Planning Board - Regular Meeting

[Music] Okay, Mr. Marshall, let's see. You have a quorum of the board. Mr. Mallaloy is with us tonight in the house. The attendees are coming on in. Amoris Media is here with us. You are the co-host of this meeting. I'll let you say what time it is. Um but I think we're good to go. All right. Thank you, Pam. You're welcome.

Welcome to the Ammeris Planning Board meeting of October 8th, 2025. My name is Doug Marshall and as chair of the Ammeris planning board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6:35 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available livereamed via Ammerst media. Minutes are being taken pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2023, and further extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2025. This planning board meeting will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town website's calendar listing for this meeting or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda where the Zoom link is listed at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event public access is disrupted for reasons of economic hardship or despite our best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings. As soon as possible after the meeting on the town's website, board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself. Answer affirmatively and return to mute. Bruce Cen,

I am here. Fred Hartwell, I am here. Jesse Major, present. I, Doug Marshall, I'm present. Angus Mloud, present.

Uh, we've been told that Johanna Newman will be absent this evening. and Jerus has informed us he will arrive uh later probably in about an hour from now. So we have five members present that is a quorum. Board members if technical issues arise and the discussion needs to pause it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment and I will call on you to speak. After speaking, rem remember to remmute yourself. To the general public, the general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the planning board chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking on the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star9 on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. Okay, that's the preamble. And uh first item on the agenda now at 6:39 is our minutes for approval. Pam, uh looks like you have sent around the minutes for May 7th of of uh this year for approval.

Correct. All right, board members, were were there any comments on the minutes? Okay, I'm not seeing any hands raised. So, in that case, I will solicit a motion to approve the minutes as drafted for May 7th. And Bruce, you got your hand up before Jesse.

Who moved? and they were colossally uh complete. I was amazing amount of work put into those minutes. We really need that much work, but they're certainly there. They're accurate. It's a long-winded as motion. All right. Thank you, Bruce and Jesse. I'll second that. All right. Thank you both. Any further discussion? All right, we'll go right into a roll call vote. Starting with you, Bruce. I'm an I. And Fred, I. Angus.

I. And Jesse. I.

Um, and I'm an I as well. So that's five in favor, two members absent. The motion passes. All right. Um, let's see. The time now is 6:40 and we'll go to the public comment period. And at this time, I generally read the names of the members of the public who are in attendance. And while I'm doing that, if there are any members of the public who would like to make a comment at this time about something that does not appear later on our agenda, this is the time to raise your hand. So I see eight eight attendees. They are Bella Delfino, Chris Skellyy, Carrington Massenill, Melena Ras Lavacus, that's probably mispronounced. My apologies. Patrick Mi Rafal Tas Tasco, Rua Kof Kofides, and Steve Bloom. So again, eight members. Uh at this point, I don't see any hands. I will linger for another few seconds to see if anybody wants to make a comment at this point. And that's I really ought to apologize to several of you that I probably misp pronounced your name. Okay. Uh I don't think there are any public comments tonight other uh at least on our general topic. All right, we'll go right into the public hearing. This this hearing was advertised for 6:35 p.m. and the time now is 6:42.

In accordance with the provisions of Mass General Law 48, this joint public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR 2026-1 and SP2026-1. Uh the applicant is Rua Kof Kofides and the address is 363 Main Street. Request site plan review approval under section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw for a mixeduse building to reduce to reduce the first floor commercial space to 650 square ft and construct a new four-bedroom residential unit and request a special permit to amend previous special permit ZBA 91-45 including conditions under section 9.22 of the zoning bylaw located in the BVC which is Village Center Business Zoning District on map 14B and parcel 60. Is there any board member disclosure? Not seeing anyone shake their head yes. Everybody shook their head no. All right. So Pam, why don't we bring uh the applicant into the panel? I know that uh I guess

there she goes. So Rua's coming over. I'm um Are there any other people representing them? I'm not sure. So when she gets here, I haven't seen her move yet. She remote to panelist.

Nade. Yeah. So, just quickly, Rua and anyone here, we um you're an an attendee now and then we'll ask you to be promoted to panelist and it um I just tried as well. You might get a little popup window asking. Do you want me to try it? Or we could just allow them to talk, Pam. I guess if that's not working. You You tried it, too, Nate. Oh, here come Rula is declining. Oh, there's a hand raised.

All right. So, there's a hand from Nick Kofides's phone. So, hello Nick or Rua? It's Rula Kofitis. Hi. Uh, my computer froze and I'm back on um on my cell phone. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Welcome. Hello. So, I missed part of it because my phone is going in and out. I don't know why. Um, and my computer is going in and out. Um, hello. Hello. And are there other people here to support you with your presentation? Yes. Patrick Mihin is there and Rafal Tusco as well. Okay, I'm gonna try to promote them.

Here's Patrick. Hey, good evening everyone. How we doing? It's uh Patrick man with Maroy Construction. Welcome Patrick. Thank you. And Rafal has joined us. He's still muted. Good afternoon everyone. Hello. Beth. And Rafael, are you uh part of the one of the contractors or I am the architect on the project. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you.

You're welcome. All right. So, um, do any of you have a presentation you wish to make to us this evening? Yes. Um, hi, good evening. My name is Rua Kofitis and we are looking to renovate the first floor of 363 Main Street into one four bedroomedroom dwelling unit with two baths and uh 32% of it to be commercial space rental in the front. There are already two three bedroomedroom units on the second floor.

Okay. Are there any do you want to present any of the graphic materials that were in the packet or any other graphic materials or not? Um what material with the site plan and everything uh the design plan has been emailed over to the planning board. Yeah. All that stuff. We often show that kind of thing at our public hearings. Yes. If you'd like I can I have it readily available. Well, I can I can please. Okay. Right. Let me please let me know once you once you see it.

We can see it. See, as Roa mentioned, all of the material was previously distributed to the board. Uh here in orange, we have the outline of the existing building. The outline of the uh the renovation does not include any exterior additions. So, we are staying within the footprint of the building. Um, on this site plan, we can see Main Street up above here and the existing parking spaces that were recently red delineated on this site plan and submitted for review. So, we have one parking space here and one, two, three, four parking spaces in the back. Ru, is there anything else you wanted to add to the site information? Nope. Nope.

Okay, let me Any questions about the site or should I go through the uh architectural drawings? Well, why don't you go through all of them and then we will ask our questions. Okay, bear with me for a second.

So, we have the existing condition drawings. Again, the first floor is currently all commercial space with a pizza restaurant out front and support spaces in the back. There's uh means of egress for the apartments up above being this staircase here, this staircase in the middle which is accessed through this door and this staircase over here going up to the apartment. Here's the footprint um or the plan of the two apartments on the second floor. One over here and one over here. And those are both three-bedroom apartments. Existing elevations front of the building facing uh Main Street. That's the side elevation facing the parking lot. the other side side elevation as well as the back elevation demolition plans. So we are basically uh almost guiding the entire first floor except for the staircases going up to the second floor. Second floor does not include any uh improvements or renovations. Again demolition elevations uh we are providing one new door in this location and filling in an existing door in this location here. Uh the front of the building remains as is with the existing uh door and existing openings as well as existing lights. We are removing and replacing some of the mechan mechanical equipment associated with the kitchen on the first floor. Um on the side elevation we are uh providing uh three new windows to the bedrooms on the first floor here as well as one more window in the back of the um uh in the back of the of the building. We are also replacing the three existing woodframed uh staircases leading to the existing uh to the existing doors and those would will be replaced in kind. Those are some details for the construction drawings. Here's the proposed floor plan. We're looking at the commercial space out front. The only

modifications to that space, we are opening it up. We're providing an ADA compliant restroom. Uh we're providing a second dedicated means of egress to the 650 ft commercial space over here as well as two utility closets for uh uh water meters, electrical meters and uh fire suppression system uh which will be also added to the entire building. Again, second floor, we're not uh we're not changing the layout of the second floor. Elevations, we are providing we are filling in one door in this location. We are providing new door in this location. What's not shown here is we will have a wall-mounted uh uh mini splits uh mini split systems in this location right here and right over here. So, this one is basically going to be replaced because we do have one right now. And there's going to be a new one in this nuke over here. Um, some of this information is no longer valid as this this project went through several phases. We uh were going to replace the front door, but this door is going to be the replace doors on this elevation here, as well as a uh lights to match the existing lights out front. New windows on the side elevation, new window in the back on the back elevation. And here's just a diagram showing the 650 foot commercial space out front as well as the four bedroomedroom new unit in the back with the two means of egress and two means of egress for the commercial space um on the first floor. Uh this is just for reference the second floor with the two units reflected ceiling plans code review drawings and then we do have uh uh MEP uh mechanical electrical plumbing and fire protection engineering drawings as well. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but basically we

have all the uh electrical demo on the first floor, new electrical, lighting, power. Uh second floor is just life safety and a fire alarm, fire protection, sprinkler system on the first and second floor. Plumbing demolition, new plumbing for the kitchen and uh uh uh restrooms on the first floor. no plumbing work on the second floor. And then u mechanical demolition and proposed mechanical um drawings. And here's the two wall mounted units as I mentioned previously. And that would conclude the drawings.

All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Is there anything uh you'd like to add? No. No. Thank you. All right. So, um, let's see. Do we have a site visit report? I think it might be Angus. Were you the only one that showed up at the site visit? And maybe Okay. Anything either of you want to say?

You want to go first, Nate? I mean, I I submitted something to the board. You know, I think at the site visit, we had asked about the gooseseneck lights on the front and they were confirmed to remain. There are small existing wallpack lights down mounted, you know, um downcast on the corners of the building, they're going to remain. There's ample space in the parking lot to access the spaces. So, on the site plan, it's kind of hard to see, but when you're there, you know, the number five parking space, you know, the car can maneuver in and out of it. Um, and then the the at the rear of the building, they're proposing maybe additional screening for the trash. It says here in green, that's really not necessary. It's already enclosed on, you know, two two sides by a by a fence. And so, uh, if you're looking to the right, you know, it's open, but you can't see that from anywhere. And it allows then easy access to the trash containers to be rolled out to the front. So, you know, it seemed like that this proposed trash and recycling screening is not necessary because it already is screened.

That's that's what All right. So, am I right? There's no change to the exterior lighting. The there's um on the new entryways above each entryway facing the alley, there's new gooseeneck lighting. Okay. To match something that was out front. So it was shown in one of the plans as um there was a cat sort of catalog cut. Yeah, there it was. Yeah. Okay. So there'd be the additional four along this elevation, right? All right. Um anything else on the site? Is it

We were curious about many splits, but but there the presentation just covered that. Okay. All right. Um I don't remember if I asked about it if there was any board disclosure. So I assume you did. I I did not. So is there any disclosure that anybody wants to make?

All right. All right. So we we're now ready for questions from the board. Um, and I although it's not a question, I'll just start and say um that I'm I'm glad to see all the drawings. It's it's a very clear presentation and I wish all of our applicants showed up with this level of of detail. Thank you. Thank you. Uh board members, questions, any questions at all? Bruce,

Doug, I agree with you. Very clear presentation and Rafalia went through a very large amount of drawings very quickly, which was good. Uh because you're right, these had been uh presented, but it was nice to have it uh brought brought brought to the public. Um my question is not really for the applicant. It's for Nate. Uh I was I'm sure there's a reason, but I couldn't help being a little confused when I looked at the uh uh applications where there's uh there is a a change to um a special permit issued by the the zoning board and and I don't understand why we are as a planning board um the per supervising a deliberations on the change to uh special permit issued by the zoning board. Am I am I misunderstanding something here? But that I just didn't I couldn't make head and tail of that particular first or second sentence in the initial application.

Sure. Yeah. So the there's two reasons uh you know it was a special permit in 1991. One is that it's a non-conforming building. So, you know, they needed a special permit to allow at the time a change of use and then a mixeduse building at the time was a special permit use. And so now as a mixeduse building is a site plan review use and so you know that's the guiding uh permit there. So, you know, the can act as a special permit granting authority in this instance to modify the

understood. That's that's yeah, I guess I could have guessed that but I didn't. Thank you. that but that helps anybody else who might be similarly confused. I don't have any further questions. It it's we I we did uh I should say I was on the uh historic district commission when we reviewed this from the point of view of looking at it so far as uh granting a certificate of appropriateness which which we have done. And so I've already had a a I've already I've already had some deliberation on this project and it's a it's it's it's a very light touch. This I mean the building is not what you would call a distinguished building at least I mean I'm thinking from the point of view of historic buildings and historic district commissions and so forth but it's in the district. Um and what's being done is uh uh having very little effect on the building. It's a essentially it's a change of use and almost everything's happening inside. So I think that's why I'm really don't have a lot to say from a planning board point of view here. I can't think of anything that I'm curious about that I'm not prepared to that I don't already have an answer and feel positively disposed.

All right. Thank you, Bruce. I guess I will ask is the exterior of the building being painted at all? Is the color changing or uh other than I mean I assume these doors will be white I guess or what can you tell us about the exterior appearance? Keeping it the same as it is as is now the same same color. All right. But it will be repainted or not? It will be repainted. Yes.

Okay. All right. Um, all right. Well, then why don't I just ask if the public wants to make any comments uh at this hearing? Um, this is a time for members of the public to weigh in with their thoughts about this project. And we have five members who have not been brought over into the panel. I don't see hands raised from any of them. So in a few seconds I will conclude there are no public comments. Um board members uh any further comments from the board? Uh, if not, we should probably go right into our findings and conditions, Nate, which I think I saw drafts of in the packet. Why don't we go ahead? I don't see any hands raised from the from the public, so we'll move on from public comment. And um maybe uh yeah, let's go back to allowing Nate to Nate or Pam to share their screen on

Sure. Yeah, I can share my screen in a minute. I will say in the development application report, there are just a few points to consider. One was um you know how the parking spaces would be numbered and assigned. you know is there anything happening on the exterior whether you know pavement markings um and then uh you know you is there any internal storage for bikes or scooters I think everything else has been um clarified you know one point I made and I mentioned at the site visit was there's a you know a concrete barrier in front on the sidewalk you know would the applicant or the town ever want to change that to something you know some other kind of ballarded Um, you know, there is a little bit of right ofway in front of the building. It might be something that we, you know, would encourage the town to do if we think that's if it's necessary. Uh, but, you know, the this building is directly or, you know, opposite Triangle Street on the downhill side and in the past it uh, it has been clipped by a car if it loses control coming down Triangle Street. So, you know, it's there now is really a a safety measure. I was just wasn't sure if there was a way to make it a little nicer looking, but

Okay. Um, so to the applicant, um, is there anything um, do you want to respond to any of the questions that Nate had about pavement markings? Are you going to be doing any pavement marking and how will you will will the parking spaces be assigned? the the parking spaces. Yes, they'll be they'll be marked um they'll be painted in in the back the parking spots. And I wasn't planning on assigning them because it's just one space per apartment. Uh depending on their size of the vehicle and what would work at the time depend, you know, we could figure out who would go where. Um, and

all right, thank you. Um, Nate, what was your second item? Was it Jersey barrier? The jersey barrier. And then, you know, like interior storage for bikes or Oh, the Jersey barrier. We're thinking maybe working with the B and asking them if maybe they could help, you know, put a planter there or putting like the like they have in front of Ammeris C ammeris coffee. All right. So, that is something that you were thinking the town would would take care of and that you'd work with them on that. Yes.

