Speaker 1: We get started. Welcome back. This is before we get started. We have a public speak portion where any individual may raise an issue that is not included on the agenda and it will be taken under advisement by the board. There will be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting. This section of the agenda is limited to 15 minutes and any individual addressing the board during this section of the agenda shall be limited to five minutes. So does anybody have anything that is not associated with five Auburn Street,
which is a bit odd? I understand we're seeing nothing. We'll move on. This is a continuation of the public hearing for five Auburn Street, an application for Metro West Collaborative Development. The applicant requests approval of a comprehensive permanent under MGL chapter 40 sections 2223 in the zoning bylaws for the multifamily dwelling development and associated site payments. Welcome back. So just in terms of the agenda for tonight, I think we're gonna start with the peer review
on traffic and civil. Does that sound right to you? Yes. Okay. With that, do we have Mr. Wong? Is it? Yeah. Okay. Do we have Mr. Wong, do we have you? Can you hear us? Oh, he appears to be muted. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Effort to, to try to unmute him.
There we go. Mr. Wong, can you hear us?
Speaker 2: I think we were on Speaker 3: Mute, so maybe he didn't hear what he was spoken to. Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it looks like our audio is off. Speaker 3: Yeah. Scooch over or Speaker 1: Not? There you go. And Speaker 2: And video Speaker 1: We go. Okay. Mr. Juan, can you hear us now? That did not solve the problem. Oh yes. Oh, there we go. Hi, how are you? Sorry about that.
Let's just check your audio here. Can you talk so we can see if we can hear you? No, we can't hear you. Speaker 2: How about now? Oh, can you hear us now? Hold on, let me invite Pegasus in
right back.
She
Speaker 1: Bless you
Speaker 4: Mr. Chair. Yeah. Just so everybody knows, while we're fixing the audio, I had Amanda hand out two things. This is the waiver list with the red line, which we're gonna show on screen, which will show you all which waivers have been eliminated due to the changes in the plans. Okay. And then the other one is the updated one with the new order. Speaker 1: Okay. Then order in terms of the letter in orientation Speaker 4: Right now we've removed
some, so we just relet them. Oh, I'm sorry. I get, and this is the one we hope you'll adopt. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Bless you. Speaker 1: I thank you for your patience Mr. Wong. Thank you. Can you hear me? Speaker 2: Pegas or Pegasus
is gonna grab him too so he'll be able to hear everything. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright, good enough. We're efforting, Speaker 2: Did you get the, Speaker 5: Did you get that memo?
This or I've read, I've read, yeah, Speaker 1: It's mine, but I have a copy so go ahead. You sure? Yeah. This guy. Speaker 2: Hundred percent. Speaker 1: 100% thousand percent I print. I printed them off. Pardon? That too. Oh yeah. Speaker 2: Thank you. Oh yeah.
Speaker 6: Hello? Are you able to hear me? Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. Speaker 6: Great. I think we got the audio working, so thank you for your patience. Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Well appreciate it. Just, I'm gonna give to hold you just for one second till we get Amanda back and she'll be here momentarily.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be presenting. That's really up to the, usually those are on, that's what I
is Roberts pool lane. The little, like the 50 foot cut. 16 and I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: You mean like the one where you're coming down? Union You bank, right? Like the church? Yeah, right there. It's like, I think that's what it is. Okay. I think that's it. Speaker 2: I've never heard of Robert's program. No, Speaker 7: That's the first one I've heard of it. Speaker 2: If only I could find Speaker 7: A map. If only you had a supercomputer right in front of you. That's my wife's time. You could look it up in the supercomputer in your Speaker 2: Pocket. One there a device. Allow piece, piece of information Speaker 7: Every, I love a picture of a map of everything
that we need. Okay. So there's, we are. Okay, so here we are. This is Central Barcode. Is there. It's right down here. Right. So you go down Union Street, right there. It's right there. That would be, is that Speaker 2: Robert? Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the whole Oh, don't Speaker 7: Even, yes. Robert Sproing. You were right. That's it. I feel like I've seen a sign my daughter plays soccer down there as I'm always dropping them off
Speaker 2: The chair. Without you, there's no me Speaker 1: Again. Thanks. Thanks everyone for your patience while we work this little technical difficulty out.
There we go. Okay. Amanda? Good? Yep. Okay. Okay. Thanks very much Mr. Wong. Thanks for coming and thanks for your patience. We're gonna turn it right over to you. Speaker 6: Okay, great. Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the board. My name is Wing Wong. I'm Wood McFarland Johnson and I am your peer reviewer on transportation items for five Auburn Street. So I have a presentation that
I'd like to share with you. Please let me know if that comes up for you at all. Lemme try this again. Okay. Please let me know if that shows up. Yes, Speaker 1: It does. Yep. Speaker 6: Okay, great. Oh, hold Speaker 1: One sec. Hold on one sec. Speaker 2: Is it possible to turn those TVs on? Speaker 1: Can we get it on here too? Speaker 2: Sit behind to turn around. Turn behind. Speaker 1: No, does Speaker 2: I can try.
We got another TV right there too. Yeah, maybe not. Only Speaker 8: Way be to do the projector, I'd have to hook an HDMI to this screen here. I can do that if you want. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the projector be on here. Speaker 8: TVs don't. Speaker 1: Oops. Okay. The TVs don't, but you can put it on here. You we'll go that way. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Corner Church Street. That fucking fascinating. I'm the one who has, Speaker 6: And thank you for accommodating me, for joining me Virtual, for joining, for allowing me to join virtually.
I've been dealing with it, with IT illness also over the last week or so. So I, I do not want to get any, anyone sec. So thank you for doing audit to allow me to join here virtually. So I have a quick presentation that will basically go over the peer review letter that I prepare. The letter itself was prepared in two parts. One was on the traffic study that was submitted last year and another part was on the site plan, which was submitted a couple weeks ago. And these are the scope
items that are listed here. That's part of our review and I will go over each one of those topics as we move along. Move along tonight. So we'll begin with the study area. The study area itself cover the site exiting onto from Marin Street onto Route 16, as well as the Union Street intersection as well as the pond row intersection on Wellesley. So for the size of the development, we felt that the study area is more than adequate. So we, we, we concur
the study area in terms of existing conditions. The traffic data was collected during the commuter peak hours as well as the pickup and drop off times at the Riverbend school. So we felt that was appropriate as well. So we didn't have any comment on that. The traffic engineer also noted that the traffic data that was collected was not adjusted down based on a seasonal adjustment. And so it provided a slightly conservative analysis. So we concur with that approach as well.
The crash data included the last five years, which did follow the state guideline as well. So we didn't have a comment on that. In terms of future growth, seven year background projection was used and that followed the state guidelines. A 1% background growth per year is also appropriate as well. The study itself mentioned about the St. Benedict Academy relocation expansion and estimated some trips based on that project. However, no
backup calculation was included in the traffic study. So if we could just request for that and just take a look at it as part of our review and say we, we completed a review for that as well. That'd be great. In terms of the site generated trips, the land use code from it was used appropriately for this. And I do specifically recall from the December meeting here that someone involved a question about whether or not the trip rates reflected the peak hour of the adjacent roadway network or the peak hour
of the site itself. So I just want to close the loop on that particular question. So as you can see, we took a look at what it would be if it's the peak hour of the generator rates and what that would be. And it basically resulted in two additional trips during each of the peak hours. So because of the minor differences between the two, the conclusion of the study wouldn't have changed, but I just wanted to close the loop on that question. In terms of operational analysis, the procedures, the results all
follows industry standards. So we don't have any comments on that. The one comment we did note that was that the Sink Bend Digger Academy relocation, the volumes di was dis redistributed. Instead of taking a left from Route 16 on Pleasant Street, it was res redistributed take a right movement, which is appropriate. However, most of the right movements that we observe actually used Robert Scroll lane instead of coming down to the Union Street intersection. So that's a slight
change that could be made to the study itself to reflect that barely any right movements actually come down to the intersection itself in terms of possible mitigation measure. Can Speaker 1: I just stop you there just for a second? I just wanna make sure we're just go back one. So that comment is that cars traveling westbound on Elliot don't go all the way to the intersection to take that right. To go north on Union? Correct. They they take the,
they take that earlier right. And cut through, correct? Speaker 6: That's correct. Essentially the church, they go around the church and that's like a channelized right turn lane and so they don't come down to the intersection. Speaker 1: And so, and, and what's the impact there and what's the, what's, what's the net impact of, of, of the fact that you recognize that this is occurring, if any? Speaker 6: So basically we will end up taking some of the volume out of the intersection so
the operating operation results of the intersection will be slightly better than what is shown in the study report itself. With that said though, I think the conclusion overall still doesn't change, but you get a, a better picture of what the actual operations are if you take this out into future conditions. Speaker 1: Okay, thanks. Speaker 6: In terms of mitigation measures, the traffic study itself evaluated several potential improvements at the yielding street intersection
and one of them is performing signal timing adjustments. And I felt that, you know, that alone should be an a mitigation that can be easily implemented and may for this intersection to offset some of the impacts from this development itself. I think the, in the last meeting, four second additional delay was thrown around a little bit there, here. And if we look at the future condition analysis, the morning peak hour, especially the intersection in
Union Street, worse, worse by four seconds or so. And if the signal timing adjustments were made, it basically offsetted those four seconds in the morning peak about ten second improvements in the afternoon peak. So slight improvements, but I think it's fairly equal to the impacts that this development is expecting to have. Another mitigation measure here is a potentially adding do not block intersection markings at the Auburn Street and
Riverbend intersection. So when we send out engineer out to the site to look over the operations, and this is in a typical Wednesday on January 8th, we were able to see long queues in the afternoon backing up from the Union Street intersection past Auburn Street and head towards a Wellesley town line. So we did see that queue ourselves and I know that was sort of discussed in the last meeting quite a bit. So having seen that actually happening, which is consistent with the result of the analysis, we felt that having to not block intersection
markings could help cars exiting both the Riverbend school as well as Auburn Street itself and have a, have a pocket have a space that they can enter Alley Street heading westbound towards Union Street. So that is it a quick summary of the traffic study review. So before I get onto the site plan review, do you have any question regarding the traffic study itself? Speaker 1: I, I'm certain there will be some, so let me just take a look
at my notes for a second and anybody on the board feel free to ask whatever questions you deem appropriate at this Speaker 9: Time. One question Mr. Wong. Just to be clear, these mitigation measures you're suggesting are independent of the project, is that correct? Speaker 6: They could happen together as part of the project, especially the do not block intersection markings. So, you know, can definitely help with the additional traffic that are expected on Auburn Street as well as the Riverbend intersection
itself. And certainly signal timing adjustments as the traffic study did identify, there are additional future measures that can be done to really improve the intersection at a very different level. But with the project, with respect to the project itself, I certainly feel that single timing adjustment at a minimum would be a good enhancement as part of it to mitigate the impacts. Speaker 1: Can you just give us a sense of what these,
the more extensive improvements independent of the development that that might be considered? Speaker 6: Sure. Some of that could be including wide up the intersection to include additional turn lanes. I think that was something that we did observe as a potential, a reason for some of the long queues that we saw. So those type of improvements would be that next level, that longer term level where it's gonna be a lot more costly and certainly will
take a lot longer as well given the site constraints that are at the intersection itself. So those are some will be a longer term improvements. Speaker 1: Okay. Anybody else have any questions on the board right now? Do you have any comments here before I ask if anyone else has any questions? Speaker 4: So we, we have both of our consultants here. Oh, okay. So it's up to the chair when you want them to respond when the board is done or? Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we're gonna hold them off and we're gonna let some
interaction between the peer review and folks who might have questions about what was just stated. Speaker 4: Great. And then we'll be prepared to respond. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Are we gonna do site plan? I want do one at a time. Traffic. Yeah, just, just because they're definitive, right? There's a hard, hard line here. Does anybody here have any questions that they'd like to pose? I think you'll, we'll have you pose them to the board and then we'll ask Mr. Wong to respond to the extent appropriate. Yes ma'am. If you could
just come up to the podium and give your name and address for the record. Speaker 10: Hi, I'm Chris Carson den. I live at the corner of Elliot and Auburn about the Sprool Lane. I go that way. I don't go up Sprool Lane, but I go 16 west every morning and one day a week I go SPR Lane to go downtown Natick to go to work. There's so many people coming
out of the Riverbend school that go up Sprool Lane and then they take a left on 16 'cause they don't wanna be stuck at the, the, the intersection to take their left a pleasant. So, you know, it blocks so many cars from taking a right onto union. So I just want you to be aware of that. That happens all the time. So there's people behind each other on Sprool Lane in front of the fire station trying to take a Right.
It's got nothing to do with St. Benedict's. Speaker 1: So I, you know, for me it's a little bit difficult for me to, to sort of visualize, I think what you're saying is not unimportant. Could I invite you up here just to show us on the, on the plan? Just Mr. Wong, can you back up to show? There we go. That's right there. Yep. I think that'd do it. Can you just come up and show me, show us. I think Speaker 10: Sru Lane is in front of the fire station, correct? Correct. Speaker 1: Yeah. So this, this Speaker 10: Is that shortcut? Yes, the shortcut that
where the arrow is. Speaker 1: So come and tell me what you're saying. I'm just having trouble visualizing it. Speaker 10: I wanna make that clear. I didn't know I had to come up. Speaker 1: It's me, not you. Speaker 10: All right, so you're going 16 west, you're coming out of Auburn Street. Well go go right there. Perfect. That's it. Speaker 1: That's where oriented, that's school. Speaker 10: Okay. Where's Auburn? Here's the pizza. So this is Auburn? Yep. Auburn. Okay. You're coming out of Auburn, you're, you take a left, you know
if you're lucky enough for someone to let you cross over. We talked about that at many of the meetings. So you wait to get out and then you come past the fire station and there's all these Riverbend folks and I'm not blaming any of 'em, it's just they're going, they're going this way to come back to Pleasant. So they're blocking Sru Lane and it's not the same. St. Benedicts did it all the time. So there's less of it, but there's a lot of Riverbend people who don not wanna get stuck. It's 16 in
Pleasant. They do not. So they go down the shortcut and then they take a left and they cannot get out. They cannot get, they can't take a left, they can't take a left here because this, this Union Street is mobbed with cars. So then we're all sitting there waiting for this person to take a left because they didn't wanna go to the intersection. This happens all the time. So I wanted to explain that. Okay. That shortcut there becomes pretty crowded. Speaker 1: So they go right, they go right to go left,
Speaker 10: They go right to go, they go right to left. They treat it like a duck handle. Yeah, they go right. And, but St. Ben did it every, all the time. All the time. Yeah. So now they're coming from all different parts of Natick now. So we don't see as many of them because they're just crossing maybe from Pleasant to go down to St. Benedict's. So then you've got, you come out on my regular day when I'm going 16 West and there's so many people trying to turn left and nobody going east
is letting anybody turn left. So I just want you to visualize. That's helpful. This is what happens every morning. Yep, that's helpful. It's probably an hour or two of that. Speaker 1: Okay. Thanks very much. Think of what Speaker 10: Else I wanted to say Speaker 1: Mr. Wong, were you able to see that? Speaker 6: I was able to, thank you. So those are one of those long term improvements that may or could be potentially implemented is adding those extra turn lanes. So there is a pocket for potential left turn cars
at that location. But again, that's gonna be a lot longer term and put a left, it's, it's gonna be a lot more challenging to implement because of the site constraints with all the buildings and the adjacent roadway. So, but that's, that could be a longer future term improvement outside of this project. Speaker 1: Got it. Okay. Anybody else wish to be heard? Okay, seeing none, did you want to invite a response? Sure, sure. Thanks Speaker 10: Scott Thornton.
Speaker 11: Good evening, Mr. Chair. Good evening. Members of the board, Scott Thornton with Vanessa and Associates, we did receive the peer review letter from McFarland Johnson and we are in the process of preparing a formal response in terms of the, the overall letter, I think there was a
lot of agreement. I think there were eight of the 14 comments related to traffic where there was no, no comment required. The other six required short answers or clarifying information. One of the examples of that is the, is the backup for the St. Benedict reassignment of, of traffic volumes. We will prepare or we will provide that we agree that the, that there's
not much difference in the, in the peak hour of the generator or peak hour of adjacent street traffic trip generation numbers. We use the peak hour of adjacent street traffic. That's the, the typical, typical time period that we use for these types of developments. In some cases it's the same, the peak hour, the generator is the peak hour adjacent street traffic. But we acknowledge there's a couple trip difference between the two related to
the Robert Spro lane use. We, we had scoped out the study area, the num the locations and the intersections to be studied with the, with town staff and neither end of Robert Sproul was included in that. So we acknowledge that that traffic would want to take the right turn onto Spro and then up, up to Union Street. But we felt that
we needed to include that volume in the analysis. So we assumed that they would be making the right turn at at Pleasant and Union, even though that's not likely to occur. It just presents a more conservative condition for the analysis as I think Mr. Wong indicated. And in terms of, in terms of the impacts and, and signal timing adjustments and things, you know, the,
the project has, so at the, at the intersection of Auburn Street with Elliot Street, that's where there's an impact of four seconds at the intersection of Union and Pleasant and Elliot, there we're looking at an increase in delay of 0.2 seconds in the morning and 1.2 seconds in the evening, which we don't feel that there's, that that's, you know, that's a significant impact due to the project.
