Wait, I have a sticky note I wrote myself. Hold on. Recording in progress. Uh, good evening and welcome to the June 4th, 2025 Yarmouth Planning Board meeting. I am Joanne Crowley, chair. The public is welcome to attend our meetings
in person or via alternative public access provided on the town of Yarmouth website. Our meetings are generally held on the first and third Wednesdays of the month, but additional meetings are added when needed. I'll begin by taking roll call. Susan Brida, Dearri Aquin, Will
Rubenstein here. Remote. Oh. Oh, dear's remote. Oh, dear. I don't know. Here. Hey, on remote. Thank you. I am here, Madam Chair. Yes. Uh Jim Sabin, Peter Slovak, Ken Smith, here.
Joanne Crowley, present. Seeing that we have a quorum, I'll now call the meeting to order. And I would ask that you join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh this evening we we are we are on our agenda. Our pair of our consultants are joining us. Welcome Jeff and Jeremy. Um we're going to review the status of some
consulting work that they have been doing for us on mixeduse studies. Um Jeff from the BCS group will be going over the Route 28 regulatory review analysis and Jeremy from Union uh
studios um has prepared a series of case studies and illustrative slides uh sites um of one, two and three acres uh and the possible development of them. We'll also talk about at some point I think we should review schedule and timeline
Kath. Um and then uh I think we should just cover a quick update on the LCP at the end. So I'd like to turn it over to Jeff. Welcome Jeff. Jeff Bag. Hi everybody. Um good evening and I'm joined by Adam uh Deno in our office as
well. So he'll be uh backing me up on our presentation today. Welcome Adam. Um, and then Kathy, can you just remind me am I do you want me to share my screen at all or were you going to do that in the room? I have the slides shown up and hopefully Gabriel can start showing the slide screen and then you'll
be able to see it as well and you can tell me when you want to move along uh in the slides this way everyone in the in the room as well as at home can see it easily. Yep. Perfect. So on the cover the cover slide I did want to just acknowledge that the project is funded by a community um planning grant uh by
the executive office of housing and liable livable communities. Um and that you know we're sort of in our our sort of task two of our project where the first one was the benchmarking where we we went through some projects throughout Massachusetts and and some on the Cape
kind of showed some successful projects that were built uh mixeduse projects. And then this second phase of our task is um a regulatory analysis. And I think with that we can go to the the first slide as the introduction.
Um my my presentation is a lot of words and a lot of important words. Um and I know I know um Uni Studios has a lot of nice graphics to help illustrate some of the stuff. So um just bear with me. What I tried to do with our slides tonight is
really parallel um the written report. Um we provided the draft to the planning board and so it should be in a packet and we anticipate this being a liable like a document that will exist and be a reference for the town moving forward. So the slides are a summation of that and I tried to tried to stick pretty
close to um the text that was included in the in the packet. But what the first and foremost thing is is coming out of the local comprehensive plan process which is which is well underway really the town has identified a preference for the Route 28 corridor to be a focal
point for encouraging redevelopment you know especially of underutilized property and new development where it's feasible and mixed use has really been a very long established goal of the town and it's a really clear theme coming
through the LCP P um including the grow the growth policy which is part of that and sec kind of secondary to the to the community engagement process. you know, really looking ahead and and seeing the ongoing sewer installation
project um is a is a really big public infrastructure um project that's been planned for a long time, but it's coming to fruition now, as well as two two um pretty large uh mass DOT projects, which are pedestrian safety and roadway
improvements, uh long stretch of the 20 corridor, and then um over by the Bass River Bridge. in those two all three of these public in- infrastructure projects are kind of queued up to to take place over the next
let's say three three years or so and this is a great time to be examining the zoning to make sure it's kind of the the projects that you want to get are encouraged through the zoning. So, our report, um, one of the things it does is it it does a an inventory of recently
approved projects along Route 28 corridor. And that was something that when we scoped the project, um, we felt that we could just look at the zoning text. But by looking at the projects that have been permitted under the zoning, we can actually ground truth
some of the zoning to see what's working and and potentially what's not working. And that's a really good way to investigate um you know what you know what to do with the zoning if anything moving forward. And then just acknowledging that um you know Union Studios is is doing a different element
of this same you know project uh providing assessments and illustrations for potential mixed use options on properties um with a size range between 1, two, and three acres to really help understand the design options and constraints. And I'm sure as Jeremy presents a little bit later, he'll dig
in deeper. And I think Adam and I are going to stay on to listen to that to see how some of the Union Studios findings, you know, we we can still tailor some of our findings. Um or at least see how close we are with finding some of the issues and problems that
might exist. So with that, you can go to the next slide. um just trying to acknowledge that since the 1990s this has really been a concerted effort of the town um to really achieve the character and functionality that that people sort of expect and want to see on Route 28 and
there really has been a lot of success and I don't want to underestim underplay the the amount of success that the town has and the amount of um effort that has been put in and just quickly it's mirroring you know one of our sections in the local comprehensive plan but there's really three three really
important important zoning um districts that have been created, overlay districts, and then you know a regulatory uh structure with the growth growth incentive zone. But the road um was adopted in 1999 and that gave some flexibility um and and allows waiverss from the base
zoning requirements and we're seeing a trend that that's that's been very helpful to to let projects move forward um where there might be a constraint in the zoning. the hotel motel overlay district, the HM OD1, the one in particular, the district one um applies
to to Route 28 adopted in 2006 and really creates a a carefully controlled mechanism to promote the redevelopment of hotel motel properties. Some of which, you know, over time have fallen into disrepair and really this desire to to allow them to be renovated and
enhanced um into housing opportunities. So, and then the last big zoning, you know, effort was really this village centers overlay district, um, the VCOD. So, that was in 2012. Really clearly a a significant effort on behalf of the town
to set this up. Um, really creating incentives for new new development activity based on specific standards that kind of matched the areas along Route 28. So there's four distinct districts that were intended to kind of
you know enhance what was already there the the positive characteristics. And then the last item just to you know these worth these items worth mentioning is the growth incentive zone. It's not zoning but it's a regulatory tool. So it was originally created in 2007
um and and updated in 2021 extended um and this is in place until um 2035 I believe. um the tool eases some of the requirements of the Cape Cod Commission. So this um alleviates the requirement
for certain projects to get to become you know reviewed as a development of regional impact and that has been successful um in certain cases along 28. Um just quickly a zoning map um we we digitized the zoning map and we
applied um the underlying zoning this this B2 area. We added the um the road overlay district which applies to certain motel and hotel properties along the corridor. Um the aquaer protection district and the village center overlays
at the inset shows you the four distinct areas. And this will come up again as we we mapped some of the projects that have been permitted. And this helps orient you know people to projects and the zoning. So it's just a just a copy of the zoning
map. And then part of our project is intensive look at um permitted projects. And I I have an asterct that I added. This wasn't necessarily in the report, but I just wanted to have a disclaimer that this is not necessarily a comprehensive list of every project on
Route 28. Um we worked with Kathy to get a really great list, but I just wanted to be careful to to be clear that this is not every project and certainly not some of the smaller ones that might have changed use in a building. We didn't we didn't look at those in detail. that we looked at the larger projects that were
either big renovations or or new construction. But we did look at 21 projects. We created a spreadsheet which is in the the package of material. I promise I will not show the spreadsheet. We will not glaze over looking at a spreadsheet of this. But what we did to
capture was these really important components of each project. So address, approval date, the zoning district and permit type. Just basic information to catalog the projects that we looked at. And then an important part about the status is there are projects that were approved so permitted and and built and
those you know those are u depicted on the map but then there are projects that were approved and not built. And you know in talking to Kathy and as we as we finalize our report we are going to make a finer point to distinguish between projects that were recently permitted and not build. you know, as a way to
identify that those projects have, you know, they probably still have legs and they might still move forward versus a project that was permitted, you know, 2019 or so and and it's unclear, you know, if it if it will move forward, you know, so we're going to do a little bit more finetuning on that. Um, looking at
the use, we broke them down to general categories, residential, um, commercial, mixed use, and we did put in a couple municipal projects. We felt that those were important for the character of the corridor. um and then some characteristics of the of each project. So the goal is really
to better understand the types of development that have been approved to determine if the zoning is providing what is desired. And we're we're estimating right now that 10 of the 10 of the pro 10 of the 21 projects were permitted and built. Several have been
recently permitted and are are you know anticipated to be constructed. And so on the next page, we're going to shift to a map um which helps visualize this. Um for quick orientation, the map is um
it's an it's the east west corridor. Um so the west the west side of Route 28 is the left side of the map. Um and we we arranged our data so that the data in the spreadsheet starts on the west side
and runs through to the to the east. So, just for easy reference, the first project listed is is 55 Route 28. So, Becker's Package Store, that's listed on the left side. Um, and it's the first it's the first project listed in the spreadsheet. So, we tried to color code
these the best we could. Um, where where blue is residential and these are all residential project like a pres a project that has all residential units in it. Um commercial, all commercial is in the sort of the the maroon, the
darker red and then mixed use is um projects in in orange. Um and then we did include municipal parks. Um those are green and on the left side on the west side is the the Baxter Gris Mill. Um the next project in green is the
Chase Brook Park, excuse me, which is you know approved and um you know in design and then um Parker Parker's River Landing in the center there. And we talked about this that it doesn't necessarily relate to zoning per se, but
it does u relate to the character of Route 28 and it it starts to fulfill some of the some of the visions that the town has had to create these active areas along the corridor. Um, and then, um, you can see the village center overlay districts are colorcoded.
They're kind of on the right side of the page. And, um, we took time to do this. This is something that came up, you know, early on the early on in the local comprehensive plan process was kind of this discussion about, you know, it would be great to help illustrate to
people the number of projects and the potential investment that is happening along Route 28. I think I think people do fall um victim to not seeing much, you know, in way of actual construction even though there's a lot of this
permitted activity um in the wings, you know, that has previously uh permitted a whole bunch of projects. So, we can dive into this a little bit more. Again, I think my takeaway here is that it corresponds to the spreadsheet which has a lot of the more detailed information
that some people would want. Um the last thing I guess sorry is um in the legend you can see a green circle with a green check mark. We did try to in it capture projects that have been um built and so those are signified by the green check
mark and so it takes a little time to get accustomed to this map but it is in your packet there. Jeeoff can we take just take a minute to go through a quick look at the at this um Sure. Yep. And I do have as a preview just one thing Joanne um on the next slide this the one
thing that was not in the packet that we were able to at least start to put together is a list of which projects fell into which category. Um so I don't know if this is helpful but this is this is um mixeduse projects on the left and we try I tried to break this down. So
green is built. Um, and then there's the permitted projects. And then I'm just trying to figure out, you know, we're trying to figure out the way to illustrate this for recently approved and some projects that are early stages. And then when you look at the residential column, you know, there's there's more projects that haven't
actually been built. Uh, but we still have in that middle column some recently approved and early stages. And then just lastly on the right is the commercial projects. So two of the three have been built and one is recently approved. So, we're just trying to break this down a little bit for people to be able to see
this quicker. Um, that's helpful. Uh, because I wanted to ask, and I see you've answered it with this slide, kind of the time frame that you looked at these. I was not I don't have an objection to including Captain Gladcliffe, but it it was a very long
time ago. Um, and most of the others are more recent, but the one I see that's missing is um the hotel What hotel? The suits. Hampton in. Yeah. Wasn't that an HMO? I mean, I wasn't
here for that, but was that an H mod? Yeah, I thought it was. I think it might have been. I think it might have been. When was that done? In 11 2011. Yeah. So, if we if Captain Glad Cliff is in there, I I think that that hotel um is
is is really nice. I mean, it's a it's kind of the the gateway and and it's um national. So, I'd like to see if we could throw that on the map. I think the reason I included the Captain Glad Cliff apartments was because I know that Peter Slov had been commenting about how um
motel had been converted to residential and that was one of those that had happened. Hampton in was motel to hotel. Definitely nicer. But yeah, I can certainly provide that information to to Jeff. Um and the the other comment I had um just generally in the narrative not
for the presentation necessarily but um you do identify the open space the three open space projects but we don't say open space anywhere in the narrative we talk about commercial we talk about mixeduse we talk about residential so as
you move into the narrative you know it can just be a sentence it can be something very simple I think we need to work in language that talks about the open space projects as well. Yeah, I think that makes sense and I appreciate that feedback. I think the other thing is, you know, my understanding is town
meeting funded something recently for town a town common and so that might be that might be a way because I think that the town common example is another one where that was identified as a goal, you know, long ago and and it's it's it could be implemented. So, we will we'll
take take a look at open space and kind of putting that in a narrative and then maybe even adding the town common park project um with some specific details about where that is and what that might look like moving forward. I think that would be a good idea because it has been approved by town meeting. So,
correct. Anybody else have any questions on the map? Should we add also should we add the second park on Route 28? You've got Chase Brook, but there's a second one. Remember the other the other um they actually renamed all those three parks to just be Chase one. Okay. So,
and this captures all three all three of those sites. Well, this is basically the existing are there existing parks. This was actually taking a motel, removing it and turning it into a park. Yes, we're going to combine it and upgrade and have a nice waterfront park. Um Okay. But it's kind of emphasizing what we did
with the 275. Okay. Um the only other thing is while we're talking about them is I know that Peter Slovak had mentioned um the laundromat project at 897. Um that's what I wanted to know. Right. I couldn't remember because I couldn't remember if 811 was those because that was also eight
apartments if I recall or is that 12? I think it was eight. Right. So I'm glad that that's so there should be one more because that was just approved. Well, it it was it wasn't approved locally for anything. It would be something that in my opinion would be early stages of design. They they went through and got a
letter from the state for a chapter 40B project. Um, but my understanding is they're not going to be using that letter. They're going to be coming back with a different 40b project, but I can provide and I'm not exactly sure what that all involves, but we can include that. It's going to be it's in the it's
in our local permitting phase, but we haven't seen anything. I mean, it's it's in I'm assuming they're designing something right now. It's in the design stages for them. Is this not the one that we that you and Madam Chair talked to about the fire trucks? That's a different one. Say 11 the residenc. So I
