've just got these around noon time. But I will say, I just want
to really compliment you on undertaking this rezoning. I think anybody who drives down West Central Street and back and looks at it and says, this is a neighborhood that really needs something new, something different. It's a wonderful opportunity for Natick, I think. And I'm, I'm just very pleased that you're, you're taking this on and trying to, to change the town by changing the zoning. So I, I think that's, that's great. And I think the approach that Amanda has put together here really has a lot of merit.
You know, it's a, an interesting combination of a little bit of form-based code and a little bit of new urbanism and you know, I think her approach and hopefully your approach right, of sort of recognizing that different densities are really appropriate along this long quarter from a planning perspective is a great way to do it. So, you know, with that said, I think, I think you're off to a great start and we'd, we'd love to work with you on this, certainly lots of details and things that I don't understand how they work
and I'm sure it could be explained and things that probably need correction and, and a little bit of, you know, change here and there. But as a starting point, it seems like it's a really great place to, to be starting from and working through to the fall town meeting. So love to work with you further on it. Speaker 1: Thank No, thank you very much. And I'll, I'll note I think we're not trying to change the town by changing things, but we are trying to celebrate the town by changing it. Speaker 28: Well you know, the comment about is this a neighborhood or not a neighborhood? It, it really depends on where you come from.
Like most of my work is in urban areas and yeah, a neighborhood is not just housing, it's it's libraries and supermarkets and retail centers and all that kind of stuff. And so whatever the right name is for Natick, I don't know, maybe it's village center or something. But the idea is you're trying to create a place, right? You're trying to create a place and I think you have the opportunity to do that and, and just, you know, I think the way you've approached it with these districts, even if every parcel is imperfect, the combination of these parcels, you know, around a train station, around a intersection, you know,
can get you to a really nice place. And that's what you're trying to do, I think create a, create a place right? That people want to go to, people wanna live in, people wanna recreate in. So Speaker 11: Thank you. Yeah. And I'm just, thank you for the comments Mr. Faye. And I think you know it to the previous speaker. It's complicated in this, I mean, you know, in, I know that word spoken at town meeting, you know, gets people spinning in different directions. But I hope that when we, at the end of the day what we try to achieve is, you know, there's minimums in here, let's say 200 square feet, we talked about 200 square feet is a minimum or percentages.
That's what form-based code is really about. It's like setting some standards but not being prescriptive about it. That's really what hopefully the, an imbalance, right? I mean this isn't a purely form-based code approach, but the best parts of form-based code is you set certain standards and they're flexible and they're contextual. And so when a development pro, you know, proposed development comes forward, there's a lot of discretion. We have a lot of conversation about design because that's really making a place is about design, it's about the architecture, it's about the quality
of the open space, how, you know, open spaces well designed can be small and really effective and they can be big and ineffective. So, you know, I just think hopefully we're achieving flexibility in this and that we kind of signal there's certain minimums we want to see, but ultimately when projects come forward, you know, we've got something to work with that's flexible and you know, contextual. That's really what we're trying to achieve. And as Mr. Faye said, it's, it's placemaking at a,
at a linear corridor. So we'll come up with a good brand. We Speaker 4: Use smart growth already. Can't really use that Speaker 11: Done. Speaker 4: But this is kind of a smart Speaker 11: Oh it is. Well it's transit. I mean let's not, there's a transit either sell, there's no Speaker 4: Question. There's, there's a very, they're very, you know, Speaker 11: A unique transit node there that is Speaker 4: Part of it. Speaker 3: Would that be appropriate then transit node rather than neighborhood center? Speaker 5: I don't know. Yeah. But that really just applies to kind of that one, that's what, right. It doesn't necessarily Speaker 1: Apply to the one on the other side as Speaker 4: Being that's the way we solve.