We did provide some analysis for potential options that could be implemented there by the town at the request of, of town staff and, and identified a number of options that could be implemented there. I think there's some value in that in that process. Speaker 1: Can you share with us what the response you, you got to that, if any? Was Speaker 11: I, I think, I think the town engineer was appreciative of the, of the,
of the, of the options that were noted. We basically noted that things like the signal timing adjustments, you know, that's kind of low hanging fruit that could improve operations. Bigger changes as Mr. Wong indicated would require some widening, some corner takings, which may not be feasible, but, but I, I do believe the town engineer was appreciative of the, of the
recommendations that we had for, for improvements that could be implemented there. Speaker 1: Sure. Lemme just stop you just for a second, Amanda, do you have any feedback on that from the town? Just in terms of, you know, the sort of willingness if you will, to, to do at least as described, the low hanging fruit. I mean every our, our peer review, their development consultant says change the timing, that's gonna improve the condition. Are we willing to do that? I'm saying we as the town,
so I haven't Speaker 12: Received a letter from town engineer yet. Yeah. So that would be something I would want to, unless Mr. Wong has. Speaker 1: Yeah. And Mr. Wong, do you have any feedback from them on that? Speaker 2: From the Speaker 11: Time engineers? I Speaker 1: Do not. Okay. Alright. Alright. Did I, I stopped Speaker 11: You. Yeah, just, just one more thing. The, the pavement markings, the, that's that are on the screen there, we're not opposed to to, to the town implementing those, but that
becomes, you know, an ongoing maintenance agreement that the town would have to pick up to reapply those markings. I assume they, they would, you know, on a busily, busily traveled road, they, they tend to wear down quickly. So that might be something where those markings would need to get reapplied every couple three years. But again, we're not, we're not opposed to it if the town
wants to, wants to implement it. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. Good enough. Does anybody have a on the board have any questions? We're gonna hold you there for a second. Does anybody here have any follow up questions if you'd like to address? Yes ma'am. I'm just gonna have her share that with you for a moment. If you could just give us your name and address for the record and you can address the board and we'll kick it back to whoever's appropriate
to answer it. Speaker 13: Okay. Susan Shago eight Auburn Street. I walk at the intersection of all of those streets, union Pleasant, route 16 and Sperling, if it's called that is where the fire station is. Is that what we're talking about? Yes. Has anyone thought of what happens is the Montessori school who wanna go east on Route 16 will go up to Sperling
and then around and they get back on? Speaker 1: Is that the same comment that was just mentioned? No, this is something different. Speaker 13: Yeah, this is when Montessori school people wanna go west. She was talking about Speaker 1: Can again, I'm gonna have you just demonstrate it for everyone here just so we all know what you're talking about. It's just difficult for me to visualize. It would work, visualize Speaker 13: It on the Speaker 1: Can. Do it right over there if you want. Speaker 13: Oh, okay. I just have a suggestion for the town, that's <v
Speaker 1>All. Oh, we're just trying to understand the comment. I, I, Speaker 13: Okay, so where is, Speaker 1: That's all Speaker 13: The Montessori right there. Yep. Rather than try to get out onto Route 16. Onto Route 16. Yeah. That they're wanting to go east and it'd be hard to do with traffic. They'll come over here then come down here and then go east. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 13: So one of the things that might help is that if we put a no
left turn here, I don't know if that's feasible or good or bad or whatever. Speaker 1: Sure. Amanda, why don't we just make a note of that. Thanks. Okay, thanks very much. That's not unlike the earlier comment. I think the suggestion was that the people were going west we're going taking a right to go west and you're saying they're going right to go east? Speaker 13: Yes. Yeah, both. Speaker 1: They were going right to go south. Right To go south, right To go right Pleasant go south.
Right. To avoid that intersection is essentially what, okay. Julie Uni Rotary. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Anybody else have any questions? Okay. Speaker 13: Yes sir. Speaker 1: Come on up and give your name and address for the record and just address the board again. Speaker 14: Mark Bugden 32 Elliot, the corner house. This is something that came up last time from different people who bike and walk. Is there anything we can help
make it a little bit safer? Because with all the activity, these cars going left or on the block, schools coming in and out. Some, there's a family that ride bike with their kid to the school. It's just kind of, kind of a lot of too many moving parts. Yeah. Is there any way from the traffic study that could offer some, suggest some suggestions to maybe organize things a little bit more signage or something Speaker 1: For pedestrians? Yeah, sure. We'll put a
note in there. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else here have any questions? I, I don't, no. Do you wanna say anything else before we go to the next step? No. Good. Okay. Thank you Mr. Thank you very much Mr. Wong, why don't you go on to part two. Speaker 6: Okay, I will do that. And I would also add that, you know, in my professional opinion, you know, project like this one, you know, I do agree that it's, it generates a
minimal amount of impact. However, if, if we always keep saying that for every development, eventually you're gonna add up to, you know, the, the roadway network over time. So I'm always looking for something that's reasonable. So that's where, you know, some of the signal timing adjustment suggestion comes in. It's a relatively low cost work to implement. And so I hope the time will consider that coming forward. Speaker 1: Okay, thanks very much. Speaker 6: Okay, so onto the site plan itself. I'll start with
the site driveways. They're located roughly the same location as the existing, Speaker 1: I'm sorry, did we lose this? Speaker 2: Did we get out? Speaker 1: I don't know. Oh, hold on one sec. We just, we lost the screen here. Speaker 6: Let me reshare it again just in case it's on my end. Speaker 1: Okay, Speaker 6: One <v
Speaker 1>Sec. I don't think it is 'cause we can see it on the main screen. We just can't see it on the projector. Speaker 6: I see Speaker 2: Somebody was watching said a speaker just changed. Yeah, here
he comes on the projector mode. You got the project mode on the top right. Do scream hearing. There we go. Bingo. Two for two doing that. Speaker 1: Okay, you're
back on. Speaker 2: Alright, Speaker 6: I'll start over from the top just in case Speaker 2: King. Speaker 6: So we'll start off with the site drive locations. Both of the site drives are located in a very similar location, two existing conditions and we felt those were adequate as there wasn't, there's not a whole lot of change in terms of where they're located. The traffic study did include talk about trimming vegetations to maintain site distance out of those site driveways. When we did our site
observations, we did try to approximate how those will be located. So having that commitment to trim vegetation going forward in the long term, we'll just ensure that the adequate site distance provided. In terms of site circulations, we did review the latest turning movement diagrams that was provided as part of the site plans. And those did show that the anticipated vehicles circling the site are able to circulate it without any problems. That includes a firetruck as well as box trucks. One clarification I did
note here is the trash bin pickup operation. So in the previous site plan, I believe the, the trash pickup trucks were shown to be able to go directly in front of the trash cans and be able to pick 'em up and dump them in the back and put 'em back and back up and exit the sites. However, what the current layout has is, I'm not sure how that operation will work, so just request for clarification on that end. And then my last bullet
here is recommending on street parking to be restricted on operating street altogether. And I'm gonna explain that on my next slide. Are you able to see my cursor at all on screen? Yeah. Yep. Okay, great. So on the left side, this is the recommended on Streete parking, figured I was included in traffic study. On the right is three different versions of the turning movement diagrams that came a couple of weeks ago. So I'm gonna go ahead
and explain the left first. So on this diagram, the red are the areas that was recommended to restrict parking. The green is where on street parking could be maintained. The blue is where the existing or proposed driveways are going to be. So what this diagram, I'm gonna show here on the top side here, which is the northeast corner next to 32 Elliot Street. So a couple of spaces were shown to, to, to be accommodated
for on streete parking. However, looking at the turning movements, this is the fire trucks, you can see that the turning movements do require a good chunk of Auburn Street in order to make that movement. Those two parking spaces were roughly about there. So that's entering and then exiting again, they're very close and could potentially conflict with these type of vehicles movements. And I would also say that the box truck movements are very similar to the fire trucks. So in this case they're, they have similar
potential conflicts with that. So because of that, I would recommend, you know, taking away these two spots up here in the top corner here as we move down the site, the next green spot I wanna call your attention to is this right here. And this would be between the two site driveways. And so if I get your attention back on the diagram on the right, that would be this space right here between the, the two side trucks. And as you can see from the firetruck, and again with the box trucks is very similar. It does
require a lot of space on Auburn Street in order to make that movement. And right in that little corner there, there is a potential conflict with these parked vehicles. And so for that reason, I'm also gonna recommend maybe we restrict that as well. Now if I get your attention to the end of Auburn Street, both of these areas shown as green, where on street parking may be accommodated. However, on the right hand side, on the last diagram here, this is a fire truck at the end of Auburn Street backing
up into the site drive and turn around to exit Auburn Street. Now in the memo that I receive, the applicant did mention that the proposed site drives were widened a little bit in order to accommodate a movement such as this because the, the residents have spoken up about difficulties for emergency vehicles in the past to make those type of backup movements. So that's why this, this was provided in the driveway for change. And if you look at this
diagram here, how much room that the firetruck needs to, to have in order to make this backup movement, I'm gonna recommend restricting parking on this side as well. And additionally, if we look at the last house here, because the driveway vehicles back out of that driveway, it is recommended to not have parking at that. Anyways, apo opposite of the driveway. So with that, another reason why I'm recommending not have any parking on street from here. Now if we go to the
last green strip that's up here, similar case to the house at the last, at the end of Auburn Street, I would recommend not having on street parking opposite of that driveway out of 32 Elliot. And so that leaves us with about a couple of spots here where vehicles could potentially park. And those spots would be roughly right out here. It's tight. Could they do it? Potentially, but you know, if it's just the two spaces that could be available,
it may need to confusion and inviting more cars to come in and park where they're not supposed to. So for all these reasons here, I'm, I would recommend restricting on street parking on Auburn Street. And I do want to clarify in my letter, it wasn't specific that I'm not asking the applicant to, to make that work because they don't have the ability to do so. This would be something that the town would have to do outside of this project to have that officially be restricted.
And if you have any questions, please feel, please feel free to stop me. Speaker 1: Wow, I I guess we Speaker 6: Could do it next up. We, Speaker 1: We could. I think maybe, maybe we just do it periodically as we change topics. Just, I don't know, maybe it won't be easier. Maybe it will. Does anybody have any questions about what we just saw? Just to reaffirm Speaker 9: He's proposing no off on street parking at all on Auburn Street? That's Speaker 1: Correct. For a variety, for a variety of reasons. Speaker 9: What does that,
I'm presuming it would predominantly be guest parking on Auburn Street. Speaker 1: We don't know who's gonna park there. Speaker 4: No, we don't think we need any guest parking. There's 41 proposed now, one for each unit plus nine for visitors and tradespeople. So we don't believe that Auburn would be used for guest parking, but for our project anyway. Other guests on Auburn. Speaker 9: Where would people park if the 42nd car came up? Speaker 4: Well, I don't, I
don't think we anticipate a 42nd car, but if it, if it did, it would probably park on Auburn. But we don't anticipate that it didn't come up in our study. I don't know if Scott wants to speak to that, but Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 11: Yeah, so, so in terms of parking demand, we've got data from the perfect fit parking report. We've got data from
the ITE parking generation manual. We've got data from Metro West's own Medway project that indicates the parking demand is around, is between 0.9 and 0.98 spaces per unit. We're proposing a rate of 1.27 spaces per unit. So there's a fair amount of, of additional space that's there. You know, in in general
the visitor, I think the, you know, the, these aren't, these aren't single family homes that, that may have a, a lot of people coming to visit at once. I think we've got enough space for, for, you know, home health aides or, or contractors if they need to come in, repair people. I think that's what we're, that's what we're, we're tasked with providing. Speaker 9: Okay. Maybe it's more of a marketing problem than
Speaker 5: So all Speaker 1: Of the, any other questions here? Speaker 5: Have secondary houses, but, Speaker 1: Okay. Seeing none, folks. Yep. Come on up sir. Speaker 5: They have 50 feet back. Speaker 1: Just again, your name and address for the record. Speaker 15: Thank you sir. Ed Shago, down street eight Auburn Street, Natick. I have a general question and I don't know the answer. There's a church hall
right now either for sale or under agreement or something like that. I candidly don't think it's gonna remain a church hall. I think it's gonna become a church or something like that. That said, sir, how is the added traffic pattern, are vehicles from that change in use of that building gonna affect all of this? Excuse me? Are you talking about number 40?
I'm, I'm bad on numbers, sir. I'm, I'm, it's a church hall that the congregational church owns to the right of the schoolyard. It's right now minimally used St. Benedict's used to use it. Yes. Speaker 1: Where is adherence? Speaker 15: Oh God, I, Hey look, I'm mommy, I can't read maps
Speaker 1: There. This Speaker 15: Is all, do you know what I mean? Site and that's right there. It's, it's kind of a vacant building. Speaker 1: We know anything about that. Speaker 12: We know it was lifted for sale. It seems to be off market, but we don't know anything. It is limited in terms of parking. It only has two parking spaces. So what can go there is Speaker 1: Are you limited? Speaker 15: No. Speaker 1: Yeah, what I'm hearing. Can you hear that? Speaker 15: Yes sir. Speaker 1: Okay. You did hear that? Yes, sir. Okay, so that's, it's
only got two parking spaces associated with it. So the use of that space would appear to be extraordinarily limited in scope. Speaker 15: I'm just gonna toss out that if the current use of that building I think is going to dramatically change. Speaker 1: Okay. So let, let, let's, it's, it's difficult for us to determine what it might be, but let's do high play, play the hypothetical game just for a moment. Yes sir. What's the use? You, you go what's,
what's the use? Just pick Speaker 15: Probably a church. Speaker 1: Okay. So if it turns into a church, the church is gonna have to supply parking Speaker 15: Where Speaker 1: They won't be able to supply parking. Makes the use difficult. Even under the Dover Amendment. It'd be very, very difficult to get that. Speaker 15: I agree with you. But that said, people are gonna park there
where either on Auburn Street, Speaker 1: Lemme stop you there just for a second. If, if the town is smart enough to accept the recommendation of its peer review consultant and makes the entire length of Auburn Street essentially a no parking zone, then anybody who does park there will be subject to being towed. I wouldn't think it would take too many cars getting towed from there. That people will, will likely learn that you can't park there. There'll be signage just
like there is anywhere in the town that you can't park. Speaker 15: Okay. Speaker 1: I, I think, yeah, so I think I would, I, what I really was curious to know is what the folks on Auburn Street thought about the fact that there would be no parking on Auburn Street. I, I think from what I heard the first time around, that would be a good thing. Speaker 15: You know, about 10 years ago that was proposed that the town put
up no parking signs and we were all vehemently against it. It's a neighborhood. Speaker 1: And today, Speaker 15: I confess ignorance, sir. Speaker 1: Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Does anybody else wish to be heard? Why? No. And we're just gonna have you restrict your comments to just the segment that, that Mr. Wong just covered
and your name and address for the record, if you would. Speaker 16: Roger Scott. 40 Water Street. I understand the ratio, the parking place is two tenants was 1.27, is that correct? Speaker 1: That's right. Speaker 16: Alright. And does everyone that's going to move in and sign a restriction that they can only own one vehicle? Speaker 1: No. Speaker 16: So they could have two cars. You got, you have gonna
have families in there. Correct? Speaker 1: Let me, let me, let me ask specifically about that question. Speaker 17: Right. So our management company would assign spaces to each unit and it would be one space per unit. And that would be made clear during the leasing process. So if anyone had two vehicles, they would likely opt not to live in the community. Speaker 16: So it's a matter of good faith people. Speaker 1: No, I I think,
correct me if I'm wrong here, but if you have 20, I'm sorry, 32 units, that's 32 spaces you're gonna supply 41. Those other nine spaces are not gonna be for residents to park a vehicle full time. Correct? Correct. So the, how, how do you control the parking in those nine other spaces through the management company? There'd be signage. What, who would park so far? We heard workman would park in them, guests would
park in them. So would there be some, would there be some sort of sticker system for cars registered to park in your parking lot or assigned spaces? How does that work? Speaker 2: Right, Speaker 17: So the management company would mark certain spaces as visitor parking and there would be restrictions around how long people could park in those spaces. So people who were staying overnight or longer term would not occupy those spaces. Speaker 1: And if they
did, if they occupy 'em unlawfully, in other words, I move in there, I've got two cars in my family. I park in the visitor space every day, 24 hours a day, then my car's gonna get towed. Correct. Speaker 16: Okay. Are we going to have a management team on 24 hours a day or we just have somebody passing through to manage the property? Speaker 17: It will not be, we won't have on onsite management 24 hours a day. But we will have on-call
management 24 hours a day. And if parking violations were noticed by other residents, they would be reported to the management company. Speaker 16: So there would be somebody available to respond to a situation that the person coming in with that 42 40 second spot can contact you guys and you'll send somebody over and have a tow truck come and take that 42nd car away. Is that how it works? Speaker 1: So let me just,
so, so we're clear. I'm a resident. I'm one of the 32 lucky people to have a parking space in that lot assigned to me. If I pull in at midnight and someone's in my parking space, what do I do? Is that the question? Speaker 16: Pretty much, yeah. Speaker 1: So they would, would they call the management company? The management company on-call staff? They would call a tow company and the tow company would do their job. Speaker 17: Right. We would have a contract with a, a tow company. Speaker 16: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. I
saw another hand. Yes ma'am. Speaker 18: My name is Patty Malone. I live at 31 South Lincoln Street in the neighborhood. So I have to admit, I'm not, I don't, I'm not good with stats and just that number, just common sense wise just doesn't make sense to me. And I'm willing to hear which one Speaker 1: And listen to which one, just so we know what you're talking about. Which number Speaker 18: The,
the 1.27 per household. 'cause some of those units, some of those households are gonna be three bedrooms. I know when I went up to town when this project was first proposed and there was a, a meeting at the community senior center, one of the people of the proponents said to me, oh, it's, you know, for 60% would be set aside for natick residents. So if you have three school teachers in Natick sharing a three bedroom
unit, which I would think that would be something that would happen. Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on one second. Let me, let me, let me, I just wanna make sure the premise is accurate. These are three full-time adult work, working adults. Do they income qualify for one of these units? Speaker 17: That would be unlikely. Speaker 18: That would, I'm sorry. That would, Speaker 1: So it's, it's unlikely that three full-time working adults who live together would income qualify for one of these units. Speaker 18: Okay.