just my head was a little I don't think necessarily in addresses um especially when it comes to route 28. I know. Well, everybody's brain works differently. So I appreciate you talking that through and I apologize if there was any confusion about the other project which I agree should be captured. Yeah. So so
the laundromat, the town commons and then the Hampton Inn. Okay. Yeah. This is great feedback. And and so just to clarify, do you think the 2009 project that the Glad Cliff apartment should stay or is that sort of get marked off as too too long ago? I I
believe that it should stay if we're going to add the Hampton in because that wasn't much after that. Agreed. So, okay. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I think within reason I think it, you know, we we have some flexibility left to incorporate another project. If if there's something else that comes to
mind and and kind of Kathy thinks that it's worth it fits in to our scheme here, we we can we can absorb that. So, I think that makes sense. Um, just going back to the um slide that's the breakdown. It's it's all the projects with a little bit of color
coding. It's it's just after the map. Thank you. that one. Y um this is a bit of a work in progress, but I think you know as we go into some of the issues and constraints and barriers I think it it doesn't this slide by itself doesn't tell the whole story but it
tells a little bit of a story which is that for whatever reason and that's what we're trying to drill down on there was the there's been more residential projects that have been permitted and built and I think through the work that we're going to finish up with this project and the work that Uni Studios is
looking at doing. I think we want to make sure that we're we're really trying to figure out if if there's something with some of these permitted projects that don't move forward into construction if we can start to identify what some of the constraints might be that's preventing them. In some cases,
we'll never know, but in some cases, you know, it could be it could be X, Y, or Z. And I think through some of the slides that we're going to go through next, we start to uncover some possibilities. Um, but also a little bit of looking back at maybe why some of the projects haven't
moved, but also big emphasis on looking ahead, you know, over the next 3 or 4 years. Are there things that can still be done to make it even easier or clearer for for projects to move to move forward? And so that's kind of the gist of where I'm about to go um with the
next slide, which is um starting off with some issues, constraints, and barriers. And one thing, you know, I did want to say this is just a little If I could interrupt you, can can you not share your slide? I'd like to be able to see you. I I don't know whether that's something that Gabriel's doing. He's all
of a sudden he's switching any slides. Yeah, we need to show this so that people can see it at home. I don't know whether we can see Jeff's face here in the room and see this. No, but we've been seeing him. I guess that's my And I don't know whether the slides have been available. Um I can display it, but uh
people on Zoom won't see the slides as well. Oh, never mind then. Okay, we want to see the slides. One quick question. Can you click on the okay button, please? So, we can see some faces while they're talking and there's a slide below it. See the blue okay button? Oh, thanks. We just want to see Jeff's face while he's walked up to the screen and
tapped it. Yeah. Okay. Well, now I feel like a dum dum. Okay. Next time I'll do that all by myself. Thank you. Thank you. Believe it or not, everyone's still getting used to all the technology. It's It's pretty wild. Um, but thank you. I appreciate that. So, you know, again, my
slides, they have a lot of text, and I I didn't put every word in the report, but I tried to make sure we were being consistent. Um, I wanted to be mindful of the amount of text, but also the importance of the subject. So, um, the basis for this again is kind of the the
community input from the LCP. So, we got public input, um, you know, through the through early on actually. So, in in 2021, the survey um you know, that's that's relevant data for the LCP, we had stakeholder meetings and then we had the
community engagement sessions. And so, gleaning from that, we're able to get, you know, some directions on on route 28. Also, the benchmarking evaluation, the zoning analysis that is part of this, um and then the review of permanent projects. And I think, you know, to be inclusive, I think looking
at some of the stuff that Union Studios is going to provide, I think all factors in, but I just wanted to kind of identify kind of where the basis of this is coming from and that we're just looking at the zoning. There's been a lot of success. I know that a lot of people have worked really hard and so none of this is intended to diminish any
of the work or the success that the town has had. It's just a a little bit more straight look at potentially some of the things that um are barriers. So, um, multiple permits and or meetings, um, is
an important one. It's really the there's been a lot done to to provide incentives and provide opportunity for projects and properties to redevelop, but sometimes the path to to getting the approval involves multiple boards. It
involves some discretionary approval um, on top of multiple meetings and hearings. Um, and I think, you know, some of the things that we we know from from talking to developers just globally is that it's a lot of exposure. Every
time there's a a, you know, a a butter's notice that goes out for a public hearing that's happening, you know, those those are risks and they create risks and opportunity. Obviously, you know, balancing the the the need for public input and the value of it, but
with with, you know, the potential to streamline that and the just just understanding that that can be expensive and nerve-wracking for a developer and it can be a challenge to projects. So, I'll leave that there. We have a we have a little bit of solution discussion you know two slides more but
um one other thing in terms of the high percentage of commercial use that's required particularly in the road bylaw you know in order to be eligible for the flexibility that it offers you have to have 50% of the gross floor area of a project be commercial and the trend
across the board is that and it may be directly as a result of COVID it may be peripherilally because of COVID it's just people's changing patterns. The the ability to find tenants and to fill commercial spaces can be challenging and it seems like it's getting more
challenging. So, um this it's a pretty high percentage to achieve 50%, people have done it and so it's not that it can't be done, but it might be it might be a barrier. Um and then just conversely with the BCOD, it that's that's lowered down. The expectation for
a VC BCOD project is 50% of the project is commercial. So you have that variability, that gap between 15% and 50%. That can be challenging. I think um there's there's there anecdotally there's information about um the ability for developers to secure funding uh
because of the uncertainty about the ability to fill tenants base. And so there's a lot of factors underlying that um but we're highlighting as a potential a potential barrier. um the lack of sewer access. Quickly noting that the town has put forth a
tremendous amount of effort and time and and and financial investment to get the wastewater um project underway. It is happily underway. I think there's a lot so much kudos should be given to the town for for pushing that project
forward. Um but I think that there is this time lapse that we're we probably saw a few years ago. It's probably started a few years ago where a developer who's really looking to invest in a property knows that a sewer project is coming but may may not be able to,
you know, come up with a plan that incorporates septic just to cover that period of time. So, there's something here that we're we're interested to kind of keep following in terms of projects that have been permitted and not built. you know, if they've designed a septic system before they actually go forward
with the investment of installing the the septic system, you know, they might be waiting or or really calculating the investment value of doing the septic system versus waiting till 2028 or later to actually revise the project or or
move forward with the project. And um you know, it's estimated at 2028. You know, I I think everyone wants it to move forward earnestly and and it's going to happen, but if a if the schedule slips, if that becomes 2029, you know, that could be a really impactful thing to a developer who who's
investing, you know, significantly into one of these projects. So that's just a it's so great that that project is so far along and moving, but there still is this this gap uh between now and at least 2028 where there's probably uncertainty for developers looking at projects. Um limited residential
density. I don't mean to say this aggressively, but I you know there is a cap at 16 units per acre on most of the properties. Um we we do talk about 40R at the end of our presentation and that starts at a minimum of 20 units per acre. And so it's a sensitive subject,
but it is worth one that might it might be worth pursuing this as a discussion piece to just find out if that's if there's any wiggle room there. Um kind of balancing this potential concern with the amount of commercial space with the amount of residential unit availability.
That might that might be a barrier for some projects to to to be limited in number of residential units. Um again, we'll talk about that in the solutions section. And then this is kind of a the a long list parking requirements, but I think as union
studios will portray, I think when you're looking at the buildout of a site, you go between the amount of building space and amount of parking and that often times dictates the buildout. And so just really thinking about um opportunities for reducing the parking
requirements. The the zoning does offer a shared parking, which is great. it it looked like on our first run through of all this that it prohibits the it prohibits the reduction of parking for residential units. So just understanding, you know, looking ahead if there if there is any flexibility
that might be available um or lowering the threshold, you know, my understanding is if you're talking about 1.25, 25, you know, what does it do to a project to go down to one, you know, and that helps elaborate on the the buildout analysis, but then, you know, as Kathy kind of mentioned, it does put the
constraint on the amount of parking that's actually required. So, just looking at parking, um, parcel size and assembly. Um, I did want to I didn't incorporate it, but I did want to pull up an image and I'm not prepared to do to tonight, but during the 2012, uh, VCOD process, there were some
illustrations prepared. And when we looked at that, they really showed these mixed use villages, you know, the intent was to reduce curb cuts on Route 28, provide these internal access roads that that led people to a range of buildings and building sizes and types of uses. It
it it looks to us that a lot of that didn't come to fruition. And we think that it's because of the the need to u gather all these parcels to to really assemble a large um group of parcels to make this one project happen. Um the
complexity and timeline to do that is is pretty challenging. It's a barrier. um not only to time in in legal costs, but also just money to secure um option agreements on properties or to outright purchase them. Um there's just a lot
there to get to a large parcel to create that village that that real village feel that was kind of shown in some of those uh illustrations. The next one is confusion and complexity. um you know for the VCOD
it's it's 2 miles of the five mile five fiveish mile stretch and there's a base zoning you know uh district and then there's there's overlay districts on top of that and then even within the the VCOD there's four of them so it it
creates um some complexity for a property owner to understand what is viable and I know that there's a team and and Kathy meets with people constantly and plan board is really flexible with entertaining those questions, but it can be it can be challenging um on the surface to to
navigate that. And then in terms of the zoning bylaw itself, um many communities have done this, but they've added the sections get added over time. Um and there's a lot of references if you're in the BCOD section, there's a lot of
references to other areas of the bylaw, and that's common, but it's challenging to trace those all back sometimes where they're not all in the same place. And then the use of footnotes um also is really common, but it it it creates a trail, you know, for someone to follow
to something that actually has a fair amount of significance to a project is is in a footnote. And so there's, you know, a zoning diagnostic. We'll talk about that in the solutions actually. So that's just the problem there. Waver zoning relief and variances. Um not universal in any way, but several of the
projects needed relief, a special permit. Some needed a variance, some got a 40B permit. So, some went total comprehensive permit. And I think just as a practice where where there's consistently um um waiverss or variation being
granted, it really is something to look at just just to really look there and find out if it's too restrictive, if it's unnecessary or or maybe think about moving something to to by right to to clarify. But there's we have some discussion of that in this in the solution section.
So, um, snapping ahead to to looking at some preliminary recommendations, you know, we we really want to map this out with the town. Um, they're generally arranged from the easiest potentially to to the most challenging and the easiest thing
um would not desirable, but easiest would be to do nothing. Um, I it was not to be contrite about it. I do think that there's a lot of success and there's a lot of opportunity still with the properties to to maneuver through the existing zoning. So, if it does stay,
it's it's not an absolute detriment. Um, there has been a lot of great projects, but we did want to put it in there just in case it, you know, whether it's fail fails at town meeting or doesn't ever move forward, you know, for some reason there there's no changes. It's not it's not the end of the world, but it, you
know, our job is to kind of help look at what might make it better. So um with some suggestion from Kathy um in our look at it as well, the architectural and site design standards was adopted in 2006 and just collectively we know that
a lot has changed since since 2006. A lot of you know design requirements and a lot of expectations and a even the emphasis on mixed use development and the way that they play out on a property have changed. So kind of pushing to to e to to either update them or or eliminate
them and work them through the existing there's other design standards that the town has. So there's some options here but I think you know really looking at them to make sure that if you keep them in place are they going to provide the types of projects that you that you want to see on 28. Um and then kind of in the
middle here, this this is a really important one we think because it it's it's it's critical for the development sort of world, but also um can can be something that is is reasonable to expect to get, you know, through town meeting um is consolidating some of the
permitting requirements um wherever possible. Sort of taking away the discretionary approval. So, you know, a special permit with it comes the rights for the rights and almost the expectation that a project could be appealed um and navigate, you know, uh
litigation. um if that can be removed or or um made more I guess removed it would make it more predictable and it doesn't eliminate all ability to be regulated but it just makes it um by right predictable um and clearer for a
developer to to know that they are most likely going to get a permit at the end of the day. Um and then wherever there's um two boards required. So in some cases the zoning board of appeals is the permit granting authority and the planning board try you know has to issue a permit and then the developer has
secured all its approvals. Any any consolidation of the permitting process to to one board in in most cases that ends up being the planning board. Um that is really effective. That's really helpful because it allows the developer to concentrate on that approval process.
It gives the planning board the knowledge and the knowhow to kind of move through looking at waiverss and the and the you know the history of the purpose of the zoning bylaw and those sorts of things. And so um it doesn't take away necessarily permitting but it it streamlines it. And from a
developer's perspective that that can be really helpful and impactful a positive impact. And then looking at the growth incentive zone the the town wants to update it. it's listed as an action item in the LCP, but accelerating that might
be helpful just to find out if there's, you know, additional projects or additional descriptions or different opportunities that could be worked into the to the growth incentive zone to continue to incentivize the projects that you want to see. Um, so it's a complicated proc process. That's why
it's kind of in the middle here. And then the last three um, you know, require research. I think in terms of reducing the amount of commercial space, we think that there could be some uh some merit here. I would be curious what Union Studios presents, but I think
considering that 50% threshold um if that were reduced, it might allow more projects to to go through the road process um and get the additional waiverss or flexibility that they need. So, it's just something that we're seeing um given the costs and the
potential issues with securing tenants for all that commercial space. Um it just and the this push for housing, you know, the the Cape and the in Massachusetts in general are in this housing crisis and there's a a strong emphasis and a push towards housing and
this might be a way to to look at that commercial, you know, calculation and maybe lower it and get some more commercial units as a way to push a project, you know, forward. project that's on the fence from moving forward to actually happening. Um,
recodification, it's not glamorous, but and it and it is a longer process, but recotification usually looks at just fixing the way the zoning bylaw reads and looks through the sections and helps all the information be reconsolidated.