Speaker 1: So others, alright Amanda, next steps for us? Speaker 3: No members of the public either. Speaker 1: Nope. No. Speaker 3: So I guess the question comes down to is would it be inappropriate or actually appropriate to ask the select board to refer it back to the planning board for the purpose of public hearing? So then we could actually start kind of go on Speaker 1: Getting Speaker 3: Out Speaker 1: There. I think that would make a a lot of sense. That's great. The sooner the better. Cool. Speaker 3: We'll get that to them. Speaker 4: Could we send draft copies
to some of those people that are very interested in these types of things just to see if we can Yep. Fish out some early comments, participation, I mean this is, this is complex and it, it, it wouldn't be unreasonable that it might take a cycle or two of town meeting. But I would love when we have our public hearing on this to have, you know, certain individuals who are really good at opining on these things later in the process earlier. 'cause I, I think we'd all benefit from it. Yep. Speaker 3: We can definitely get those out. And then we're gonna send out like a couple one-pager similar to what we are doing already with the articles.
Not to mention specifics on those, but we have already sent those to the various like members of the staff to make sure that they're good to go and we'll send those ones out as well. So, no, that's a great idea. I'll make sure I get those ones out. Speaker 1: Okay, thank Speaker 3: You. And then we also do include the moderator and the chair of the finance committee in those correspondence just so they know that it's where Speaker 1: We're at. Good. That's great. Okay, done. Anything further? Oh, going under planning board business. Do we wanna get into 2 91 Worcester Street? I think they're here tonight. Yeah. What's that?
I think they're here. Oh, oh good. Okay. I'm sorry about that. So Speaker 3: 2 91 Worcester Street. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 3: So I know there's been conversations, this is a project that actually Speaker 1: Lemme just have Yep. Sorry. Take their seats. I think, I think our goal is to is to sort out what we can, what we can sort out and yeah, Speaker 3: So 2 91 Worcester Street Relief came to the planning board for permitting and approval. Some of the provisions are underneath the planning board because of the conditions outlined in the decision.
Other things are not under the planning board's purview like hours of operation, those kind of items. Those are under the CCC. So we're not looking at those. So there were a couple conditions in the planning boards decisions regarding the traffic study with the kind of turning and the access regarding Route nine and mass work. MAs dot sorry, however those hadn't been completed. The applicant or the owners of the property are here. That's one piece. Another piece that is kind of a question is the parking that is tied
to 2 91 located at 2 9 2 81 Worcester Street, which is the former, I think Rice tempura is not needed. And so trying to detach those parking spaces if they are not needed. So that use can actually, that parcel can be reused for something other than overflow parking. So the question comes down to is how would the planning board view these? Could this be done administratively, like an amendment good to go, et cetera? Or does it need to open up the public hearing? I don't know if the A can't or the owner of relief has any other
information they would like to provide to you. Speaker 29: I did bring some information to help make a decision if it Speaker 1: Would help. And with apologies, could you just introduce yourself? Speaker 29: Connor Speaker 1: McLaughlin. Thank you. Speaker 29: It's Speaker 30: The, excuse me, is the green light on? There's light on. Hit the word push. Speaker 31: There we go. Oh, Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 31: Conor McLaughlin relief alternative. I did bring some information to help you make your decision. Just total transactions we're seeing per day pictures of the parking lot and police log activity showing no accidents or any issues on the street in the intersection in front. But happy to share that if you'd like. Speaker 1: So is, and I guess I'm, I'm looking at the fact
that we put this into the decision, all these things. So I think what we're trying to figure out is a way to amend or take out with the, with the information that you have can provide so that what the, what the edited decision reads is actually reflects Speaker 31: The current circumstance. The Speaker 1: Current circumstance. Yeah. But what we do, what we need are those figures getting, getting the draft changed so that we can kind of be right with the decision
so no one can come back and say, wait, they, they didn't comply with this. Yeah. So we can Speaker 30: I'm Phil Silverman from Vicente an attorney for the company. Yes. And so Mr. McLaughlin has, you know, I think some customer accounts, which I think, you know, you could probably do your own look at the Institute of Traffic Engineers and realize that it's like half the number that was ever anticipated here. So if, I mean, is it possible to sort of take your decision and in lieu of a, for example, a formal traffic study, you take the information and accept that, would that be a way to do this sort
of in an informal basis? Speaker 1: Doug, Speaker 11: What are we talking about? Where are we on, what is the issue at hand that we are being asked to address? Speaker 1: There were things, there were things that were specified in the decision. Speaker 11: Okay. Speaker 31: So Speaker 1: There was that are not exactly moot, but the intensity of use, the intensity of traffic Yep. Has meant that doing a traffic study is kind of crazy because the, the evidence kind of, Speaker 11: It's Speaker 4: Less, but the request in the decision was a traffic study.