Because the total units, the total amount of income would have to meet the, the That's right. So what if it was a, you know, you have a high school kid that lives in the household. It just seems to me so, so intuitively I'm not, I just need to grasp it. Okay. Speaker 1: And, and again, I understand, I think I understand the question. If I am a family who's gonna move in there and I have a wife and we both work out
of town out of Natick and I al we also have an adult child who has a car, we can't live there. Right. 'cause there's nowhere for our cars to, to be, there's, there's not enough parking for my family to live there. I have to make a choice. Well, my wife and I can commute, our son can get a ride. But if you have three people and you only have one parking space, this is not the place for you. Speaker 2: Okay. <v
Speaker 18>And then even holidays, people wouldn't be able to come visit. It Speaker 1: Just, there's there's gonna be nine guest spaces on the lot. People will have to adjust accordingly. Speaker 18: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay. Thanks. Anybody else? Yes ma'am. Speaker 17: Carol Joseph. 12 Leach Lane. It just makes me think
that Water Street, Lincoln Street, river Street are gonna take the brunt of, okay. They ran outta spaces. Now visitors will go and park along those roads, which are narrow as well. Speaker 1: Let me just ask you a question 'cause I don't know that area well enough. Are those, is law, is parking a lawful on those streets? Yes. Yes. So all I can tell you is that streets, people can park on the street. Speaker 17: I agree. I agree. I agree. But then unfortunate
for the people who live on Auburn Street, that now they have visitors to their own house, they can't park on the street anymore. Like that's taking away what they have as a property owner. I just, I find that really unfair to people who are on that street. Speaker 1: Fair enough. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else have any questions, comments? Yes, ma'am. <v Speaker
17>Hi. Donna Rado. I live at for Auburn Street directly across from the Hi building. Hi. So I have three grown children that don't live with me and they all drive. They have partners, spouses, and I entertain holidays, et cetera. We're, I have one driveway. Where is everybody gonna park just to come visit me? Speaker 1: How many cars can you find your driveway? Two. That's gonna be difficult. I hear there's plenty
of parking on Water Street. Speaker 2: There's nine on, on the parking lot, Speaker 17: Which they won't be happy about. Speaker 1: Touche. Speaker 2: Great. Speaker 1: Yeah, I see a hand back there. Speaker 19: Hi, mark Oel. Tovan five Water Street. Hi. I just wanna say wasn't funny. We respect you. Respect us. Speaker 1: Okay,
thanks very much. No offense intended. Who else would like to be heard? Speaker 2: I just have a, Speaker 1: I see a hand. Yep. Come on. I, I know you gave it once before, but just for the record, we'll have you give your name and address again. Speaker 10: Hi, Chris Carson Bugden, 32 Elliot Street about the parking and the 1.7 cars. Oh, before I say that, I wanna thank all of you. It's Speaker 1: 1.27. Go <v
Speaker 10>Ahead. 1.2. I wanna thank all of you for everything you do because you work so hard. Thank you. Zoning board. I mean, you do this all the time for our, for our town. So thank you. I wanted to say that before, but I forgot. Thanks. Thank you. So we're just, I just wanna paint a picture. We have a family like you said, David, you said we have a family, a husband and wife and maybe three kids. Sure. Okay. So we're basically not
really allowing the other person to work because they can't get there really when we allow one car. So if this whole project was shrunk and the two buildings that are beautiful that you redesigned, I appreciate it. Were cut in half, then we would have parking and we would create an appropriate project for this site. I think we can't penalize
adults who might wanna work and might wanna get there. Speaker 1: Stop you just for a second. 'cause I just wanna make sure that the premise is we understand the premise. Speaker 10: Yeah. The premise is I think people should have two cars. I'm a question be able to have two cars. I'm Speaker 1: Gonna ask you a question. Yeah. So what you're saying is we want to introduce more vehicles onto the site. You wanna Speaker 10: Shrink the project so that we can make it appropriate. So whoever lives there can get to work. If they wanna make a living, Speaker 1: One of the primary concerns that we heard
from the neighbor, neighbors and the neighborhood was the impact on the roadways from cars. Speaker 10: Yeah. But if the project was shrunk, right, if it was demen, if, if it was made smaller, then we could accommodate the people that live there who might wanna make a living. We can't, we can't penalize them by giving them 1.2 cars per unit. It just doesn't make sense. Speaker 1: So what's your math? How, how, how many, how big Speaker 10: Nine people in
the school maybe how many, how many cars would that be? There'll be single people in there, I don't know, 13 cars for that building and then maybe 10 or 12 in the back. Given both, each unit gets two cars. That's 20 plus 13, 33. And then maybe a really nice recreational area to make the quality of life for these folks that are living there nicer. Then having just a couple
little spots on the grass for chairs that they have to remove all the time. I just think it's just too big. It's too big. We're not providing the tenants with what they need. Okay. They need vehicles to get to work so they can afford to live. I mean I think that was, that's why we, you know, affordable housing, we want people to be able to get to work. Right. We don't wanna have somebody have to stay home because there's only one car. I mean, you know, we need to get to work and I, and I and bicycles are
grateful leisure, I, I am on avid bike ride bike everywhere, but not to work on union and 16. That's not realistic to go and get dressed every day and show up in an office. You know, like from a bicycle, that's not gonna work. Okay. So I think if we, we were thinking about making this more of an appropriate project, we would shrink it so that there's a park, a place to sit and recreate in the back and two cars for each spot. So I think that's, that's
what I wanted to say. Speaker 1: Okay. Thanks very much. Does anybody else wish to be heard? Speaker 11: I have a, well, Alan has a question. Speaker 1: Oh sure. Go ahead. Didn't see it. Yeah. Speaker 11: So I was over there on Saturday driving around taking a look and I just wanted to have a curious question, an honest question. The residence of
eight and six Auburn and four Auburn, are you concerned that you're gonna lose any on-street parking whatsoever? 'cause you have parking garages in the back of your house. So my question is, are you concerned about losing any on street parking on Auburn Street? Yeah. Why? Help me understand that. Please. Are you at number eight? Yes. Okay. I have an image of your home
Speaker 15: Here at Sugar eight Auburn Street. Yep. That's a great question. Number one. Number two, thank you for going down there. Number three, in spite of what some of you may think of me, I have friends and they come and visit query. Where are they gonna park? What am I gonna do? I can't say, Hey, you gonna park down the street. They'll think I'm crazy. Speaker 11: No sir. By, with respect, by the advantage that I'm looking at your garage
in the back of your home. Speaker 15: Yes sir. Speaker 11: You have ample, ample parking spaces for numerous cars. I do not. I'm not seeing how you're worried about losing street parking on Auburn Street. You both have number eight. Number six, you have in the, in a loc, very large house in the back. You have your own garage, two car garage in the back of your house and about
150 feet worth of space that you have parking available before you get to Auburn Street. Speaker 15: Can't because I wanna go outta my garage, which means the car that's in the driveway. I have a choice. I suppose I can hit it or drive around it. Okay. It's tough to do. I'm looking at it not in the ivory tower, but realistically it won't work. The driveways are too, all of the driveways on Auburn Street are either too narrow
or at number four. Too small. It looks great on paper. It doesn't work that way. Speaker 11: That's why I went, that's why I actually went and looked. Speaker 15: I'm So, let me tell you something buddy. I appreciate you going down there. Really. Thank you. I'm very impressed. If I had known that I would've given you coffee. Speaker 11: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for your, thank you for their attention to that. Thank Speaker 3: You. Did you add something? I did. What's the, what's the
zoning as of right here for number of parking spots, what would you be required at to put the current Speaker 4: Two spaces per unit? Two Speaker 3: Per unit. So here it says, falls below the town's requirement of 45. Speaker 4: That's what's, I'm sorry. Speaker 3: In the peer review, Speaker 4: We're asking for a waiver from the parking. If that was question I say 45, Speaker 3: I must Speaker 1: A waiver. Okay. I think we just got done with something there. Are we
all set? Anybody? Did you want to respond to anything that you heard? No. Okay. Did you wanna say something? Okay, Jeff, so your Speaker 11: Magic, Speaker 1: I think there was some confusion for me just in terms of the total parking requirement, because later in your comments right here. Oh yeah. Find, find that, hold on a minute. Yeah. This Speaker 4: Is what I have on 5 0 8 Speaker 1: You say,
okay, here we go. It says, assessment included in the original comprehensive permit application indicates a parking supply of 29 to 41 as appropriate. The reduction of parking by four spaces result the relocation of the trash enclosure, which induce? Oh, okay. I'm sorry. This is supply not requirement. Oh, Speaker 4: We've reduced it to 41. Speaker 1: From 45. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. Okay. From 45. And that
you'll see when we go over. Speaker 1: You lost four because of the way you moved the Yes, yes. Trash. Yep. Okay. Okay. Mr. Wong, you're back on. Speaker 6: Let me pull this aside. Okay. Let me know when y'all see my screen again. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 6: Okay. So the next topic I'm going to discuss is a D accessibility. So on the first bullet here, it corresponds to the top right figure that's over here. This is the
Northern Site Drive. So we have a sidewalk within the site that connects to the sidewalk on Auburn Street. So this particular connection here is the one I have concerns with. Certainly a detectable warning panel is meant to help direct a visually impaired pedestrian to cross the street indicating that this is what it would cross and in this particular layout that would send them across Auburn Street, which I don't believe is the intended location.
Additionally, when two rams do meet like this, there needs to be a five by five level area for turnaround space. And I don't believe that that is provided here. So my recommendation is, re-look at this area. I believe the previous site plan actually had the sidewalk come up upstream of this wheelchair ram, which then would make it comply with a DA, or at least have the ability to comply with a DA. So that's what this comment is about. My second comment, I don't have a figure for it, but it's about the existing
ramps at the Auburn Street at Route 16 intersection. Those two ramps right now do not appear to meet a DA compliance, and my recommendation is to upgrade 'em as part of this project so that an entire a DA accessible route can be provided from Route 16. Itself down to the site with all the improvements that are being proposed in here. So that's my second comment. On the third bullet here, this will direct your attention to the figure on the bottom right, this is located
at the Southern Drive. There's a crosswalk just west of the driveway opening itself. And what I noticed is the proposed sidewalk itself is proposed to be four feet. And when there is a wheelchair ram at the end here at the crosswalks, those need to have a five by five level area to meet a DA accessibility requirements. So I would just recommend to provide those at these two locations. So that is regarding a d accessibility. Any questions before I move on?
Speaker 1: I have none. Anybody else have any questions? Okay. Yep. Keep, can you hold on for a second? Well, we do have a question. Yep, sure. Come on up. Speaker 15: Ed Shari eight Auburn Street. I really wanna thank you guys for your patience. It's to me overwhelming. I have two questions miss through you, sir. I would like to ask Mr. Wong,
there's not a sidewalk on the even numbered side of Auburn Street, is that proposed to be changed Speaker 1: On your side? Speaker 15: Yes, sir. Speaker 1: That's off the project is Locus. So Speaker 15: Say again? Speaker 1: I I said it was off Locus, so I, I suspect No, but Mr. Mr. Wong's probably not the one to answer that. But go ahead. Speaker 6: Who? I was
just gonna say that currently the, the project is not proposed any sidewalk on the other side. Speaker 15: On the even number side. Yeah, correct. Speaker 1: Not proposed. Speaker 15: Is Armond Street through your proposal, Mr. Wong? And I'm asking through the chairperson. No, Speaker 1: He's our guy. He's on, he he's with the town. Speaker 15: Say again. He works Speaker 1: For you. Mr. Wong works for you? Yes. Speaker 15: Is there a proposal, sir, to widen Armond Street and if so, on what side? Even numbered or
five Auburn Street side? Speaker 1: Not, not proposed. Speaker 15: It's not proposed. Speaker 1: No, you're not proposing to widen Auburn Street. They're not proposing to widen Auburn Street. Okay, thank you. Yes ma'am. Speaker 17: Carol Joseph, 12 Leach Lane. Who pays for the
wi the widening of the wheelchair accessible sidewalk issues. Is that the town who pays for that if Speaker 1: It's on site? I I I'm absolutely positive it's the applicant. If, if it's off locust, Amanda, Speaker 12: Well it would be dependent on whether it was something that we worked out in mitigation or if not, but putting a sidewalk on the even side would be difficult because there are
two very large trees and other I think he's talking Speaker 1: About Speaker 17: But on like route on like Route 16 to cross? Yeah. To get those to be compliant. Who pays for that? The town, which is Speaker 1: Not one. Well, I think that the, the answer I'm hearing right now is it's possible that it can be worked out in a, in agreement with the applicant absent that agreement. Then if the, if those areas were to be improved by the town, it would be by the town. Speaker 17: Okay. Just fact
that there's, they're trying to ask for more money from the taxpayers here and one more thing that the taxpayers are gonna have to do to accommodate the people down in South Natick. So I don't feel like it should have to be a tax payment. Speaker 1: I think if, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Wong, but during Mr. Wong's peer review of this site, he recognized that two of the existing areas that are in South Natick have non-compliant
accessibility and he's suggesting that they should be made accessible notwithstanding this project may EV be built. So for that, do you have an objection to making those sidewalks accessible? No, Speaker 5: I think that everywhere in the town should Speaker 1: Okay. Should Speaker 5: Have Speaker 1: That. Thank you. Speaker 5: The town. Speaker 1: Okay Mr. Wong.
Speaker 6: So on the next one, we talked about parking a little bit, but we'll come back to this topic here. 41 spaces are being proposed now instead of 45. Certainly I think if the applicant is aware and if not already a waiver would certainly be required to hold, hold, provide spaces less than the town file. Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop you just for a second. We're having some trouble with this, but it's back there. Well, it was back there now I'm back there.
There it is. Now it's back there. So if you lose it up here, turn around, we can see that, we can make that, we can turn that a little bit. Speaker 5: Jeff's, Jeff's getting that going here. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 5: Request five minutes. Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn this thing. Speaker 5: There we go. Thanks. There you go Speaker 1: Or something. Continue Mr. Wong. Thank you. Please.