It doesn't usually make substantive changes. Um, but that would help with the footnotes and the and the references. it would really consolidate the way that someone looks at gets the zoning bylaw and starts to analyze it. And so that is something that is on the list. And then lastly is just maybe some
more aggressive strategies. Um they those kind of include um increasing the residential density. Um in a second we'll talk about the 40R and how that that threshold to to be eligible for certain 40R projects is a minimum of 20
units per acre. And you know, we know that um not just in Yarmouth, but in other places, that's a sensitive discussion. Um really understanding what that does to the area, if it if it's viable or palpable. Um but it is something that, you know, it could be
worth exploring and it's it's really kind of taking the stones and making sure you're you're looking under every stone for options. Um elimination of the BCOD districts in place of the road is just kind of one example. Um, we looked at the BCODs and they're they're very
similar. Um, there are there are some distinct differences. A couple areas have different setbacks. There's some slight variations in the the uses that are allowed. Um, but with the exception of some uh one the VCOD2, I think it is, has this density opportunity where you
can go up to 20 units per acre. Other than that, they're they're they're fairly similar. And so there's just this notion of maybe maybe simplifying the permitting process could be done by eliminating that. And then the last one is the 40R smart growth overlay
district. And so I think with this I get to my last slide which is we we were tasked with looking at the potential benefits of 40R. Um you know um the the note is that based on our research our knowledge that there's no towns on the
Cape that have adopted 40R overlay district. So, it's important to mention that it's it's common throughout the rest of Massachusetts, but not on Cape. Um, what it is is it's a set of regulations that are that produced by the state and they're locally adopted,
so it's only by choice, but they really encourage the creation of dense residential and mixeduse areas. And some of the trade-offs are that a denser mixeduse project is required to have 20% of the units be affordable. Um and then
as a there are some financial incentives that are that are given to the municipality for for undertaking this task for kind of working towards um you know the effort to provide more housing through through 40R. And so come a couple of the key elements here are sustainable design. It's really intended
to encourage new developments um in areas that are already developed. So whether or not it's an ultimate fit or not, Route 28 corridor is a good it's a good at least it meets that already developed kind of characteristic. Um it
does allow for areas that are suitable. So if you have an area that's offset from from a developed area, but it is it it's suitable, it's it's already been disturbed or it's got activity and and it's viable, um 40R can be applied in an outlining area. uh there are some
infrastructure requirements that will have to be met to do that. Um and then um um there are sorry um there are design standards and there's um you know requirement to meet sustainable design principles and those are laid out. Um
what it does is it increases density by right. So it takes um the zoning and consolidates it to mo in most cases it's the planning board and all permits are granted by the all the permit is granting by the granted by the planning board and any waiverss are also
administered by the planning board. So, it's kind of what we talked about before with the consolidated permitting and it's by right. And so, a lot of the developers have said that the 40R is beneficial because it gives them the clarity to know that once they go through this process at the end of it, they're going to walk out with an actual
permit without without, you know, the concern of an appeal. And then just the increased density. We think that there's evidence that starts to show that the additional density, the additional dwelling units help projects pencil out at the end of the day um and increase their chances of getting built.
Streamline and predictable permitting. We already talked about that. And then financial incentives is really where if it's adopted, there's three types of financial incentives that are offered available to the municipality. One is when you map out the area, there's some calculations of the number of units um
that are above and beyond what's already allowed. So the increase in density is monetized for the municipality as an incentive. A lot of towns use that to leverage um infrastructure grants or other infrastructure improvements.
Sometimes they're used for design funds. So if you have a big roadway improvement project that that the municipalities typically have to pay for the design and if you're successful balancing this the 40R you know incentive payments could be used to pay for that design work and so it's a leveraging um some of the public
dollars and then um if a if any housing unit is built once adopted the the town is eligible for $3,000 per unit payment. So, when you get when you get into some of the larger projects, that's that's helpful. Um, you know, and it can be
used for these design projects or other projects. Um, you can do the numbers on 3,000 per unit for a project. It's not it's not significant necessarily for each project, but when you look cumulatively across a long corridor and you start to get projects over time, um,
every time there's a dwelling unit added, that is an incentive payment. And then lastly, there is a process to get um funds if if a project is identified and tracked as producing school age children. There's a way to get reimbursement costs for for school for
schools. Um so with that I am done unless you have questions and um Adam is here in case I missed anything but I think if we have questions we we can try to tackle them now. Any questions you guys? a lot there's a lot a lot to digest although none of it
quite frankly new for those of us I'm sure you very few items on here are new we're aware we've been aware of many of these issues for a long long time uh but it is nice to see it all in one place all in one place in fact Kathy and I talked
about that today earlier that it's it's great to have the you know a focused look at um at these things And but we we are I you're right. We've been dealing with all of these. Mhm. Um Madam Chair, may I just say I mean if
we're we we've been trying Well, let me back up. We all acknowledge the housing crisis because that's the word I think that's deserved to be used on the Cape and how it affects both economic development as well as just community stability in the
ability for people to continue to afford to live here and then continue to do things like have schools that have x number of kids versus x minus in some cases 10 20 30% than they were even 20 years ago including in our own town. Um,
not to mention with our friends across the river and how their contribution to the overall school population has declined and that's not a judgment, that's just a fact. Um, so then, you know, there's lots of little ways to try to help the housing crisis and we all try to contribute on a monthly and even
annually annual basis to stem it. And of course, we spent 18 months on the ADU issue. We never we never went into it thinking it was going to solve the housing crisis, but we also felt like it was going to help some people do good things so that more people could live on the Cape and it could afford to live here. And then our friends at the state
of Massachusetts came down from the mountain with the tablets, which we're still working on and we still have to work on. But when I read about 40R, which I think I remember we might have even brushed on it when I first joined the planning board, but that was in but it was very minor. Um, the one thing
that the reason I'm bringing this up is because now that the sewer the first phase of the sewer system is underway, you know, this is what I was hearing when I first moved here 22 years ago was that when the sewer system came
that was going to help the town, right, on an environmental level as well as a commercial level and as a residential level. And so now we're at the place where when you start thinking about recodification or codification, probably more codification if since we live here,
um that this is our opportunity to help contribute to the health and the future of our town and much less the cape. So I recognize that sometimes when we see capital A affordable, sometimes people get a little hinky, uh as one of my high school teachers used to say. But at the
same time, we're not in 2004 anymore. The demographics of our town are not 2004. The school population is not 2004. And certainly the housing prices are not 2004. Um, and so I hope that we'll all keep an open mind when these kinds of all these different strategies, which
again, I appreciate uh Jeff and Adam, you know, congealing into this one document. I just hope we'll all keep an open mind as to what we're trying to do on the micro level to help contribute to the macro level, which is to slow down the
um the departures of lots of good people, people that we all know of different generations from the Cape and the incredible impacts that has. Whether you're trying to run a business or run a school or be nice people that just live
here in their older years, all of us, whatever stage we are, are affected by these issues. And again, I will stop my saliloquy, but I just hope that we'll continue to keep an open mind and not necessarily fall back into 10 to 20 years ago thinking when that doesn't
apply to a current problem. Thank you very much. Thank you, Will. Anyone else? I just want to add to the second hand to to one of the things that will talked about. Um I always think when we talk about affordable housing, we cannot have a good discussion about affordable housing unless we also talk about
economic development and job creation. Sometimes people can't afford the house because it is too expensive, but also because they're not making enough money. You know, the Cape really needs and I'm talking, you know, the entire Cape, not just Yamoth, the entire Cape. It has to be a regional push to
develop better jobs on the Cape so that people can afford the houses and they can stay. Um, you know, I think we have to move beyond this notion that we're a summer economy. We and we've recognized that we always push forward, you know, when development comes, the motel has to
do something 12 months out of the year. Just kind, you know, get the indoor pool, get the activities that will get people down here in November and December. Um, and the two need to go hand in hand because you cannot I don't think you can effectively solve the housing problem until we get an economic
base that can can help us in that in that problem. Help us solve that problem. I think it's an integral part and we just don't have it yet. We're better than we were, but we don't don't have it yet and we need to get there. We need to push for economic development, good solid jobs that allow these people,
people are now leaving the younger families to stay here and afford the jobs. They have to go hand in hand. The conversation has to go hand in hand. Uh and we we focus on the housing. I think we did a great I think we're doing a good job in the housing, not such a great job on making sure that the
economic development conversation is not just housing, it's jobs, too. Uh, one comment I and I think I've made this before. Um, you know, we talk about our wonderful wastewater project and how we're so far ahead of others and how um
how well it's going um and our plans are progressing. Um that doesn't have endless capacity. It just doesn't. And that corridor can't be uh built out um to whatever maximum
that people think they want. There simply isn't capacity to process uh the waste. Um so we need to think about that kind of constraint sitting out there. What what what how much how much buildout can there can there be without
threatening um the capacity of the of the treatment plant and and getting and and finding more um what's it what's it called when effluent discharge the good water comes out uh oh dis you mean effluent discharge the discharge
effluent discharge um so I I just I I think we I've said this before so I just wanted to I would just like to point out that the the critical things aren't necessarily the capacity of the plant because we built in like 750,000 gallons per day of additional new growth. It's the effluent
discharge locations as well as our water supply. That's right. Yep. Yep. Yep. Water's got to go in for it to come out. Water's going to come out, Madam Ch. The water's going to come out of the ground, too. And there's only so much water in the ground beneath us. Exactly. So, that certainly has to be taken into
consideration. Also, it's a limiting capacity. Yeah. Kathy, did you have I just wanted to while while one of the questions for Jeff and I know that um I just want to say the financial incentives, it's important to note that that these incentives are based on the number of new units above and beyond the
existing zoning. So pretty much a large sections of VCOD allow 16 units per acre by right. So the 40R if we did it in that particular area it would only get take advantage of the four units. So
that's something to keep in mind is like this might work better in an area that doesn't have any high density at all now anyway because we're talking about the increase beyond what's already allowed by right and we have a lot of options that are allowed by right in the BCOD. So I just wanted to point that out.
Uh any comments from the public? Yes. Uh your name please. Yes. Hi, Courtney Butler, chair of the Yarmouth Community and Economic Development Committee. Uh, very happy to be here tonight. Very happy to see you all. Um, thank you so much for those comments that those were spot on with exactly what we were talking about last night. Um, my full-time job is I work for the town of
Brewster and they're doing a lot of similar studies and analysis. Um, and a a quote that I heard that we talked about last night that was really good was um that um we're not in a tourism economy anymore. We're in a second homeowner economy. And so, it's really we're seeing a shift of not only people
You know, a lot of the second homes we've noticed in our neighborhoods are are being used by families. It's not so much the short-term rentals anymore. It's staying in a family turning over and then alternatively seeing people move here more for longer terms. You know, they maybe did the six months in a day where they live in Lexington or
Pittsfield or wherever and they're kind of switching it a little bit. And so we talked last night about moving ahead and how do we create these jobs? Right? If you have a business that you run successfully in some other part of the state or the country, how can we make it so you want to bring that business here? So, you want to open your shop here, open your law firm here, open your
practice here, create jobs, do all of that stuff. So, we um are are very excited and encouraged by all of your comments and by these studies being done tonight. Um and we're we're behind you 100%. Um and we feel exactly the same way that this is a town that, you know, is has a lot of great opportunity. Um
and and we do we have a lot of great people leaving, which is too too bad. Um but we've also have a lot of great people coming here um and who are choosing to stay here longer and that's really encouraging as well. And so we're trying to find ways to tap into those people um make them feel welcome, make them really be aware of what's going on in the town and understand that
Yarmmouth is a great community to be in for 12 months out of the year, seven months in a day, however long they want to be here, but to really engage them. So, thank you so much for those comments and I appreciate all that you you do for the town. Thank you. Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, Courtney. Yeah. Anyone else? Uh, do we have do we have a couple
of remotes? Well, I don't know if Dearra has any anything. Oh, Deedra, I'm sorry, Deedra. Hello. Well, hello. Uh, no, no more comments at the moment. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I almost forgot you. Sorry. Never forgot. No problem. Just like to say,
you got to come up to a mic. You have to come to Please. Just a compliment. It's incredibly valuable to have this summary. Um, I read it this afternoon and thought, "Wow, it really is very good." Uh, here here's the history and
everything wrapped up in one. Oh, and here's the results. So, with with the additional units, the additional couple of examples I think will be very helpful. But I really could say thank you. Very good job. Do you mind telling us who you are because I've never met you. I'm Pete Malpass. I'm on community
economic development. Nice to meet you, Pete. Of a resident of South Yarmouth. Nice to meet you. down by the water where the water table has dropped six feet because they've been pumping the water out to make the sewers. It's great all those people. I mean, $600 a month electric bill for your sump pump is now
zero. Kathy, could I just ask Jeff one question? Jeff, when you were doing your recommendations, if you had to prioritize these or pick one that you thought you could have the most impact as quickly as possible, which one would you pick out of the preliminary
recommendations? If you could if you were a king for a day and you could pick one and and put it into action, which one do you think would have the most impact and the easiest to implement? That's a great question and I would
100% defer to Kathy and some of those I think no honestly professionally speaking I think consol like working to consolidate the permitting requirements just making sure that whatever chance there is that a project proponent an applicant only goes to I mean well the
design review I think it sounded like that was going to stay and so I think that was acknowledged like We're acknowledging design review might stand alone, but in terms of the actual regulatory review process really consolidating preferably with the planning board and I know there was a