All right. Is Nate, do you think that that Jersey barrier is a town installation and property. It is. Yeah. Public works put it there. Um, you know, rule, I like the idea of the business improvement district to see if they would have something they could also use. Um, I I think it is necessary to have something there. And so, you know, I don't I wouldn't want it to be removed unless there was something that was, you know, capable of, you know, providing the same safety for the sidewalk and the building. Right. All right. Is that something we might want to put in as a condition? Uh, yeah. I mean, it might be in the right way, so it's hard to

Yeah. If it's a town property in the town right away, it's not something we should make as a condition on this private owner, right? Yeah. It's hard to say exactly where the property line is. It's um in that location. I I didn't it it wasn't clear on the survey where exactly you know that ended. Okay. They didn't you know they didn't show it for instance on the main street side but uh Bruce I see your hand.

Yes. Uh I I I um looked through and as usual I marked the uh the issues to consider in the development application report but uh I didn't see anything there that that seemed to not already be asked or answered. Uh the piece about uh is there sufficient internal storage for bites? I thought uh that's really not for us to answer because we know from previous projects that people frequently take uh renters frequently take their bikes inside particularly if they're valuable and even if there is storage outside it's not so much intended to be used. So it doesn't seem to be any storage outside and and and that people choose or do not choose to take bikes inside. They didn't think it is our business and I we have no idea whether there's internal storage because that is truly up to the person who decides to put a bike in their bedroom or not. Um, and about the uh property manager, I was wondering I I didn't know that we needed, but I will see whether my colleagues agree that when you've only got three units, a property manager is typically somebody who's um at the end of a phone. And I don't know that I would expect that we would have anything more than that. But um that's that's that was my take on the development report. uh other things have been answered and answered.

Okay, thank you Bruce. I will note that Jara has joined us I believe one minute ago at 7:06.

Um anyone else have any comments uh or questions about this proposal? All right, Jar, I'll just call you out. Um we're we're we're not finding much to talk about on this uh uh site plan review and special permit application. So uh there were no no public comments and there were very few comments from the board. Um in that case Nate would it make sense to show the the findings and follow that with the conditions? All right. Looks like a one-s sentence finding, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I agree. You know, the development application report had some questions or considerations and doesn't seem like there's a lot. So, there's a simple finding. Uh, there's, I don't know, a dozen conditions. I think the last one, the Ballard piece, you know, we can remove it. It was just an idea. I don't know if we have to make it a, you know, a shell, you know, um, everything else is, you know, follows along a development application report. So, we can go through those, but uh, often there's a bunch of sort of boilerplate conditions about construction.

Yeah. I mean, we have right here the substantial changes to the project. The product shall be built substantially in accordance with the plans. Um, yeah, I'm thinking of the conditions that often get into, you know, what hours they work. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me, this is a really small uh I mean, I I I, you know, compared to some other larger projects, you know, this is all internal work. And so I didn't, you know, we could add something about hours of work, but it seems like as part of the building permit, uh that's it's it's listed there.

Okay. Yeah. I've always thought all that stuff was kind of uh superfluous and that it could just show up in our, you know, our JAR bylaw or something. So I'm fine not having it. I'm just surprised not to see it. All right. Uh so we usually read through these and um you know, are you uh prepared to do that or do you think we don't need to?

Yeah, I just would say um you know, if the plans are revised um um just to have a you know, one of the sets showed that the gooseeneck lights on the front were going to be removed and then the plans today didn't. So if there's the final plan set just you know um we can make sure there's the correct date there

or have them mailed to you know emailed to staff. So, you know, we were saying that this, you know, site plan review along with the special permit modify the ZBA permit 1991-45 and that the new survey is, you know, now the new site plan for the property. And so that's, you know, so there's plans from 91 that'll be superseded. Uh the project will be built substantially in accordance with the plan submitted to the board and approved this evening. So there's the architectural plan set and then the survey. uh substantial changes would come back to the board for their review. And then we say the purpose of the submitt shall be for the board to determine or to approve the change or determine if the changes are dimminimous or significant enough to require modification of the site plan review. The permit expires within two years. Uh all work would be done within two years, 24 months. They could get an extension if necessary. Uh the use of the property number six shall be a mixeduse building in accordance with section 3.325 of the bylaw include three dwelling units one on the ground floor and two above and one non-residential space of 650 square ft representing 32% of the gross floor area. You know we delineate the bedroom sizes just to confirm that one fourbedroom two bath on the first floor and two threebedroom one bath on the second floor. Uh right now, you know, for this condition eight, there shall be no more than five cars parking on the property. All parking spaces shall be donated and numbered. So, we just want to make sure that that that'll be accurate. It sounds like they might not be numbered. Uh you know, at the site visit, Rulo said that they might take the site plan and then have that be part of the lease, too, and say, "Well, here's what the site plan showed. You know, you could you you'll be using space two or three. Maybe not number them on the exterior, whether it's signs or on the pavement." So, you know, this could be removed possibly.

Yeah, why don't we go ahead and remove that then?

Parking space number one shown along the alley shall be at least 18 inches from the entryways and delineated with pavement markings. I think that's important. So, there's, you know, a nook where there's going to be a new entry proposed and there's an existing entry in electrical meters and there is plenty of space for the parking, but it can't get so close to the building that it impedes access to the to the entries. Uh trash and recycling will be kept in the containers at the rear of the property. You know I have this here whether or not this is necessary. Container shall be returned to the storage area promptly after they are emptied by the waste hauler. So you know the containers will be brought all the way to the street and then the tenants have to then bring that bring them back. Um and so you know if we like this this statement can keep it or modify it. Um, all exterior lighting will be downcast and shielded and then the applicant shall install ballers in the front of the building along Main Street. And again, this could be, you know, softened or changed or removed. Um,

though number 10, I think I would change the word promptly to within 24 hours. All right. Just if I'm a tenant and I'm at work during the day when they take the trash, right? Yeah. I I think Yeah, promptly would mean what? A day, two days. What does promptly mean? Two hours. Well, something like you know. No, no, no. I think this is better to have like an actual Yeah.

Yeah. And nobody knows exactly when the waist hauler showed up. We know what day it was. So that you've really probably got 36 hours by the time it Anyway, um and then the last one, well, I see Bruce's hand. Go ahead, Bruce.

I was going to suggest that we say to the extent that uh the Jersey barrier intrudes uh upon the uh applicant's property, uh the applicant shall work with the town to install basable or or similar in in front of the building. In other words, we can fold in uh the fact that if if the unless the unless at least some part of the the uh the the concrete barrier is on the applicant's land, we can't obligate them to do anything about this. And the applicant has suggested that something other than bolards, which seems to be a an agreeable solution, planter box. So, um

two followed or another barrier or another similar barrier similarly protective or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that works for me.

So that language does not obligate them to do anything. No. Yeah. And it sounds like we're I mean, so the survey doesn't show anything about the barrier. Is that correct? Right. It shows that there's a you know, at one corner 12 and a half feet and then 13 feet on the other to the right of way. it doesn't show any sidewalk markings or where that actually is. So

I would change the applicant may to applicant shall. Um and then we can decide uh whether we want to qualify this about whether the the barrier is on the any of the barrier is on the the applicant's property or not. But you can say shall work with the town and to install bas I think may too soft. I think shall is better and uh I bet this does presume an outcome.

I'm going to call Fred. Do you have a comment about this particular condition? No, I have something about trash, but I'll wait until we get off. All right. All right. Uh uh well, does anybody else have a feeling about this? I'm I'm feeling like I'm I'm I'm disappointed that we don't know where this ballard or where the jersey barrier is and whether it's on p private property or public property. And so I'm having a hard time feeling like I can right on the curve

like I should uh you know obligate the owner to do anything if it's not on their property. Jesse, yeah, I was going to say the same thing. This is it's pretty close. Sorry, Nick. What did you say? Yes. Hi. I wanted to say it's below the curb. Um, so I think it's uh town property. So, you're saying it's on the pavement of the roadway? Yes. It's not on the sidewalk. It's on the pavement on the roadway. Then Oh, is it on the Oh, on the sidewalk. Oh, it is on the sidewalk. I'm sorry.

It's It's like right by the Right. Right near the curb. Okay. So, side on the sidewalk. Uh by the curb. Right. Right near the curb. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I I think 12 is right. It's a you know, we could call it a It's not, you know, a obligatory condition, but I think, you know, the applicants mentioned an intention and we could continue to work with them to see if it's possible. I don't If we want to say shall here, we could we could change May to shell. I don't it's up to the board.

Yeah, I mean shall I mean they that that obligates them to work with the town but not necessarily to result in anything. Yeah. All right. Well, if I can finish my sentence. I agree with what you said before, Doug. If we're not sure they're responsible for it, I don't know why we put it in this document. Yeah.

Does it Are there any board members who particularly want it on in our conditions? Uh well uh I I I if if if it's on their property, then it should be a real condition that uses the verb shall. And if it's not on their property, uh then item 12 is uh can go away. And so I would phrase item 12 such that it is mandatory if and only if the jersey barrier is on uh their property. Is that a way to

so so are we then obligating another survey, you know, get a surveyor back out there and determine exactly where the property line is? Well, I would I I would think it would be simpler than that, but Okay. Yeah. I mean, we know we know the distances. So, um I mean, you mentioned like 12 feet from the was it from the face of the building or

So, here's the survey. And so, you know, it's 12.8T 8 ft here and 13 and 12 ft, you know, on this side. But what what the survey doesn't show is, you know, where is the right, you know, is the where's the curb line? And so, well, what where's the 12 and 1/2 ft measured from the face of the building? Right. So, it would be easy enough to get out there with a tape measure. it would be and see if it touched the barrier or not.

Right? So, what happens is, you know, on the street it does something like this and then it curves in for parking in front and the jersey barrier, you know, is is like here and it maybe that when the town created parking in front uh that this curb is actually on private property for, you know, in front of this building.

Okay. Well, let's see. Fred, I'm gonna assume you're still waiting to talk about trash. So, Angus, do you have anything to talk about this?

Yeah, I mean, I I think um it this doesn't seem like the most important thing for us to be focusing on on this on this property. I think that um the owner has expressed an interest in working with the business improvement district and it's not going to happen without town or business improvement district involvement and now it's on the town planning department's radar. So I think this is something that you know we could work on down the road but it doesn't seem um necessary to attach as a condition for this property.

Okay. So that's at least three three people who have expressed a desire to just remove the condition. Anybody Anybody object to removing it? Going once. Going twice. All right, Nate. Look, sounds like we'll take it away. All right. Uh Brad, you had a comment uh on another topic.

Yeah. On trash. Um uh most of the trash hauling services I think offer something I know uh my trash hauler, which I think may be the same one that they use, offers driveway service for a little more money, which I always subscribe to. and they back a a or position a trash truck near it. And then they uh their employees go out and up the driveway and uh roll the uh uh trash bins out to the uh truck, dump it, and then return the uh trash bins to the uh uh point of origination. And uh this is not uh an ownorous charge and I think it's practical and it might be a way to approach this.

All right, that's a good suggestion. Um yeah, so the sorry the condition doesn't say who would return them, right? I think in the management plan they said the tenants, but it could be anyone at this point, right? The language wouldn't need to change if they decided to do that. Uh, Rua, I saw your hand for a moment. Yes. Yes. Um, I had asked Republic Services about that. They told me that they do not uh go that their drivers do not go out to get the trash. Okay. And have you had good luck with your tenants returning the the uh toers to to their storage location? Yes.

Okay. Is that uh a condition of your lease? Yes, it's in the lease. Yes. Okay, great. All right. Um Fred, you all right with that? The way it stands? Uh yeah, I I'm I'm not going to press it. Okay. All right. Um any further comments from the board? So, we've gone through findings. We've gone through the conditions, Nate. Are there another set? Yeah, I was going to say, aren't there earlier conditions we need to be changing?

Uh, I think so. There's a set of findings conditions for the site plan review and then findings for the special permit. So, I was going to just get those Okay. visible as well. I'm not sure why um We saw the other one for a moment there. Oh, you did. Okay. Yeah, I guess I'm Yeah, I have too many windows open. I I didn't see it. Um, yeah, you had it. There it is. There it is. There it is.

All right. So, the findings. So, this is the special permit. Um, as Bruce asked, you know, why is it a special permit? And is you're right, it is because there is an existing permit and it's a non-conforming building and previously was permitted. The mixeduse building was permitted by a special permit. So the finding would be that the project complies with the relevant criteria of of 3.325 and 9.22 and is amendment to the ZBA special permit 199145 to modify a non-conforming structure to continue to be used as a mixeduse building. Um there's we know the these kind of boilerplate conditions up front just so it's here too as well built substantially in accordance with the plans and any any changes would come back to the board. And then condition three is the following conditions of the 1991 permit would be amended as follows. Uh and there's nine conditions to this permit. So condition one is unchanged. There shall be no or there shall be one commercial use only on the first floor. Condition two has been modified. So the number of cars parked in the rear of the parking lot shall be limited to four and one parking space shall be located next to the building in the alley which shall not block vehicular access to the rear parking area or block the entries into the building. So before this had you know there was a different site plan. So this had different numbers uh parked in the rear of the building. Condition three, there shall be five parking spaces numbered and assigned to residents. So there used to be eight spaces. So now it says five and it's been cleaned up the condition. Condition four, remove it in its entirety.

Nate, if I may interrupt, this is now inconsistent. Condition three, uh the assigned to residence was deleted from the uh conditions uh in the last uh or I think we we simply said that the spaces had to be delineated. I think we had also Yeah, we didn't ask that they be numbered and assigned. I think this is saying it's assigned to residents. It's not being numbered, you know, physically as with a sign or marking. Oh, I Okay, understood. You know, and if we think it's somewhat confusing, we could modify that. Condition four state. Um Nate, I'm sorry. Um

the number I'm a little bit confused why we're limiting the number of cars to four when there are five parking spaces. uh four in the rear of the of the lot and then one along the um next to the building for a total of five. So condition two, does it control the number of parking spaces in the rear of the building or the number of cars that are parked in the rear of the building? Uh we could um uh parking spaces, right?

So I Yeah, I think that would be clearer. Yeah.

Okay. That now I'm now I'm I'm good.

All right. Uh condition four is removing. So it's at the number of Space nine on the previous plan is a long-term residential commercial space. Condition five, a copy of the rental agreement for residential tenants indicating that five cars may be parked. She'll be on file with the planning department. So we we'd asked typically we used to ask for um some agreements. We could remove it or keep this. We we we asked for a copy as part of this application of the rental agreement condition six to remove it um saying that they'd have an agreement next door with which was Fenton's to allow the shared driveway. So that's something usually between private properties and it's been allowed for a number of years. Uh number seven, there's no change, so no trucks in the parking area with the exception of the trash hauler. remove condition eight that the upper story windows on the west side be translucent and remove number nine that the seconds story apartment shall be built according to the plans um approved in 1991. So that's now changed.