Speaker 6: So a waiver, you know, the applicant, if not already would need to submit a waiver for not providing 45 spaces for the town's bylaws. So that's regarding the parking supply. Now what we did notice too is that stalls 15 and 16, they're noted to be ev charging ready with the size of eight by 16, I believe is the size currently proposed for, based on the USS four recommendations that was produced
in 20 2023, EV charging stalls that are accessible needs to have, needs to be 11 feet wide by 20 feet long. And the reason for that is that anyone who has a mobility device need to be able to go around the entire vehicle in case the charging port is on the other side of the vehicle, not where they exit the vehicle. So that is a little bit different than a standard van accessible space or any type of accessible space
and that's why there is an extra width that is required there. Additionally, at the charging station itself, there needs to be a level landing space that's provided to access the charging station. It is not unlike a level area that's at a wheelchair ramp, so that needs to be a five by five space. So seeing what the site is currently on, on the figure here, on the bottom right, these are the two spaces that are, are in concern. The space here seems extremely tight to provide
those level areas for those charging stations in the future. And additional the sizes currently do not meet those recommendations of the USSS board. So I do recommend maybe ev reevaluating where the these two spaces should go. Speaker 1: Okay, continue. Speaker 6: So next up, pedestrian bicycle, bicycle circulation overall. Sorry, I'm gonna Speaker 1: Stop, I'm gonna stop you right there. Yes sir. Maybe grab a
seat right over by that microphone. Sir, you took the Speaker 15: Words right out of my mouth. Up. I'm precinct eight ten eight Auburn Street. I have a question about the ev charging. Who pays the electric bill if I want charge my Tesla? Speaker 1: You can't charge your Tesla. I Speaker 15: Don't have a Tesla. You've been spying on me. Speaker 1: No, that
is, it's not the town, Speaker 15: It's the applicant with some kind of a cod device. Speaker 1: They, they, they'll work it out however they work it out, but it's not gonna be on your dime, it's not gonna be on the town. Thank you. Speaker 15: And again, sir, and it's worth mentioning your patience is admirable. Speaker 1: Ah, I appreciate it, thank you. If it Speaker 15: Weren't, I would've told Speaker 1: Yes sir. Speaker 2: I think <v
Speaker 16>Roger Scott 40 Water Street. Just a clarification on those two parking places just mentioned, are those part of the 41 spots? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 16: So that means that those two spots actually can be inactive as far as the tenants go because somebody else might need a park and charge their electric vehicle or if there's more than one electric vehicle in residence. Where, how does this, how does this plan out? Speaker 1: We're gonna wa we're gonna ask,
Speaker 17: Would you please repeat the question? Speaker 1: Yeah, sure. So I think I got it here. You got, those are two accessible parking spaces for ev charging, which means if there's nobody charging, essentially your 41 spaces is really 39. Speaker 17: Right? So those, any ev charging spaces that would be available on site would have charging capability, but they wouldn't be restricted only to
electric vehicles. So non-electric vehicles would be able to park in those spaces. We do wanna talk a little bit about this specific recommendation when our civil engineer has a chance to, to respond to questions. Speaker 1: So just so I I just find it easier to do these things in real time. You know, we have a comment and a response. It may be a little ungainly and I'm sorry for that. I just don't want to get an hour into this thing and have 'em jump back to
where we were a long time ago. Just for me, it's easier to have these things compartmentalized a little bit. So to the extent that you want to make a comment or your team wants to make a comment to something that's being raised here, raise your hand and we're gonna let you let you address it. Come on out. Speaker 2: Jennifer was 57. Speaker 11: Thank you very, thank you very much. I'm Dana Ella with Merrill Engineers and Land Surveyors. So we, we re
reviewed the, the, the, the peer review letter. Thank you very much for that input. In looking at the, the recommendations on the, the site for ev parking spaces for, for a DA accessibility there, the recommendation that was noted was 11 feet wide and a, a length of 20 feet with a, a five foot wide access aisle next to it. You know, in order to do that on the site, we probably, we'd likely end up losing one more space. We, we've already
lost four spaces by looking at the angle parking and moving the dumpster, et cetera. So we, we prefer not to mo lose any more spaces. It is just, you know, as, as we all have have been talking, it's very tight out there. We feel that something maybe in the middle might be more appropriate for this, you know, this site. I, I think as we've shown it now, we provide a, you know, most EV vehicles are on the smaller side, so we've used the, the compact space to allow for it. It, it also provides a
very accessible a DA route to both buildings to to place the, the spaces where we show them currently. So we feel this is the, the best space on the site, you know, for the project right now. But we can certainly, you know, look at different options. But this, this seems to work best with the site as it's Speaker 1: Sure currently. Mr. Wong, let me ask you a question, just US access board, is that different than the, the, those numbers different than what the A A B would require in Massachusetts for accessibility? Speaker 6: Yes. I don't believe the Massachusetts Architectural Access Access board
specifically addresses EV parking or ev charging parking spaces. So that's where this document comes from. I referenced the date in the, in the letter itself. So that was specifically made, has additional recommendations for the EV charging Speaker 1: And but is you, Speaker 6: I specifically assessable EV charging, Speaker 1: But again, a re a requirement or just a sort of a
design recommendation? Speaker 6: It's a design recommendation for the reasons that unlike a standard accessible space, a person who has a mobility device could potentially need to go around the car itself in order to access the charging board charging ports and that's why they have recommended to have a wider space than your traditional accessible space. Sure. Speaker 1: Okay.
Okay, thanks. Okay. A anything else before we have him move on? Speaker 11: I think that's, that's really all the only comment I wanted to Speaker 1: Make for now. Speaker 2: No, just now that a while ago it just hadn't been addressed yet. Speaker 1: Oh sure. Come on up.
Speaker 19: Marco O kil, Tovan five Water Street. The school across the street from us on Water Street has is one of those parking spaces as well. I think it's a misnomer that electric cars are small. They used to be, you know, back in the day a Prius was pretty small, but now Lexus is electric in a, the, the big Tesla truck, I
don't know what they call that. That's Tesla truck. Pretty large vehicle. Speaker 2: Cyber truck. Cyber truck I think Speaker 19: So, I think we can't count on electric vehicles being little anymore. Now things have changed. Speaker 1: Sure. Okay, thanks very much. Okay, Mr. Wong. Speaker 6: Okay, so the next topic, pedestrian and bi circulation. So sidewalk is
provided throughout the site and so pedestrians should be able to access anywhere from the site to Route 16 itself. Elliot Street. In terms of bicyclists, there are two sets of bike racks that are proposed on site for anyone who wishes to park or to lock their bicycles there. So there is that availability as well. But one thing about circulation is I request for clarification of the crosswalk between stalls 15 and 16 over to the fire excess drive, fire department,
excess drive. And that's again in figure here on the bottom right, that's this crosswalk here. I believe the main entrance, main entrances to the buildings are off the screen, they're above. And there is another crosswalk that can be utilized to access the new building as well. So just curious, the purpose of that crosswalk there, Speaker 1: Is that something you want to address now or, or later?
Speaker 11: Good evening. Dana Alveo with Merrill Engineers again. So the, the purpose of that crosswalk is to provide access to the dumpsters that are adjacent to it. So that will provide access from the existing Elliot school as shown currently. And then the new building will have access just along its front walkway. So that will, that will get both buildings accessible routes to the, the new dumpster pad.
Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 2: Sure. Speaker 1: You're on. Speaker 2: Good. Do see that for you again? Speaker 1: Oh, Mr. Wong, you're, you're, you're back up. Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you. I I I wasn't about Harry, sorry. So the next we have is emergency access. Really the only thing we want request for is confirmation that the Natick
Fire department has review and approved the site. One of the concerns that we noted in the letter is that the access to the backside of the new building currently, there is no way to access it. And again, that is something that I think is more appropriate to comment by the fire department. It's just something that I pointed out based on previous working experiences and other peer reviews where that issue came up in, in a different town. So I just wanna bring that to attention. Speaker 1: No, you wanna
address No, Speaker 2: I, yeah, Speaker 17: So Amanda might be able to speak to this more, but the fire department has reviewed our adjusted site plan, including the adjustment to the fire lane and have not indicated any issue without being able to access the rear of the building because it's a fully sprinkled sprinkler building. Yep. The one small piece they haven't reviewed is the mountable curb and the, the, the pavers that
are located there. But we're, we've requested their feedback and don't anticipate that it being an issue, but obviously they can speak. Speaker 1: Sure. And we have nothing there yet, right? Yes sir. Speaker 16: Roger Scott, 40 water street town meeting member last year in the town
meeting, I introduced an article for the safety of dead end streets, which limited the size of any development to 15 units just for the sole safety issue of the new tenants as well as the old residents in the neighborhood. Now since that time and since we last met here, there was a major tragedy in Los Angeles that nobody, nobody anticipated would ever happen. Now that really in supports
my approach to this thing that if you make it so difficult for the fire department to, to act on as a very dangerous situation has happened in LA or it happens in many parts of the world, they need to have access. There was one hydrant that's near Shari's house at Shari's house and the next hydrant is on the corner of my street, which would be a heck of a length of hoses. I don't know
how they'd get that and set up to rescue 32, probably a hundred plus people as well as the tenants that live on the street. There are a lot of trees behind that and we've experienced some extreme winds in the last couple of weeks. I think all of that has to be looked at. And I would like for the safety, you know this to be signed off by all participants, all the boards in town that approve this, the fire department, the safety councils
in the town, anything that's involved in this, it has to be written out there. Explain the potential danger to any resident going into this location. If this is going to be allowed as 32 units, there has to be transparent potential dangers built out there so that people know what they're buying into and for their own safety that either this hasn't been addressed by the town and have a legal counsel of
the town approve it, as well as everyone signing off on this thing that this is a potentially dangerous situation that can endanger lives and I don't wanna have that happen. So Speaker 1: It's gonna be looked at by all the, the various departments of the town and that document you just referenced will not be created. Speaker 3: What was the result of the town meeting thing you brought up? Speaker 16: Unfortunately the vote didn't pass, so, you know, it was, it was, to me it was accessible to any dead end
street in the town. So if you put a maximum of 15 and it's, that was factored into this thing too because I think previously with 10 units coming from a private builder and 32 by this particular group. So it was sort of like trying to say, well what do you think you could manage in this area that wouldn't endanger the neighborhood? And you know, this is a changing world and this is real things happening. I'm Speaker 1: Gonna stop you. Okay, thanks. Okay, next.
Thank you Mr. Wong. Speaker 6: That's it for my presentation. There are several small comments that I also made in the letter itself, so I'll just go forward to getting the response from the applicant for those, those are minor enough that we don't need to bring it up at the setting. Speaker 1: Okay. Let me just take a look at my notes on your, on your comments for a moment.
Okay, you, you, you hit all my, all the points that I had noted. Anybody here have any questions over here? Any questions? I, Speaker 20: I did have one on the parking probably maybe for the applicant, but There was, there's gonna be 32 assigned spaces to 32 units that leaves nine overflow or leftovers.
How many of those are restricted to handicap? And, and then I guess it gets into, you know, would you add another handicapped spot if there was a handicapped resident with a reserved space or would you assign them one of the proposed handicap spots and then what happens to the spare that was otherwise gonna be assigned to them? I'm trying to figure out how many, you said it seemed like there were about nine available spaces in addition to the 32, but if some were all, or many of those are restricted handicap,
I'm just wondering how many spaces you really do have available for non handicapped vehicles for overflow. Speaker 17: Sure. And Dana, I might ask you to come back up to, to speak to the assignments of the units, but our expectation is that we're providing the adequate number of handicapped accessible spaces for the accessible units that we are created. I'm not sure if we've gotten to the level of detail of indicating whether any of those are available to visitors.
Dana, do you have, Speaker 11: So, so right now we have four a DA accessible units in the, the, the development and we're providing four spaces for the, you know, each one of those units. There wouldn't necessarily be any accessible units outside of that. We could certainly look at that if that is something that comes up during the, the, you know, future design process. But typically that that's been enough. But we can certainly add more if, if needed.
Speaker 1: Just for the record, I, what I was showing you here is there's two would be the requirement from the A A B one of which may must be van accessible. The proposal is four spaces, two or two of which are van accessible. Okay. And I think because you have four access, four good one units, yeah, four accessible units. Yeah. Speaker 20: So I guess the expectation would be that the four handicap
spots would be assigned to residents of the handicap units. Correct. So they, that would be, that would still leave nine unassigned non handicap spaces. Correct. Available for visitors. Okay, good. My next Speaker 1: Question and those four units are after the adjustments that were in the memo sent, this is 41. 41 spaces is are currently being proposed. Okay. Did you want to go ahead? Is Speaker 4: It
our turn now? Yeah. Okay, great. What we'd like to do first is, is call up Dana to go over, we have a presentation, it's gonna show a lot of revisions both to the site plan, the feedback we heard from historic, the feedback we heard from the planning board and I know that Kaitlyn wanted to say some brief opening remarks. So we're just gonna, we're just gonna pull up our presentation that has all that information Speaker 21: Or do you think that's not okay? That's okay at this point with our technology
no problem, no problem. I'd love to say yes please. No problem. We're struggling. Speaker 1: Can she join the Speaker 21: Zoom? Does she wanna present? Is that the deal? Yeah, I'm joining the Zoom. I just, yeah to see we can give her No Speaker 1: Is she gonna be able to get onto here? Speaker 21: Yeah it's gonna Oh Speaker 1: Okay. These would <v Speaker
21>Be the same. Speaker 1: Okay, great. Mr the chair? Yes sir. Just like any zoom call. Oh yeah. Just to request that the speaker Speaker 21: Move the mic up Speaker 1: A little bit. Yeah. Oh sure. Yep, will do. Speaker 17: Okay. So thank you everyone again for being here this evening. I'm just gonna give a brief
overview of where we have been with the project before handing it over to our consultants to talk through the updated design. Next slide please. Speaker 21: Oh, why is it? I am changing it on my end so I'm not see on my end, which is weird. Okay. Presenting different screen
she's presenting. Yeah, but it's not the, lemme try this. Speaker 2: It's Speaker 21: Working on the tv. Think that is really strange. I have the right thing. I can see it at the top on the Pegasus but it's,
I mean we could try the HDMI if it doesn't Speaker 2: Work.