comment I think Kathy made it about there's there's there's moving parts to that as well which is the workload you know and the there there might be um you know concern of of authority and who's regulating what but I think the the idea of consolidating into one regulatory
board would be Um, I think it would be um something that most town meeting members would understand. Um, that you're not taking away a review process. You're consolidating it and I think it has the most likely chance of getting through you know the scrutiny of town
meeting. Um whereas I think reducing the I think secondarily I think considering reducing the commercial um space requirement might be might be a second option but I know that that's going to be more challenging. there's there's more questions and there's more analysis
that would probably come with that. So, I would I would go with um consolidating the permanent requirements because I think there's amount of time that you have you have enough time to do it and it and then and then it would ceue up projects who if you have property owners who are thinking about stuff in the next
year or two, you know, they'll know that they have a more consolidated permit process to to engage with and that that might be beneficial. Thank you. Yes. Can I ask a quick followup? But but doesn't don't the Thank you, Jeff, for that. Does but don't don't you want to cons if
you want to consolidate the permitting requirements, don't you also need to take a crack at recotification, too? I mean, you kind of you can still and I don't want to get into the details about the the timing, but it feels like at least maybe in a multi-phase approach,
like maybe there's a way to just take some of the footnoting. I'm just I'm saying this because it's easy for me to say because I don't have to necessarily do all the work, but I in my head it's one thing to say we're going to make the permitting process streamlined, but if
you're not going to if you're going to keep this beautiful mosaic um that we have, then is that really also helping to accomplish that goal when there might be an opportunity to streamline that as well? I don't think that that's as as simple of a process. I think bummer. I
think Jeff hit hit a good one on the head because that's something that's that's very simple. The only concern I have is then a lot more projects are probably going to be coming um to you guys which is going to be more staff work. So maybe that becomes more more staff in the planning department in
order to to address that. I mean that's what we want. I mean that's that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Um, but I would also want to do something with the architectural and site design standards sooner rather than later because I think it's very important that when people are coming and people are coming and talking about projects that
we're ensuring that we're getting it looking like what we want it to look like on on Route 28. And I recognize these all happen at different speeds and on different timets. But it is interesting to hear and I'm glad you asked the question Susan about the prioritization of it because we've talked big picture Madam Chair. I think
it was a couple of meetings ago, you know, looking beyond special town meeting into whatever the future holds for the big picture work we're trying to do after the LCP, God willing, is done. Um, it's these kinds of issues that I I'm assuming will form that agenda for
2026. Thank you. One of the action items in the LCP is considering rewriting the whole thing. So, I wouldn't want to go through a recontification and then two years down the line, right? Okay. That was Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I just make one comment and Jeff, thank you for that comment because
I actually put a little star next to do when we were going through the thing about consolidating the permitting requirements because I think it's hugely important. But the one piece that moving forward that I'd like to see stricken from this is to do nothing. Okay. I
truly believe that if we have that on there and we do nothing, we're going can going to continue to have the growth that we've had whether we want it or not. I think that should should go. Oh, that's sounds good. Establishing the polls, but I get it. But you don't want
that to be any official position. I get it. Yeah. I guess of us have ever said that. No, and I and I respect that, Madam Chair. But I No one none of us have ever said do nothing, right? So, we're always doing something. I guess I wanted to point out the permitting projects and the breakdown. I think the
mixeduse ones that haven't happened are all around Great Island Plaza. Okay. and those got permitted at a time that was right before COVID and then a lot of bad things happened during COVID. There's some rumblings of some things going on there. I do know that I think maybe the
612 is waiting for for sewers to come through. Um, but there might be some things that are moving forward with the Great Island Plaza, but these are the ones that were permitted a long time ago and were never built. Anything that was recently approved, this JMAR is moving forward. You know, these people are
working very hard to move forward with 811 Main Street. Um, I'm not exactly sure where the where the car dealership stands. But these other ones like the Habitat for Humanity, that's in the early stages. That's one case where they were going to do the project in Yarmouth with a septic system, but we talked to
them about it and they said, you know what, we had another project in Brewster that we were going to do second. We'll just switch them and we'll wait until we're ready to do that and you have the sewer going. So things like that, people are making some like Habitat who has multiple projects in multiple towns and making changes. But all these other ones
here are in early stages of permitting and and design or have been permitted and designed. So these are very very promising to come forward. So it doesn't it doesn't look as bad as it really is. It's really this one intersection that really needs to be. And this might be a
case where if we had a redevelopment authority or something like that, they could have been snatched up and something else being done. But I do think that something is going to be coming forward in in those hopefully. I I I also think we have to recognize the impact that the sewer project is going to have on development. Uh especially if you're sitting there trying to pencil
something out and it's a difference between, you know, a half a million dollar investment in a sewer and then three three years later you're going to be able to hook. That's a big decision. Absolutely. And and you know the the water project is going to drive a lot of these ancillary business decisions
because it is so profound in our neighborhood now. Well then, Madam Chair, as we think about working backwards and looking at 2026, maybe we need to start thinking backwards from 2028 or 2029 and then that might inform how we try to prioritize some of these solutions so
that when all of these when all this stuff merges that at least there's a there's a there's just a nice there's an easier glide path for things or let me just say the friction has been reduced. Yeah. One good thing about consolidating the permitting process that's almost administrative. That's something we
almost totally control. There's not a lot of subjective, you know, or personal opinions. It's fill out the form and send it in. If we can consolidate that and and and it's controlled a lot by by the staff and by the t. It's almost administrative in nature. Um that is a
good reason. That's a good one to start with because we we don't have to do a lot of like quite frankly in-depth analysis. We know what the permitting process looks like. There's still a friendly conversation with our friends at the planning board, the zoning board, I would assume, about what that would look like, right? But I don't think we'd
leave them with tumble weeds either. They'll have plenty on their plenty to do. That has nothing to do with this. We're going to eliminate special permits. No, there's a lot of non-conforming lots and non-conforming structures in in Yarmouth that keep people that keep the ZBA very busy, right? And but that's the kind of conversation that they would certainly
want to have. Yeah. Okay. Anything anything else? Okay. Um, thank you so much, uh, Jeff. Always a good presentation. I'm not sure if you've been hanging with us for a while or, um, yeah, I think Adam and I
are going to stay on to listen to the Union Studios presentation. So, thank you very much for having us. Great. Thanks, Jeff. Um, Jeremy, hi there. Good evening. How you doing? How are you all doing? Good. So, good to see you all again. And I'm Jeremy Lake again with Union Studio and
I'm also join joined tonight by Erica who's one of my colleagues here at Union. Uh she's both the brains and the beauty of our team. So I'm not really exactly sure what I bring to the table, but we're going to uh tag team the presentation here. The stuff that we've been working on and pulling together. So I'm glad she's able to join us, too. I
should also point out that Nate Kelly of Worley Whitten Group is listening in as an attendee. Um they're helping us, you know, look closely at the zoning piece. I think he'll have a much bigger part of the next time we're in front of you guys. But, um, excited that he's he's online and listening so he can hear the conversation that we're having and that
you've already been having. I think one of the things that's really exciting is doing this in tandem with what the BSC group is working on. It's nice that they're kind of looking at the really broad big picture issues while we're really focusing in on, you know, specific examples and and understanding how it kind of meets the ground, if you
will. So, I think it's it's interesting that we're approaching this from both ends, if you will. Um so with that I think we can we can jump in. Um go ahead Kathy to the next slide. So you know I just want to point out you know I think our marching orders were really to focus
in on the VCOD district. Um again it was very interesting to hear from VSC Group how there are these sort of multiple multiple overlays that that impact this area. We definitely agree it's probably a little bit overly complicated at the moment and it's not surprising that it's that way because we know how these things evolve over long periods of time
with lots of best intentions but they can get kind of muddy as time goes by and that's why it's important to do things like this where you kind of step back and say how do we really want to proceed and move forward. Uh but again our our marching orders were really to kind of focus in um particularly on the VCOD uh area and regulations. Uh next
slide Kathy. Um, and just as a reminder of our process, you know, pretty pretty short fuse here that we're working on with you guys. Um, I was on with you guys a month ago kind of introducing uh this this effort, what we were going to be working on. Um, we've been, you know, doing some
work behind the scenes with with town staff. We're here tonight to share with you guys the this sort of cut it, some schemes that we've done, and some some just initial thoughts that at least Erica and I have around the zoning that we're going to have Whiten help us flesh out a little bit more. Um we are still in the midst of scheduling a panel
discussion with um to to approach you know fiscal feasibility talking to some of the local developers the local development community to to get sort of their input and thoughts about what they see as being the real hurdles. Uh with the goal being to then come back to you guys again here in a few weeks and sort of share what we've learned um share
what we've come up with as a result of what we hear from you tonight and some of the things that we'll keep working on here in the coming weeks. Next slide. So, as a reminder, when I was there with you guys a few weeks ago, you know, that the approach we said that we were going to take was really to look at three
illustrative sites. And the thought was to make these sort of generic. We don't want to freak anybody out that we're looking literally at the, you know, the old Blockbuster site or whatever the case might be. It really was to say, here's a generic idea of a 1acre site, a 2acre site, and a 3acre site. Uh, and
then we also tried to tee those up so that there were different sort of conditions or pressures that they might be addressing. So, you know, the 1acre site is a midblock parcel, you know, so there's neighbors on either side, so the real pressure is just on the frontage on Route 28. Um, and maybe that one backs up to a wetland wooded area, so there's
there's no residents in in close proximity. Um, whereas when we look at the twoacre site, we said, let's make that a corner condition where maybe the commercial um uses extend along the corner on that road. So, there might be a little bit of pressure on two roads to have a little bit of a commercial presence. And then onto the threeacre
site. Again, also thinking of that as a corner, but maybe on a corner where you know the commercial pressures on Route 28, but once you kind of turn off onto that side street, you're pretty quickly into some residential fabric. So maybe that creates a different sort of set of constraints, opportunities, challenges to think about. Um, we also in theory
thought of them separately as different districts, you know, the VC1, the VC3, and the VC4 districts. Although to Jeff's earlier point, we also observed that there's not a whole lot of difference between them. They're very minor. Um, so in some ways that was less important or or less um impactful in the
things that we drew between the three. Um, and you know, we knew that going from sort of small, medium to large, we would expect there to be maybe one structure at the small end, multiple structures at the higher end, and that the mix of commercial to residential would probably vary as well. And again, for us, it was just an a matter of
testing those things out, seeing what things rose to the top as being issues that were were something we thought were a challenge or things we should talk about or things that didn't feel like they were as big a deal uh that we didn't feel like we had to worry about or bring bring up tonight. So, so again, just wanted to remind you that was the exercise that we were we were planning
on doing and that's what we're here to talk about tonight. Next slide, Kathy, please. So, one thing we wanted to to talk about before we jump in is that there really are a number of variables at play. And so, when we looked at these schemes, we tried to settle in on a typical
condition. So, it would feel a little bit like apples to apples to apples instead of playing with every variable that could be played with. You know, you could create a matrix of infinite variations on these things. And that that wasn't going to be particularly useful, instructive or intuitive. Um so first and foremost you know when we talk
about mixed use and we talk about there being a commercial component obviously what that commercial component isn't determined in this particular exercise right and so it could be anything from you know a realator's office up to a restaurant or you know a a t-shirt shop
whatever the case might be there could be a variety of uses that are in those buildings and when a project comes in front of you it probably has a pretty good sense of what that use wants to be even if it's just categorically not necessarily a specific user And what's really important to understand is that has a big impact on the parking consideration. So, you know,
we listed a few of the examples here just to show you that there is a big range between the minimum to maximum depending on the use. And so, we might see anything from, you know, the business services, the third bullet there at the minimum end is only one space per thousand. So, that's not a whole lot of parking required. Whereas
if we look at the finance insurance real estate at the maximum end it's one per 200 square f feet which is to say five spaces per thousand square feet. So even just in this these couple examples we shared you know the commercial parking might be anywhere from one to to five
per thousand square ft. And for this exercise we said it looked like a reasonable sort of middle ground especially if we're trying to think of it more at the minimum end of the spectrum might be something like the one per 500 which is to say two per thousand. So for the the studies we did, we said let's do the commercial space
parked at 2 per thousand. But again, that could be higher, it could be lower. That would have an impact on some of these yields. Um, but that was just something we wanted to kind of, you know, set set a line in the sand so that we would know what it is we referring to. Um, I should also point out that we we conveniently dodged the issue of of,
you know, food establishments, restaurants. Those requirements are on a per occupant basis. So until you really dive in and design the restaurant and know if it's a fine dining establishment with a few seats or you know a quick carry out place that might be a very small footprint but with a lot of you
know use the the restaurant is even harder to capture and in fact we often see that the restaurant uses require even more parking than you know the maybe the 4 per thousand or the 5 per thousand. So again, it can be kind of a little bit complicated if you really get into it, but we just thought let's for the sake of this say two per thousand is
a sort of the stand the baseline that we're going to use for the studies that we looked at. Similarly, the residential units, you know, we knew there'd be a residential component, but what that residential component isn't determined at this point either. Certainly, if they're studios, you know, they're much smaller. It could be a much smaller
footprint versus if they're all three-bedroom units. Um, and obviously they can range in sizes. So again, we just said, let's land on something that feels like a reasonable middle middle ground. That's also just an easy number to wrap your head around. So an average of a,000 gross square feet per unit. Um, and it's important there to know gross