So for condition seven if if they have a tenant who drives a Ford Maverick little pickup truck, are they allowed to park here or not? It's a good question. Would is that just a passenger vehicle? You know, I guess we don't truck. Yeah, I mean, you know, everybody has pickup trucks these days. And um so we could we could I assume you mean, you know, a a truck that's larger than I don't know 12,000 gross vehicle weight or something like that. I

mean, we could say no. I think when this was written, it was knowing that there would be a restaurant here. So, I think they were probably implying like commercial trucks. I'm not sure it's even necessary. Um, you know, we could Is there is there a life safety uh potential risk if there's a truck parked and the fire department can't get past or something?

I think that was probably the genesis of it. Um, you know, so here's space one and then there's still space to pass by the building and get a fire truck, you know, at least into this area if needed. I think the concern at one point was cars used to park over here back in the 90s uh against this building and so I think the worry was that if you had bigger vehicles parking there there would be you know access would be impeded to get back here. Well, why don't we just say that the 9- foot wide rightofway to the to from the front to the back of the property shall be maintained in a clear, you know, unobstructed condition or something,

right? So, we don't care whatever's who's what kind of vehicle it is that's in the way. Yeah. Fred and then Angus. Yeah, condition three I think can be simply deleted now. Um or yeah because condition two covers it I think.

Nate is that condition changing or is that new? It was changing. So I could add what the you know we could just say you know this is essentially the condition three on the previous permit I could go look at it it had something about the total number of parking spaces on the property you know whereas condition two describe them a little bit condition three then kind of just summarized it was redundant in the first permit so I was just keeping the same structure but we could just say remove condition and change yeah or remove condition y okay Yeah. And then I'm sorry. Go ahead, Nate.

Oh, I thought President Hans still up. I don't know Fred if you saw other comments. Uh on condition two, I think for clarity on the second line, I would say one additional space.

All right. And then you can say these uh maybe with a separate sense these spaces shall not block vehicular act or this spa. Oh yeah. The the space on the side of the building shall not block vehicular access. Right. If I can interrupt, you could simply make that either by saying which shall not.

Oh, yeah. Just a continuation of the previous sentence, Bruce, you mean? Yes. You save yourself a whole bunch of words. Yeah. Yep, there we go. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce and Fred. Uh, Fred, do you have anything else? No, I'm good. All right, I'm just going back to number seven. Sorry, I was going to say just remove condition. Okay, I kind of covered it in number three. Yeah. All right, Angus. Oops.

That's what I was gonna say. Okay. All right. All right. Um, so that's the special permit findings and conditions. And I I assume Nate, you'll go ahead and put in the original language on these remove condition. Yes. Yep. Yeah. So these like for this one four this you know is the original condition. Yeah. I'll just put it in here. I just highlight it. Right. And here I'll just

Nate for clarity would it be better to say remove original condition or prior condition? Well, it above it says here, sorry. Um, the following conditions of the permited. Never mind. All right, Bruce. Um, I was going to move uh approval.

All right. So we would have the finding we had we have the two we have the site plan um and we have the special permit. We need to approve the findings. We need to approve the conditions and we need to close the public public hearing. The joint public hearing the joint public hearing. Um so moved. All right. Mangus

second. All right. Any further comments. All right. All right. We'll go ahead and vote. Uh this time starting with Jara. Could we given my late uh arrival, could we perhaps vote in the other direction? Oh, sure. Thank you. We Yeah, we'll start with Bruce. I'm an I. Thank you. Fred I Angus I Jesse I Jarrett

I and I'm an I as well. That's six in favor, one absent. The motion carries. The hearing is closed. The two permits are uh approved. So, Rua and company, uh, thank you very much. Thank you very much, guys. Good good luck with your project. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye. Good night. Good night.

Good night. Okay, time is 7:37 and our next item on the agenda is a public meeting concerning the East Ammerst Local Historic District proposal. Review and discuss the preliminary study report for a possible East Ammerst local historic district. And um Nate, do we have anybody from the local historic district other than Bruce to present this?

Yeah, there's if you want to raise your hand. I I know there's probably a few people in the audience and I would introduce my colleague Walker Powell. She's a planner with the town and she, you know, has been she works with historical commission and local historic district commission among other things. I'll just say quickly that, you know, this is just a public meeting. there's no requirement for a public hearing to review the preliminary study report. And so, you know, at tonight's meeting and if after the planning board members have questions, you can send them to staff, myself and Walker. And so, really the idea would be, you know, if the planning board has something um there's a chance for a final report that would be submitted to the Massachusetts Historical Commission if this moves forward. And so, any you know, uh any like changes or, you know, concerns or something that would be addressed in the in the final report. And so this is really a chance for the planning board to ask questions or provide comments. And so, you know, the plinary s report has been submitted to the Massachusetts Historical Commission and then now it's being reviewed by the planning board. And so, uh, like I said, there's there can be followup if we need it.

Okay. And um, do any of our guests want to make an initial presentation? Chris Skellyy has a presentation that he was going to give. He is the consultant we've been working with um to come up with the inventory forms and the study report. Um so he has the most information of all of us. But before he does could certainly Steve go ahead. Yes. So I'm the vice chair and before Chris does his uh PowerPoint presentation I just wanted to give a little preamble. Have you guys received the study report and have you

we had we had a link to it in our packet and so we were able to open it and look at it online.

Okay. Okay. Then I won't bore you with what with the introduction. I just wanted to say that this is not a mission creep uh for the LHDC. Uh this was done at the suggestion of town manager Paul Bachelman because this is the oldest area of Amherst and I just wanted to before Chris goes on to just say this is we're not nimbies. None of the people on the on our commission live in this area. And um you know so we're not doing that. And um when when we uh when Chris does his report, there's one structure that is our poster child for how LHD should work. And I'll rejoin the conversation at at that time. And so with that, um I'll let Chris take the floor, please.

Okay. Thank you very much. Go ahead, Chris. All right. Thank you very much. I'm gonna try to share screen here. We can see your screen. Excellent. Right. And you you could enlarge that I suspect if you wanted to go to the slideshow setting. I am in There you go. Perfect.

Okay. Okay. All right. I'm not I'm not sure what the delay was then. Okay. All right. Uh so, uh happy to be here. Uh happy to present this district to all of you on the planning board. And uh just to follow up on what Nate said, uh yeah, in terms of this process, uh it isn't a public hearing process with the planning board. As Nate said, uh this is a process of the state law, which is not Mass General 40A, which you work with. This is Mass General Law, chapter 40C. the local historic districts act. And that law says that this preliminary study report has to be sent to the Massachusetts Historical Commission and it has to be sent to the local planning board. Uh so uh yeah, it's uh it's your chance to uh make some recommendations if if you would like. Um uh it's the similar to the way that the Massachusetts Historical Commission uh handles their reviews. They're uh the Massachusetts Historical Commission does not have the ability to require any changes to the study report. Uh it's just a matter of a process of of uh seeking seeking seeking their seeking their input. So, I'm just going to talk a little bit about the Ammerst East Ammerst uh local historic district and a little background on what local historic districts are. So, East uh East Ammerst is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. So, right now it's already a national registered district, also known as a historic district. Uh so it is a historic district currently but importantly it's not a local historic district and uh national registered districts are primarily an honorary designation.

The local historic districts the ones that are created through local government are established uh through through your local elected officials and these kinds of historic these kinds of historic districts unlike the national registered districts are very effective at protecting historic resources. So the typical projects that get reviewed in a local historic district uh established through city city town ordinance uh alterations to buildings, alterations to structures, demolitions, additions, new buildings, new structures, all those kinds of things are typically reviewed in a local historic district. All depends a little bit on how the ordinance is written, but that's basically the kinds of things that get reviewed in the in the in a local historic district. Importantly, it is only what's visible from the public way. That's it. You're only reviewing things that are from the from the public that you can see from the public way. There's already two local historic districts in Ammerst, the Dickinson local historic district and then the North Prospect Lincoln Sunset local historic district. So, other areas of Ammerst such as East Ammerst uh have very very little protection from alterations, demolitions, and incompatible development. Uh the town has a demolition delay ordinance, but uh uh these properties outside of these districts are really not well protected at all. This is the property that Steve had uh mentioned here. Uh so I had as I understand it this uh a building within the North Pros Lincoln Sunset local historic district uh had reached a point where saving the building just wasn't feasible any longer by having a local historic district in place here. The new construction uh met the expectations of the neighborhood uh because it had a review through the local historic district commission. Um,

but without that local historic district in place on Mlullen Street, uh, the replacement could have been a real substantial concern for the for the whole neighborhood. Okay, Chris. Yeah, looks like Steve wants

Yeah, I just wanted to interject here. Um, this property came before the local historic district uh, in October of of 2024. There was no objections because it was appropriate in scale and design to the rest of the neighborhood. and it was immediately at that meeting given a certificate of appropriateness. Within six months, the building was up and now it is a student rental. Uh yet less, you know, a year later. So the point is that an LHD does not impede development. Um and it doesn't impede student rentals. So that that was the point that I wanted to make. Um and this is our poster child. This is the way it's supposed to work. Okay, Chris, back to you. All right.

Thanks. Thanks, Steve.

All right. So, East Ammerst is under consideration for one of these local historic districts and fittingly so because it contains many early intact properties uh that really tell the early history of Ammerst as a whole uh and its growth and development over time. My role as the consultant uh on this project was to do a lot of the updating the research on properties within the district. So uh basically the research that was done on these properties in the area uh in the past uh was done in the 1980s. So well over 40 years old now. uh well well out of date. Uh lots of times uh information is missing as you can see as you can see right here uh second page about arch architectural significance or historical significance this form here on this property done in 1982 uh that information is completely missing entirely. So uh other pro other examples of this where it's just very minimal minimal description of uh the historical narrative uh and a little may little or no description of the architectural significance as well. So my role was to try to update a lot of the information background information here. Uh so to come up with uh updates of these forms uh where you're putting in uh a better up-to-date photograph uh better map uh better information uh in terms of um historic names and dates of construction, things like that. And then really fill in some of those gaps uh in terms of the architectural descriptions and the historical narratives. Uh, and then when I could where it made sense, I added in some extra photos as well. So to get maybe to get some extra

extra oblique uh, images or close-ups or something like that for the properties. So I did this by going through uh the deeds as much as I could. Um, so wherever it was manageable to research the deeds, I would do that. And, uh, deeds can be pretty amazing to to look through and see that record of ownership. Uh, really interesting in terms of some of the descriptions of the properties that you see. Uh, some of the talk about, uh, the water access and the springs that were there, how they were how they were accessing drinking water. Uh definitely lots of descriptions about not only uh uh property lines that uh reference a tree. Um there was one property line that referenced a dead tree. So a stump. So pretty pretty interesting to read all these things. Uh can be some of these I was able to go right back uh into the 1840s. Sometimes the deeds get so complicated with different subdivisions and lots of other things taking place. I couldn't go back that far, but it went back as far as as far as was reasonable uh reasonably possible to do it. Um

Chris, I see Fred's hand up. Fred Fred's got Fred's got a question. Okay, Fred, you're still muted.

I'm Yeah, there it goes. Um I have a question about how you made the determination how far west to extend this up main street. Um I'm thinking of uh Tulio Engles's architect studio which was uh an old church. Um and then across the street from that on the corner of North Whitney Street was the doicile of Simon W. Whitney uh who laid out the first part of that street uh which if you go up a little ways that's where I live but I've done a lot of the research of on on all the deeds in that area and uh in terms of uh age and uh some significance u I'm just I I'm thinking that Um, I'm wondering if you went far enough west.

Okay. Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Um, I wonder if we could just take that one at the end. Uh, just because it's a general general question about the boundary. So, if I if if if uh we'll I think we'll have some time at the end to answer those questions. Okay. All right. Chris uh Steve raised his hand. Steve, did you want to say something or No. Okay, never mind. Go ahead, Chris. All right, let's try to let you finish your presentation and then we'll take questions. Yeah, that sounds good.

All right. Um, besides deeds, uh, which are great, uh, but they don't really give you a whole lot of information, uh, in terms of the interesting aspects of the property. They they they trace the ownership, of course, uh, but they don't necessarily trace some of the more interesting aspects of who lived there and what kind of occupations did they have, what kind of lives did they live. uh instead of the owner you can it's often more interesting to think about all the other people that lived in the house too. Uh so one of the ways uh one of the other sources of information of uh documentary research that we use are these old atlases from the 1800s. So there's one from 1863 for 1860 I think for Ammerst and it's then it's 1873. uh and uh that can really help uh uh with some of the footprints, dates and ownership and also some of the uses that were taking place there. So you might see some of the occupations, businesses and things that are on these that are on these maps. And then uh there's these things called directories which are really interesting. Uh kind of I kind of like to think of these as a telephone book before there even were telephone books. Telephones uh it's basically a listing of the residents of Ammerst where they lived and what their occupations were. It never really has street addresses and numbers and things like that because early on they didn't really have that. Um this early one, this directory right here is actually from 1869. Uh, and so it has um an alphabetical list of residents in Ammerst uh and usually their occupations and sometimes it'll give you a sense of where they are at least at least the street anyway um for their for their location. So that's great for getting a lot of the occupations there. Uh they

also use things like census records uh and uh all kinds of other all kinds of other documentary sources to get learn more about the people that lived in these houses. U this one was interesting right here uh just with the the property on Main Street. um learning about this property that it was almost demolished

and it's such an iconic property on Main Street now. Uh but uh yeah, almost demolished. It was in really poor condition and uh only because in the 1980s somebody came forward and uh decided to restore that building. Uh so professional office space now uh but nearly lost. Uh the school building uh was really interesting. That's on Southeast Street. Um um see the ch this photo of uh the children here in front of the school, the East Street School was known which it was known at the time in 1928. Uh wonderful uh lots of records available at the Jones Library in the archives there. So that's where this photo came from. And I would say that the East Ammer section of Ammerst is notably significant for its intact collection of buildings and landscapes that convey the early history and development of Ammerst. Um the the buildings and landscapes found in East Ammerst reflect that commerce, occupations, industries, and institutions that took place during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Um and so that's why this was this area was put on the national register back in 1986. Uh several houses in East Ammerst actually date from the early Ammerst settlement. Uh they include uh the Noah Dickinson house at 743 Main Street and the Daniel Kellogg House at 76 Northeast Street. And uh the the uh Noah Dickson house dates from 1754 and the Daniel Kellogg House from 1758. and just remarkably intact properties there. This certainly an interesting one as

well. Uh the Bags Tavern at 6 Southeast Southeast Street also dating from this period. Uh it was operated as a tavern by John Bags during the first half of the 1800s. And then in 1925, a restoration effort was t undertaken to return the building to its tavern appearance. Uh in in early, you know, over a hundred years ago, this uh there was a museum and an antique shop that was that was in this building. Uh changed again and became housing. Uh and then uh unfortunately in the 1970s, a horrible fire caused extensive damage to this building. And uh like the other building that I just showed you on Main Street, uh this building was vacant. Uh very very poor condition, open to the weather, and was likely likely going to be demolished. Demolition seemed like the most likely outcome. Um but a new owner came forward, uh purchased the property, and uh chose to restore the building. And uh I like this uh I love this uh newspaper article that I found in the uh collection at Jones Library Archives is that there they are ex there's the new owner accepting a preservation award from the Amoris Historical Commission. This one right here is the uh Ebenezer Matune House at 58 Southeast Street and dates from 1782. And the building was constructed by Ebenezer Matun following his extensive uh experience in the revolutionary war. Uh from its earliest European settlement to the mid- 19th century, East Ammerst was really the institutional and residential hub of Ammerst. Um the primary early occupation was farming

with crops including hay and green grain and apples. Uh and at the center of the community was a second congregational church. So you can think of uh East Ammerst is really where the center of of activity was in Ammerst. And it wasn't until later uh that the that the downtown Ammerst really developed uh further further west. By 1783, the Congregational Church was constructed here in East Ammerst. Uh however that building got de uh dismantled and a new larger second congregational church was completed in 1839 to accommodate the many new arrivals to the village. And the building at 742 Main Street, now the Jewish community uh of Ammerst uh certainly remains a prominent focal point at the center of the East Ammerst Village uh with it with its prominent spire. Many homes in East Ammerst were constructed during the middle of the 1800s uh and really and really have this this style right here. So the area grew in prosperity uh especially during that time and these examples of Greek revival architecture really demonstrate that that level of of development that was take all taking place around the the mid 1800s. One of the interesting things about East Ammerst to me is seeing the distinctions between the homes in Ammerst. So these properties on Main Street tell two very different stories. Uh on the left, it's a story of wealth uh and uh the the the the funds that were necessary to construct this dwelling. And then on the right uh you see the workers housing. Uh so very very very clearly demonstrating the workers housing here uh for the many people that were employed in manufacturing and the

trades in East Ammerst. Uh so there's a big straw hat manufacturing area. So um this is one of the places that the workers that the workers were residing in getting to know East Ammerst uh has a particularly impressive collection of brick homes uh dating from the early 1800s u and mid 1800s uh some with some of the examples shown here uh really excellent uh intact examples. Uh we can definitely say find buildings in East Hammers that have been altered over the decades. Um some have been covered in asbestous siding or vinyl siding. Some of porches that have been enclosed at that former school. Uh you can see that front entrance there altered by enclosing the recessed entryway. uh removing the stairs that were there at one time. Yet, even with these alterations, uh I think these buildings really tell a really important story about East Ammerst and that growth and development for the town, for the town as a whole. So, I am happy to take some questions or Steve could answer some questions as well, but happy to hear what you you'd like to like to offer.