I don't think that was Speaker 12: The issue. So is that there's this does it on my computer as well. If it's not on
there it will actually, you can scroll on here but when you mirror it it freezes out. Speaker 1: So it'll be on this one and it'll be on the one in the back. Speaker 2: So maybe can we turn that up against the windows worked for Speaker 1: The last Sure. Speaker 2: Full
I think Waiting on your end. Alright, lemme try. Hold on. It's still not working. Speaker 12: It's weird. It just suddenly showing on mine Speaker 1: Not working. Speaker 2: It's working back
there. Speaker 1: It's the same thing there we, oh it's happening back there so it Speaker 2: Works back there. Let's all look, Speaker 1: That's weird. Okay, we'll I'll look back. There You what? There it is. Oh, there we go. Oh, okay. Speaker 2: Just a lag takes a minute. Okay. Okay. Speaker 17: Okay, so I'm just gonna talk very briefly about our public engagement to date. So since being selected by the select board through a competitive RFP process, we've had
significant public engagement and input on our proposal, including open houses, the NAD process through the conservation commission, several select board meetings, zoning board hearings, and presentations to the historic district commission and the planning board. We've also had significant additional feedback from a number of other sources, including written comments and letters from community members and through the project eligibility letter process from the National Park Service and the Massachusetts Historical Commission as part of the
historic review process. Feedback from the Natick Affordable Housing Trust, a number of meetings with the Town Design review team, which includes town department staff and one-on-one meetings with Abutters. We've taken the feedback and updated our plans and site plan to reflect many of the comments received. The updated design that you're gonna see tonight was the basis of the peer review report and the basis of the historic district commission and planning board presentations and memos that were
provided to the board. Tonight we have already gone through the traffic and civil peer review, so we'll be reviewing the architectural and site design updates and reviewing the updated list of waivers. Before we start reviewing the changes, I wanna highlight some of the, the, some of the things that have not changed all of the community benefits that were described in our RFP response have remained. Our proposal will still
provide 100% affordable family rental housing available to households making up to 60% of area median income. The number of units and unit mix has not changed. Our proposal will also preserve the Elliot School, a treasured community resource in accordance with the strict historic rehabilitation standards of the Department of the Interior. Our proposal continues to maintain the lawn area at the corner of Elliot and Albertan Street as open space and our proposal still incorporates ambitious sustainability goals, including energy efficiency improvements for the
existing building and pursuing passive house certification for the new construction building. We are also still making significant site storm stormwater management improvements to benefit the Charles River. And finally we'll be making accessibility upgrades at the historic building in addition to making the new construction building fully accessible. In terms of what has changed, we have revised our civil and landscape plans and adapted our architectural plans for the new building so it better reflects
features of the historic school and the character of the surrounding neighborhood. We are grateful for the comments to date and believe that our updates to the proposal have been responsive to them. I will now turn it over to Dana to walk everyone through our updated site plan. Speaker 11: Thank you very much Kaylin. So looking at this initial site, I can just give you a quick overview of the, the site and the location. I know you're, you're all very familiar with it. Just briefly, number five is located on the southwesterly side of Auburn
Street at the intersection of Elliot and Auburn Street. It has the Charles River located to the southeast of it, located in blue back there on the screen. The site consists of approximately 2.8 acres and contains the historic Elliot school along with its parking areas, play areas, and associated site features. The location of the parcel is within the residential general zoning district and the existing topography on the lot is relatively flat within the developed areas. It slopes gently basically
from Elliot Street to a existing fence at the top of the, the steep slope that goes down to the the Charles River. The existing site currently provides no stormwater treatment or recharge of, of runoff. The majority of the runoff from the rooftop areas and the existing parking areas just flows overland untreated towards the Charles River currently. Moving on to the, the next slide, this is the previous site plan that was submitted and reviewed with the
board on 12 9 24. We'll go through in more detail. Since then, we've made a lot of modifications to address a lot of the, the comments that were received at the, at the previous hearing, as well as other design meetings to this point. The next slide is the site plan for the, the landscaping. Rebecca will be going through this in more detail just to discuss all of the, the changes that have been made there, made there. And lastly is the
renderings for the architectural plans. As you can see, there's, you know, this is the original site plan. We've, we've made substantial changes as you'll see on the, the final site plan or the updated site plan, that there's major changes to the massing and the, the size and the, the layout of the, the existing buildings that have have reduced the buildings and substantially modified the, the layout of the buildings themselves. Cliff and Anna will be able to go through that in more detail. We re received a lot of comments to date. We, we've heard a lot
and made a lot of revisions. These are kind of some of the, the more important comments that we received. The first one was excessive impervious surface on site. We looked at the layout, tried to reduce things as best we can and, and modify the, the parking and the, the driveways accessing the, providing accessibility to the parking areas. By modifying this, we've been able to reduce the impervious area by over, over 2,800
square feet. The location of the trash area enclosure was not noted to be ideal in in some of the comments. So knowing this, we've relocated the trash enclosure to a more efficient space outside of the fire lane and drive aisle and away from the dwelling unit's. More, more importantly, excuse me, the vehicular site circulation could be upgraded. We've made some modifications to the site to address this. We've elevated the fire
lane, relocated the trash enclosure improved the a DA access, adjusted the drive aisle and parking stalls, widths over at the EV charging area. It was noted that there was in insufficient open space and planting areas in, in order to improve that we've modified the layout of the site and the parking that this will provide increased and improved open space and planting areas adjacent to the new building. This is something that Rebecca will be able to go through in more detail along with the next comment
was received relative to the selection of, of tree species being ill suited for the site. Rebecca has made some modifications to the species in the, the revised landscape plans. And lastly, the river overlook design, impedes neighbor access and, and snow storage. From a a landscape perspective, Rebecca will also be able to address that. In order to address that, she has removed the proposed seating from the river overlooked design and the last item that
was noted was emergency access for Auburn Street neighbors could use some improvement in order to try to assist with that. We've increased the radii of the southerly driveway entrance, allowing easier access and maneuverability for emergency vehicles leaving the end of Auburn Street, allowing them to completely to turn around and exit the seat, exit the street driving forward. Moving on to the next slide. This is the updated site plan. Since the
last hearing, these plans have been revised in an effort to try to address comments that were received at the various hearings and from different dire design review comments heard. To this point, the parking area is the prob is one of the bigger changes that's been modified to provide angle parking. This allows the driveway width to be reduced from 24 feet to 18 feet. The width of the driveway and parking area between the two buildings has overall been reduced by four feet and
we've reduced the width of the walkway adjacent to this parking area by one foot. This allows for more landscape area between the parking area and the new building. We've also increased the space size for the compact or ev spaces to eight feet wide and 16 feet long as requested. The dumpster area, as we discussed earlier, has been relocated. Originally it was
set adjacent to the easterly side of or westerly side of the new building that's been relocated kind of around the, the corner there to an elevated space adjacent to the snow storage area and the bio, our retention area. Number two, we've also shortened up the fire department access driveway to reduce the impervious area. On site a
DA access has been provided to the dumpsters from both buildings. The relocation of the dumpster and the change to angle parking results in a loss of four spaces total. Now we're at 41 spaces where the, the original site design had 45. This still meets the minimum parking count, which was calculated by Scott Thornton. From that it was set at 41 spaces minimum. So we've been trying to hold that throughout the, the modifications to the site design. The asphalt for the fire
department access drive has been removed and will be replaced with previous papers and slope curving. It'll be, it'll be an, an elevated area with slope curving protecting it from the adjacent drive aisle. Next to it the dumpster will also be set up on this elevated slope curving area. The pervious pavers in this area will eliminate the, the need for a a, a third bio retention area and subsurface infiltration
system to treat the, the stormwater from this, from this impervious area, the slope curbing is mountable. The firetruck will be able to, to easily drive in and access the side of the building from this area in total. As mentioned before, the asphalt area on the site will be reduced by over 28,000 square feet with these revisions additional Speaker 22: 128. Speaker 11: I'm sorry, did I what You said? 28,000. Oh I'm sorry. 28. Oh I just added a
zero there. Sorry about that. Additional pre-treatment has been added to the bio retention areas that will remain bio retention areas number one and two, we'll add additional pretreatment which will bring it into compliance with the new Aquifer protection District. Regulations that were recently passed, wheel stops have been added to all parking spaces that are adjacent
to curbing or buildings. And the curb radi at the southerly entrance has been increased or the it, the curb radi at both entrances have have been increased. But the curb radi, curb radii at the southerly entrance has been increased a little bit more to allow emergency vehicles visiting the end of Auburn Lane to this will allow them to be able to back into the site, turn around and drive out forward out of Auburn Street. After leaving the, the
site we have, excuse me, we have added Ballards at all a DA ramps where there's parking spaces adjacent to them and we've also added Ballards at the new building corner that is adjacent to the fire department access drive. And lastly all a DA ramps on site and even the a DA ramps within Auburn Street will be treated with the, the detectable warning strips at the, the bottom of the ramp itself. That's pretty much it with the site design modifications. I can pass it off to
Rebecca, she can go through that, the landscape modifications. Speaker 23: Thank you Dana. Hi everyone, I'm Rebecca Bhan, landscape architect for the project. Everybody hanging in there. So as Dana noted in response to this reduced impervious area and the modified building, the new building on the north end, we actually gained a lot of nice open space. So we are providing additional screening on that north end, giving a little bit more separation to the residents of Auburn Street
from that building. Breaking up the massing a bit more. You can see on the plan if I put my glasses on I can see too the lighter green circles are the existing trees to remain. Those are primarily around the perimeter of the site. There are no existing trees where the proposed new building is. If you've been out there, you know it's a really large field right now just grass. So we'll be adding a lot of new trees along Auburn Street to continue that street line street tree line. And then in
filling with evergreens around remaining property lines to provide additional screening and buffering question had come up previously about access from the existing church onto the site. There's a small pathway, we're planning to remove that and we are now showing more detailed planting plans. We have a hedge and some trees in that area so there won't be access there anymore. We actually looked at, there was a request to change out some of the tree species. A couple I think red maples and white pines just have
been overused over time in Natick. So we've swapped those out with sweet gum and tulip tree. I also eliminated the beloved oak tree from the list because it drops something every season and there was concern about it dropping acorns and things that could be a hazard on walkways or parking lots. So those have all been swapped out. There's a new planting schedule on the black and white drawings that we also looked at the existing species, the town has an inventory of all of the trees on this property because they're currently in the
public realm. So we have that whole list and so we've been able to compare and make sure we're not like continuing that the monoculture or over planting trend in the area on the overlook. I know it was mentioned that we've reduced some of the scope early on. I think in the RFP response we talked about doing an overlook or boardwalk and things like that right now because we heard that residents of Auburn Street are using it to back up and get out of their driveways and the town DPW has been
storing snow there in the winter. We're really reducing the scope and scale of that. We'll do the invasive plant species removal and mitigation in coordination with the conservation commission will maintain the flagpole in existing lawn and maybe do some replacement plantings as part of that conservation mitigation. But otherwise DPW will still have hard blanc to store their snow and the charis can continue to back up and turn around.
We do have evergreen trees proposed to limit views of the new building from Pleasant Street, which was one of the concerns we heard during this process. And we've added or relocated the bike racks. We have three bike racks proposed for a total of six bike parking spaces for visitors. The residents park in the buildings and bike rooms but those have been relocated to right near the main entrances to each building so they'll be convenient to everyone coming visit on bike. And I'm really excited about,
'cause I'm excited about trash all the time, but the trash revisions are really allowing more flexibility of use that we've raised that entire area up to one level at the grade of the building. So that new permeable paver area can really be more of a flex space as long as there isn't an emergency, which is hopefully most of the time. So you could have, you know, yard games being played out there. Sidewalk chalk, just like a little extra space that's separated along with the
new lawn on the north facade and Auburn Street end of that new building. We do have solid board fencing details now in the drawing set in the black and white version for the trash enclosure and the property line south of the new building. We've, if you go to the next slide, updated the site plan site lighting. I know this one's really hard to read but it has the important
numbers that you'll wanna see that where we're have very limited 0.1 in just two isolated areas, which are a little bit easier to see on the next slide. You can see on the left south of the great lawn there's some Ballard lights just to light that little fire lane driveway access. Those will be screened with plantings that can't be reflected properly in the photometry. And then there's one little area at the south where the light for the emergency
door in far lane will be cut off by a solid board fence. The biggest change is that because we eliminated the access door on the wetland side, yes that light will go away completely. So that one, which is probably one of the more noticeable be just out there in the dark on its own. That one's gone completely. So otherwise throughout the site the light levels remain the same. All of the fixtures are dark sky compliant, full cutoff
and warm color temperature to be perceived as less red. So now on that wetland side, you really only have the ambient light from the units and we were questioned about the flags. If there is a flag, if the flag is lit, it will be with a downlight from the pole itself, not with uplights. So we'll make that determination as we proceed along. I don't think I missed anything. So I think D Davis Square is gonna take over, go through their building changes.
Speaker 24: Hello, I'm Cliff Palmer, a principal at Davis Square Architects. I'm here with Anna A. Scott whom you met at the previous hearing. So, and I've heard, I'm sure I'll be corrected if I get any numbers wrong, we've got some very active listeners here. Anyway, I'll pick up on feedback that we have gotten and then
our responses and then quickly go through images that that I think back up those. So I think the one we've heard from a lot of different parties is that the massing and the scale of the building aren't a good fit. We've made very big changes on that front. We've really redistributed the massing of the new building. We've introduced sloped roof forms and you'll see these in greater detail in the images, the architectural language, of course
massing is part of it, but the architectural language is sort of more on the style side, not consistent with the Auburn Street and South Natick neighborhood. The slope roofs have helped us really integrate a lot more of this sort of indigenous design elements that exist all around us. The roof forms the design of building elements like bays, window treatments and smaller elements that are decorative but do help
with the visual scale and a variation in the materiality of the building. So we made big changes on that front. There were comments about weak relation of the new building with the existing historic structure. We have also looked at that very carefully. I think one of the biggest things that you'll notice is the overall composition of the new school. There's a a classroom
building which is where all of our residential units will be located, but there's also about the same scale of an auditorium building. There are two different pieces connected with a little open area walkway, kind of a pergo structure. We've replicated that idea in our building. Massing really breaking up the massing of the front piece, the Auburn Street piece and the back piece that's furthest away from our closest neighbors. Lack of landscaping of the
open space between the buildings. I think you've heard a lot both from Dana and from Rebecca about the differences it's made by reducing the width of the parking courtyard between because we've reduced the width of that front piece of the building significantly. We really do have a lot more space now for plantings that include both larger planting areas at the front building and planting areas
between the walkways and the larger mass in the back. I will point out that it, and it hasn't been mentioned to this point but I'm just gonna put it in here, is as far as useful open space, I think it is important to note that within walking distance of our site, certainly on our own site we have a very big open lawn. I'll let the site people tell you exactly what percentage, I think it's about 15 to
20% of the entire lot is that front yard that we're not proposing any development in. And there are also five walkable parks within six tenths of a mile that do include the, include the multi-purpose park, the Honeywell ballparks, the Memorial Elementary School, the Shaw Park, and of course a little park that's at the dam. So there are lots of walkable areas that provide both passive and active
recreation opportunities for the residents of the building. The last comment I thought was a terrific one that we heard, which is that the materials that we were presenting really insufficiently showed the views from other perspectives. We'd been focusing really in our initial presentations of the views from Auburn Street. We've looked at a lot more locations as Rebecca mentioned, and in some cases
have even add some landscaping to enhance the screening from those perspectives. So we can go to the next slide and you can start to see some of what I was talking about. I'll start with the, of course the new building. Although I will say I keep in mind that the school building itself, the notion is that it is a very careful historic restoration. So we're not really allowed to make big
changes on that building. It will just be made much, much better. Of course the use is changing radically, but the the energy consumption, accessibility and really maintaining it for the long term is what that scope is about in that building. In the new building, I think you see the scale and the massing. We have a small kind of single family scale piece on the front. A really a radically
different width of that facade that's facing Auburn Street. We've provided sloped roofs instead of flat roofs in all of the primary views of the building. The third floor units in our previous design, it was a flat roof building. All the third floor units were ex an extension of, of the floor below In this new plan, the third floor units are, are embedded in the roofscape of the building.
We've changed the colors quite a bit. You know, we've looked around, there are a lot of white buildings in South Natick. We think it works well on this building as well. We're using some roof color in the, in our new building that we think will relate to the masonry in the existing school building. And then of course adding, as I had mentioned before, some smaller scale pieces that are very commonly
deployed in single family homes that really help break up the boxing us of, of even small homes. We can look at the next slide that is a, just a reminder of where we were. I think this slide probably best shows the difference that you see when the front piece is much narrower and the space between the historic building and the new build and the and the new building
has increased quite a lot. What you see in these images of the new building, we've cut down on the density of the trees so you can actually see the facades of the building. But the trees that you do see depicted in that rendering our trees, that correspond to what Rebecca was showing in her landscape plans. That last view is sort of close to elevation views.
This is a perspective view and I wanna point out that in all the perspective views we show, because there have been questions about what you see up on the roof 'cause there is a flat roof area in the building that you'll see a little bit more of and a little bit. These are perspective views that actually do include the mechanical equipment on the roofs, the flat roofed areas of the building. So what you see in these images is really what you get,
you know, up to the level of what we know at this point. We're not at even design development but we've made very good guesses based on, on comparable size buildings of how big the equipment, the rooftop equipment would be. They are in these models. So as I, I think that's really important to note that that's not something that we're not dealing with regularly. The next image, you get a
even a better view of that, of that idea of really breaking up the massing of the building. Taking the, the more monolithic concept that we had moving the entryway so that we'd have nicely proportioned two different pieces tied together with corridor space and you'll see that in the next view a little better. That's a shot looking into what a corridor light that will bring, make
those corridors in the building, bring light into the inside of the building, we think is both nice for the residents, but really important, an important element to break up that overall scale of, of the big building. What you see to the right of that pedestrian there. Resident is part of the building that we think makes a nice connection over to the historic building. The, I think you'll remember
from some of the other views, there are large bay really prominent bays on the school building facing that courtyard on our back piece. Those correspond actually quite closely to those gagged bays in the, in the larger half of the building towards the rear of the site quickly. Floor plans are next. I I just wanna
recap, it's 32 units nine overall counting both buildings. Nine of those units are in the school building. We can do very little changes in the plans of the school building. We have to retain the existing corridor widths. We can't break down all the walls of the classrooms. And we have the good fortune that the typical classroom size is very close to being the one bedroom
size that meets the, the requirements of the funding sources and also just make nice one bedroom units. So nine of those units are in the school building. The 23 new units are in the new building. You heard earlier that we're providing four group two units and group two units in Massachusetts, Massachusetts Architectural access board language means fully accessible
units on day one. There are actually two categories, but it's basically fully dimension dimensionally consistent with fully accessible units. We are providing four of those, which is 12.5%. The code requires 5% but we think it's a really nice, nice, a nice thing to provide is enhanced accessibility in the building. In addition, in the school building which is exempt, the school building
is in a architectural access board is exempt even from group one units, which are sort of generically known as adaptable units. However, we are making three of those units, group one units. So the accessibility picture overall is really way above and beyond what code would require. The, in the, I mentioned before that the auditorium
building, that's where all of the common use spaces are. Any of the significant common use spaces for the residents. There's bike storage office space for the management company conference room, but we haven't decided where the mail's gonna go yet. We haven't met with the post office. We're not at that point in the design yet. All of those common uses are fully accessible in the, in the auditorium wing of the, the two building complex that makes up
the historic buildings. The new building is elevator fed. So all of those units will be either group two, which is four and then the remainder of those 19 units will be, will meet group one requirements which are the so-called adaptable units. So that's the building notion elevations to the left, you see the Auburn street elevation there. I think you see
really the big difference. Before what we had in massing was close to a uniform width of the building that went the full round of the building. The depth of the, of the really developable area, the site. Now we have a kind of a little house in front of a bigger house In the back you see a little bit of a yellow pergola, which is protected protection from the entryway but also a reference to the kind of colon aid that's used to connect the two historic pieces together.