square feet per unit because when you look at things like multif family, you know, gross is inclusive of the corridors, the elevators, the utility spaces, some of those things. Often a building is about an 85% efficiency. So, so say that's really a net square footage of about 850 ft per unit, which
is kind of like somewhere between a one and two-bedroom unit. So, for us, again, that was another one of these lines in the sand that we just wanted to draw to say, okay, we could twist oursel in knots trying to, you know, consider every condition, but this is maybe a reasonable sort of median condition to help with these illustrative
examples. Next was thinking about residential parking. Similarly, the range there is a little bit tighter. So at least currently for the multif family in the VCOD, it's a minimum of one space per unit, a maximum of one and a half spaces per unit. So we just said let's do something right in the middle of
1.25. Um and I know that's one of the topics that we're certainly going to be talking probably a bit about tonight is whether or not those could should be higher, could be higher, should be lower, could be lower. Um but again, we felt like that was a reasonable starting point. And because we don't know what any of those uses are above, shared parking was also something we didn't
necessarily get into trying to calculate for because you need to know the use to figure out how effective or not the shared parking in is. And I think for me, one of the real takeaways was in some of these where it might feel like um the parking is a little bit ambitious in terms of being maybe at the lower end
of what the developer might ultimately want to build out. if you could take advantage of a shared parking scenario that might create a little bit of that cushion that might be missing or or that might not be as well represented here as it could otherwise be or might be. Um but so so for the time being we've kind of couch shared parking but I do think
it's an important consideration to still have in the back of our mind as we think about these these scenarios. So before we jump into the scenarios are there any questions about about that notion or this approach? Yeah m I'll just touch on it for a
second. Um, Jeremy, thank you. On the parking, I mean, parking certainly has to be, you know, it's a huge consideration. I I personally run a retirement community. And the reason I bring it up is we in today's standards from when the property was built don't
have enough parking. Um, it's real simple. People have, you know, everyone drives a car. Most families have, you know, two cars now. Um, so I just think that airing airing on the side of the low side, I think would air on the side of being wrong. I really think just
looking at these numbers, the one and a half per unit on the residential seriously needs to be taken into consideration. Yeah, I I also had a um a brief conversation with Kathy this morning. Uh Jeremy, uh we just had recently uh a
couple of projects um on Route 28 where uh the the parking was an issue and the developer went back um and and worked it out to be two spaces uh after initially submitting a plan that was one and a
half. Um because we all looked at it and said this just is not going to work. um a onebedroom is going to have two people. Um and uh so that's that's one of the assumptions I guess I I would ask that you as we go through it and I know
this is your first shot at this and sharing this with us. I think the model is a good one. Yep. I I really like the model in terms of trying to limit the combinations and permutations that you could have on this. I fully I fully appreciate that. But I I do think
residential parking we need to move um closer to two. Yeah. And again I think for us too it's ultimately sort of a bake in as much reasonable flexibility as you can so that the developer can propose what is appropriate or not appropriate for their
particular project. Right? So it can vary on a number of you know needs or reasons or you know one thing that's kind of interesting when we always talk about density it's sort of agnostic as to what type of unit it is. So if you can tell a developer they can build eight units, you know, their incentive is probably to build the eight biggest
units they can, you know, because that's what's going to bring the highest return and that might also then need the highest parking demand. Whereas if you could think about it in a different way, you know, maybe incentivizing smaller units also incentivizes units that might have less parking requirements. So, you know, it it's all interconnected. It's
all tangled. And again, I think we can keep talking that through. Um, and it is a good point. Um but again, I think our exercise was meant to be an illustrative one and we'll talk about this even as we go through these um scenarios. We did we do kind of point out this idea of if the parking was higher, what impact does that have? And so we'll get to that in a
bit, but we appreciate those comments. Yeah. Well, you when when you move up to two, it really will affect the what what you can do on the site. We fully appreciate that. Y Okay. Well, should we keep going and get through the schemes? I don't we'll certainly circle back to number of these
things as well. So, um, Erica, I'll pass it over to you at this point. So, we'll first go through the the scenarios as Jeremy mentioned. So, this is the first site we looked at, which was the 1acre site. And when we looked at this one, this was looking at the BC3
district. Um, again, not much you'll see like that doesn't affect too much between um our our renderings, but I did want to point that out. So in this case, we're showing um the building on the just it's a single building mixeduse
building where you have commercial on the ground floor and residential units above. And so we've tested this out with the 16 dwelling units per acre. So it's it's a pretty simple sort of illustrative diagram. We have the the building in the front and the parking in
the back. I'm trying to ill illustrate that you the zoning where we're connecting potential connections to the neighboring sites and um and then that also the the the zoning recommendations for the parking buffers and landscape
requirements. U next slide. And then here is a rendering just showing what that might look like. And you can see on on this small site, it does um you know, it's a fairly large building for um the parking. So, I think
it's something for um to consider um as far far as what the actual uses might be in in the market. But um we're showing a three-story building here with that um commercial entry along the the street, showing what that might look like with the future updates of to Route 28, the
shared use path and and the sidewalk on the the northern side of the the street there. and then a walkway to the back to get to the parking easily. Next slide. Can I can I just ask a quick question? Um on the
the one acre commercial building, one story. Yes, we'll go to that here next. Oh, I'm sorry. They haven't talked about it yet. Way ahead of myself. I apologize. Sorry. No, no, no. It's because we've we've added these renderings that you don't
see in your package, right? So surprise, you know, there's renderings. Okay. I apologize. No, so let me speak to it real quick and then we'll we'll we'll take your question about it. Um, which is just when we then, you know, one of the things we were thinking about just to illustrate the point was that you could take what essentially is the exact
same scheme at least two-dimensionally of having a building in front and the parking in back. But really, if you were just to adjust the parking ratios, you know, if it was a commercial building that wanted to park it more like four and a half spaces per thousand, and there was nothing magic about that number other than we had 36 spaces
behind it. So, that's just sort of where the math landed. But, as I illustrated on some of those uses at the higher end of the allowed maximums, you could have four or five per thousand depending on what the use is. But, you can see how that same site suddenly doesn't have the capacity or the the ability to also
incorporate residential above. Um we also then did the same thing thinking in conversely if on a residential basis with the 16 units that we had if suddenly they were looking for more parking and again we had 36 spaces shown so it worked out to 2.25 25. But be it at two with four less parking spaces
back there. You still get the point that you know what is otherwise almost the exact same two-dimensional plan. When you go to the third dimension, you just don't have as much stuff in the building because you know you're losing square footage inside because you only have so much parking and pack to support it if you truly are convinced or you
legitimately have a use that requires something more than some of those benchmarks that we were showing. So again, just pointing out that when you start playing with these variables, it can have a real impact on on what the ultimate yield might be. And I think this is also a way of just thinking about the image on the left is essentially what you have out there
today. You have a lot of commercial uses with a big parking lot for them probably calculated at numbers like 4 per thousand and that's why it looks the way it looks. And so it really is having to sort of chip away at those expectations and find ways of of incentivizing folks to think a little bit differently or
letting people pivot to, you know, uses that are less demand or to Jeff's point, allowing them to build maybe more residential and a little bit less commercial even though this is, you know, the ideal spot for a mixeduse zone just so that you can find something that is that reasonable balance that everybody is hoping to achieve. Great.
Thank you. All right, we'll keep going. Okay, go to the next slide. [Applause] Great. So, this is a 2 acre site. Um, so again, we're showing the 16 um units per
acre. Uh, we have about 13,000 square ft commercial. All right, let me check my 18,000. 18,000. 18,000. Thank you. This was small for me to read there. Um and
32 units. Um and so this one worked out to be a similar actual percentage to the the first site. Um so we are still looking at about 30, you know, about 36% commercial to um 64% residential, which was sort of just some of our goals that
we were looking at before. um we've kept to this where it's still all mixeduse frontage, but because we have that residential district um that the site's backing up to and it it worked out to balance the site a little bit, we were able to step down that mixeduse building C to two stories. Um, so that's um just
kind of an something that we would typically want to do in our projects and and it worked out here that that was um a you know a nice thing to do and to keep that threetory density up on Route 28 as opposed to wrapping it around to the residential as well. May I ask a quick question, Madam Chair? Yes, of
course. Yeah. Erica, a quick question. Have you ever when you've done these presentations, have you ever considered um because some of us at least my weird brain I think in percentages. Is it possible in future versions that we could see the residential percentage and
the commercial percentage on this page? And again, I know I can do the math, but I think there might be other people that might look at this and go, "Okay, just tell me, is it 50/50? Is it 4555 or 6832? Is that something that would be hard to do? And if so, would you mind doing it?" If not, I should Yeah, we can
definitely do that. Obviously, it's up to for your consideration. I It would help. In fair in fairness, Erica did have it on there and I had her take it off to try to keep the things simple so people are focused. I told Erica the plan Erica the plan worked. We we did it. We did it. Erica,
thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. So, we can show the rendering now too, which will help illustrate that plan. Thanks. Um, so yeah, so here you can see we're showing that corner building. Um, and we're just trying to demonstrate this something that we would type like to consider. We we often do
this third floor treatment. Um, so that building even though it's three stories, we're trying to bring down the scale a little bit so that it reads more like a two and a half story even though it's three. Um, and then in the back that steps down to the twotory and again you have that drive to the parking um, behind.
Yeah, it's it's interesting. This is that particular instance is something that we observed in the design standards. you know, it defines a dormer very specifically as sort of a single window dormer, kind of like what we showed on the other buildings in that rendering, but this tactic that we'll
often use of trying to treat the upper floor as if it's tucked into the eaves of the roof and we we almost don't call it a dormer because then it triggers that definition of a dormer. So, it's just like a treatment on the third story. But I think it is one of those things that, you know, as we move forward and we'll talk about some of our recommendations, it's one of those
things we think you should look closely at and consider because in some ways we found done well, this is an effective way of helping sort of bring the visual scale of the building down even though it's still three stories. You initially read it as a two-story building that just happens to have some uses up in the
roof. Um, so again, it's a minor aside, but it's I think an important aside that we we we we saw in the regulations that we wanted to potentially suggest thinking about a little bit differently. Was there a question? I'm sorry. Nope. No. Okay. Um, so for the third site
here, coincidentally, also three acres. Um, we have this here we have the density is allowed at 16 dwelling units per acre, but you can see we've actually ended up a little bit over on that. So, we're at we're showing a 17.3
um units per acre. And for the percentage folks in the room, that's 20% commercial and it's 80% residential that we're showing. So, it's keeping to that original goal. Um, so then we ended up a little bit over on the residential there. So um but you know we could still
drop the four units probably still look very similar in in form just reducing some of the heights of the buildings or yeah size of the um units. So here we're showing a mixed frontages. So we have just the mixeduse buildings on the front
that would be fronting route 28 and then um when you turn the corner onto the secondary road you have um the you know small side of that mixeduse building but then residential in the back. Um and we were able to show a little bit of open space there too so that those residential units can open out onto
their own little public um common green there. And something to note that both actually for this site and the previous site that I failed to mention was that this is these are both corner lots. So for the secondary um road just to remind us all that that steps back that setback
is a greater um minimum setback than what you have for route um route 28. Um, and so here, um, I think that's I think we've covered everything on that one. So, we can go to the next
slide. That's right. All right. And so, here's the rendering again showing that third floor treatment that we've talked about before on the corner um because of that setback that allowed us to have a little bit of a plaza there on the corner. Um, and then we have the mixeduse buildings going down and then
showing the residential in the back. And that's that steps down to two stories which you know is a lot more I think palatable to the neighbors there. Um but you can see it it does create this interesting condition that might want to be considered for the the setbacks when
it has to step back so much greater to the um route 28 where we're looking at really like 15 ft foot stepbacks from the minimum. Um it's just an interesting condition. So, it might be something to to consider how that is treated on the
site and and maybe it doesn't have to be along that whole secondary road. Maybe there's a a residential, you know, similar type of residential buffer you have in other conditions. Um, but it is definitely something to think about what happens with that area on on that secondary road
on the slot. I did also want to mention I think when I was in front of you guys a month ago when one scenario I thought we might be showing on this one was residential on the back but maybe only commercial in the front such that the site overall was still mixed use even though building by
building it wasn't mixed use and what we found when we actually drew it up because we had a bigger lot we had fairly large efficient parking area in the middle we were able just to achieve a little bit higher density. It's why we actually kind of tipped over a little bit beyond the 16 um per acre that that's allowable. Um but it is something
I think is worth still thinking about considering that if a project wanted to do you know commercial only buildings and residential only buildings still creating mixed use overall that's not an unreasonable condition to consider and allow for certainly provides a little more flexibility in what the commercial
spaces might be. Um might provide more flexibility on how they are financed. you know, if it was phased and one is purely commercial and one's purely residential, that tends to open up more options for financing, etc. Um, so it was something we thought we might be showing in this and ultimately we didn't we didn't end up going that route. But
you could picture that scenario kind of like we did with the 1acre site that if we thought about parking ratios a little bit different, it wouldn't be unreasonable to imagine some or all the buildings in front being purely commercial parked at a slightly higher ratio with the residential component in back where it creates a nice transition
to the existing residential fabric that might be beyond. Madam chair, can I ask a question? So, thank you. Um, so for for Jeremy and Erica, when I I guess I have a COVID related
question. So the question is when you think about parking in a mixed use especially, but certainly in a residential project, do you assume that people leave and go to another place in their car Monday through Friday 9 to5?