All right. Thank you, Chris. Uh, Steve, go ahead.

Yes, in answer to the question about the boundaries, we tried to stick to the national registry district as closely as we could. Um, actually staff at the planning department requested us to enlarge the district and we did include three houses on Salem. Uh, and actually Nate would actually would like us to include more on Spalding and more on Salem. Uh but like I said in terms of trying to defend the LHD, we tried to like the Dick the Dickinson district is the National Registry District. So we tried to stick as closely as we could to the National Registry District in terms of like you know we looked at houses on Spalding and on Salem and and on Whitney. Those are all, you know, worthy of LHDs, but our feeling is that they could form their, you know, in the future form their own study committees and create, you know, an additional LHD if if that, you know, comes to pass. The real thing is, you know, if you look at these buildings like, you know, the the bags tavern right now, if somebody wants to demolish it, the historical commission can delay it for a year, but then there's nothing to stop it from being demolished. and this would stop that. In addition, I just wanted to point out that this is the gateway to our new elementary school. So, I think it behooves us, you know, to keep that in consideration as well. And again, this is not about impeding development. It's basically about preserving our town's unique legacy.

Okay. Thank you, Steve. Jesse. Uh, thanks Chris and Steve for the presentation. One comment, one question. Comment is also about the link that you provided us to the web-based version of this that had a map where we could click on the homes and whoever made that. It's really fun and I really enjoyed it. Walker Walker made that. Oh, it's great. Is there one for the other districts in town? I'd love to see those also. That's a sign. Not yet, but I can I can get on that. Yeah, I mean I I really think it's fantastic and they should be spread around. It's really fun way to see the town. Um

my question is about I guess an LH the interaction of LHD and then a potential overlay zone and I'm not sure who here will know this answer but how does that work? So if if we for example have an overlay plan for overlapping part of a LHD, does then every project including what's allowed in the overlay then also go to the LHD or to the commission for appropriateness? Um maybe someone just tell me about how that works. So Jesse, any any project in the LHD would be subject to their review and regardless of how the zoning changes over time. Okay.

It just is quickly to jump in. So a local historic district isn't zoning.

You know, it's a regulatory uh bylaw as part of the town's general bylaws. So it's not zoning. So, you know, it's really about the appearance and aesthetic of the built environment where, you know, zoning is a land use. It gets into some other things as well, but in East Ammeris for instance, if this were in place and we had an overlay, then you know, right, any any regulations in place, whether it's local historic district, conservation commission, zoning, you know, they're all, you know, layers that are part of a permit process on a property. So, you know, um, if that were the case, you know, I'd say if there was say a site plan review and there's a local historic district, you know, typically a staff will work with an applicant to try to have something be, you know, either sequential in permitting or, you know, simultaneous. So, you know, we just saw 363 Main Street, that's in a local historic district. So, that went first to the local historic district a while ago. Um, you know, there weren't too many exterior changes or a few. Then it came to the planning board and so you know we the applicant knew what the permit process was but you know that's an example of something that went through local historic district and then it came to the planning board.

Great. Thank you. But so Nate, I I could imagine a a situation where say the planning board uh and the and the council approved a zoning change, say for allowing much bigger buildings in a local historic district. and at which point you would have uh zoning allowing buildings that probably would be considered incompatible with the uh scale of the buildings in the local historic district. Is that uh you know would you have a situation where the two sides were in conflict?

Thank you for asking my actual question, Doug. Yeah, I mean I think there there could be um you know so some of it is you know zoning will give you a minimum or a maximum of what's allowed. It doesn't necessarily say what's appropriate, right? So that's what a local historic district would do. So in you know if we say that you can have a 50% lot coverage or building coverage and a 90% lot coverage. Well, according to zoning, you could have 90% of your lot be covered in building and pavement and you could have 50% of it be a big building. um and is that really the the you know the best development approach and so I think the two can work together you know there's a product on 180 fearing the corner of sunset and fearing where there's 17 units it came before the local historic district over you know I think it's six different buildings with three to four units maybe two to four units in each building so it's kind of duplex a townhouse style uh and went to the zoning board in the local historic district I think it worked really well the local historic district you know when it was first proposed they had bigger buildings, uh, taller, more massive, and they said, "Well, you know, could you break down the mass a little bit, change the facades, have a little bit of more articulation facing the street, um, you know, it's only what's visible from the public way." And so, it's something that the applicant, you know, did. And I think it, you know, a lot of people say it's a nice project as well. Uh and so yeah, I think it's a balance of, you know, if if we think East Ammeris is is a resource for um both, you know, current economic development and as a historic resource, you know, we should be considerative of okay, what what do we want the zoning to be here? You know, are we going to really say six stories or are we going to say three with maybe a fourth under the roof or maybe a fourth at step back or behind? And so I think that they can work together. I think it's, you know, sometimes it takes a little bit more forethought and, you know, discussions with an applicant and the permitting boards to get there, but I don't necessarily see them as incompatible. I think sometimes they can have kind of

maybe different goals and then you just have to work to get there.

All right. Thank you. All right. So, we've got four more hands here. It looks like we've got lots of interest in this topic. Um, Fred, go ahead. Uh well, I'm looking at the uh buildings that are on the screen right now and uh I'm thinking about uh the five of this seven uh southerntherly buildings on North Whitney Street uh easily match up. They're not brricked, but other than not being brick, they they match up with what's on the screen here. And uh having lived in this area for now uh 54 years, uh I've had occasion to do an extensive amount of research, which I'm happy to share. But anyway, I uh yeah, I uh I I I think we may be missing something by uh stopping the that district or else uh maybe we need to look at an an additional district.

All right. Thank you, Fred Angus.

Yeah, I this is wonderful work. I mean, it's it's incredibly beautifully presented. Um, it's clear that the commission has really thought hard about this and thought about how to preserve a lot of these um buildings with care and love. Um, I guess I have a couple of things that I want to uh share and then maybe one or two questions. Um, one thing that I'll just note as we're talking about, you know, zoning and how this would kind of overlay, um, I it's not a zoning overlay, but how it this, uh, historic district would interface with the zoning. I mean, the the region that we're talking about here has like five different zoning designations. So, it's a a business village center, it's a residential village center, it's general residential, it's neighborhood residential. So, um, one thing that I'm just thinking about is we I don't know if we have a full sense of what we as a planning board want to do with a this major intersection of of, uh, roads in our town. And it seems like we're trying to do a number of different things at the same time. Um, that's not necessarily directly related to this historic district question. That's a zoning question, but I think there maybe is some relationship in terms of what are we wanting to do with this particular part of our town. Um uh the question that I have um based on the map there are two it seems like within the historic district there are at least two apartment complexes that are included. Um they are not listed in the um wonderful um you know guide with with individual properties but it's it's labeled as East Amoris Village on on Google Maps. And then there's a uh another property with about six um it looks like maybe six connected buildings right below that. Um these are both off of Northeast Street. And I guess I'm just wondering why is

this historic district including those properties which at least based on on my looking at them don't seem to have a whole lot of historic value. I understand the buildings on either side of them do. All right. Um let's see. I can I can work on that, but Steve has a hand up as well. I don't know if you wanted to.

We can both We can both answer that. Every historic local historic district has Chris is going to kill me for my terminology, but it's they're known as non-conforming properties or intrusions, you know, whether it's a national district or local one. And you know, there's an exceptions for every um local historic district has intrusions and non-conforming properties. It's a matter of continuity in terms of um uh the boundaries. You know, we'd love, you know, we were very cognizant that there's a lot of push back against um local historic districts as being elitist, which is why I, you know, we've been very, you know, tried to keep it restricted to the National Registry District. Again, I have to emphasize this was done not, you know, this is no mission creep. This is not us trying to expand our powers. This was something that was uh suggested to us by the town manager. And like I said, none of us live in this district. This is the oldest part of our town. And in terms of zoning, this is there. We have ADU by right now, so the local historic district isn't going to get in the way of that. But um uh so anyway, I hope that answers some of the your questions. Chris, if you want to Chris Chris was with the Massachusetts Historical Commission and he knows he's the expert on this and he can answer a lot better than me.

Chris, you want to add to that?

Yeah. Uh, yes. So, your your question about the the properties that were far more recent properties uh that they certainly don't Yeah. It's not so much I know that there there are several houses on there that are built in the 1950s that are are great examples of ranch style homes. It's not so much about those is that there are two apartment complexes that are um one of them is on the edge of the historic district on the north side and includes it looks like six different buildings and then the other one is it looks like three properties below that. So it's parcel 58 and 24 on the map. Um, both of those I I guess I'm just wondering it see doesn't seem like it would be that hard to cut them out of the historic district and they don't seem to be off they don't seem to be I mean they are non-compliant but in addition they those are major sources of housing I would think.

Yeah. Uh so so I I couldn't go I couldn't go to a local historic district anywhere in the state and not see properties that are more recent that aren't going to have the level of significance of the earlier properties. So that's going to be true of Salem, Boston, uh any any place. So, uh it's it's very common that there's going to be more recent recent properties included within a local historic district. There's nothing in the historic district that uh bylaw that's going to require that to be any more historic in the future. So, the way it is right now is the way that it can remain. Uh the one of the benefits is that you still with a local historic district have that chance to do design review over what might be what might be go up in its place in the future. So uh it's it's the same reason why I might say uh a vacant lot. Uh I think we could we there's some vacant there's some vacant property within this district as well. And the benefit of including vacant property within the district is that you have design review capabilities over what's going to get put up in its place. Even though what's there right now, it's just vacant. There's no significance there. Uh but you don't know what might get proposed in the future. And this way you can really be assured that uh whatever is going to go up is going to be compatible compatible with compatible with the existing district.

All right. Thank you, Steve. I see your hand up again. I'm gonna let you Sorry to keep talking. We're not are these boundaries are not fixed in stone and we can we can certainly revisit these large complexes as and again as I've stated um the planning department uh Nate in particular wants us to include other project other uh structures that are but the national registry district. So these are not fixed in stone and can be revisited. All right. Thank you. Bruce, you're next.

I I think I'm going to speak uh as a representative of the historic commission. Um and I'm going to uh say something that hasn't been said before, but it's it's it's important from my point of view. Historic commission has seven commissioners. Uh five of them are residents within the districts. two of them are one of them is me as an architect or supposedly an architect. I'm a retired architect but the structure of the commission is it should have a somewhere some with an architectural professional background and the seventh member is has a real estate background. Um when I was asked seven or eight years ago to be on this commission, I uh said I will agree to be appointed or I'll put myself forward. But you have to understand and I've said this every time uh that uh and this these photographs here are help me here. These these districts have buildings from the 17th, 18th, 19th, maybe not 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. And they're rich for that. And so we've got uh quite an age range in this uh these districts. And I maintained uh upon my interview that you would do not expect me to expect to to disallow the 21st century to have part of this narrative as well. So put yourself forward 100 years from now. Um this district should have um exemplary buildings from the 20th and the 21st century as well. So Steve put up that picture of a building on McLaren that was demolished and it was rebuilt and it was rebuilt to look like it was 100 years old. I probably wouldn't have objected to that. I probably would have supported that uh uh

certificate of appropriate at the time so I wasn't actually one of the few meetings I've missed but I wouldn't object to uh a rather welldesigned and certainly not to an especially well-designed uh modern building there. I want to make it very clear that at least one member of this commission um does not believe that buildings in a historic district should look like the other buildings in the historic district. I don't believe that historic district should or commission should set out to freeze these districts uh as as uh as frozen in time. There should be a narrative and that narrative should continue and it should have uh the narrative should include uh the story of today and tomorrow as well as yesterday and I think I've been very clear about that. Now, I uh not sure whether I would be able to convince all of my or a sufficient number of my commission colleagues um but I would be uh uh and indeed very open to uh well-designed buildings regardless of whether they're um pieces of work that was approved on McCullen Street or whether they would be a modern elegant steel uh concrete wire um cardboard whatever the hell it is if it's welldesigned um we have the ability to review it and give it a certificate of appropriateness and that's what we do. We we we uh judge appropriateness and so I think it's important to recognize that these districts are um really looking at appropriateness and that can be defined um uh quite widely widely. We don't yet have uh design standards. Uh we're working on that. So there are design standards. But

from my view, design standards, the standard is good design. The standard is good design. So these things historic districts are trying to certainly preserve what's there. We care about what's there, but we also care about what's going there in the future. I may be an outlier opinion on this, but that's the way I think. That's the way I've always think and that's the way I've argued about how this commission should view buildings and projects and propositions that come before it. All right. Thanks, Bruce. Jer.

Well, I can let I can let Steve jump in. I'm sorry to keep jumping in. Uh, a couple things. Uh, the good to address what Bruce uh, what Bruce just said. Amherst College does a great job of combining uh, new con new design that's that's compatible with old design. I don't know. I wish I had the actual addresses. Maybe Chris can correct me. You know that church, you know, next to where the copy center used to be on Pleasant Street? The Peter Pan building. Which one? I call it the Peter Pan building.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean that I mean they did an addition in the back that is a modern building and but it's the same scale and it complements it. There's another building down down on Pleasant Street across Route 9. Um I I you know and they did they just did another edition Amherst College. They do really great stuff. It's, you know, new materials, but it's of appropriate scale and it complements the building. So, we're certainly not trying to freeze everything in amber. Um, I mean, you know, what we're we are trying to do is preserve the buildings, these historic buildings from being destroyed. That is one of the, you know, one of the functions. And then also there's the function of, you know, new buildings. But these those are two different things. And in terms of design standards, we're actually have applied for um a CPA grant to hire Chris to uh give us uh design standards. Um so it won't be so uh confusing and arbitrary.