The west elevation there you see where we have some flat roof area. What the flat roof area does for us is it gives us area for solar panels, it gives us area for all of the mechanical equipment it doesn't have sit on the ground. So we're really checking a lot of boxes from, well, so first of all, keeping open space on the ground to the greatest degree possible, but also checking a lot
of sustainability boxes as well as resiliency by having the, the equipment up high in the building. What you see in those elevations. Before you leave that one Anna, back up again please. That what we're showing there for mechanical screening is very aggressive mechanical screening. I don't know how much, I don't think we necessarily need that to go to that high, but we wanted to make sure that, that we showed you what the worst
case would be. This of course is not a view that any human could ever have. A drone could do it. I guess as I just wanna reiterate that all the perspective use we show actually do include the mechanical screening and mechanical equipment that you could possibly see. Next are the long elevations. Top one is the parking court elevation. I think you see in that right hand piece there
are those three bays I was talking about that relate to those huge yellow gold window walls in the, in the historic building. And then the third floor units up in the roofscape. The backside, you see the, well it kinda speaks for itself. The front half does have shed dormers on both sides. The rear half makes a transition to our flat roof area, which is where the mechanical
equipment is, as well as PV panels on the far southernmost end of it. I think the next slide after I take a drink, the next side slide I think is just kind of backing off a little bit. And you can see that actually South Natick has a little clusters of of bigger buildings like campus, like settings this, these are the three that you see just by zooming out, not
very far at all. You see us in the foreground, right? You see the exchange with the John Elliot Church and the commercial buildings at the intersection of Pleasant and Elliot Street to the left. And then of course the Riverbend school, which is the newest thing ha that happened or most recent, which is actually very large complex that blends both slope roofs and flat roofs, flat roof areas. Actually, in kind of a
similar way that we're proposing, the next slide is a quick view of like why did you make the building white? There are a lot of white buildings. We do think there they, well there are a lot of reasons architects like white buildings, but in this case this is mainly about context in what you see in this context I think is is you know, it's kinda similar colors. You see habitable, habitable space on third floor levels
and you also see particularly highlighted in the River Bend school that, that integration of flat roof and pitched roofs. And in our building we're doing a very similar mechanism of, of screening the flat, you know, any primary views of the flat roof are, are screened actually in our, in our building primarily by sloped roof. Much like was accomplished at the River Bend school, I think
pretty successfully. Now as far as those views from other places, we had the, what I would call the good fortune of having no leaves on the trees. So these, I think you would have to say are sort of worst case views that you would see. So we took our own photographs, plugged our model into the photographs to give you an idea of what it would look like from various perspectives. There's a little key plan down
there on the right hand side that helps you get oriented if you need it. Take note in this slide that the actual water level in the river is anywhere from 12 to 14 feet below the bottom of what you saw in those flat elevation. So the river river's way down there, this is a shot from those ball fields across from our site looking through
unvegetated trees. The next view I actually, I think in this view you can't even see our building. Yeah you can't. And that's because we took it from Google or this is one we didn't take and we realize we missed it. So we took it from street views. So this is vegetated, you see the par the cars though that are back in that parking lot that serve that, that residential development that is actually quite prominent on
the river as you're crossing that bridge on Pleasant Street Next views. I'm, I'm gonna have to ask Anna to zoom in because you can see there, but you can see better. Yeah, so this is, you know, this is on the other side of Elliot Street. Looking over back through, you can see some of, it's hard
to see frankly and notice there's, there's a lot of vegetation there right now and in some of these views, one we are actually proposing a little bit of additional vegetation. But we really wanted to see, as I was saying, sort of the worst case. The next view is, is a view looking across Pleasant Street. And there you can see it a little better, but you're also again looking through trees that actually this is
very similar to the view that you see in the context slide, if you remember that slide. It's a view of almost the same view but in the summer. So you can, and Anna, will you kill me if you go back and look at that view again too, 'cause it's pretty similar. Okay, so that's there. And here we are proposing some plantings, but if you go back to the context slide, you'll see very close to that view, what it looks like in a vegetated
version, you know, for eight, eight or nine months. Oh, great. Of, yeah. There you go. So that's the what happens when there are leaves on the tree. The next few, actually there is a typo I think in the label on the next one, which is just a little further along. Yeah. That says Elliot Street. I think it's actually Pleasant Street. So that's moving a little bit further along. Again, there you get
a pretty, pretty good view of the historic building. But in any case, we thought it was important to show you as well as we can under existing winter conditions, plugging our model in to, and finally, the view that is from Elliott Street, which is of the, the new version of the
new massing. And which is a familiar view because you've seen this view before on the last slide. So there's a modification in that view from what you saw before. Not, not very big modification, but it, it is different from what you saw. So we're gonna just, Speaker 21: I'll give it a try. Speaker 24: Yeah. Will this work? We'll try. Alright. We're gonna try. I hope this works
because it's a walkthrough and we think this is very close to what you'll see. And I hope it works 'cause it's pretty cute. Walkthrough back down onto Auburn Street. Here we go. Yeah, it's just a, it's a little jerky. Yeah. So maybe it's like a skateboard kind of Speaker 21: On your screen. Yeah. This is what Yeah, it's okay. Speaker 24: This, yeah, there
it goes. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. It actually isn't normally this jerky. Yes. Sorry. It feels like that. Okay, Speaker 21: I'm gonna pause here. Speaker 24: Yeah, I think this is interesting. This is kind of your best view of really seeing that, the composition of those two buildings and the connector piece in the middle. So we thought that was a nice sort of reference to that building.
I think we are showing the, the augmented curve radio here too. So I think, I think this is pretty current with the, with the change site plans. I, at this one when you approach our building, we had to remove a tree. So they're in front of our building. We had to remove it, otherwise you, you wouldn't see the building. And this program
doesn't allow us to present trees without leaves. So would that Speaker 9: Be right there on, not the berm, but that little square next to the berm? Speaker 21: Yeah, I think I took out Speaker 24: Three nice, big, rich, lush tree. That one. Yeah, that's the one. And we're not taking it out. We, you, we, sorry, this program just didn't do that. Okay. Doesn't work Speaker 21: That way. I think there are three that I took out. So there are three Speaker 24: Gone. Okay. So anyway, that's an important point.
The historic commission didn't like the yellow might change that, but this, there's the, the yellow three bay, ganged bay thing. That is, if you go in that parking lot, it's clearly the coolest thing on the, the historic building, just this massive window wall. See this lot was, I think we, we sh we shrank the lot about four feet, I think
it was four feet. And introduced that angled parking so we could introduce the planting strip. Even at the, the wider rear building, we're able to fit a planting strip. Now by having the angle parking, it is actually angled, even though it doesn't quite look at the perspective because of the camera in this program is a little weird. But this is the angled parking one way view. I think that's a
it. Sorry about the jerky. Speaker 1: Oh, it's good. Drive. It's helpful. Thank you. Okay, before we go on to the next phase, why don't we just take a five minute break. Alright, here we go. Let's do it. Okay. So we just heard from the architect and we just watched the video and now you were gonna do what? Or was I gonna do
something? I was gonna respond, right? We were gonna respond. Yes. Okay. Good enough. Okay. We saw a lot. We heard a lot. Does anybody here have any questions, comments, thoughts? I, I'll just say it's really come a long, long way from where we started to where we are. So again, I, I think the process works. You listen, redesign change, you adapt to try to, to adjust based on
the comments you received. I, I think you did a good job in that regard. So that's a general comment, but I think I'm gonna invite Andy, who's an architect to comment. Speaker 9: So it has been two, two months since we saw the, the other scheme. And I, I would, I would agree, just frankly from a a personal perspective, I was sort of, you know, wondering aloud about what what might come back and came back pretty
similar to, you know, what I thought would mostly be appropriate as far as changing up the massing. I mean a lot of the points that you've made, but changing up the massing, similar roof lines, you know, echoing the sort of scale of those sort of window elements on either side. I know hearing from neighbors, there's an issue I think, you know, still will be an issue with the overall size and unit count.
But from, from where it was as far as the overall massing and breaking it down and feeling more neighborhood scale, I think it's, I think it's working well. You know, as you said, you're not even in schematic design. So there's, you know, meaning that this is, there are many design development phases that the architect will, will go through and, you know, and make tweaks. But typically that's a, that's an a place to improve
even more. Adding detail, adding things that I think will help even further. So yeah, overall this was what I was personally hoping to see. Speaker 1: So. Okay. Anybody else have any questions, comments, thoughts? Nothing to add to that Concerns? Say it again. Nothing I could add. Nothing you could add. Fair enough. Anybody here? No. No. Okay. Anybody wish to be heard about
what we saw? Yep. Come on up. Just give your name and address for the record. Speaker 25: Good evening chair and members of the board. Ganish Hanran 30 Spring Street. I'm also a licensed planner, urban designer and chair of the Affordable Housing Trust. Though these opinions are my own, I have to applaud the design team and Metro West for listening to the concerns of the neighbors.
And I think it's a huge improvement and it's really nice touch how they were able to break up and even the way in which they were able to not necessarily mimic the historic building, but at the same time complement it in terms of the base of, you know, you are starting to look at it as a complex and as, as an urban designer, I really appreciated the view where you kind of zoom back and look at these larger buildings. Yes, there is a point of connection where this building faces the single family, but when you look at it as a neighborhood,
as a larger like town center, as a village center, it, it doesn't necessarily stand out in, in fact like the scale of this building is like much smaller than some of the, the school and some of the other apartment buildings that they shared. So overall, I think it's, it's a big step and I would like to thank everyone for helping us get there. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thanks. Who else would like to be heard seeing no one? Oh, yep. Nope. Couple late, late goers.
We know you are. Yeah, Speaker 15: Thank you. First, I really wanna thank you folks for what I consider to be due diligence for what you've done it. You should be commended. Second, believe it or not, I think the new design is radically better than the old design. No, we're not there yet. But I think it's a radical change that we certainly welcome. Which brings me to this point. I think someone said,
and I could be wrong 'cause that's the way sometimes things go. You've received feedback from the neighborhood. I'll bet you that none of the feedback from the neighborhood was positive about this project. And I challenge you to dispute me on that. I wish you what if you could. I won't say again. I Speaker 1: Won't. Speaker 15: Okay. Next. There, there was a comment that this has affected the Charles River. I think I heard
that correctly. Query how? Speaker 1: I don't recall hearing that. I hear that either. I Speaker 15: Don't. There you go. I'm, you've indicated you've received lots of comments. Speaker 1: I don't think I said that. I was, I was saying that there have been a lot of comments. Speaker 15: Yes, sir. Okay. I accept that. I certainly
hope you consider the feelings of the neighborhood. We're permanent there. And we, while we don't oppose low income housing at all, we oppose vehemently this project as I think you've learned. Thank you. Speaker 1: Your name and address,
if you would for the record. Speaker 26: Sure. It's Reginald Lee zero Michael Terrace. I am also a member of the board of trustees of the Natick Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I'm also a town meeting member for Precinct 10. I rise in support of this project wholeheartedly. I'm a fan of more housing in Natick. I'm a fan of in the increased diversity of housing in Natick. And this project
hits both spots. This is a, there's a, a need for this type of housing in the town. And I think the, the, the project is, and the design of the project and the scale of the project is appropriate for the needs of the town and the needs for South Natick. I spend quite a bit of time and time in town and speaking with friends and neighbors and whatever. And I can assure you that the vast majority of the conversations I have with members of the town of Natick, residents of
the town of Natick and Precinct 10 are invariably supportive of this project. I can, I have received very few little correspondence regarding the, the people who are opposed to this project. Everyone seems to think this is a, a good thing for the town and I recommend that you support the project. Thanks very much. Thank you. Speaker 1: Yes sir.
Speaker 16: I just need a class clarification of the solar panels all gonna be on roof. Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn that right back. Yes. Yes. Speaker 16: So nothing on the ground. Correct. Thank you. Speaker 1: Anybody else wish to be heard? Yes sir. Your name and
address if you could. Speaker 27: My name is Rob Dunleavy. I live at eight Front Street. I walk around South Natick a lot. I lived here in the neighborhood for 20, over 20 some years. And the presentation tonight is, is very nice. I agree with what people have generally said, their impression of the renderings and the accommodations, maybe that's not the right word, but the adjustments that they architects have made. I think the thing that
that I see is a, you talk about Natick. I think what we need to talk about is South Natick and there's a change in the character that I see in the downtown of South Natick. It's been some residential, but those, and we're talking really what within half a mile of the intersection of Route 16 and Pleasant Street real estate, small
retail business, but mostly some types of offices, just some types of service services in those buildings, you know, so, so this changes the residential character of this space within, I'm guessing about a half mile radius of that intersection. And that's perhaps appropriate perhaps in older times, a hundred years
ago maybe there was a density like that there. And that was normal. You know, we've gotten used to this somewhat laid back residential character in South Natick. This changes it, it's a change and maybe we just don't like change. So of course you're, I hope you're factoring that as a human response to change. I know that there are, Natick is doing quite well in creating
affordable housing and my sense is that this puts us well over the threshold of what we need to have for affordable housing. So I just sort of push back gently against the idea that this has to be the place to push us over that line because it simply changes the character. It's a character we've all come to sort of love like an old coat perhaps we just won't throw it away. We keep it, it works for us. It's, well,
and maybe that's a very conservative kind of position to take. Maybe that sounds, I don't know, just kind of stick in the mud kind of resident sort of talking. But I think it's real. There was one view in the, in, in the, the renderings that were done with the present site sort of photos. And you know, when, when I, I don't know the name, the, the historic building on
Pleasant Street with the columns, hell, I can't remember the name, but there's a gray building next to it. It's got this aesthetic business in it. I look back from there and I see the school and now I know I'll see the school and I'll see the new building and I think I'll see mostly the new building. Maybe that's just my prejudice that I, I don't, I don't wanna see that view. I wanna be able to
see Auburn Street. That's all. It's just a change. And I think really we should be mindful and be aware, and I'm sure you can correct me if I, my sense of Natick's commitment to affordable housing is somehow helped that much by this project. I would assess, I
would assert that maybe not, maybe fewer units, maybe smaller, maybe two cars per unit. I don't know what, but that's my feeling. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Anybody else? Just don off that one. Sorry, sorry. Yep. We'll get you Speaker 9: To that point. I know that there seems to be a couple of gentlemen here that are involved with the Natick Affordable housing group. Is that data that's well known of what you know, thresholds are
or goals are and where we are in that gold goal? As far as units? I'd be curious as well. Speaker 25: Right now I think Amanda, please feel free to correct me. We are under the 10%. We are close but we are under the 9.87 or something like that. Right. Speaker 12: We actually just hit 10. Speaker 25: Oh. But we are also increasing the number of units. There are more units. So I'm not sure how that'll impact, but we, we
are not way over. We are maybe just there Speaker 12: We're exactly at 10.0. Speaker 9: What happens when all of the stuff going on in center comes on, Speaker 12: That's just gonna keep going over the 10%. Speaker 9: So 10% of current housing is affordable. Yeah. Speaker 12: Okay. Speaker 25: Thank you. Speaker 9: Do you know how that compares to other towns? Just curious. Speaker 12: So with the recent 2020 census, quite a few communities
did fall below the 10% where they were previously above the 10%. So we're in the mix. A lot of communities either don't even approach the 10%. And then there's some other communities that do do a little bit better at like 15%. But no one's at a hundred percent. But there's a lot of communities down to the threes and the fives. Yeah, Speaker 9: Thanks. Speaker 1: I think this is the hand I saw first. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 14: Hi. The drawings looked a lot better. I'm sorry, could you just give your name and address again? Mark Den 32 Elliot Corner, house of Auburn. You know, I, I still have an issue and you know, kind of resonated with some people here tonight. That 1.27 parking per unit and that might be lower if, 'cause there's a really 41 spaces or is it 40 because of the EV
charger size and scope. So it might be down to 40 for 32 units. If there's needs to be no on-street parking for safety issues, well you can't skip the safety issues that has to be done. So those are big changes right now. I would prefer to see a smaller scale project. Nice buildings shrink it. There'd be ample parking with those 40 spaces. It would make more sense
if there was half the number of units in this project on this little street where there's only four houses is carrying a heck of a lot of weight. I'm looking here at the statistics. I think they're all pretty accurate. Lots of new construction going up. 26 to 34 Union Street, 40 units, eight, affordable, 21 summer, 13 units, two affordable, 23 willow eight units, one affordable 45 eights
East Central, which is St. Pat's building. It's finally getting work on, there's some duplex for sales, but 46 rentals, eight affordable 69 to 88 East Central Street, 30 units five, affordable, seven to 19 Washington Street, 48 units, 10 affordable. So I think we can easily achieve as many affordable
units as any one of those 48 unit buildings. 'cause it's all affordable. And I think the fact that we're not gonna have EP parking residents might lose spaces. There might be people have to park blocks away that you can't park on Route 16. All of these things, five trucks can't get behind the building turnaround. So maybe it'll work if perfect if someone parked in the wrong spot. It's not gonna be that good one way in one way out. Historically, nobody was ever
allowed to build like this. And I saw a lot of statewide things from the early two thousands of study done on this. Not one town that put in the information had anything that would come close to this. Not even half this much. So we're asking a lot and to build on every square foot basically of that space. And I have a picture I just packed up showing the picture of what Rob was talking about from the library, looking straight back
to Auburn Street. It's beautiful. We talk about open space, we're taking away open space in the back along the river. There could be some middle ground here, fewer units, less parking hassles. There will be parking hassles. How can there not be, you know, we have storms. People visit birthday parties, there's like eight extra spaces. Plumbers, electrician, HVAC guys, the UPS trucks, all of the above.