Is that built into the assumptions that people go to a physical place to go to work? The question. I think it it's a great question and I think it's something that is probably not completely understood in part because it varies so much. I do think
there are a lot more people working from home these days than they might otherwise. That probably would have an impact on some of the assumptions really about the shared parking, right? It's probably the shared parking formula that this would come up as a question for. I think if you're already assuming there's, you know, one and a half or two
spaces per unit and they're there all day, that should be fine. It's really when you're trying to free up, okay, but, you know, during the day an office is in the ground floor. Couldn't they be using those spaces because some percentage of those folks are going away? And that's why I think the shared parking doesn't assume 100% of the
residential parking spaces suddenly become available. It already builds in an assumption that some number of folks are home. Sure. Um I don't I don't remember what your current share regulation formulas are. We could kind of look at that and think about that a bit. Although I think the way it's written, the residential doesn't get impacted. It's really what the
commercial uses are affiliated with the site. Well, yeah, because it works Yeah, it works both ways. I mean, you don't want the businesses to not have any free parking because there are more people who don't leave Monday through Friday 9 to5. I'm only and I guess as a quick side note, I would imagine as an industry that you and Erica work in, you
know, if you if if if you're ever looking for a topic to have a lot of smart people talking about about what's going on around the country in terms of how projects are, you know, thought of and conceptualized and then actually planned and permitted. I mean, you could do a whole conference on how the work
home balance has been fundamentally shifted, but I agree with you, Jeremy, it's hard to measure because there's so many different factors. is mostly geography I would imagine but not exclusively. Um but I just wanted to bring up the topic because I know there are people that we were talking about
more people coming to the Cape. Well I think it's fair to say as as as Susan said before unless we're creating physical places where people can work and afford to then live here then the kinds of people who are going to relocate here are probably going to be working from their home. Again, I'm being completely simplistic about this,
but it is an issue that we have to grapple with, and it doesn't feel like it's going back ever again. So, I just wanted to bring it up. I know you have a lot to think about, but if you guys are ever looking for a fun conference topic, when you guys go off to your next conference, you guys should be the lead
speakers, and then you don't have to do anything. You just show up and say, "Okay, COVID percentages, work life balance, discuss." And then you have your continuing ed credits all taken care of. You're welcome. I assume there's literally conference topics about this um in your world. And I never
had to think about it until, you know, uh Ken and I were just sort of giggling at each other because we were kind of like, well, there's not enough parking except for nights and weekends, right? But then it made me think, well, what about Monday through Friday? Anyway, I've beaten this issue into the ground, but it's just more interesting stuff
that you brought us up to think about. No. And I think what's also interesting though is, you know, I think the ideal principle behind mixed use is that ultimately the folks that live in this neighborhood would also shop in this neighborhood and eat in this neighborhood and they wouldn't necessarily be driving and parking to do
that, right? So some of these things can kind of balance themselves out. And I think one of the things we were even thinking about is it's hard in the current condition of Route 28 to imagine, you know, this more aggressive thinking about parking ratios. But if you could fast forward 15 years and this
thing was really highly built out with a number of mixed uses in there and there's a bike lane and so suddenly maybe someone says, "Yeah, we don't need a second car because I can bike to my job or whatever the case might be." Like that's why I do like the idea of there being sort of minimums and maximums because in some ways the hope would
probably be that over time people are trending more towards the minimums because this this built-in lifestyle this built-in model that we're all hoping this thing facilitates might allow for less car usage or suddenly creates these dense nodes where you know mass transit becomes a little bit more
viable. You know so it's it is a little bit of a chicken and egg scenario. can't help but look at the condition out the window today and so we say oh my god we got to have two cars for everybody but you know at some point maybe we don't maybe some of these things change maybe there's other you know options that are put into place thank you madam chair
you're welcome I think the idea was always to have a minimum and maximum um it's just a question is one the right minimum we're finding that maybe that's not um but the maximum at 1.5 is obviously causing problems and we do need to allow for
somelex fibility. If someone says, "I really need two." They shouldn't have to go get a special permit in order to get two if they feel that they need it. Like the 811 Route 28, that was really like eight town houses for professional couples is was exactly the answer to the question of who do you think's going to you're going to be renting to. It's
like, well, then that's two cars. Definitely. So, something to think about. But you could also I just want to push back on that. I agree and I'm glad that they made that tweak. But you could also make an argument that, and I know this because in the business that we're in that we're seeing a lot more parents
where maybe now it's just one parent that leaves the house every day and not both. I know that your mileage may vary, pun intended, but like I don't know. I just think it's worth continuing to think about this issue. Um, but I agree one doesn't make
a sense at all. Um, certainly heading towards two does and maybe there's some sort of common ground that could be possibly found. Okay, we'll continue. All right, what's next, Erica? So, this uh slide was here just to kind
of bring us back to talk about our code considerations and and just it's it's kind of been touched on a little bit already, so we won't talk about it too much more, but um we're just again trying to highlight that we have these four different districts and as we were looking at it and and laying out the
plans, we didn't see too much dimensional differences except for say maybe the VC2 um between them. So, it's just something again for for some consideration. Next slide. Um, and so another topic that came up when looking at the zoning code
of the town was, you know, whether or not these unit sizes that exist as minimums within the code are at the right number. Um, and so when we looked at it, um, we decided we we noticed you had already done this benchmarking study. And so we looked at that
benchmarking study and the units that have been built and what the range of sizes were. Um and when you're looking at the average um you know it looks like you're fairly on on par. However, you can see there's a lot that are lower and
and I think for us um you know potentially our recommendation is that maybe this isn't something that needs to be regulated in the end. Um, so if if it's not really working for the town, I think the market's going to try to create a a nice marketable unit that it
can that can be rented or sold and and that, you know, hopefully they're not going to end up with a sub substandard unit in the end. That next slide. Yeah, I was just going to say again, I think I think the concern is always that there's going to be some dastardly developer that comes
in and, you know, builds some crazy small units, but we just never observe that really happening. I mean, in the end, they they still need to get it financed. They still need to talk about it with, you know, a lender who's got to be convinced that it's a viable, marketable thing. And so, you know, most zoning codes don't speak to unit sizes.
So, it's not to say that you shouldn't or couldn't, and that we could continue to think about that. But, you know, again, we were asked specifically to think about are these minimums the right minimums and maybe they should be a little bit lower just to provide more flexibility or again we just question do they even need to be there in the first
place. I I do think that's one thing that we did talk about when we were looking at accessory apartments like what were some of the reasonable sizes for onebedroom. We had some examples uh and the minimum. Um the only other thing I would mention is that there are some minimum requirements with regard to the affordable units. So, I think the what
we have in in our zoning for VCOD is kind of what would be the minimum sizes preferred by the state. That doesn't mean that we don't um go through the local process and the community housing committee will say um okay, we we'll have a smaller unit, but we want you to
reduce the um rental rate by 10% or something along those lines. But that's kind of what those numbers are coming from the state with regard to minimum sizes for affordable units. Okay. [Applause] We can go to the
next there. You're just not seeing it yet. Oh, okay. There we go. All right. Um and so for this one, we just wanted to make a note on the building height um requirements. So, right now, as it stands in the zoning code, you have a
height for three stories not to exceed 35 ft or four stories not to exceed 48 ft. Um and and we just put in the sort of long definition there. But that and that that height we have to keep in mind is measured from the average existing grade. So if there's if it's not a flat
site, um all of a sudden the three stories becomes a little bit challenging to to reach especially with a mixeduse building. Um and so we have examples again from the benchmarking but you know typically a on a low end a mixeduse like
a commercial ground floor might be 12 ft when you include the structure. So you know 10 ft from of floor height um of ceiling height and and then you have your residential units above. So by the time you're you're done you're looking at reasonably probably a 33 foot height
just to the bottom of the eve not including the roof. Um, and so if you're looking for a really nice um designed building that's not necessarily a flat roof, having a little bit more flexibility in the height or maybe redefining what that height it is going
to um like will probably about give you some better design options. Um, also just put in a little note here. Um, just that we know that you have some flood regulations already. Um, but we did note that when you're looking at this in some of the recent
maps that parts of this district are looking at higher sea level rises or potential storm impact. And so as you're looking to redo your zoning potentially or add notes on it, there might be want some considerations and especially specifically looking at the building
height. Um, but also design standards because you know buildings might need to get elevated down the road um and and things like that that will affect the the building height. And so, um, it's just something to consider. And I know that the Cape Cod Commission's also done some some good work on this with design
guidelines that can be referenced, but we just wanted to make that out. Next slide. One of the things that we did take into consideration in the VCOD is that when you're in a FEMA special flood hazard area, you measure the it's not measured from the average existing ground. It's one foot above the base
flood elevation. So, understanding that people may need to elevate in order to to address the that Yeah. Yeah, and I think something that we're seeing as we've worked with some towns in this is that that base flood elevation isn't is not high enough in considering sea level
rise and flood inundation from storm surge. So, it's just something to consider looking at. There's, you know, some more recent mapping um and different groups that are doing, you know, maps that are coming out of Woods Hole that consider that, you know, impending, I guess I don't want to call
it a threat, but uh potential flood um inundation at a much greater rate, greater height. Understood. Yeah. So, I just want to quickly reinforce, you know, what Erica prior to that was also speaking to, you know, we see three stories 35 ft. That's
pretty standard as sort of like a residential standard, especially thinking of a smaller scale residential building. It's a really difficult metric for a for a mixeduse building because typically a commercial occupancy wants a slightly higher ceiling height. Like think about you don't often walk into a
store and the ceiling's only at 8 ft high unless it is a really historic building that was converted over time. You know, a modern, you know, tenant would want something more like a 10ft ceiling height or even a 12t ceiling height depending on what the use is. So again, we think it's just specific to a
mixeduse district. It might make sense to build in a little more height. And I think the next slide we have was actually showing some of the heights of the benchmarking examples. Erica, maybe walk them through that is is illustrative to that point. Yeah. So we pulled some of the the examples that were in that study and
categorize them by, you know, the two two and a half story um your threetory and your fourtory. And so if you if you look at these, the heights are listed at the the bottom. I apologize. They are a little bit small. But um on that two to two and a half story range, you're looking at um almost 30 feet to almost
38 feet, right? So um the 35 ft you can see even has pressures at that two two and 1/2 foot um um two and a half stories, sorry, uh building height. And so in the threestory buildings, um you can see that if you look at the the top
two, they're actually one of the the middle, you have the flat roof in the middle. Um and so that seems a little, you know, that's pretty easy to probably get to the 35 ft. But then on the top, that's really a flat roof trying to treat itself like a mansar, trying to hide itself in that two and a half, but it's still again at pretty much
threetory flat roof. But then on the bottom, um, you can see that they actually have that pretty substantial commercial ground floor that Jeremy was speaking to and then a true roof on top of the story on top of the third floor there. And so that building is what's
actually at 52 um almost 53 feet in height um when you when you account for the grade and the commercial ground floor and the height of the roof pitch. And so it's just something we wanted to show in consideration. And again on the four story that actually is going up to
almost 62 ft. Um so you know they would be coming to for for a variance if they were trying to get to the four story most likely. Yeah. I think I think some of those threetory examples show you the architect started at what the maximum building height was and then sort of had
to work down from there instead of trying to come up with a composition that they really thought was an effective or nice or lovely composition. You know, and I think even on the two and a half story example on the bottom left, you know, that one had almost like a true half story in the ceiling and even that couldn't quite come in under
the 35 ft. And I don't know what they were using for varying ceiling heights, but I'm guessing that kind of lower left image is the kind of thing that we're all sort of hoping would be the case for what we might get here. And 35 ft is very difficult to achieve that in. You know, again, they're at almost 38 ft and they're on a pancake flat site and, you
know, etc., etc. So it's just again we we see this this is a regular occurrence for us when we come into communities and talk to them about building height. It's almost always set using the kind of same philosophy that's been in place for 60 years that assumes it's residential with at most 10 ft per floor and we'll give
you a couple feet for the roof which doesn't usually result in architecture that anybody really cares for the look of. So we can go to the next slide. Um so again this um we talked a little bit about this I think but we can talk a little bit more about it. So
um the something we noticed too is some of these sideyard setbacks are a little bit complicated in the district. Um, and so even though you see that 0 to 15 foot setback, um, the zero foot is actually only permitted if there's an agreement
with the abuing property owner. Um, which we think, you know, that some of these notes in here are actually great to have and and allowing for that zero foot setback is great. I think it's just sort of the compounding effect of the different notes and elements that everybody that has to be put into
consideration. And so when you're seeing on um the the sites that we've done too where we're having to back up to a residential district, we then had to consider another note that says that the um the setback has to be equivalent to the the building height um or the
setback in the chart, whichever one's greater. And so pretty much that always defaulted to the building height because when you're looking at these buildings of two and three stories, um the setback would become the the building height and would definitely not be uh 15 ft. I
don't think we'd see too many buildings at that height. Um and so that drove a lot of design decisions too. And so instead of reducing building height to get closer in the side step setback, you then end up putting a parking uh drive aisle or a parking lane in order to
compensate and still keep your building height at that edge. Um so we just think that you know there's already a residential buffer also that's required with six foot of landscape screening and so we were kind of just wondering if
maybe that residential buffer should be reduced from the 20 feet to something a little bit less. there's there's sort of a parking um buffer also landscape buffer of 10 ft and then you have this six-foot screening required um to a residential district. And so that's um
seems pretty sufficient with those two requirements that you then end up kind of with like 14 ft of kind of unknown landscaping that's required. Um and that seems like it could be better utilized um and given over to the site. So potentially we just as we note down here
just looking at sort of reducing and redefining that residential buffer um taking into account that there are already all these other design requirements and and also looking at simplifying some of the setback requirements. Next
slide. And that leads us up to our discussion. Um, and if anyone has any questions on anything Hilly noted over the past few minutes, any any questions, comments? Yes. I was looking at the ladder truck. If you could just say your name again. My
name is Pete Malpass and I'm just a resident here. But I was looking at a one of the ladder trucks out front of the fire station that serves my area and I don't think it goes more than about 36 feet. So, do you have a ladder? Is it is
there a fire department limit on the height of your buildings because it can't rescue people from higher than a certain height? I was just wondering my my son's a firefighter in Virginia. I wondered. Thank you. Question. It does. It's a Yeah, go ahead, Jeremy. I was
just going to say it is an important consideration. It's something you want to understand. I think what's what's worth noting is that, you know, when we say 35 ft is the building height, that's to the upper ridge, you know, the very top of the building. So, the window sills are much lower than that. So, even if you go a little bit higher, you know, a lot of the access they need can be
done there. Um, but it is an important question. Sometimes it's a matter of, you know, what is the height to the eve because that's what the the ladder is going to lean against. So, you would want to understand and coordinate some of that, but I I wouldn't be surprised if the couple of additional feet we're talking about would be feasible or maybe you bump it up for a three-story
building and but not a four-story building. Um, some of the setback requirements, we actually found it was very difficult for us to draw a four-story building on any of these sites. Save the 3acre site. Our first scheme was putting a four-story building sort of right in the middle of it so that it would, you know, adhere to all the setback requirements. And it wasn't
making sort of much sense. Um, so we defaulted back to sort of that three stories everywhere. Maybe a concession is you only allow up to three stories and give up on the four stories, but let the three stories be at a sort of more meaningful and useful height. Um, so I do think that's an important consideration that that you raise, but I
think it would would be addressable as long as there was the right conversation had. I think one of the conversations that Jeremy Jeremy and I also had is we all know what the fire department's concerns are with regard to getting their equipment in and turning it around. Um, so there's going to be also
some considerations that will probably impact parking as well when they come and say, "Oh, no, you need to I need to be able to get the ladder truck around that." So, you're losing those two parking spaces so that we can do that. We've tried to negotiate and they've been very uh understanding as they did on 811 and we came up with a a solution
that still provided for adequate fire safety, but didn't necessarily need need that turnaround right in the back, which allowed them to get the two spaces to have the parking in the back. So, it was a little bit of a negotiation, but um you know, we've had some some other meetings with them and people see they keep talking about turning the ladder
truck around and that's like turning a tractor trailer truck around on your property. So, it there's further discussions. I mean there's there's regulations and codes that they need to meet, but my understanding is there's some, you know, if you could maybe bring a hydrant in or obviously it's a sprinkled building, it it means
something different as as to how the safety uh of that, but that probably is something that we should at least mention somewhere in these that you know, you know, vehicle access, fire safety access vehicles need to be able to turn around or move through the move safely through your through these
developments. I will point out it is one of the advantages of this this approach though of the buildings coming out to the street. You know, you have great access to at least the fronts, you know, maybe the side from the public right of way. I think that one of the challenges in other scenarios that the building's at
the back end of a big parking lot now I've got to drive by 60 parked cars. Hopefully, they're all in the right place. When you bring the building out to the street, I think it makes some of those access issues a lot easier. So, you're right. It's still something when you would need to make sure worked on a case- by case basis. Again, these are
illustrative but aren't dissimilar from things we're designing, you know, in real life in in various locations. So, it's not a unsolvable problem. Thank you. Anyone else? No. Uh Jeremy, I'm I'm curious as to how you
can help us with the two parking spaces for residential. Um, can you reset some of these plans to take that into consideration? Show something maybe show an example of one of them that shows too and kind of
illustrate the negative impacts. Yeah, that was a little bit what we were trying to sort of do with quickly with that one the first couple of examples on the 1acre site when you kind of swip the ratios what happens for us at all. Happy to do that on some of the other parcels too. Maybe if we just look at the 3acre
parcel and assume it's two spaces per res and maybe even bump up the retail parking a little bit too to something that might be a more you know common ratio that we might expect to see and just see how it really does either knock away a few footprints or you know
certainly knock a few stories off of some of these as well and and where does that land us. So we can do that. That's a relatively easy exercise we can pull into the fold for the next. Great. I think it's important because as Jeff Bag was talking, you know, maybe we need to have more than 16 units per acre, but if we're finding that, you know, can you
really have even the 16 units per acre in two parking spaces and then have at least the 15% minimum commercial that we have as a requirement in the zoning? What what does that happen? How does that happen? Yeah, great presentation. Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Jeremy and Erica. Thank you so much. Yeah, very educational. Oh my goodness. Yikes. And having the illustrations are very helpful because I think a it shows, you know, what good design can look like, which I think is very helpful. Um, I do love the dormer
and making that third story kind of look like a half story. I think that looks significantly better than some of the things we've been seeing. So, I'm really interested in hearing about more details on how we might be able to phrase that correctly in our in our zoning to get something along those lines.