Right. Thanks, Steve. Um Chris, you have your hand up and I guess I'll let you go and then Jared.

Okay. Yeah, sure. Uh just just following up on Bruce's comments. I Bruce, you make some excellent points. Uh definitely and uh I I I would agree uh in terms of this on on a scale of replication that property on Mlullen uh definitely trended towards the the replication of of a of a historic property. Uh but there's plenty of room for lo in local historic districts for uh much more contemporary uh contemporary design features. Uh we like to use the term uh compatible yet differentiated is often is often what we would like to see within a local historic district so that it's it speaks to our present day but also really can be compatible with its with its surroundings as well. Uh I would say that a lot of that comes down to communities the community standard. What does the community want? So some communities may want go a little bit more. They want a little bit more replication. Uh and some communities are going to be far more interested in uh pushing that pushing that still having compatibility but having lots more lots more uh design solutions that really speak to uh the the present day. Um, as as Steve said, the best way to really think about that is having good design guidelines uh that uh that cover things like new construction so that all all the all those points can come across easily.

All right. Thank you, Jara. Go ahead.

Thank you. Um, I also I want to say uh Steve, thank you for bringing this to us. Um, Chris, thank you for the great presentation and for fielding all of our questions. Uh and uh and Bruce, I also wanted to say I I appreciate your particular uh perspective on this presenting a spectrum, a story over time of all the different um stages of architecture that we've experienced and your uh I think unfortunately rather unique um perspective of being in favor of of good design that's compatible but not necessarily just a replication of existing structures. Um I uh I worry that while there is no clearly no desire to diminish you know opportunities for needed like redevelopment or new construction on vacant lots or whatever the case may be. you know, um, making this an area a historic district does add additional layers of approval required for that kind of work. And I by by default by requiring those extra layers, like it does make it more expensive to to do that process. And so I feel like it's important to acknowledge that we're making it more difficult to build in this area just by virtue of the process. It it it is maybe the protection of our cultural resources is worth that, but I think it's important that it's worth stating that this is going to make it more challenging to make it more affordable to build here. This, I think, reduces our likelihood of, for instance, um some kind of structure that can affordably house the teachers of Fort River in this area. Um,

I fully appreciate the value of preserving the area's historic value. I mean, I also appreciate that this was an idea of the town manager. Um, and that the staff would like to add some additional properties as well. Um, but I I I wonder if this is the best application of or if this is the best tool for for preserving the the homes that are truly historic and are of historic value. Um, I I'm not a historic preservationist, so I don't know the tools in the toolbox well enough. Um, but I'm wondering if there is some kind of like scalpel tool available rather than kind of blanketing this entire area with additional layers of approval. Um, while I would love to believe that, you know, these um well, I guess I'll I'll I'll stop there. I'll stop there. Um, I I I would also I would love if the uh report would include the area size. I couldn't find like how much actual acreage would be included in the district. Um that would be a really helpful thing to include in a final version. Um uh I'm also I'm curious to understand a little bit more about how the his how the well you know what no I've said I've said enough so I'll I'll stop there.

Okay. All right, Jara. Um, I see that Angus you have your hand up and uh Steve and Crystal have their hands up again. I do want to say I recognize that we normally take a break at 8:00 or thereabouts. Um, it's now almost 8:30. Um, I want to say I'm perfectly willing to keep going with this, but if people want to take a break, uh, you know, raise your hand or or get my attention or just break in. Um, because, uh, you know, this is a good conversation. I was hoping we could wrap it up in time to take a break at a reasonable hour. So, uh, I'm not seeing any new hands as we do that. So, Angus, I'll I guess I'll go to you next.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's just building off of, I guess, what what what Jar is bringing up, which is just to say that if uh I mean, my understanding of of local historic districts is that they generally do lead to less construction within the given area. Not always. Um, and I think it's great that this that, you know, uh, Steve and Bruce are both, you know, supportive of of thinking creatively, thinking expansively. Um, but I guess my my question is if the board's composition changed, if the commission's the historic commission's composition changed and they decided that they actually didn't want to have that perspective, um, they could block a lot. Could I mean, I guess I'm wondering what how much could they block? What what requirements could they set?

Well, okay. Uh why don't I let Steve or Chris respond to that and then go ahead with your comments.

Well, we can we could block the demolition of a historic structure, but that's the purpose that's a huge purpose of a local historic district. I mean, you you know, I'd like to keep the Bags Tavern where Sha's rebellion was plotted. Um but we can't block construction. Uh we can only block what you can see from a public way. We can only determine what can be seen from a public way. Uh we can't stop an ADU. Uh we really can't block anything. And in terms of uh Jar's point about the toolbox, this is it. I mean, this is the only tool there is. Uh you know, I wish there were other tools, but there aren't. I mean, right now, if you want to knock down one of these buildings from the 1700s, you go to the historical commission and they give you a demolition delay for 12 months and then the building can come down and when once it's down, it's down and then this town become looks like every other town. Uh, you know, like I said, this is the oldest. You know, at one point we were investigating, you know, having a local historic district in our downtown, which actually Bruce was opposed to because those buildings are some of the buildings downtown are old, but they're not particularly historic. These buildings are historic. These are the founding families of this town, Matune Street. I mean, we all drive to the elementary school, Maton Street. You know who Matune was? Well, there's his house. He was in the he was a a revolutionary war general. He was in the house of he was one of the first people in the house of representatives and you know this is what makes this place this place you know um and it's worth protecting and that's what the main thing about this like again and this is a this is actually a pretty contained space and like I said to Fred we've actually made an effort to contain

it as much as possible. Uh, and as Nate can attest, I've been personally resistant to mission creep of expanding the LHD because I'm a very aware of the push back in terms of development. Um, anyway, I'll let Chris Chris go. Chris,

sure. I'll just follow up on a couple of the comments that were coming up uh related to new growth development in local historic districts. I these are not meant to be museum at all. These are these are areas that are meant to grow, change, adapt. Uh it's really trying to keep uh what's significant there while still while still changing into the into the future. Uh so it's it's well understood that these are areas that people live, work, run businesses. And in a lot of cases, there's these are places that more density actually makes sense. Um, I'm not actually not aware of any studies out there that suggest that there's less construction in a local historic district. I could actually point uh to some local historic districts that have more construction within the district than areas outside the district. And that's one of those reasons is that's because we're that's where people want to live because it's it's a it's a nice walkable area in in some other cities that uh um uh but they when they've actually done the the the studies for the the number of building permits or the number of new units the new units of housing uh that were that that that have been created, they've actually found by far uh the most units are within the the local historic district. So this is is not is does not equate necessarily with with stopping growth whatsoever. Um I'm I'm interested in this idea of and I only I only hear about this sort of anecdotally. I don't have a good study that I can point to, but because there's opposition that comes up to new density, uh, new housing sometimes, sometimes that comes up in ways that, uh, neighbors of Butters concerned about that because, uh, they're concerned it's going to really change the character of the neighborhood. It's going to have a very different look if we have new housing

there. Anecdotally, I've heard of of examples where um by having the design review of a local historic district available, you really have that ability to make sure the new the the the additional the additional housing that's going to go in um behind adjacent somehow within the within the within the the existing historic uh properties there. uh that that's going to be all done in a compatible way. And that tends to actually be a way that uh the residents can really support uh some some more housing in that area, too.

All right. Thank you. I see one hand from one member of our public. Could Pam, could you bring over Dela Deli, Bella, Bella Delino, excuse me? Hello. Um, welcome. Uh, please give us your name and your street address and you would have three minutes for your comment.

Okay. My name is Bel Stelfino. My address is 995 North Pleasant Street. I am a local graduate student studying regional planning and I think this conversation is very very interesting. Um I have some questions just generally about if there's a concern that the planning board is going to be seen as a bunch of nimbies like what is being done about public engagement or like public participation and community engagement on this issue um specifically for East Ammerst because just tangentially from my own experience here I've been here three years now um and I didn't know about any of this history, even though I'm a self-proclaimed uh nerd about anything to do with planning and architecture. So, I was wondering if um anything in this funding or like um getting this designation would allow for putting up like nondescript, not in your face plaques about housing history so people could walk in these areas and learn a little bit more about the history because I think that would increase uh appreciation for the architectural history. While the locals may know about just the history by living here for a long time, a lot of the population is transient and from the students and when I think about people who are upset about uh or like perceive the planning board as trying to block development, it's most often people looking for housing and that can be local residents and that can also be students. So, I was just wondering if anybody has any comments on that.

All right. Thank you, Bella. Steve or Chris, do you know if uh these kinds of initiatives often result in you know uh we've had well I mean uh Walker has done this great story map um and you know we have the writers walk which has plaques in front of you know prominent writers but yes we could certainly do more uh signage. It's something that we've talked about. All right.

Yeah. I work as a consultant. I work with lots and lots of communities that are that are trying to increase their community engagement and uh interpretive signage is one of the ways that that's done. Okay. I guess I I feel the need to just clarify for Bella that I think the concern has been that the local historic district commission would be resistant to development, not the planning board. Uh, okay. Um, so Jesse and then Angus.

Thanks. Uh, just wanted to add a comment. Um, sort of based on Tara and Angus' concerns we're just expressing. Uh, certainly I think you all know I'm very much pro increasing housing in our town. Um but the one example I have of the an LHD interfacing with this issue is actually in my backyard literally got a property that abuted my property. Um that came to the LHD first uh the sorry the commission for appropriateness. Um and I was one of the neighbors who spoke fairly strongly against the design that was presented because of that appropriateness piece. And again, it it was not about increasing housing. It was about changing the character of the neighborhood. And so, to be honest, I'm of a split mind here because I think that's really important. And I do see the value certainly after this presentation by Chris and uh comments by Steve of this old town center. And so, uh, I think having that tool available to the, not just the commission, but the community to come and comment, um, and help shape what goes on, I think there's a lot of value in that.

Thanks.

Okay. Thanks, Jesse Angus. Yeah, I guess uh Bella's question and Jesse's uh point I guess raises um a question for me, which is what has been the community's response to this, if if at all? What what do property owners within this um local historic district think of this proposal? Is there um a lot of support for it? Is there resistance to it? Are there options in I'm not sure how Massachusetts law works. Is there options for property owners to not allow their property to be pulled into this local historic district? I'm just wanting to understand a little bit more about how the community that would be impacted by this feels about it.

All right, Steve, what kind of community outreach have you done?

Well, two things. The other two local historic districts were generated by the residents. the residents who live there wanted a local historic district and formed a committee. And uh this one is was again instigated at the suggestion of the town manager. And to be honest, we've done outreach and we've gotten minimal response and the min the the limited response as you'll read in our study report has been split. Uh this area is mostly student. You know, there's a few uh mostly it's absentee landlords and I'm not even to be honest, I'm not sure if they they're even aware of what's going, you know, what's going on. They haven't been certainly they haven't been very responsive. I mean, my my vision for this in terms of housing um and this this is a totally different issue. It'd be nice to have condo this to be a nice area that has condos for like you said teachers and people who live here year round and not necessarily you know exclusively for student housing which I think this area is p predominantly student housing now.

All right, thanks Steve Jara and then Walker. Thank you. Um, well, I Steve, I just want to say thank you for helping me to understand like what tools are and are not out there

and um and the historic significance of some of the properties in particular. Also, Walker, I did want to give you a shout out for the work on the story map because that is pretty awesome. Great job with that. Um, uh, I also just wanted to say that I really appreciate that we're able to have a very respectful conversation about what could be a contentious issue. So, thank you to everybody um for for being respectful about this topic. Uh let's see, what was the one thing I wanted to just kind of wrap that up? Um um I guess one question that I I have and and about how this works is or one concern I have I suppose is just because there is such a wide spectrum of um of time represented architecturally in the district. I'm worried that that could be used or abused in a way to reject um uh proposals to say it's like, you know, not in conformity with this district because, you know, it looks like a 19 30s house, but there's this 1884 house, you know, two properties away. I guess I don't really know. I don't understand how that works because my understanding of historic districts, it's usually more cohesive identity and culture, whereas this is more of a a a serial kind of or a timebased um district. So, could somebody explain to me exactly how that how that works? Um, I guess I I would say that I'm I'm not My perception is that these districts don't discriminate against buildings that are already there and that, you know, for instance, the one or two little 1950s ranch houses

that were included, if they were renovated or reclad, you know, I think it's unlikely anybody would try to turn them into looking like a 1870s federal building or something,

right? No, I'm sorry. I think I I I asked my question poorly. It was more that I was curious, you know, can um or new development uh or redevelopment of properties because there are so many examples of different types of architecture and time periods. Does that provide a lot of ammunition for a uh a more nefarious historical commission to reject proposals? I guess

I was going to jump in and just say that you know Walker I see your hand and others you know the so you know we have there's some um references to design guidelines in the bylaw and then the rules and rags and then the idea is to develop some design guidelines that will so that those are helpful right to have some kind of framework for review um and you know local historic district can't um the idea is that it would if it denies a certificate it has to have reasons a project and the idea is that eventually it could get to So, you can't take a site and say um categorically it can't be redeveloped or changed. Do you take it on a case-by case basis? And so, you know, if someone is willing to work with the commission, uh staff and others, you can get to you can probably always get to yes. Right. It really depends on like you said, is it an extra cost? Is it time? Is it, you know, how are they willing to to work with that? Um, I was just going to share my screen quickly and replace this one just to show the the newer building that Steve mentioned on off South Pleasant Street. So, here's the, you know, a church building with Ammeris College, the addition in the back. And so, you know, when this came before the historical commission, the design was slightly different. Um, and so there was discussions about the patterns of the windows on the new section, kind of its relationship, mass and void and openness, you know, kind of the proportions of the windows. And then there's like a hyphen, you know, um, kind of a recessed area connection, a hyphen between the old and new building. And so when this was discussed, yes, sorry, there's a sign in the way. Um, but, you know, there was minor changes made and I think it works really well. And so it's, you know, it's a modern building that's compatible with a historically significant building up front. And so this wasn't in a local historic district, but it did get reviewed by the historical commission, design review board, and probably the planning board. And so, you know, it all worked together to make changes to the project, but it worked really well. Um,

and so that, you know, to me, it's what what a local district could do as well. Um, sorry I replaced your your screen, Chris. I just wanted to show that. Oh,

good. But it is true that that process is additional time and consultant money and has the abil has the potential for rejection. Um, you know, so it it feels more like a special permit to me uh as a process, you know, rather than uh a site plan review. It feels like another special permit to to to to be required. Okay. Um, with the loss of the screen sharing, I guess I'm a little bit unsure if I'm seeing the hands in the same order that they were before. Bruce, somehow you've jumped ahead of Walker. So, I guess I'll I'll ask Walker to go ahead. She hasn't spoken yet really this evening. Thank you. Um I had two things. I wanted to go back to the public outreach for a minute and just specify what we did a little bit more. Um we did have a public hearing at the local historic district commission. And then we also sent um information letters specifically to all the property owners within the proposed district so that they could see what was being done or what was being proposed and also answer a survey. And as Steve said, we didn't get we didn't get a lot of response. I think we got like a 15 or 16% response rate on the survey and it was split almost evenly between supportive and not supportive. Um, as he said, there's a lot of absentee out of town landlords and I think they probably weren't as interested. Um, we are required to have another public hearing that we also directly send to each of the um, property owners. So it's possible the second time around they

might be more interested at the end of this review period where we discuss the comments and feedback that we get from the planning board and the historical commission and the state historical commission. So those there's going to be at least one more chance for people to provide feedback and then of course it goes to town council. And then the other comment I had was kind of along the same lines as Nate, that the design guidelines that we're discussing putting into place would provide not only clarity to people who are trying to apply to get new construction or a renovation done, it also provides consistency. So even if the board members change, the priorities set in the guidelines will remain the same. And the priorities set can be those that the town as a whole agrees on. We can um take public comment about what people think is important to include in the design guidelines and what the priorities are um and how to address buildings that might be newer, how to address new construction in a way that's supportive of, you know, development without changing the character. So that gives us another opportunity to address some of those questions and get it down in writing. and have some of the smaller changes potentially be administrative approval rather than going through a hearing process which reduces the time and cost for applicants. So, we're going to be working on that process over the next few months and next year.