It's gonna be crowded, there will be hassles. Nobody's there on site. You can call some number and get somebody this and that. But why do we have to overdevelop this land? I have a nice picture over there of a project like this in New Bedford. It's a smaller number of units in the school building, but they had like, I dunno it was 19 or I forget the number I could show you. But it was just a beautiful building historically done. And that was it. We started
this project a couple years ago, I don't know how many years ago, the whole proposal we met with the Natick folks coming out and they were saying maybe 11 to 14 units. And they were talking just inside the school. Here's a project down in New Bedford, 15 units in a similar type school building. Granted they might be singles, maybe we have fewer and have a a half a building in the back, but why we're carrying more weight than St. Pat's school for affordable for the town. We're carrying more than
all these other places. 30 units, another 48 20. Why? Why? I mean, to me it's just kind of being overdeveloped, considering one way in one way out. And I don't know, I I, I liked the gentleman who was there from the town about the traffic studies and that talks about, about the intersection. It's hard to really tell and explain getting outta your own street. If you miss the light cycle, you gotta wait for the next one. And you know, as things get developed, there'll be
more of those. I don't think this project's gonna cause too much more traffic on Elliot, like Mr. Wong said. But they all do a little bit over time. I'm talking like getting outta your driveway to go past the corner. There will be times where it takes many, many minutes just to get out to route 16. You try to go left. A lot of these people are waiting for memorial school in traffic all the way to the light. They're not gonna be that friendly to wave everybody out. So I'm just wanna let you know if we're gonna be
a hundred percent affordable, we are already surpassing even if we cut this in half and then some what every other project has been doing in Natick and just wanted to let you know that it does impact people. There's been just four houses there in a little school neighborhood school there was built, I believe in the 1930s. And I thought when, you know, I used to be part of housing projects and we want to integrate with the neighborhood, not take over the neighborhood and adding
a hundred people to a little street with four houses. And I, granted we all have realistic expectations. Something's gonna go in the school building, whether it's a school or housing and housing's great. I'm all for it. But we never dreamt that it was gonna be this scale. And no one proposed that at any of the early meetings until, you know, it got to the point where the RFPs came that originally the native affordable housing committee came up with 19 units within the building, singles maybe
they mentioned. Then they came back with a little bit more in the back. Okay, what's gonna be that many people? And then this kind of blew us outta the water. Like, you gotta be kidding me. So adding a hundred people to, you know, a street with maybe a dozen or 15 depending on how many adult kids are living at home these days. But that's what I wanna know. We are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Not we, we want to, but there's a, there's gotta be a limit. And I think the limit is that 1.27, you can't park in next to your house, someone else will take it.
You gotta go around the block. I mean, do we have to do this in Natick? You come, everything is changing. Do we have to lose what we do have in order to help people out? And I think if we were scale down the project, somebody can build there. The, the money, the historical money for that building is a lot of money. That will cover a lot. And then people will build in on a smaller scale if we allow them. Thank you. Thank Speaker 1: You. Before we, yeah, I'm gonna get to you a second. I just,
I just want to see if I didn't give Mr. Wong an opportunity to, to weigh in after everything he's heard. Is there anything else you, you, you would like to offer us after you, you heard a lot tonight. Has have any of your opinions changed or is there any information you'd like to share with the board or the applicant or, or, or the assembled tonight? Speaker 6: Nothing more beyond
the comments that I've already made. You know, those review comments are, are based on, you know, what I have in front of me from a technical standpoint. So I'm not gonna bring any, you know, personal feelings into the development or anything like that. So strictly prof professional. Yep. That's all. I don't have anything else to add. I I look forward to the applicant's responses on some of the questions that, or comments I had on the site plan. Yep. But I'm sure that'll be forthcoming at some point and looking forward to seeing those. Yeah. Speaker 1: Very good. Okay, thanks. Just want to give you an opportunity.
Yes sir. Thank you. Yep. Speaker 28: Hi, I'm Ben King, 19 Glen Street. Mr. Chair, in the, the first meeting we had, you talked about 40 B and you said, I don't wanna get in the weeds about 40 B. So I think we just got into the weeds about 40 BI thought the affordable housing stock in Natick was 9.97. But now I hear it's 10%. Doesn't that, if
you're below 10%, that triggers 40 40 B project. If you're above it, from what I understand, you would not have to agree with it or whatever. Could you get into that a little bit? The time of the application? Speaker 4: Yeah, at the time of the application, the town was under 10%. So anything that was filed prior to the town reaching 10% is covered under 40 B. And some of the units also can fall off the SHI. Sometimes that happens in
communities where you're at 10 and then some of the units fall off because they don't get built. So Yeah. But we were in before the application was submitted. Speaker 28: Alright. And the, the question goes along with that. At the time, the application I believe was 9.97%. I don't have the number, but, okay. But that in the Natick affordable housing website, it said they needed five more units would create bring us to 10%. So my question or my ask
to the board as we go back to the time of the application, if, if we just converted the school building to nine units, we'd, we would've made the 10% without the need of doing the, the building behind, which is, I'd rather, I'd rather see the three repurposing of the building rather than any new construction. Speaker 3: Thanks very much. What, what is the need for affordable housing in Natick as opposed to the statutory minimum?
There have been a Speaker 28: Need compared to other towns. I have the list. Speaker 3: No, just the need for affordable housing. I mean, how many people wanna live here? Can't afford they live Speaker 28: Here. Can I make a point on that demand? If my point is let's make it 50% rather than 10%, I guess Speaker 3: I'm not asking what's the minimum that we, that this board can deny a project for, but what's the,
what's the need for both market rate housing and affordable housing in Natick that has been in metro Boston and Massachusetts, that that has not been met over the past several decades. Speaker 28: Yeah, and it's supposedly that the state mandate, or I dunno if it's a mandate, is 10% and that's Speaker 3: The statutory minimum. Speaker 28: Yes. And if you go over that, there's a cost involved. I would, I assume to the town people living in town to, to
pay for that. And then for you, you know, if you wanna go 10%, let's go 20% and it just 30%, 40%, we, it would just cost more to the residents of the town. And I think that's where the, in my opinion, that's where a number is. I'm sure someone else could ask to that. Speaker 11: I think through my colleague, if I made the chair, the need is substantially understated. There is much more need for affordable housing everywhere than what we, Speaker 3: Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Which is why we built
it here in Natick Center, which is why we've approved 40 B up near Cloverleaf, which is why there's another one that was APLU approved at Cloverleaf, which is why there's a lot of affordable housing in West Natick. We'd like to put it around town, but I, it's necessary. I think we're all agreement. Speaker 28: What I'm Speaker 1: Saying is just, I'm saying to hold off just because your comments are not being captured. If you're on to talk, you gotta be at the podium.
Speaker 28: And what I'm saying is if you repurpose the school building in, in South Natick, you'll, at the time of application, you would've gone over the 10% and you would've brought some affordable housing in South Natick to South Natick Center. I'm sure there's some Was there any up on Rockland Street? I don't know. On that big project. I'm not sure. Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. Saw a couple more hands. Did I see what, hang on one second. We got one in the back here. Yep.
I'm gonna give you an opportunity to talk, to respond to whatever you want to do. Speaker 29: Hi, friendly Vickers Oakland Street Extension, if you don't mind, sir, through the chair please. My understanding is that there are different levels of affordable housing and everything that we've just been hearing about in downtown is all at 80%. And isn't this project we're
talking about 60 and 30%? Could we, there's different, could I under, could I understand a little bit about that? Speaker 1: I, I can't recall offhand what the mix of the, whether it's, what's the mix here? Speaker 30: So half of our units are available to households earning up to 30% of area median income. And the remaining 16 units are available up to 60% of area Speaker 1: Median. So you have, do you hear that? Speaker 29: So that's actually
what we would consider deeply affordable as opposed to what's happening downtown, which is really kind of just barely affordable. Speaker 1: No, I don't think that's the case. I don't remember what the unit, what the, what the affordability mix is at St. St. Pat's you mean? Speaker 29: No, I just mean in, in downtown as a whole. In downtown as a whole, the affordable housing that we've been creating, it's not necessarily at 60 or 30%. Is that correct? Speaker 1: I'm sure part, I'm sure part of it is Speaker 12: The
max is 80% and lower, so it could be 30 to 80% given the project. Speaker 1: Yeah. So, so let me, I just wanna make sure I understand what your comment is. Is your comment that the project is Speaker 29: Really affordable? Speaker 1: So it's the people that are gonna move in there, that's your concern? Or is it something Speaker 29: Else? It's the need that it's filling because we're not necessarily
filling the need at that level in great numbers. And this is really filling that need. Speaker 1: Go ahead. Speaker 12: Yeah, sorry. We recently had to put in a lip application that's our local initiative program to make sure that the units remain affordable in perpetuity through the state program. In that we do require a local preference. And so we have to give the justification for that local preference. And the one we just did for 21 Summer Street, which does have
two affordable units. Let's see, one third of Natick residents are low income. One half or 51% of renters in Natick earn below 80% a MI. And so this is a two page letter, which I can definitely send to you, but a low income family of three in Natick eligible for a two bedroom unit at 80% of the area. Immediate income earns no more than $117,250 annually using
a 30% allowance. Such family can afford to pay a maximum of $2,931 per month if the rent of all utilities are included. Or 2,656 without utilities included. The rent that our household eligible for a one bedroom could afford would be a bit less and more for a three bed. So it goes on. So we have to document all this. And so there is a demand throughout the commonwealth. The other thing is Natick
is in the Boston Cambridge area median income. So we're not just in the metro west, we are looking at Boston rents, Cambridge brands. Speaker 1: I see. Yeah. I'm not sure if that addressed your question or not, but I I Speaker 9: Can I repeat what I think the question is? No, the demand for deeply affordable housing is great and the supply is negligible. Speaker 29: That's, I think, the point I was trying to make. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Okay, thanks very much.
Yep. Speaker 25: I think a board member hundred 30 Spring Street board member asked what is the need for affordable housing? I think the number that's floating around the need for housing is about 222,000 units in the next decade. So the need is enormous. You know, it's
not just Massachusetts. We are living, breathing a housing crisis. I live in downtown Natick. I could say I'm really concerned about downtown Natick, but I am concerned about Natick, I'm concerned about our state, and I'm concerned about our country. So what we are doing is a very small step in like providing one of the basic human right to put a shelter on top of someone's head, whether it's a single mom or whether it's a senior. It's very likely you are not going to see a hundred
people living in that unit. In, in the development, the average household size has reduced from 3.7 to like 2.5 right now. And the average household sites in these units are likely to be even smaller. So there are gonna be like more single folks, more seniors like a mom with a child. So it's, it's likely to be under 60 or even under 50 in this development. Thank you. Thank Speaker 1: You very much. Does anybody else
wish to be heard? Okay, see, seeing done, and we might get one more opportunity to, to, to ask questions, but so I I have a question 'cause I I I, I think this is, you know, we're sort of noodling around the edge of the, some of this stuff, but I think this is the question for the people in the assembled and for the board. Why can't this project be 28 units? Why can't this project be 24 units? Why can't this project
be smaller than it is? Let me, let me say it a a different way. Let's say everyone here loves the buildings they've done yeoman's work in bringing these buildings into a place that everyone can accept it. Let's say the massing is okay, but the concern is about density, just the number of bodies on the land. And if that's
the concern, irrespective of the structures themselves, why can't it be smaller? Speaker 4: Sure. I'm gonna let Caitlyn answer that, but in in general, the answer to that is it can't be built, it wouldn't be economically feasible. No one would build less than 32. They're right on the brink. And this is a non-profit that isn't out to make a profit, but they're mission driven and in their response to the town, this is the deep
affordability that they offered, which the town accepted and put into a developer agreement back in 2023 with the select board. But let me have Kaitlyn get into a little bit more detail about the FE economic feasibility. Speaker 17: Right. So the, the 32 apartments that we proposed in our RFP response hasn't changed and it was vetted at the select board during the RFP process. Going into preparing
our response, we understood that there would be a desire for the fewest number of units financially feasible on the site, which is how we arrived at the number of 32. We typically try to propose 40 or more units. This financial feasibility analysis was driven in large part around the financing tools that we have available to us. So it helps us meet our funding requirements. It also helps support
the signi significant costs required for the historic preservation, careful preservation work and bringing the building up to modern code, the significant costs of the site work required to implement appropriate storm water management on the site and to support long-term high quality maintenance for the life of the building. Because will you wanna be good neighbors? Speaker 1: What would happen if, can you tell me what the mix is again? At 60 and 30,
Speaker 17: 16 units at 30% a MI and 16 at 60%. Speaker 1: Okay, so a split and I, I know the, there was an RFP and the, the town selected, the, the selected board selected you based on i i 32 yet. But this split as well, Speaker 17: This split is what was proposed in our RFP response. Speaker 1: I don't think we're necessarily tied to that, but there's certainly, I'd like where you going? Keep going. The fa the
fa the our well whatever the, the elders have spoken. Would you have any flexibility in terms of, you know, changing the mix? Because if let, let's just say you went to 24 at 60, then the economics changes, right? 'cause now you're, you're
going to have more revenue from those 24 units. I, I don't know what the math looks like, but I do you have the flexibility of shifting some from the 30 to the 60, increasing the revenue stream and then reducing the overall the, the total numbers. Speaker 17: Right. So converting some of the units from 30% a MI to 60% a MI actually doesn't help the financial feasibility. The units at 30% area median income are supported by operating income
or operating subsidy. So the rents that we collect are the same. It's just the residents share of the rent that changes. So lower income households might pay a hundred dollars a month depending on their income, but the, the income to the property doesn't change between the 30 and Speaker 1: 60. So is it section eight? Speaker 17: We have eight. Section eight and eight MRVP, Speaker 1: MRVP. So so eight section eight. These are vouchers Speaker 17: Project based vouchers?
Speaker 1: Yes. Oh, the MRM RVP is mobile, right? Speaker 17: The MRVP are also project based. Oh, Speaker 1: Project based. Okay. So that's 16. And then what about the other 16 Speaker 17: And the other 16 are already at the 60% area meeting income. Oh, Speaker 1: And what's the subsidy there? Speaker 17: There's no subsidy. It's just you have to meet the income qualifications and be able to support the cost of the rent. Speaker 1: Oh, okay. So you, is there a, is there a low income housing tax credits or something? Speaker 17: Okay, that's right.