Yes. Okay. And the second thing was a plan for offsite parking in the impact that it was needed. Speaker 11: Okay. So we are, you're asking what are, so you are asking that those conditions be removed from the decision? That's correct. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And why so and why in our packets do we have two MAs, DOT permits? Speaker 31: One one's, what, what are those about? One is for the water line, right? Speaker 11: That was is that re what is that relevant to? Speaker 31: No, we just provided the, the only MAs DOT communications we had had. Okay. Speaker 30: It's relevant to some other conditions in there related to mass DOT permitting when we were just sort
of trying to show you Yeah. Speaker 11: These are utility permit, Speaker 31: These are the only utility correspondents we Speaker 11: Have. Utility. Yeah. I mean you've, you, you, you, you, you know my feelings about the traffic study on this project. I, I underst understand we're we're not gonna re retread that. So, so Speaker 1: The question is, and in some ways I guess it's it whether CCC has anything to say, but what is the process to go in and modify a decision that satisfies C, C, C and anyone else that needs to Speaker 4: Be satisfied? What if we were to vote a finding as a board that we find that the conditions of the permit have been met and,
and, and that we, Speaker 1: Or we find that the intensity of traffic does not demand the, the earlier requirements. Speaker 4: I think something like that would, something Speaker 1: More graceful than that. Yeah. Speaker 31: If I may, when we started this discussion, we were talking in the, in the realm of 500 to 600 trips per day. Okay. And that's what just brought these discussions of how do we deal with the traffic, how to do with X, Y, Z We're seeing roughly 140 people a day. Mm. Our busiest day ever has been 210 people in the last year. So now I have a year of data to show we've never broken over 210 people.
Our average day is like 130 people. We have 55 parking spaces. We're way over powered for the amount of customers. I wish it was not that way, but we're struggling to stay alive right now. And Speaker 11: What's the, what the, the remote parking, how was that secured for what's the next No, I know, I know. How is that secured for you? We Speaker 31: Own both parcels. Oh, you own both parcels. Got it. Yeah. So we've left it abandoned now for a while, as you know, and it's, it's become an eyesore as the building needs to be reconstructed and we have some interest in it and we'd love to not have it be a dilapidated structure there. And we, it's become a, it's more of an issue
to have people walking down route nine or the things when there's more parking than, you know, we brought pictures. There's never more than seven cars in the 55 parking space lot. It just doesn't make sense to have, you know, people walking down route nine of these other things that we, we were anticipating with the volume. We were hoping, Speaker 1: I'm thinking with kind of maybe with, with concerns concurrence or or consultation from Caras from town council to make sure that our wording meets anything required of CCC. I don't know if, I don't know the extent to which these are entwined. So
Speaker 3: These, you Speaker 30: Heard ccc, the Speaker 1: Cannabis control? Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 30: There's no requirements. Okay. Cannabis control regulations regarding parking, traffic, et cetera. It's a local matter. Speaker 4: Maybe the gentleman could propose some draft language and we could review it and then run it by Caris as opposed to making her draft it. Speaker 3: Do you want Sure. Speaker 11: I'd rather have What would you suggest? I mean, would it be, would it be Speaker 1: I think we, I think we get the fact that you don't need that the draft Speaker 30: Along the lines of given the a lower intensity of use. Speaker 11: Yep. I think consensus is, we're with you on, on, on that.