Walker, thank you. If I could ask you a question about a phrase you used and was was used earlier. Um um changing the character of a neighborhood. Um as uh settlements grow the neighborhood character does change and even the introduction of the automobile changed character of places. So, is it a good thing to be preserving the character of a neighborhood unilaterally or is it should we be you know how much should we be allowing neighborhoods to change? Um, I I would argue that we don't want to strangle the the evolution of settlements and um that we need at at most we need a balance between what areas we're going to preserve the neighborhood character and what areas we're going to be allowing the character to change in whatever way it needs to change. Yeah, I actually agree with you and I think that the way character is defined or the way that that's impacted by new development can be defined in the guidelines and by the priorities of the commission. So they might say, you know, they're they're welcome they're welcoming to new types of buildings or new types of construction, but they want it to not be jarringly different than the building that it's next to or the sort of the pattern of development within the district. Some other guidelines in other towns I've seen might have things like the setback of the new building should match that of the other buildings on the street. So you don't have a building that's protruding further towards the street or set much farther back than the other buildings, but and maybe the size, you're not having something that's twice the scale of the buildings around it, but maybe the style within that. There's

a lot of range for different kind of styles um or shapes of buildings that are new and interesting or maybe adapted to modern times but still kind of harmoniously fit into the neighborhood in a way that maybe something that hasn't gone through the review would. And I think it is a little bit subjective and it would involve a sort of a case by case discussion. And Steve might also have more to say or Bruce on that particular note. Okay. Thank you. I'm I'm gonna ask one more question before I move to the the next four hands that I see. Uh and and this is a question for Nate. Um and and potentially for you, Walker, and your team.

Um but what is it that you need from us tonight? Do you need a vote of recommendation to council or are you just soliciting comments? We are just soliciting comments. So any feedback that anybody is giving us, we will take into consideration. And if anybody wants to provide written feedback after the meeting, we will take that into consideration as well when we get to the final report. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Um, everybody's good, right? Your bladders are uh just feeling fine. All right, Bruce. Um, I I think we're doing this because the process is stipulated by the Mass Historical Commission says that we have a meeting. Um, so we're we're basically touching a base, but that's not what I tuned in to say. Um, I'm uh taking you up, Jar, on your u concerns. You use the word nefarious. I'm just using that to trig back to uh the the what you were saying. uh expressing concern that uh uh these commissions would uh impede and so forth. And let me tell you, I've been on this commission eight years. Um it is the intent of the commission at every meeting to uh approve a project. Um maybe we do so and almost invariably we do so by suggesting, asking or conditioning, but we're in the business of approving projects. Um, I can think of only two projects in eight years that we denied a certificate of appropriateness for because of the nature of the project rather than that we have denied a few on the basis that they didn't have sufficient information and we needed them to uh uh refile or some technique or something like that. But the uh and of those two, one of them went away. In other words, they didn't come back with a uh because as as was mentioned, Nate mentioned we denial is not something that's arbitrarily given. There has to be reasons we have to say why. And in the case of the uh Amis media project is the one project in 8 years

where there was a an outcry. We listened. We did actually say no. This is not deserving of a certificate of appropriateness. This extremely awkward, I would say stupid proposal, thoughtless, mindless, idiotic thing that they brought forward first. And we said no. and we said in order to gain acceptance from this commission you should do the following one two three I think there were three rather particularly thought out questions they um took those to heart they came back uh with a a completely new direction one that was followed through and received a certificate of appropriateness it was probably the most challenging most time consuming of all of the hearings that I've attended in eight years But we uh all got a better project out of that. Um sadly I don't think it'll be built because I don't know that the horsepower of an media to um deliver on this project would happen. I hope it does because if it does it'll be a demonstration of what I'm talking about. But I don't think we should have concerns that this commission or indeed any commission but certainly not this one is going to uh be an impediment to intelligent and thoughtful uh progress in town. I I mean as as Steve says we are the only tool in the toolbox to preserve historic buildings and that's basically what we're there. I'm not too big on preserving character of neighborhoods for exactly the reason that we discussed things change. you know, uh, automobiles happen. Um, although you would have thought we would have gotten rid of power poles by now because that's 150 year old technology that deserved to die in year one, but it's still there. Um, stuff like that. We deal with it. But we are thinking about how we can preserve these

buildings and how we can add character um, and uh, and narrative to these parts of town that we particularly care about. And we've taken the trouble to protect it this way. All right, that's very reassuring. Thank you, Bruce. Angus, I don't know if Steve wanted to jump in and say anything in response to what Bruce was saying, but Steve. I don't know if Steve's there. Okay, I can I can share my thoughts.

Oh, here I am. Okay. Sorry. I I just wanted Sorry about that. I just wanted to say something about character. Um, there's a lot of talk about destination Amherst and I just want to say history is our brand. When I think of Amherst, I think of Emily Dickinson. Character is what makes a town special and it's a big part of what makes people want to move here. And so, I think it behooves us to try to honor that and preserve it. In terms of the standards, our LHD is pretty lax. We don't deal with paint color. We don't, you know, like if you go to Nantucket, which is I was just at. That's a place that's preserved in amber. The entire island is a historic district. Okay? That's not what we are. These are little pockets. We have little If we get this one passed, which we may not, we only have we'll only have three. I mean, it's And they're all pretty I mean, the Lincoln Sunset's pretty big, but the Dickinson one is tiny. And this one's only 50 or so properties. So these are not we're not this is not in Nucket. These are just tiny pockets.

I'm done. Okay. Thank you, Steve. Back to you, Angus. Thanks. Yeah, I uh I just wanted to say uh since y'all are soliciting feedback, I'd like to reiterate that I I really think that the historic commission should reconsider whether they include parcels 58 and 24

in this um district. Um I know that it would then not be contiguous perhaps with the National Historic District, but um those apartment complexes, a bunch of them are visible from the road. So, they would be subject to local historic district um review and I they're also on the edge um at least one of them is is on the edge. So, I I just want to flag that as something for the historic district or historic commission to rethink.

So, I'm jumping. I'm sharing my screen. So, here's a map of the proposed district. And so, um just to respond to you, Angus. So the you know here is property 24 and you know you really you want to have a a contiguous district and so to me you know I would include this one uh for a few reasons but the main one would be you'd want to preserve what's around it and so if this were exempt from the district I think one Massachusetts historical commissioner would recommend putting it in and the idea would be you'd want to then have control if this were ever redeveloped or changed that you then maintain you a streetscape. And so, um, you know, I would I I think that one to me is a a difficult one. The other one is this one up here. There's 58. Um, again, it's, you know, it's not it's closer to the periphery of the district, but, you know, in the Massachusetts Historical Commission in their guidelines, they acknowledge that they're, you know, they're going to be whatever you want to call them, non-contributing structures or, um, there's another term, uh, but that, you know, you want to include it because the property itself, its location within the district is important to be able to, um, like I said, have an opportunity to shape new development. And so, um, I think it would be difficult to remove these if, for instance, it was this one or if we said, well, maybe the district could end here, uh, and then that way we maybe would do this. But I think there's some significant properties to the north of it. I I think, you know, it' be difficult to exclude these because they're internal to the district. I'm just throwing that out there now. Um, you know, I think it's something that Chris and the commission could think about. I, you know, I do think it's difficult to remove something central in the district.

I'll just respond. I take your point on parcel 24. On parcel 58, I don't find it convincing. I'll leave this up here just for a second so everyone can see, you know, the here's Spalding Street. Here's uh Salem Street, you know, here's the JCA. Here's the school building. Um, you know, and Route Nine is further south off the off the map.

Yeah, I I mean this is helpful, Nate. And um I'm I'm sort of going to go back to Fred's original comment about gee why you know most of the most of the buildings going up Main Street are equally historic and you know contribute to the character of the main entrance to to Ammerst for people that came in from Route Two. Um, and you know, to me it's sort of how do you where do you draw the line or how do you balance out the the these areas versus allowing the rest of the the town to evolve in a way that it needs might might need to evolve. So, um, you know, if we had another local historic district that took went from this point west up to the Dickinson, uh, historic district, would that be a good thing? I don't know. I mean, maybe maybe it's uh, what is it? College Street in Belchuretown. That's that's where we're going to allow things to change in this part of town. And um we'll keep Main Street under tighter restrictions.

Yeah. I mean, I think quickly to um I think it was Angus or someone mentioned that there's a lot of zoning districts here and it's right. There's like, you know, BVC, there's RVC, there's all these, you know, and we've talked about looking at East Ammerst for reszoning typically along, you know, um Belchuretown Road and Route 9. It could be that this also could be reszoned. And so, you know, our the zoning districts try to respond to what's on the ground. And maybe a more appropriate zoning in this area is not, you know, maybe it's RVC and not BBC. And, you know, maybe we actually make more RVC, uh, because we want to encourage residential development with smaller mixeduse buildings or something. Um, and you know, in that way, uh, you know, to me, this, you know, I think our whole discussion about where we want to have density and zoning made me think like, wow, enamorous in general, we have a lot of zoning districts. I feel like they could all be updated. Um, you know, and that's another conversation though. But yeah, I think the reason why this could stay this way is, you know, some of the buildings here, although they're newer, they're still, you know, mid-9th century. And so there is a a kind of a a a time when the architecture and the when it's built also, you know, what some of these buildings here were stores that supported the East Ammeris commerce area. So there is some you know there's a reason why it's this it you know Massachusetts Historical Commission would say are there geographic features other areas of why you'd end it whether it's you know along a street or if there's a break in development or time period and so you know at some point you do have to make the decision of why why is it here and why is it not here right and it could be that I think some of these homes here now are actually much newer than the homes that are really uh central to this district and so at some point you have to make that decision of Why do you stop? You know, um it I feel like if this were another district between the two, there's a reason why it would be a different district. And so we looked at having another national res register district actually further west, a depot district that captures kind of

this, you know, mid to late 19th century kind of a little bit more, you know, um commercial um different architectural styles. Um, but not, you know, not not a local historic district, just a national register district for acknowledgement. All right, Walker, I was just going to say that this is a slightly older map and that the actually that these three buildings are included and I'm pretty sure this one as well. Which three are you talking about? You see me drawing on it or not? Maybe you can't see it because it's not my screen. Oh, actually, yes. Yes, we do. Yeah, those three at the top of Salem Street and this one here. Um, yeah.

So, those are included. Those are included in the proposed district. We'd added those.

All right. I don't see any hands. Um, sounds like u we don't need a vote or a recommendation this evening. and um Walker and Steve, we've gotten had a pretty good conversation. I hope you've gotten what you needed out of this. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And at the very least, uh we Chris has digitized, you know, all these properties which weren't before. So that's a tremendous resource for the town. In any event, great. Okay, so

Chris, why don't we let you guys go and we will wish you well. Thank you. Some of us wishing you success in in this and and others maybe not, but uh it is good work and it's nice to have the record that you've assembled. Thank you. Bye-bye. All right. Uh board members, um I think that was the last Well, maybe not depending on what you want to talk about tonight. Should we take a five minute break or should we just plow through?

I think we should take a break if we intend to do housing. Uh I think Nate, do we need to talk a lot about our general housing discussion this evening? Um, you know, I think we could take a break. I, you know, I have, um, the housing and zoning subcommittee came up with kind of a framework for the meeting for North Ammeris. So, it'd be nice to talk about that. Uh, councelor Shane reached out to Doug and myself to suggest some meeting dates. Yeah, I did not I did not respond. Did you? No, I was going to wait till today and talk with the board about it. Um, we could talk about

All right. So, it's so it's 7 after 9 and why don't we take a five minute break, try to come back at 12 after 9. Um, see if we can synchronize our watches on that.

All right, it looks like people are wandering back. It looks like maybe we have everyone but Pam. And we will need Pam to remove our screen slide. Jesse, thanks. Uh, well, quickly, I think you can click on the webinar version and then you don't see the screen side, but that's not what I raised my hand to say. Um, I was I think I've said things like this before and I'm going to say it again because I think the hour we spent talking about parking spots and trash removal would have been much better spent on an enjoyable conversation, a useful conversation like we just had for the last hour and a conversation we could have had about upcoming things for an hour. And so really what I'm asking is what is really their mandate and like how much of that are we required to do at that level of discussion? because it seemed to me a lot of that could have been Nate saying, "Yes, I reviewed all these things. There's no issues really. You all had a chance to look it over. Does anyone want to raise something?" I don't know if we can operate that way. I guess that's what I'm asking. Uh well, Nate, do you want to say anything or uh

Yeah, I mean I I can say I thought that was a fruitful discussion and I think it's a good thing for us to be talking about together. It it's not directly zoning, but it's part of the I don't know development environment of Ammerst.

Sorry, I'm talking about the first cibby's property parking spaces. Yeah. No, I very much enjoyed the historical conversation. That's not what time we're talking. I'm talking about the first agenda item that I felt like we spent a really long time and only because there weren't any big issues. We spent a long time talking about tiny issues that I think nobody had an issue with. So that's what I'm questioning.

Okay. Well, we have a certain um I mean we need to go through findings and conditions. It's not something we can just sort of punt on and say to Nate, write up whatever you want and you know, I'll sign on behalf of the board. Um, so there's a certain amount of sort of, I don't know, regulatory protocol or something you could say, but I agree. There wasn't very much to that.