Yeah. For all of the units. Speaker 1: Right. Okay. Okay. So they're, they're gonna pay the full contract rent, but that contract rent is going to be less than the market, right? Yeah. Okay. Speaker 3: Yeah. A adjusting didn't somewhere go wrong. I know that must to be dangerous, right? I knew less that'd be less dangerous adjusting the rent a adjusting the a MI does not adjust the rent. And what, but what
about adjusting the bedroom size and and unit size to get to a, to fewer units, but maybe you're chart, you have more twos than ones which could reduce the parking need a little bit. How does that affect the financials? Speaker 17: Right. So the state has a required bedroom mix percentage and our current proposal is meeting that if we started to
make adjustments among bedroom sizes, we would no longer qualify for our state funding, which makes up, you know, 95% of our, our budget. Speaker 9: Yeah. Relative to the budget, relative to, you know, the kind of, you know, it's probably a fairly lengthy process. You guys have been working on this to make sure that you can still build it. Have you built in escalation costs and things like that on your construction estimates? And is that something that
you've been updating as you go with construction prices being insane? What what they've been Speaker 17: They are, yes. And we've been working with a pre-construction, pre, excuse me, pre-construction general contractor on our pricing and making sure that we're, because we're in the really early stages of design and also have a lot of time that needs to pass before we're able to start building, we are building in escalation for costs Speaker 9: And owner contingency and design contingencies and all of
all of that. That's right. Okay, Speaker 1: Great. Speaker 9: I'm just morbidly curious, what kind of impact has the preservation of the school having on your costs Speaker 3: Square feet? Speaker 1: Before they answer that, they're also, there's a big chunk of change coming from, well maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Yeah, yeah. From, as a result of the fact that they do have to do that, Speaker 9: What's the net net? Is it costing 1,000,002 and you're getting 400 Speaker 1: Or that one I
can't answer just at a rough, rough. Speaker 9: Not have to be exact. You're spending a lot of money to preserve the school and you're being granted money to preserve the school. What's the net cost to you, your bottom line by preserving the school? You said that preserving the school is a major cost factor, Speaker 17: Right? Speaker 9: How big, <v Speaker
17>I'm sorry, could you restate the question? Speaker 9: You're getting some grant money for preserving the school. Yeah. You said that preserving the school has a significant cost impact on your construction, right? Roughly. Roughly what is that delta? Is it 20% of the total cost? Is it 5% of preserving? If you could take down the school and start with a flat piece of ground, what would that do to the mix of units? What would that do to your whole economic story?
Speaker 3: Forget whether you can take the school down. Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 9: This is just, this is a hypothe exercise to show people that, you know, as a community Speaker 17: Right? School. Right. So Speaker 3: Maybe what if you have the per unit construction cost of the school building compared to the, versus the per unit construction cost of the Speaker 9: New building. Of Speaker 3: The new building. Understanding you got site costs, you got the overall design cost. It's, it's sometimes it's
hard to, you know, leave it per perfectly. And then what's your estimated historic tax credit? Speaker 17: So the way that the historic tax credit program works is that you are eligible for 20% of the overall all cost of the preservation. So we, you know, we are able to gather resources from the state Massachusetts Historical Commission and the National Park
Service to offset some of the preservation costs. But there's a lot of costs that aren't covered by like Speaker 9: 80%. Exactly. Speaker 17: Right. Speaker 9: And so we're talking a couple of million dollars Speaker 17: Easily. Yes. The, his, the, the building, the historic building itself is extremely expensive to renovate, to bring up to code. And any improvement that you would make to that building would also come with the requirement to make the site improvements around storm water management. So you couldn't
just renovate the building and call it done. You have to make the site improvements Speaker 9: As well. It was preserving that building a requirement for the RFP process. Speaker 17: Can't do Speaker 3: As the guy who wrote it. Yes, Speaker 9: But you are one, there Speaker 4: You go. Yes. And the other, the other piece that's hasn't been discussed yet is the preservation of, I think it's about Cliff one third of the site has to be open so that whole
area could not be built on Speaker 9: The front area between the Speaker 4: Building. You lose about I think a third of the lot, right? Speaker 24: It's a lot. It's maybe not quite that much, but the, the big, big cost driver also that's directly associated with the historic preservation is that remember in the entire school building we have nine units, then there's a whole other building and they both have to be preserved. So if you kind of
run conventional numbers about efficiency of the dollars you're spending in a, in a new single freestanding building, it's, you were bringing up what if you had a completely open site, you would look at efficien efficiency of, you know, eight 85%, you know, 82% efficiency of what you get built. You can actually live in. And the, because we are restoring the auditorium building is a very large percentage
of common space compared to what you would normally build. So it's, that adds a very large amount of money and it's strictly for historic restoration purposes. Speaker 9: So the bottom line is given your open space requirements, given your historical preservation requirements, given the lay of the land, literally you were sort of forced into this corner called between the river
and the historic building and forced into a certain mass to make all of this work. Is that what I'm hearing? Speaker 24: Basically. Basically, yeah. Speaker 9: I know you, you answered this before, but just coming at it again. I mean, is there any like, ounce of movement on being able to use that common space that other l wing of the school for units? It's just, is there Speaker 24: It is a
really good question and unfortunately no. And the degree to which they're looking at our proposals for converting that even into bike storage and offices is the park service wants to know how we're mounting partitions that can be demoted without destroying any of the fabric, any of the storage, Speaker 9: Even fabric put in bike storage is an issue. Speaker 24: How we put up the walls. Are the walls attached to the floor? Does that damage the floor?
So the the notion of of losing the sense of the, the, the big idea in that building is maintaining that large volume, a sense of it. So our walls don't go up to the ceiling in there, in the offices. It's, we're putting in what essentially are temporary partitions where the office space will be, they'll have a lid for privacy, but the park service would, it would really draw the line on, you know, a totally occupying
that space. You'd be able to see differently from outside the, those big windows you would see it, it just wouldn't, it wouldn't work. So anyway, I just wanted to get that, that in there, that that is a big driver, directly related historic, it's just the amount of volume that we have to upgrade to meet the standards and preserve it for the town. Speaker 1: Thanks very much. The numbers, have they been
supplied to the town? We have them. You see, you have them. The numbers, the financials. I mean look, I, I have seen these projects go up to hack and if condition, if we condition it, it makes it uneconomic, they're gonna send it back. Right. You you can't, you can't, you can't be made up uneconomic. So let's get the numbers, make sure we have the numbers. And so does anybody
else have anything on here before we kind of wrap it up? Oh, are we going to waivers? Speaker 4: You know, we can go to waivers. Not Okay. We have one revision to submit to Amanda that I talked to her about. We would very much like to start working with Amanda at the direction of the board on a draft decision so that we can discuss that after waivers. Speaker 1: Alright. You're our lawyer. Are you our lawyer back there? You're Speaker 4: Not our, no, I
think Amanda spoke to, I apologize. Amanda spoke to town council. Oh you did? About starting that process. Town Speaker 1: Council's gonna be our point person. I apologize, like to be our lawyer, Speaker 4: But Speaker 1: I apologize. Okay. Speaker 4: Just, I think we need direction from the board to get that process going. Speaker 1: I'm happy to have you start that process. Thank you. I I, for everyone who's here, that doesn't suggest necessarily anything, it's just moving forward in some fashion
before we wrap it up then what, what I'd like you to do, whomever is appropriate, is just speak to the people behind you who are gravely concerned about the density. I will tell you this, the aesthetics have so vastly improved on this project. It's amazing to me that standing on Auburn Street and looking at that building,
it does what it does despite it looking like, kinda like the side of a house. It's really quite clever. So good, good on you for that. And then as you walk around the site, all these, these various views, this sort of, its visual impact is so insignificant in terms of this, this whole area. You can walk around the site and it and it just, it
it's, it just, it's amazing that this building hides so much unless you're on Auburn Street or unless you're inside the circulation of the site, that building just doesn't look that big. That's an aesthetic issue as I see it. Then you have the, the concerns at the outset of this project, it was unanimous. It's the traffic, it's the traffic, it's bad and it's gonna get worse. And it's a host of horribles and it's Armageddon
on the streets. That turns out not to be the case. Your consultant indicated as much as confirmed by the town's peer review consultant. So that that horrific, you know, future will does not seem to, will not seem to obtain. So now we're back to seems like a, an intense use of that site in what is essentially a
residential community. You have five houses or four houses on ARB Street and they're gonna bear the brunt. And, and I, I don't, I don't, I I definitely don't want you to tell talk, talk about that these people are gonna be affordable tenants. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about the number of bodies on this site and speak to the people behind you and, and tell them why this is gonna be
okay for them. Speaker 4: Do you wanna do that? Talk about your other properties. I mean, I think that Caitlin can speak to the other properties and the, Speaker 1: I think that, and you don't have to answer the question. You have experience in developing affordable properties. You won't speak to the one you, I can't remember where it is. I'm sure there was, there was significant neighborhood opposition to that.
Is there still, or have is is your project up running and and it it functions well in the neighborhood? Let me tell you, let me, let me ask it a different way. You have an opportunity right now to sell the project to the people who are most opposed to it. I'm just giving you the floor to do it. You don't have to take it. Speaker 17: Well, I'm, I'm, don't consider myself much of a, a salesman and I think that
this is a pretty awkward format. So if anyone would like to meet with me one-on-one to talk in more detail about any concerns, I'd be happy to do that. We do have a number of communities. One is in Medway, it's 92 units. We have a couple in in Watertown as well and Norwell. And we're building one in Hudson right now. I will
tell just a very short story about Medway. Gosh. So there was a, a member of a public body in Medway who was very much opposed to the, the project in the early stages. But we were able to get our approvals. We were able to welcome all of the new residents to
the community. Many of whom many, many, many of whom had either current ties to Medway or who had built their lives in Medway and were forced to move away when they wanted to downsize. But the member of the planning board attended our, our ribbon cutting and met our residents and spoke with one resident who had to move to Connecticut to find a unit that they could afford. And that
was also accessible because they had mobility challenges and needed to, to use a wheelchair. They had kids, grandkids and all of their friends in Medway. But to find a unit that met their accessibility needs, they had to move far away. Glenbrook way was an opportunity for them to return to the community where they have deep roots. And I think that the planning board members was very proud of the way that the community came together
and the, the folks that we are, we are serving there. I know that 32 units can sound like a large number. I would encourage you to go buy a Metro West property to go buy a similar 30 ish unit community in town. And when you create well-designed and well-maintained spaces, I think
you'd be surprised at at how it really can fit into the community fabric. So I'm not doing a great job here, I acknowledge that, but I appreciate the community input to date and it really has become a better project for it. So thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. And I would just add that we can also provide a little bit more information about the property management company and what they actually do on a day to day basis to react and handle any issues that might arise. And I just wanna go back to what Amanda said. They're working
on an application that will give Natick residents some preference. So this is gonna be, you know, your neighbors and you'll have a lot of examples Speaker 1: Of that. I just wanna correct one thing for the record. 'cause I think I heard a comment and I didn't give you a chance to respond to it. We, you, you, you mentioned that it's not 24 7 onsite management staff, but at night when after hours, let's call it, there's gonna be an on call service, but, but typically nine to five there will be onsite people. Is that right Or
am I wrong? No, Speaker 4: No. Speaker 17: So we will have a property onsite property manager, resident services coordinator and maintenance staff. And we try to manage those schedules so that there is coverage for as many hours a week as possible. But it wouldn't be, not all staff would be on site nine to five, five days a week. Yeah. Speaker 1: But it, am I hearing you correctly that somebody from the property
management staff will typically be there during the sort of working hours? Speaker 9: Right. Okay. Speaker 17: Right. And that's one of the benefits of having 32 units is that you can support stabbing if you start to reduce the number of units, you have to also have to cut back the staffing. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. Thank you. Does anybody here have any follow up? Speaker 9: No. Speaker 1: Okay. So let's just get the date. The next, the next hearing is March
31. Is that right Amanda? Yep. 3 31 6 30. And in the meantime, in the meantime, you're gonna respond to the open questions, right? Like the fire department, that was one of the comments on here. Speaker 4: We got that approval from the fire department. You already did? Yeah, we already did. So we,
Amanda should have that email. She can provide it. Oh, Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Speaker 4: To the board. So we got the fire department approval and we're gonna submit the final information that was requested by Mr. Wong. Okay, good. But we're curious if, if a meeting can happen between now and March 31st, Speaker 1: That would be a waiver meeting now? Yes. Speaker 4: Just focused on the waivers and we'll already be, have been working on the draft decision and we could speak to that on the 31st. But if we could have a meeting just on waivers, that
would be helpful. Be relatively short folks. Speaker 1: It's another, it's another night. So it's, I I leave it up to the pleasure of the board. Speaker 9: I'm sorry I missed it. I was looking at my phone about schedules. It was a meeting between now and the 31st. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. When is the regular ZBA meeting? Speaker 1: It's on 24th. Speaker 9: Yes. I'm gonna miss both of those.
Speaker 1: But you gonna be around the 31st, Speaker 9: The 24th and the 31st. Speaker 1: Not gonna be here fourth. Oh, the Speaker 9: 24th of February I'll be here. We're Speaker 1: Talking about no, no March. Yep. Speaker 9: Maybe March 3rd or 10th. Yeah, I can be there for that. Yeah, it works. Speaker 1: Is that a Monday? Speaker 9: Those are both Mondays, yep. March 3rd and 10th. I'll not be here on the 10th, but I'll be on the third. Are we planning on voting on the 31st, Speaker 1: David? No. Oh, maybe.
Speaker 9: Okay. Speaker 1: Maybe. Yeah. But that, I think the, the idea here is, is that we didn't get to the waivers tonight and I'm out of steam. So Yeah. Then to come back, do, do the waivers. What happens if the board says we're not gonna waive that and, and not, not a dimensional thing. I'm not worried about that. What happens if the, like, are there, there are certain reviews you're asking to be waived. Speaker 4: No. So there, there are quite a few you'll see on the,
on the strikeout. I look down quickly on the aqua fire, the wetlands, there's no more waivers for any of that review. But we already went to historic, so there's a waiver to have to go to historic dimensional waivers. Speaker 1: We have their input already. Speaker 4: Yeah. Parking waivers dimensional. It's, it's pretty basic. So even if you could fit us Speaker 1: In, what about the con com? What about con com? Speaker 4: No, we're going to con com It's all, all been take removed from the waivers. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: So it should be pretty simple. So you Speaker 1: Need to, that question was, if you waived the review and we said the waivers not, you can't, we're not waiving. Speaker 4: Yeah, we'd have a,
we'd have a choice to either, let's say if it was dimensional to try to fix it with the plans or to appeal, that would basically be a denial, right? Yeah, yeah. It's basic. And even if you can fit us on one of your regular agendas between now and then, I don't think it'll take as long. Oh, Speaker 1: Hold on a second. As long as, because it's just waivers. Speaker 4: Just waivers. Yep. Speaker 1: What, what do you think about, Speaker 2: We're on the 24th, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 4: March 24th. Speaker 1: Yeah.
March 24th. February 24th. Speaker 2: February 24th. Speaker 1: Oh, Speaker 4: I'm not, I'm not available that that Speaker 1: Week. March. March 24th. No, 'cause then it's, we had only one week Speaker 2: March 3rd. That works Monday, March 3rd. Yeah, Speaker 4: March 3rd Speaker 2: Works. Speaker 1: Works. You were here Speaker 2: On the third March? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Speaker 1: Re look here. Hold on a second. Yeah, you're
good. Good, good. I don't think March 3rd. March 3rd. Speaker 2: Great. Thank Speaker 1: You. Okay, hold on a minute. Six Speaker 2: 30. Speaker 1: You Speaker 2: Are bringing a snack, David, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Alright. So, okay. Anything else? Any anything else we need to discuss before we wrap it up?
No. Good, good. Sorry to put you on the spot like that. Speaker 2: No problem. Speaker 1: I just think it's important that everyone hears what you have to say, so, okay. Motion to adjourn then Speaker 2: Move to continue the hearing to March 3rd. Yeah. Speaker 1: Is that what it is? That's Speaker 2: What we said, Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Not Speaker 2: A continue. Continue not adjourn. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Continue. Continue to the
March 3rd. Second. Second. Speaker 2: Alright. Speaker 1: All those in favor? Speaker 2: Aye. Speaker 1: See you then. Thank you very Speaker 2: Much. Thank you. Speaker 1: March 3rd. Thanks.