So, when when do we think we'll see you again, Jeremy? Um, so we know that you'll see us again on June 25th. We'll be back in a few weeks again. We're going to meet with some a developer panel sort of between now and then and take care of a few more of these these items that we want to
keep talking about. So, we'll see you again soon. Okay, great. Thanks again. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right. Have a good night all. Thank you, Madam Chair. Has that panel been developed? I I don't know. We're working
on it. Yeah. Well, I think we have a a list of idea of some of the questions with regard to talking about capital and financing. Um also, what are some of the market considerations for housing? What kind of um users are are you really seeing that being beneficial financially
of are you looking for young professionals? Are you looking for seniors? Um you know, is it that are you looking for market rate? Is affordable the ones that are penciling out? Those types of things. And then also some considerations for the commercial, what kind of commercial do you see being uh
that we kind of in a sense need in Yarmouth? Is it retail? Probably not. But is it restaurants and bars or is it amusements and entertainment? um you know is it a micro brewery those type of things you might find that there's there's information that and is there any unmet commercial demand that they
know of out there you know I think identifying any land constraints or limitations we might have you know there's you know are there site or location limitations you the size of the lots are small I think that that Jeff mentioned very astutely that we had these grandio plans in 2012 that we're
going to be combining these lots and then people are going to be going in through limited access points having the parking in the back and there's going to be these separate uh roads in the back just didn't come to fruition because it's too difficult um to to actually combine those. Um you know maybe some of the concerns are, you know, there's too
much traffic 28. You know, that's just not something we want. Or maybe they're concerned about what the streetscape looks like. It doesn't, you know, we don't have bike ped access there. But you know what? Guess what? We're getting it with the mass DOT project. So there might be some things there that people have. And then just talking about some very specific zoning considerations that
they might have um and input from them. Obviously more by right options, you know, whether we would be increasing the height or the stories that are allowed, the increasing the density, not having any limits specifically in our bylaw on unit sizes and and that type of thing. And obviously simplifying the process. I
think that's an easy thing that we might be able to hit pretty pretty relatively. And then, you know, does that parking takes up a large portion? Do you have any other viable techniques to deal with it? Whether it's shared parking, should we be talking about public parking? Should we be talking about parking below buildings and that type of thing? Um and
then just kind of saying, you know, what do you think see as nec necessary um development incentives? What's helped you to make a project come to fruition? You know, was it the zoning? Was there zoning changes? There zoning that allowed that to happen? Was there a tax incentive financing? Was there some other way that the towns encouraged you
to develop a a mixeduse development? Um and then just kind of, you know, you know, is it easier to develop mixed use elsewhere? And if so, kind of like why why other areas even other communities on Cape like Harriidge and Dennisport seem to be seeing it. I'm impressed the fact that we've been seeing some mixed
use already. But I'm very happy about that. Um but they're not fully con constructed yet. So once they start putting pencil pencil to paper, I hopefully it all it all balances out for them. But that's certainly something um that we do. So we I've have a list. We were originally, I think, going to try
and get in touch with the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce because they meet with development groups on a regular basis, but that doesn't seem to be panning out. Um, so we have obviously some developers that we know of. We're trying to get some financial institutions, but that's something that's probably going to have to happen um, you know, the week of June 16th in
order to be able to get um, to meet this timeline, right? Yes. To meet this this gruelling timeline that we have for the end of the fiscal year. Um, so that it's something that's that's, you know, the questionnaire's kind of been developed that we would like to have the questions answered. We just need to see who how
many people we can get in the room together and and if they can't come, then maybe that we can send them the questionnaire and they might be able to answer and provide that information. Um, so it's not going to be as in-depth or as detailed as I think we were all hoping, but because of the time crunch do the best we'd have more success having it as an online something that
could be sent to them to, you know, because I just think this is the time of year if you're a developer, you're trying to make hay and, you know, either prior to the summer or you're as busy as you're going to be this time of year as a developer, just just, you know, I
think you'd have more success having that question, which I think is great. getting it just somehow getting it in front of them and asking them can they get it back to me by X. Okay. The problem is with that is that I like the interactiveness. I don't get that
even if we get like four people together that would be great, you know, and then if they and other people can't, but definitely making it hybrid so people can zoom in if they want to and having these questions ahead of time so they've been thinking about it is all good ideas. Courtney, hi Courtney Butler. Um, yeah, I just want to say I'm so
encouraged by this presentation. I think a lot of people when they see these images and we're talking about little old Cape Cod, they kind of like clutch their pearls of like, oh my god, we could never have something that looks like that on my main street. Um, but this is exactly what we've been talking about the CEDC. These sorts of plans and ideas are some of the things that we had
suggested for the Madis property in terms of a mixeduse neighborhood, a community. Um, you know, there's a lot of young families who want to stay here, but they can't afford a house. But to have a little community, you know, the Yarmouth Commons, all those kids are always playing around together. They're having a great time. like it's a really sweet little neighborhood. Um, and I
think it this provides a lot of great opportunity for commercial, residential, like a really nice community. I'm just so encouraged to see these designs and your support for them and I'm I'm very excited to see where this all goes. Um, you know, like Kathy said, we see other communities doing this and like I always
think of Harport, right? like that vibrant little main strip is amazing. And now they do have the mixed use and like you can park behind businesses and you can walk around and you can get to the beach and that's that's what I want for Yarmouth, too. I want everybody to, you know, you can still have your your cute little cottages and your cabins and all that away from Main Street, but I
think in this sort of area, we're looking at a place that's really how you make a good Main Street that's walkable and feels like a community. And so, thank you again so much. I big fan of your work, Yarmouth Planning Board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both for coming. We
appreciate it. We appreciate it. Um, all right, Kath, what else do you want to talk about LCP? Um, um, I don't Is is Jeff still here? I know that um Yes, Jeff still there. Peter and Joanne and Dearra
had provided some information um to Jeff uh to try and start compiling. I have not gone through myself. I'm de I'm negligent in having taken another look at at things. Um I would certainly like
to do that, but the the date was trying to get something to the Cape Cod Commission by June 11th, which is next Wednesday. Uh and maybe Jeff can kind of chirp in on how he feels we are we are standing there. Maybe we want to actually shoot for like June 16th and I
can maybe give a heads up to the commission that it's coming. at least gives a little bit more time to kind of um think things through. But I just ask Jeff kind of where he stands. Yes. Thanks. I so far, you know, at the last meeting, we got good feedback.
Nothing too substantive, you know, as of yet. Um we're still working out the capital facilities chapter. I think that's kind of where we are right now. And we have a tiny bit of flexibility. I agree with Kathy. I think maybe we put out June 11th. I was being very
optimistic. It's important. And we I think we want to really trudge through and get a draft ready to send. And I think what's really driving that is they talked about three or four weeks um for the review and then we would release the draft to the public. And I think the the
biggest wrinkle, you know, when you stretch out the four weeks is that there's the July 4th holiday kind of week. And so I think the 16th is a reasonable target. I think what I would like to try to propose is we try to get, you know, Kathy can review what she already has and then we can show her the
updated housing and capital facilities chapter. I think those are where there's where there's changes and then really kind of shoot for either Friday next week or the 16th to to get it to the Cape Commission. I think within a couple days of that span, we we want to keep on that timeline as much as possible as
well. So, I think we're close. I think the Wednesday is a little ambitious. Yeah. But I think we're we're pretty close and I think we want to try to stick, you know, within five days of that to get it to try to get it to the commission. If I may, my my one major concern that I
shared with Kathy in my in my notes to her was the capital um plan section I think is with the most recent one that I saw uh was the weakest part um and needed some I think serious uh
development. Um I had mentioned to Kathy the whole discussion about the operating budget. We don't need to talk about the operating budget. Um the capital plan is separately identified and uh approved. Um and there was kind of this mixture of
numbers that I couldn't I couldn't figure out and I used to be on the capital budget committee. So if I couldn't figure it out I I I I was a little bit concerned. So, I'm glad to hear you working on that and I'm wondering if there's any chance that we
can get a copy of whatever the latest version of that is when it's ready uh before the 11th. I would like to see it before it goes to the commission. Before it goes to the commission. Right. Well, just a process question, Madam Chair. Once it goes to the commission, Jeff, do
we they're just giving their feedback because we still have correct opportunities to refine. Yes. Okay. Correct. Yeah. And we just I think collectively we felt like it would be good to get it to the commission and get their feedback before we release the draft to the public just to understand
if Right. I always remember I I always think in terms of a little bit of triage. I could imagine a situation where if the capital facilities chapter is not ready maybe there's as I think Kathy I think the I think the planner at the commission did say that they they
would take any part of it. Yeah. Oh, so in terms of a triage approach, there there might be an opportunity to take take that one chapter out and get them the bulk of it. Um, it's not ideal, but it is an it is an opportunity because I'm just worried about like your meeting schedule. My understanding is you might
have a meeting on June 18th. And so I think if we wait to send the entire thing until after the 18th, we'll we're going to push we push out the schedule. I have the schedule up on my screen here. And you know, one of the other
targets that we have is holding a public hearing in August, August 20th. Um that there is some opportunity to push that into September and still meet the um timeline to execute the warrant in in October, but we're getting to this point
where we want to try to get the draft to the commission as much as possible. Well, I'm very happy to hear that, uh Jeff. I didn't realize that we can just um leave the chapter out and work on it. I mean, we could even send them like probably, you know, if we feel
comfortable with the natural systems, you know, I mean, the rest of it I thought was pretty close. It was that chapter in particular that I thought needed some attention and the economy I think needed some more stat data and I think maybe Deerra had helped a little bit with that. I haven't gone through
all of all of that information. I did just wanted Jeff to know that we did the planning board did send a letter to the town administrator asking to see if the special town meeting could be on November 18th. Uh I think the schedule you had we had been looking at was like
November 4th. So uh he did send it to Ken Moody who's the um moderator and he said no problem and he also sent it to Mary Mazlowski to make sure that would be okay with her and she we haven't heard back from her yet. But I'm assuming that if it's fine with those guys, and I can't imagine why Mary
wouldn't would have a problem with it. Um, then I'm sure he would bring that before the select board and hopefully they could maybe set the date for special town meeting earlier than they normally would to help us out. Great. Because we still have zoning to do.
Yay. More boat hearings. No, it's good. Important. It's important for the people My apologies for the people. That is passionate and we're excited to have them. So hopefully that gives us a little bit of of leeway. Okay. Yeah, I think it I think it does. I think that's
helpful to know. Jeeoff, might we see meaning the planning board uh a revi a a a new I please don't take this the wrong way because you're only working with the information that we give you. A new and improved chapter on capital by
the 18th. Our next meeting. Definitely by the 18th. I think going by the by the 11th. I'm not sure it'll be No, no, we don't need we wouldn't need it by then. Um, as long as you as long as we can just exclude it. Yes. And I I would urge that once we go
through and maybe there's some data points in the e in the economy section. I would I think it would be beneficial to get as much of it as possible to the commission so that we can understand you know we not sure what kind of feedback they will have. So I think getting them
as much as possible would be beneficial, you know, in the long run. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Jeff, um, on the capital budget, because I'm on that committee now, I already placed Joanne on it. Is there have you seen the narrative that was presented to the
select board this spring from capital budget? Yes. Yeah, we're looking at all the existing information and I think the trick that we're working on is there's so much in the capital improvement plan and we're trying to figure out the best
way to demonstrate that the action items being identified in the LCP either are addressed in the capital improvement plan already or need to be. And there's this dichotomy that works where not every single thing um in the
capital improvement plan will relate to the LCP. And so we're trying to sift through and make sense of the important things to distill down to the middle like what's relevant for the LCP. Absolutely. What kind of what kind of And I do appreciate what Joanne said about the operational budget. I think
giving some kind of nod to it is important because everything that's not capital improvement will potentially fall under some of the operational expenses. And I think maybe d maybe um reducing the amount of information or the emphasis on it um I think will be important because we get to things like
staff support, you know, and that's not a capital improvement item, but it's the best place in the in the LCP to to make mention of it. So, we're kind of working through that. Adam and I are working on that this week and next week. So, hopefully we'll have a we should be able to have an updated draft for the 18th. Great. Okay. I I do I did like the
section though where you spent a little bit of time talking about the process which is a significant improvement over the past several years in terms of how the capital budget is put together. I mean that was a massive undertaking and um and and you you've gave that a fair
amount of ink and I think that was good. I thought that was a good explanation. It it shows it shows a really good effort on the part of the town. Okay. Anything else on LCP? I don't think so. Kath. Um, so I was
going to mention Thank you. All right. Thank you, Jeff. Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you, Adam. Adam, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for our two viewers and two participants. And yes, thank you so much. All right. Thank you.