Yeah, I think Yeah, I was going to say I think it's um, and Jesse, I think it's okay to keep asking. I think to me what that means is we you know as we look at our zoning priority list you know how do we write in some of that and I think I said it's very difficult so you know we don't have a we've changed how we calculate the number of parking spaces per unit and so you some of it is the board has to you know do you do you did you think that was an adequate number um you know we can say the lighting can be downcast but then we want to confirm that um you know the trash removal piece is really interesting because that's a big concern around town, right? Uh is what what's visible. And so although, you know, if we we could write that into the bylaw and have it be a condition and then, you know, staff would have to hold up an application until we know that, okay, here's what's going to be met. Um and then, you know, we wouldn't have the board review it necessarily. I think it's really difficult to sometimes get all of that um in an application, right? And so I think but if we want to change that I think we can change the rules and rags maybe the bylaw a little bit and we can work toward that. You know I agree that if there's like 50 standard conditions that we always apply you know is there a way to make that um an upfront thing so that we don't have to talk about it. So you know if we like the idea that trash has to be cleaned up and removed or containers within 24 hours we you know we should put that somewhere and then we don't have to talk about it again. Um, but I do I think it's really difficult on a project by project basis um to you know I think this one was easy but on bigger projects everything kind of overlaps and it's hard to just have such discreet conversations about pieces of an application. Um, but

I guess I guess one other thing that comes to mind, and I'm sure you won't like this, but as as hearings like that go for site plan review and special permit, that was super fast. Yeah, I'm aware of that, too. Yes. You know, I mean, I don't know how many of the major building projects you've been on this board for, but that was really fast. that but again this is but you're you're kind of making my point too Doug like I agree the big projects

how many hours we spend and I do think a lot of those hours are also on minutia rather than the big picture things and and again I think someone should look at it and make sure they're meeting whatever standard good for you to call it out you know to say hey I'm impatient or I'm I'm I'm don't see the point in us going down this rabbit hole because you know some of the really long processes we've had was when we had uh other members who wanted to go down the rabbit hole

and for them that was like critical um and if so hearing that you know I mean I know we don't have those people on the board at the moment but you know if you think we're talking too much about it say something And um if if there's something we're not we're passing over too fast, say that too. So thanks.

Yeah. I was gonna jump in and just say yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. I you know I think it's also the personalities on the board and perspectives and so some other boards the zoning board for instance tends to be really detailed oriented. So it's about the use but they'll ask you know they might get down to like you know in the design review board right but that's the role but like details of a sign and you know so maybe for the planning board it's like well the site plan review is we know there'll be a sign band on a building do we have to get down to the level of font and color you know in terms of rather we like the dimensions of the sign band across the front of the building and maybe materials right and so there's you know I think it's sometimes it's personality and sometimes what the board is doing um and I think there's a difference between site interview and special permit. So yeah, I think but you know to your point I I you know and it's I think it's on the list is right maybe getting a little bit more conditions to allow administrative approval of certain projects so that the board doesn't have to spend time reviewing some things. Um

so I hope it's okay we talked about that for 10 minutes. Oh, yeah. Angus,

I just wanted to add very quickly onto what Jesse was saying. I'm not sure that I'm that I would advocate for an administrative change. Um although I think that that is worth exploring. I think in particular like having gone to the site uh to to see the site with Nate, it was a very minimal and co cosmetic set of changes compared to other projects that I think would merit much greater consideration. And I think it might help for us as a board to for either Nate or you Doug to maybe preface a little bit with kind of level setting our expectations um for thinking about how big a project we're considering here, you know, versus not not as big because I think I I'm with Jesse that that the hour we spent on that I think would have been much better suited to other purposes. And if we do that a number of times, it's going to limit our ability to make some much more important changes than the Bruno's Pizza Shop being shrunk by 400 square ft. Okay. So noted. All right. Uh moving on. I guess it's now 9:21. We're moving to the fifth item, general housing discussion. Nate, uh, you did have some new material in the packet, couple of, uh, maps of town, I think, with a whole bunch of different areas shown. How what would you like to get tonight?

Yeah, I don't, you know, it's 9:21. I think I'll share the map and then I think we could talk about the North Amoris piece. Um, you know, I'll context this, you know, as I was going to mention later, there was, you know, two citizen petitions for zoning. you know, the planning board has been talking about what could happen. There's housing production plan moving uh forward. And so I think there's um a lot of ideas. We have a zoning priority list with the housing and zoning subcommittee. I think the board looked at it at the last meeting. Um so some of it is like all in this context. You know, what do we want to prioritize? And so I'll show the map. I think it's really good. I think we can talk about North Ammerst. And then you know, if we want to solidify a date for this North Ammerst uh meeting, I don't think it has to be the full board. I actually think it could just be two or three representatives and staff um for this initial meeting. Uh you know, the North Amoris residents would like to have it up there. Um you know, if it's not a full board, it's not a public meeting. It's really, you know, we're kind of being we've been asked to present information to them. Uh we can change it at a later meeting if we want to. Um and so the map is, you know, something the planning board talked about, right? kind of where are some ideas of um for development and so I can zoom in but you know at the last meeting there was a mention of a bunch of places really it's you know maybe like 13 areas in town that we thought could have some uh new development or infill or density and so this is just showing you really you know it's not a lot of town right it's kind of like what we were talking about um if you look at what a zone for business it's really a small percentage of town. So, you know, zooming in in North Ammeris, there's the professional research park area. Here's the commercial area, an area zoned uh in North Ammeris as commercial. Here's what we're looking at for the overlay.

Uh here's Olympia Drive area off East Pleasant. And in the downtown, there's kind of some overlapping areas. North of Fearing, we'll call this the Gateway. Here's north of downtown the University Drive overlay just to illustrate what what has been done, you know, East Ammerst. And so just quickly, the the local historic district, you know, didn't come this far south. So the local historic district was, you know, we saw was, you know, like here. Um, and these could change, but I think, you know, this would be a context map in the North Ammerst meeting anyways to say here's kind of the planning board is looking, you know, around town for different areas. Here's Professional Research Park in East Ammerst. So, uh, there's, um, Research Drive, uh, in Hall Drive here, and here's Pomeroy Village Center. And so, you know, there may be other areas to add or change to this, but this is what was discussed at the previous meeting. And I just wanted to show it, uh, you know, graphically on a map what we were talking about or what I, you know, what I assumed was kind of these general areas. So, when we say East Ammeris along Route 9, sure, here's Colonial Village and down to uh, almost down to Gate House Road. So, it stops a little short of the, you know, a little short of the river. um you know and then there's maybe other areas downtown but just kind of contextwise here's what we're looking at you know these zones have all different zoning districts and what's allowed and what's built there now and you know I think some of the idea would be okay if we think this area is good for a certain type of density you know this area we thought was good for pretty high density you know what does it mean for some of these other areas uh maybe it's similar maybe it's different um and that that's it really and I think it's important you know especially given light of the citizen petitions of you know kind of where does the planning board and staff

want to see different kinds of growth whether it's housing growth or just you know different kinds of housing types that's why I sent the other document just trying to show some visuals of what are the different housing types you know so there's cottage style development that there's you know Mansfield Mass is looking at a 40 Y which is actually really small you know 10 to 12,000 square foot lots so you know they're proposing to have this overlay on three properties that probably would maybe get eight to 10 big housing lots, but with the overlay, they're going to get like 80, right? So, to me, it's more like a traditional style neighborhood development with narrower streets, small lots, and probably and it's smaller homes. It's required to be small homes. Um, and maybe that's a different map here of where we think that would be kind of interesting to look at. But I think just contextwise, you know, what does this all mean? You know, the PRP up here, there's a lot of wetland. there's already some development here. Uh, you know, North Ammeris, this commercial, there's some commercial uses here happening. There's North Square, but okay, if we think there's something here, what does it mean? You know, do we start putting priorities on some of these areas to investigate? That's it. I mean I don't you know if you have comments

Nate I think one other aspect of this kind of map that would be useful is to show the conservation land on and and the areas of town that are not developable. Um because I you know things like the 40y you know where you might put a lot of little houses you know if you I mean seems to me that makes more sense in a low density residential area or or even like a subdivision like I don't know Echo Hill or something than to propose that downtown. So, you know, but if you proposed it in Echo Hill, you'd probably have everybody up in arms um because you're changing the character of the neighborhood. Um and so, you know, we don't have a lot of of of empty land to try new things. We we have a lot of somewhat developed land that we if we want to try something new, we will change the character of the of the neighborhood,

right? Yeah. And so just quickly Yeah. I mean, I feel like um you know, to that point, Doug, is uh you know, I'm going to mention Colonial Village. Zoom in a little bit. uh you know so right now Kia village has you know these two roads you know service drives and these buildings around and it has a fair number of units they want to add more um you know when UMass had concepts for the north village that they redesigned using the same concept curve linear roads and everything one of their other ideas was a gritted street network with almost like town homes and open lots but yeah right I agree that we there's not a lot of areas so to me it's like if you took this area here. We said, "Oh, what would be a great way to redevelop it?" Is it really like, you know, you know, one big building here and then small homes here and another big building or, you know, ideally it's like, would you put like, you know, a few streets in here and have a neighborhood? And, you know, we're our zoning for years, not just Amoris, but Massachusetts, hasn't allowed something like that to happen. And so 40y and some of these other ideas to me are trying to get back to okay what are some great ways to have some development. Um I think it's really difficult because right there aren't these areas of land like here if this weren't all wet here I'd say wow this would be a great place to put some neighborhoods but you know it's at Sam's College is all wet. So I I agree I think to be strategic I can add some layers to the map. I think it's you know a start of a conversation of what we want to see. Um, okay, Jara.

Thank you. Um, so just so I just so I understand like how we're framing this, this is essentially a map of areas that we've discussed for investigation for future development, redevelopment, or or concentration of growth. We're not saying necessarily like this is um uh we're going to take what we did in University Drive and do it in all these areas, but this is the idea is that we're going to be presenting this map as a part of our event in North Ammeris to demonstrate that we're looking at a variety of different places for a variety of different strategies. Is that is that a fair synopsis of what this is? Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So it's like we could do a small area plan for one of them, we could do an overlay for another, we could do nothing for another, we could Is that correct? Yeah, I think you know um in 2023 the town the planning board had extra meetings for six months and met in the town room and we had the town manager and representatives from UMass and the housing trust and you know some of these areas were identified then about okay you know let's create this list of areas we would want to work on and then you know university drive became the first one and it took a while to get through and then we started with North Ammeris and I think some of it is you know North Ammeris residents might be asking well why why are we you know why are we focusing on North Ammerst what about elsewhere in town and it's like, well, there's been, you know, these dozen other areas that have been discussed. It just takes a lot of time to then actually bring an idea from, you know, a concept to a zoning regulation. And so, this, right, is showing context of

who knows what'll happen in some of these other areas, right? Maybe it's a just a district change without anything major, but, you know, there's consideration for these other areas in town as well, right? Okay, great. Thanks,

Jesse. Thanks, Nate. I would also say that's exactly how you should we should open the meeting in North Amb exactly what you just said, you know, saying that history um of how we got here and how these were identified. Um I would also maybe just visually one minor suggestion would be to make university drive overlay in a different color and you know name it and then also North Ammeris in a slightly different color because that's what we're working on now to sort of show a progression. Um yes.

Um and likewise I I like your idea of presenting oh exact again exactly how you just talked us through it. Maybe in colon village we want to think about this other style of development like give some more ex concrete examples people could think about uh not just leaving it very vague. I like I like describing it like that a lot.

All right. Thank you Fred. uh minor point but I I I I like the approach and the I think part of the initial presentation should be uh the the that I and I think people all over the town understand this that uh what's really uh driving uh market distortion is student housing and Uh that's a very logical reason why uh the uh property in North Ammerst uh fits with what we did in University Drive because it brackets the university. I think people will understand that uh fairly obvious uh situation,

right? or rather Bruce

um I agree that this is a good way or it's a an okay way to open the meeting a discussion with North Ammeris residents but Nate no more than 30 seconds maybe 60 seconds at the most um really this is this is this is this is simply an intro paragraph but don't go on about it um aim for 30 seconds or whoever's doing it aim for 30 seconds because what Fred's talking about is the main course and we shouldn't shy away from it and let's not uh be merely mouth about this. Let's just go in, say what we're going to say, say it clearly and don't give a about whether people are going to be for it or against it. We know what we're trying to do. Let's just be clear and honest and bold about what we're trying to achieve and why. And then if everybody votes against it, we've done our best. We're not responsible for the way these people will vote up here in this end of town. All we can do is try our best to make a case as to why it makes sense. And if people's uh prejudices or or or superior intelligence in terms of what they understand or whatever, there could be all sorts of reasons. We're trying our best to find a solution or to do the least we can, the best we can, which is not a lot, which is to create an opportunity for the kind of housing that we think is necessary to solve the problem in town or to contribute to solving the problem in town. But let's not be uh wishy-washy about this. Let's not pratt on forever about it. Let's be clear. Let's be brief and speak in bullets and then sit back and listen and just listen. That's what we want to do mostly. We want to listen. I don't want to convince my neighbors that this is the right thing necessarily. I want to find out how it could be better and I want to help them make what we might

think is the best decision, but it may not be the best decision, but we're going to find out. So, that's the thing. Don't be don't pratt on about it. Let's go there. Say something brief and pointed and then listen to what's being said. All right. Thank you, Bruce. Angus, just want to add here. Here. All right. Well, I guess I will add I'm not sure I would make it really clear that we don't give a Yeah. I I didn't take it like that.

Good. I was Nate. Frankly, I was getting uh rattled by the the the amount of time you were taking to explain something which I thought could be said in about a sentence and a half. And I was concerned that that would be the the character of this thing. And I think that it's it's just going to go south. So I I guess I care about it, but I don't I'm not going to try and block every exit to this thing. I want to find out what people think about it. So just we our job is to be to be clear about what we think not to try and second guess everybody. Oh sure that's their job.

Talking about the map was not at all my intro or what would have been said for the North Amoris thing. It was more talking about the map. Well I've I've I've unwound myself so I'm good. I'm sorry if I'm being too anxious or too aggressive about this but I I want I want what we're we spend a lot of time we go over this. We've been talking about it. We seem to go over the same damn thing all the time. I'm I'm ready for something pointed something some kind of next major step. All right. Thank you, Bruce. We should set a date. Nate. Yeah, I was I feel like that was a lead in a good segue. I do see Jesse and Jara have your hands up.

Yeah, Jesse and then Jared.

I'll try and be quick. I I don't entirely agree, Bruce, because I think we've thought about this so much we want just the bullet point. But I think we have to set up the problem and why this is a good part of the solution. Not not to try and second guess what people are going to come at us with, but to to frame it in the right way that this is part of the solution and a very attractive part. And here's why. But really, we need to state what the problem is first, probably with numbers about the students that you've helped put together. Then show the map. Yes, briefly. Here are all the areas the planning board has been considering for three years now. We did this one, now we're focusing on this one. There's more to come. Right? Succinct, but not I think we have to give context so that the North Amer residents see we're not just trying to have North Ammer solve the whole problem.

All right, Jara.

Um, two things and I will also be brief. Number one, uh I I think it'd be really beneficial and important that we I know this is being organized um I believe through homeowners association or neighborhood association, but seeing as we are intending this to be for students or renters, I feel like it's important that we invite them to be a part of this process as well. And so I don't know if that's reaching out to UMass student life or if it's the property managers for the current um rental properties that are there, but uh you know I think it's really important that we incorporate the feedback of the people who will actually be living in those units. Um not just the folks who live adjacent. Of course, there I'm I don't mean to diminish the the relevance of their in their their feelings and uh and and interests, but um I want to make sure that we're inviting everybody who's going to be impacted by this zoning overlay and not just those who are aware of our initiatives. The second part is that I would love to help with the presentation if there's anything if there's any role for me to play um with that.