Just how, how do we get to the decision that makes you guys comfortable and recordable and everything else. So Yeah. So Speaker 1: Do we need to reopen the I Yeah. Speaker 4: I think it could be maybe done in the way of a finding where we find that the current conditions Speaker 1: Do not mandate the do Speaker 4: Do not require the, the, the, the, the, the conditioned traffic study, the conditioned off traffic parking and that, you know, we, we find that this, that that the, that the special permit has been, has been met. And tho those things are no longer required. Speaker 1: Yeah. And we, I mean we could, if we wanna be careful
to say in the event that circumstances change dramatically, the town reserves the right to, we'd be happy to revisit, presume resume the requirements. Speaker 11: Well, yeah. What for your sake though, what, like what would be recordable? You know that on title, like you want something recordable? Yeah, that's right. So so an Speaker 30: Amendment, is it an amendment to the permit or Speaker 11: Yeah, but Andy's I like where you're going. Yeah. But so if that, if that is something we vote as a and it's signed by the board, can that be recordable? Yeah. That's Speaker 4: Where it exists in the minutes of the meeting. It's,
Speaker 11: It's, you want it to be something that's right with the property. Right. You Speaker 3: Can record that. If it's an addendum or an amendment to the actual decision, it gets recorded with the registry of deeds, Speaker 11: Affidavit or something that goes with it, Speaker 3: Then you kind of like attach it that way. So it would be a separate document. But when you pull up the registry of deeds Speaker 1: That it would be, it comes Speaker 3: Up as that. Speaker 11: That's Speaker 30: I fi finding to protect planning board. Speaker 11: Yeah. And that in the chain of title, you've got something there that does it because you don't want someone going back and saying, here's the special permit and we, these things, things sitting here that weren't done,
but we, but by the way Yeah. The planning board, Speaker 30: Does it make sense for me to try to come up with a draft, send that over to Kara? Speaker 1: Yes. I think that would be wonderful. And I ideally to include a caveat that should circumstances change dramatically. Yep. And, and I'm not gonna try to define dramatically, but it's just a well common sense Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 1: Cover. Speaker 4: I, I don't know about that. Probably we have trouble Yeah. Because we wanna move on and lease that property. Speaker 5: Oh yeah. I think the parking might be Speaker 4: Completely Speaker 5: Separate. Won't have Speaker 4: That. Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah, I will take that.
Speaker 5: And, and I would really doubt that it would change that dramatically. That they would need that parking ly Speaker 4: More traffic Speaker 1: Interview. Speaker 4: I think you'd have the full support of the board. It's just a matter of into the form. And I'm glad you have 120 cars. I've never seen any cars there. Oh. So I'm glad that Speaker 5: I pulled in the other day. I counted six, although I'm sure two of 'em were probably employees, but I thought Speaker 4: Maybe the employees were parked in the back. So we do wish you Well I wish you success. I mean, so Speaker 1: If, if, if you we'll draft that. Yeah. We'll review it and barring any problems. Speaker 3: So put it on the August 13th Speaker 1: Stamp. It paid, what's that? Speaker 3: August 13th? Speaker 1: Yes.
Let's see if we can take care of it for Speaker 4: Great. Speaker 1: Alright. Awesome. Thank Speaker 4: You very much. Thank you. Speaker 1: And, and, and thank you. Sometimes it's easiest just to do a quick face to face. So I appreciate you coming in. Speaker 4: Absolutely. Our pleasure. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. I like to miss the old papa. Such a great place. Speaker 1: Alright. Speaker 4: The sucker season Speaker 1: Design review board. This is renewing our appointments. Yeah, Speaker 3: I've gotta put that one to the 13th. I don't have the documentation, so. Speaker 1: Okay. And, and we, I know we have two who we appoint. Yeah. And we just, I have to either renew or if they're being succeeded.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll put that on the 13th. Speaker 1: And that should be a quick Yeah. Speaker 4: Big space. Yeah. Speaker 1: And can we skip committee assignments? Speaker 3: I got nothing. Yeah. Speaker 1: Alright. Any other business identified by members of this board? No. Good. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion Speaker 4: To adjourn. Second. Speaker 1: All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. We stand adjourned at 10 0 5.