Spread the word. Barely hear that. Oh. Okay. Whoa. That was item that was agenda item number one, Madam Chair. I know. Mat Keys update. Yeah, they they the muck committee gave the presentation to the select board last night. I I hear it went pretty well. Um I haven't
finished watching all of it. I was not there, but um I think I think it went pretty well from what I heard from Assistant Town Administrator Bill Scott. So, can you remind us if you if you can about where we are in the timeline based on last night being the presentation,
your general sense of it? I'm not holding you to it. Yeah, the general sense of I mean right right now we have the survey out and that's going through June 30th and then we're having another we're having a workshop to kind of present this on July 15th and then with all that feedback through the summer is
when U BSC group's going to be working on actually starting to do some of the renderings and the laying things out and seeing how based on the three options based on the based on their the based on what the muck directs them to do with regard to all of the input that they've
received from all the different land use groups. So you may have one where for example, you know, we're going to go we're going all in on this sports complex and convention center and it's taking up the whole site. Um otherwise you might have oh we're just going to look at more of a local uh recreational
type facility and then we'll have some some housing over here and and those types of things. So and then it's some one of them has to include some space for this potential school. So they need to figure out what what kind of thing Yeah. May and yeah, I don't I don't know how that's going to work out. Um, so
then they're going to be working on that. The whole goal is to have the three finalized kind of muck finalized three ideas to the select board for January of 2026. Thank you. That's really long story short. I should have gone right there. No, that's helpful to know. So now we can sort
of the rains the rains get pulled well dropped a little. Not dropped but eased. I'm going to be get done. I'm going to be sending out tomorrow morning a bunch of um pushing out the publicity to all my peeps and my email lists and
whatever. So, you might find that you get something again from something else or whatever. Um I did send it out already through Civic Plus when I was advertising this meeting also letting people know about about that as well. So, the muck is all good.
Uh the next item on our agenda uh would be meeting minutes. Uh Kathy set out separately. I know you have to go. Is this yours or mine? That's yours. Okay. Giving that to Kathy. Thank you. Kathy. Yeah. Don't you walk away with my pen. She's very good about it. I give her
credit. U meeting minutes for May 21st. Um may I have a motion? So moved. Second. All in favor? I But there's also Dearra. Oh. Oh. Okay. All right. 4 Z. We
heard it. Yeah. Thank you. Dedra. Is it Dedra or Deardra? Deerra. Deerra. Thank you. Deerra. All right. No, I just was wondering about mispronounced. It's like Naomi and Naomi. I've gotten that. Yeah. Deardra. There's a difference. Um,
we we can do we do we have to do a roll call on that? I don't think we do a roll call on that. Well, because it's hybrid. I think because of the hybrid remote participant. I apologize. Okay, I'll remember that the next time or my clerk will remind me. I was ready. I was actually ready but Kathy beat me to it.
Maybe I'm committ. Yes, madam chair. Uh Monday, June 2nd, the water the rack committee me the rack met, excuse me. I think the two most important takeaways were um uh
town administrator written did say regarding the location and resolution of the pump station affecting contract six which has many domino effects and I wrote down in my notes we are moving toward resolution and honing in on a
solution with the select board and there is a sense of urgency and he expects this to be wrapped up this summer which which is great because we do need to get that contract signed bid, you know, potentially rebid, signed
off, approved so that this work can start in the fall alongside contract five. So, remind me where contract six is. Six is uh the pump station across from the new park. Yeah, it's that section of 28. Okay. So, it sounds like there's been some nice progress there.
And I know there was an executive session last select board meeting about this topic and so Mr. written hour was able to fill in the rack a little bit more on Monday afternoon. So, it feels like there is some progress there and that is positive news. Um, that doesn't mean that other contracts won't continue
to be executed and and portions of the work will continue on, but we certainly would like to have contract six alongside contract 5. Um, also lots of progress. I won't bore you with the details at the actual site of the new uh
facility. Um, but everything is hunky dory. That's what I would say there. Last thing was very interesting. We had um a couple of representatives from Mil Pond Village, which is located where Buck Island Road ends at Camp Street
right across. So, if you take Buck Island Road all the way to the end and you come to the end and you're staring at a development across the street, that is Mil Pond Village with 61 units, I believe. Yep. They actually have their own separate
sewer system or treatments treatment plan. Yeah. But they came to the to the rack and written a letter and then gave a little we had a little back and forth just about they would like to be in the conversation as future phases are considered and um lots of good
reasons for that to happen and um we'll see where that goes. But it was nice, you know, just like we appreciated all of our public committee meetings, uh, you know, participation by the community and not just the nice people that show up every month. Um, and it's good to know that people are taking a more
proactive view. And actually, as we continue our conversations with I think it'll be much more into the summer, into the fall, um, about where phase two is actually going to be versus, as I mentioned in previous meetings here, where it shows. Um, I wouldn't say there's going to be humongous
differences, but there will be some tweaks based on the watershed permitting as well as the ability to use the golf course as well as in reaction to the permit, you know, that we expected to be much larger for the actual facility which came in at 375,000 gallons, which
is not enough. So, all those things are continuing and it is still fascinating. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all. Good stuff. Any other committee updates? Uh, uh, any board member items? I have one Peter SVC and I met with the
UMass Donahghue Institute. Good. Uh to um they interviewed us for around the um STR consulting work that they're doing. Um we basically gave them a background on how we've been involved in STRs over time kind of the
history of how this jumped up. I think they had most of that but they had given us a list of questions. Um they wanted to know how the planning board works with uh other housing committees. Um they wanted to you know the some of the questions were um uh pretty
straightforward. I mean do we talk about housing supply? Yeah, we talk about it all the time. Um we don't talk about short-term rentals all the time, although it does come up. Um they asked us our opinions about housing supply and affordability and uh Peter is you know
the guy on that. So as a um a professional appraiser um uh and the questions we we raised to them was again trying to understand where they think this this connection is
between um short-term rentals and some assumptions they we needed we did ask for um um information they make a statement somewhere that short-term rentals have been increasing and I I I don't know if that's the case. They have
been. So, those are the registered ones. That's the registered registered ones. Okay. Um and then I also sent them a follow-up note to check in with the KCK cut commission on their um uh they're doing a study on short-term rentals as well. Madam Chair, in relation just
asking your question on it in relation to what short-term rentals is doing to drive the housing price up. Is that how that question was asked? Okay. Yeah. In that vein. Yeah. Um, so, uh, so Peter and I, and it was,
it was great to have Peter there because he he really is the duty expert on that. Yep. Thought Peter's question about, you know, are the units that are being used for short-term rentals, what's their price point? Are they not firsttime home or are they like, you know, the million
and million to a million and a half? What is it taking away having a short-term rental? Is it really taking away from that first home buy? Yeah. I mean, my, you know, my information based on my resort hat for a second, which wasn't that many years ago when I was in that industry, um, you know, the
short-term rentals typically aren't the million-dollar homes, but they're typically not the, you know, the first time home. They they are typically within walking distance of some sort of attraction, whether it be the water or some sort of amusement.
And they're typically, you know, they're two, three, very few twos, but a lot of three and four bedroomedroom type homes cuz it's all about market rate and where they can drive the most revenue out of it in a very short period of time. You know, they have the same issues that every hotel in Cape Cod has, a 12week
season. So, they really truly need to drive revenue from the short-term rental side. um but was just all has done to me in my estimation is diminish housing stock in the respect where it's just d you know driven price. So we also did
mention both Peter and I did mention two other elements of this one that some people do a short and we've talked about this before so I'm fully aware of this. They rent out their house for a month and they go to Nickerson State Park because they need the money. But those
are typically the unregulated ones, the the ones that aren't doing it. You Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I bet they are. Yeah. I mean, the ones that are doing it as a, you know, doing it as a business, as an investment, those are typically the ones that are doing it right with the right insurance regulated through VBO or
Airbnb and all that stuff. It's not, you know, Jon Jones who's renting his house out for a month to pay his mortgage for the year while he lives in a tent. That's typically not the person. No. But uh we we have heard from people um that there are some people who do do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Um uh that's why it's two weeks maximum at Dickerson State Park now. Yeah. Is it really? I think it is. I think it is at all state parks. I thought it was I wasn't aware of that. I thought it was a that to avoid exactly that. Yeah. Interesting. Um and the other thing that we both mentioned was
corporate influence and corporate buys. Um and how that can be a threat. Um because we don't know who it's not it's not a person. It's it's some big rental company, right? Um and Peter has some had some real um real examples of I
forget the name of the company. Delmare. Um Delmare. Yeah, Delmare. Yeah. Um so, but he he raised that issue. So, um they own quite a few homes on the cave Delmare. Yeah. Neither little signs, they'll say. Yeah. Um Kathy,
anything from you in terms of it further staff updates? Um, I just I did get an email from um the Cape Cod Commission and they are working on developing Capewide um a web page about all of the Cape's outdoor recreational
opportunities. Um I guess they have something similar in Birkshshire County through their regional planning. Um so that it was kind of interesting. Um the looking at the Burk the one in the Birkshars, it was great. It was like it included things like mini golf and not
just our town golf courses, but it would include like private golf courses. So, it's outdoor recreation. So, it's not the stuff that's happening like Ryan Family Amusement, which is happening inside. It's all about outside recreation. So, we're kind of going to work with them a little bit on that. Um I guys I had sent you guys some
information um on that Route 6A visioning study that the Cape Cod Commission they're having a hybrid meeting um on June 11th at 6 PM and you can find out the information on the Cape Cod Commission calendar. Uh and there's a I I provided you guys with the link
there. There's a lot of really good information. I did spread this out a little bit to um all my peeps up on 6A on the historical commission and Old King's Highway and and you guys. And then I It's the full length of 6A. The full length of 6A. And then I sent it to
the um communications director to see if she wanted to publicize it some more for people because I'm sure a lot we have a lot of things to say because we went through kind of the process already. So, um that's good. I can give the very first and last suggestion which is sidewalks.
I know it's easier to say when I'm sitting here, but you can definitely tell when you're when the you it's a different feel and we talked about the feel of our town when it relates to Route 28. And when you drive on 20 on 6A heading towards Barnstable and you see
people walking their dog or biking or walk or just being it's different out in the community and being active, it's literally driven by the sidewalk or lack thereof. And I know that sounds incredibly simplistic, but it And I also recognize that it's not that
simple to say, we'll just sidewalk the whole thing because of all the land takings and easements that could last a lifetime, but um it will be a fascinating conversation. Thank you. That was it.
Okay. Our next meetings are June 18th and the 25th. With regard to the 18th, it sounds like are we going to be talking about this draft that went to the commission for the LCP? That's what I thought he said.
Well, I thought he said he was submitting it and then they have three full weeks, but he wanted to submit it by on the 11th so that it did so that by the time we hit July 4th, they were finishing it, not having July 4th sort of slow it down. But he also Go ahead. I
just don't know what's on the agenda for the 18th. I think what he did say was madam chair asked for the capital the capital section to at least be sent to us electronically so that if we wanted to discuss it on the 18th of course I will defer to the chair as to whether I don't want to make I don't want to make
up a meeting Kathy if you didn't have anything I'll talk to Jeff about it and we'll go from there you decide um as to whether or not because we are having an extra meeting on the 25th anyway so if we don't need to meet on the 18th let's not have a meeting for the sake of a meeting that's my vote
Yeah, we've been very busy already with lots of offline stuff, just reading stuff and commenting on it and getting it to Jeff, which is very timeconuming. Madam Chair, could you could you and Kathy remind us when we're going to be meeting in July? Did we decide that yet? Because our scheduled meeting is
Wednesday the 2nd. Yeah. And I wasn't sure. Yeah, it What's scheduled? Oh, it is. Yeah. Well, two and 16. Yeah, it's it's scheduled. It's one of the things like if we're not meeting on the 18th, we can maybe try to meet on the second, but if we were meeting on the 18th, maybe we would want to skip the
second, but we need to start talking about the the zoning, but I want a little bit of time to work on it after the fiscal year is done with all these things that are that's my problem is like I keep saying in in July, but um I need to like think about it and work on it with people and you know coordinate
with the attorney and and uh you know to with some of their ideas to come up with some ideas on how we might be able to um address these issues that everyone's kind of happy with so that when it comes to you at least it's been a little bit vetted by some other people. Um we can certainly
hear about it via email however you decide to do it. Yeah. So I thought there was discussion madam chair about taking the week of the second the second one be the first not taking not doing one that week. So um which we did we did talk about that. Sure. Nobody would hate. It gives me more time to do stuff
because I'm not doing minutes or prepping and stuff. And I would just say as someone So that might we might not meet on the second. Yeah, we'll decide. I I'll send an email about the about the um we'll just get Sorry, anybody out there. I don't on the 18th and then
we'll we'll kind of figure We'll focus on the 18th and go from there. Thank you. May I have May I have a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. All in favor? Roll call. Roll call. Madam chair. Roll call. Deerra.
I. Mr. Smith. I. Mr. Rubenstein. Hi. Joanne. I. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.