Yeah. So, sorry, I'll jump in. That's great. Uh yeah, so you know, this was a framework that the public or the um um subcommittee, the housing and zoning subcommittee came up with. You know, I think really so there's some dates suggested by North Ammerst for um you know, October 21st or 23rd um or the 22nd, which I don't think will work. And so, you know, if we like those dates, we could talk about it. I would, you know, I was going to ask for, you know, one or two, maybe three members to help with presentations or preparation of material, you know. So, you know, what we said here was, right, no more than 10 slides, some maps printed out or ready to be shown, uh, depending on what the meeting format would be and where, and, you know, all of it can be encompassed within, you know, uh, you know, some quick bullet points uh, that that's been mentioned. And so, really, it's a listening session. Uh Jar, I guess you know what I guess some of it would be we have to talk about what we think this is. You so the North Amoris residents asked for this. I think what we said here would be there could be a more interactive approach at a second meeting or follow-up meetings. And so to me this would be you know maybe it's okay if it's at the North Ammeris library and it's tailored a little bit to some residents and then you know if we uh want to move it forward you know we can have more public meetings about it and do more invitations. I just, you know, I think it's, you know, it's I feel like it's hard, you know, we, you know, we can advertise this as a public meeting. We could get 100 people. I just want to make sure we're, you know, we have the space and, you know, we're prepared for that. I think this there'll probably be a series of conversations if this moves forward. And so yeah, I feel like they're I'm not quite sure how to approach that yet in terms of, you know, I'm not even sure how big North Ammeris how big the space is in North Ammeris right now, but u I'm gladly take your help on a presentation and

great and that that all makes sense to me. So thank you. Thank you, Nate. And so I guess I guess I'd want to see a show of hands. I can stop sharing my screen of you know, do we like the idea of late October? Do we want to push it back a little bit? Uh, I'm not sure. You know, for some reason it seemed like the those dates, the 21st and 23rd were what were suggested by councelor Shane. I don't know why necessarily. I mean, it could be the week later. I guess there's Halloween, but um, you know, if we think both of those work for me. Um, you know, I think, uh, it's clear Bruce thinks we've talked about this enough and we need to get out there and, uh, and and see see how people feel about it,

socialize it. Yeah. Um, you know, I'm think, uh, I'm happy to help. Um, I' have I mean I know that if I'm if I'm the spokesman um that I'm going to want to have more input on how it's choreographed than if I'm just the supporting actor. So, uh, we should figure that out. Yeah,

I think in terms of producing material, it's most of that's going to fall on you, Nate, and and Pam. at least graphic material. As far as slides that have text on them, I mean, we can all do PowerPoint. Um, so I mean, so Thursday the 23rd to me, it's two weeks from tomorrow. That would be okay. I think that gives us, you know, hopefully enough time to pull it all together. Is that something we think works and we can let North Amoris know? Yeah,

I I'll be out of town, but it sounds like there's a critical mass that would be able to be there. So I guess that's the question. Do we like the idea of having just a few planning board representatives? Uh if it's a sub quorum to me, we wouldn't post it. It would just be us going to the North Ammerst to present this idea. Like I said, we can always have a a public meeting with the full board later at a, you know, subsequent meetings, but for this initial one, having, you know, two or three members and staff um to be there. Bruce,

um 21st or third is good for me. I can be there if necessary. Um the the room is uh how many people know and have been in the North Ammerst uh library meeting room? Um I mean it it uh I had 35 people in there the weekend before last and uh probably 50 in there. It would be a squeeze. Um, but you can have double doors that open out so it could spill into the uh so it might get 80 and it would be very tight and and but it's cooler in the year. So if it gets hot it won't be because it's 90 outside. So managing expectations around that. I think that room will be okay. I it it's hard to know who's going to show, but I think it'll be okay. But it it could be tight just so as we know. So I would think that in thinking about um there is a screen there and uh uh I was sure a projector will take up room. I suppose we do need to use a projector. Um and uh there was something else I was going to say but I can't remember what it is. So that's but that's I just wanted to work around the uh the space that we would be uh doing this in. I I I think it'll be okay, but we might have to be inventive.

Well, Bruce, were you talking about the capacity partly to say that we should try to only have a subset of the committee of this board present?

Oh, I don't think I mean whether whether the seven of us or three of us uh is going to make a difference to the room. Um I mean if it's not a if it's not if if seven of us show up uh but we haven't advertised it it's not a formal meeting of the planning board um I imagine that just means we can't make decisions or do anything right and we're not trying to do anything which it's basically a data collection uh uh isn't it? So just am I wrong about worrying about whether we restrict this to um three or three or fewer?

Yeah. I guess the question is is this a planning board meeting in North Ammerst which is you know if it or is it us going to North Ammerst to you know at the request of you know district one and so I just it's a little to me it's a nuance but it is you know if we post it as a public meeting you know it's a public meeting we have to take minutes we have we have to put an agenda we you know all these things if it's not it's not

I would say it's not and we should try hard to make it not because that's work you don't want to do and don't need to do uh I mean we might try and record it uh just for the purposes just for convenience so that we get people's literal feedback but beyond recording it uh um I was hoping that it wouldn't have the level of formality of a planning board meeting but at the same time we didn't have to be careful to make sure that the fourth board member that shows up is has to sit in the Huh? Yeah. See?

Uh, yeah. I was thinking it would be the more a nonofficial meeting, but I'm happy not to be I'm happy I think for Nate and you, Doug, and maybe you, Bruce, if you've been wanting to be a main participant is for you to decide how this should go and almost decide who should present what. I'm happy to participate or not. Uh, I do think it's really important to get the conversation out there as the main goal here and to get the feedback. Well, given my valuability a moment ago, you might want me to be the guy in the car.

My favorite know you and they know you'll cool off in 10 minutes and then you'll be fine. Um, was there a time suggestion for these nights? Just to mark it down. Oh, you're muted, Nate.

Yeah, I I I look at my email. I forget actually what um there was a specific time. No, I mean it just said the uh I think it was just like the evening. Maybe a 6:30 to 8 time slot I think was suggested. But that sounds good. Does Kathy have an opinion on time? That was in her email. Okay. Well, let's go with that.

Yeah. Again, if the full board wants to be there, I was just thinking that if we had, you know, say three board members kind of being the presenter with staff and the others show up, that's fine. Uh there's really no discussion with them. Um and that way it's just, you know, it's not quote the the formal posted meeting. Yeah. It feels like if we can avoid that, we might, you know, it's just going to make life easier for us.

Yes. I mean, I still am. Yes. Um, I had a an informal meeting with the uh conservation commission the other day uh on behalf of the Amos Community Land Trust of the Consultants. So, we we showed up and we were squeezed in. Um, so that was uh well actually that was the informal applicant, not the board was quite formal. So, I suppose No, I don't know what I'm talking about. Shut up, Bruce. All right, I'll write back to Kathy tomorrow. I'll suggest the 23rd at 6:30 in the North Amoris Library and I can, you know, I'll reach out to everyone and just confirm, you know, roles and, you know, and we can work from there. All right. Uh, we'll move on then. That'll be that's good for our general housing discussion tonight. Time is 9:50. All right. We'll see if we can go through our usual last stuff pretty pretty quickly here. Pam and Nate, any old business not anticipated?

No. No. How about new business? No. How about ANR subdivision form A? No applications? Nope. Not today. All right. Up up upcoming ZBA applications we might be interested in. I don't have anything there either. Okay. upcoming SP, SPR, SUB applications.

Uh yeah, uh Amoris College is proposing to relocate their salt shed. You know, they they purchased 40 Dickinson Street. It was the old Chevrolet dealership um just west of the train tracks. And so that would need a site plan review application that'll likely be coming forward. Um and then the uh solar um Shbury Road solar project. There was a preliminary subdivision plan filed that's been filed twice. It's since expired seven months since it was last time. So they might be coming back soon to submit the same uh subdivision plan. Uh probably in the next month or two,

maybe later. All right. Um, let's see. Planning board committee and liaison reports. Bruce, anything on PVPC? Uh, there's meeting tomorrow, so next time I promise. All right, Jesse, housing and subcommittee. Housing subcommittee. Nothing we haven't discussed really. All right, Angus CPAC. I'm technically I've been voted on it. I have not been sworn in yet. So, I was voted in on what was it last night, I think. Okay. All right. And then any word from Karen on our design review board?

Sure. You know, I I let her I you know, we exchanged emails and I she can continue serving. Um I said I would just go into the system and pull out what you know what's been done. And so she was worried that that would be too much work for staff and I said that's fine. I I can communicate with her again. So really, you know, in the last um few months, they've looked at um you know, four projects are just sign projects in the downtown. So, you know, Rare Cruzana changed location, a new restaurant opened, the closet opened next to town hall, and so their work has been really just, you know, minimal changes to storefronts. They haven't had a lot of, you know, other projects. So, okay.

All right. Um time is 9:53. report of chair. I don't really have anything to report. I did think we should I had two items I thought we should make sure we talk about before we're done. One is uh Bruce's non-b businessiness get together on Saturday and the second was Nate. You and I talked about cancelling our next meeting so that Bruce and I could attend the design review downtown design review working group without missing this meeting. So, uh, Bruce, you are on the downtown working group, right?

You're muted. Yes, I am. And I I I noted that the uh meeting coincided with what I thought was going to be a planning board meeting. I didn't hear back, but uh so yes, that that was in that was expected to be a conflict. Yeah. And yeah, so staff think

Yeah. Sorry. We don't have um you know, there's the Atkins project that has continued to that evening. We don't need a quorum to continue it again. And so staff thinks it's important for you know Bruce and you Doug to be at the downtown design uh group working group. And so we don't have any other business public hearings or anything that's too urgent. And so you know I would probably ask Johanna as the next officer to attend with Pam and I for two minutes to continue the archival project for another meeting. I don't think they'll be ready anyways. Um and then we would just the planning board would not have we'd have a night off and we'd meet again. uh you know as regularly scheduled November uh whatever meeting that is in November

nineth yeah five five okay so unless someone really wants to meet on the 22nd you know I think it's a you know the downtown design standards has been delayed I'm I you know there uh there's a working group it's a large number of people they have draft standards so I think it's really important to have as as many people there as possible on the um on the 22nd for that. Okay. It's also my birthday, so I'm expecting a cake.

Oh, okay. Well, we need to let the consultant know. Um Okay. And then, uh Bruce, uh you're you're hosting us for a social discussion this Saturday at 3. Yes. Yes. Okay. And uh I think uh it's fine just to come in the driveway and park on the side. It's 159 161. It's the co-ousing community. Uh and the uh the my house is the red barn on Pine Street.

Yes. On Pine Street. It's it's near State Street. But it's uh the the my house is the red old barn. It's got a golden kangaroo final on the porch. Hard to miss. And then we'll be basically on the back side of that out sitting on the porch and on the grass probably unless it's raining in which case we can do it inside. There's plenty of room. So uh um come and have fun. There's a I got a table tennis table as well set up outside so we can kids can play on that if they want to. Right.

All right. So, those that's all I wanted to make sure we talked about on during my report. Nate, anything on on your report?

Yeah. Um, I think I mentioned there was the two zoning petitions that council referred to the planning board and so I think it would be I think you know the planning board should hold hearings on those. It can be in the same evening. That'll probably be the second meeting in November. So we have 65 days from the date of referral which would put us on December 10th. So I think you know the November 19th um meeting date would be a public hearing to review those. You know at that hearing we can talk about say the merits of it all and everything. I don't want to like you know jump in. So you know there's um you know there's two petitions. I think I forwarded them to the planning board. Uh the um council meeting will probably be uploaded later this week. You could watch it. It was a two-hour discussion. Um and so we you know at the hearing we can hear from the the proponent board can ask questions we can decide how we want to move forward with it. Um the ADU zoning amendment is going to go to town council on October 20th for the first read. So you know the you know we closed the hearing the CRC did. I think the town attorneys reviewed it. They didn't actually I don't think they had any changes. Maybe one or two minor ones really. Uh so that's you know that'll be something that council will hopefully vote on by the end of November. Um, so that's, you know, that'll be on the books. Uh, and then the housing production plan, just to give you an update, the CRC is still reviewing it. So, they're meeting tomorrow to review it. Uh, some of the members have questions about some of the information in the housing production plan, you know, detailed stuff about number of students, also about some of the strategies, and it may be that they want to have changes made to the plan before it goes back to council in November. And if that does, I'd probably just bring it back to the planning board just so you see it again. Um, I don't, you know, I think I explained to the CRC that, you know, the planning board, you looked at what you thought was under your purview and generally, right, I think there was an agreement that the the plan provides a good framework and even if we don't like something, it's not enough to deny it, right? We

just don't have to move forward with that strategy or we can change it after the plan's been adopted. I think the CRC's of the opinion that before they adopt it, they want to make sure it says what they want it to say. And so, for instance, one of the strategies is build more student housing. And people don't like that. To me, it's like, well, that's what the consultant thinks is important, right, to help solve the affordable housing problem in Ammeris. They don't say who should build it or where. It's a strategy. And to me, the idea would be after it's adopted now, we decide, well, what do we do with that idea? But let's not say remove it from the plan anyway. So, I think that's moving through the CRC. The hope is it goes back to council uh this year to be voted on in late November or December. Um my hope my I really want it to get voted on. I think like I said once it is I'd like for the planning board and the housing trust and CRC to have a combined meeting at some point too to kind of talk about how do we work together and how do we you know divide tasks or priorities and see how we can move it forward. And so I'll keep you know up to date on that. I I'm hoping it moves forward. If not, I maybe we we schedule a meeting with the housing trust anyways just to understand what they would like to do and what the planning board would like to do.

Is CRC the last word on that? They're making a recommendation to council. So, in order for it to be sent to the state for approval, uh the uh the council has to adopt it. And so, you know, the planning board, you voted to recommend it. Uh and the CRC is is not quite there yet. So they, you know, they could in the next meeting or two not get there or not and recommend a council not to uh adopt it. I think it has to they have to get it back to council for November 7th or something. Their recommendations back to council by November 7th. So okay, Angus.

Yeah, just two quick questions. One, um should the housing and zoning subcommittee look at the petitions or should we save it for a full planning board discussion? And then second question um is has there been any progress on a full-time planning director for the town?

Yeah. So the zoning um petitions, let's wait for the full hearing and then we can decide how to move forward with that if if you know if we want to um you know typically it's it's the planning board by statute uh state laws the planning board that help holds the hearings. If the planning board then wants to have the housing and zoning subcommittee work on it as part of the hearing, they could. Um so we'll wait till then. Uh and yeah, the the director the search for the director of planning and economic development is probably going to be concluded in the next few weeks and so there there's been finalists and it's just going through that process right now. All right, Nate, anything else from

No, we covered uh everything else on my list, so it's good. All right, anybody have anything else? All right, time is 10:01 and we are adjourned. Thank you all. Our next official meeting will be in November. November 5th, I think Pam told us. Yes. Our next unofficial meeting is Saturday at Bruce's house. That's right. All right. Good night, everyone. Night, Pam. Good night. Okay, we'll talk to you soon. All right. Bye. Recording stopped.