Planning Board - Regular Meeting

one meeting a month in person, and that's a good reminder that we should take that subject up again.

We've gone back to full attendance. It's been a couple of years actually now that we've been doing it.

I think we get good attendance online. People can show up for the segment of the meeting that they're most interested in if they don't want to sit through the whole thing. Um, so we have, yeah, pretty good attendance. I would say both ways, you know, there's certainly people who prefer to engage in person. Yeah.

But I mean, I think the proposal would be hybrid, not right. So not in prison in prison.

Yeah. The discussion. Yes, that's right. Yeah. So the discussion we had was at one meeting a month, uh, via zoom and the other, uh, hybrid.

Hmm. We're also waiting. We're also waiting to see what the legislature does. Cause they may change the rules in the next month. They would never, well, they may just set the standard for permanent hybrid option, but we'll, we'll see.

All right. Well, I will wait. Uh, let's call it until seven Oh three. I've got seven Oh one right now. And since we have a quorum, I am, We'll get rolling at 7.03 if we don't have any additional members. Well, we'll get rolling anyway. Let me put it that way. All right, here we go. We've got four.

Super Quorum. Yeah. Super Quorum. Don says, computer is slow to boot up on my way. OK. Virtually, of course. Yes.

Speaking of.

All right, it is 7.03, so I will begin the meeting. I am pursuant to Legislation 862, Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, extending the suspension of certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, General Law Chapter 30A, Section 20. This meeting of the Bedford Planning Board will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the town's website an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. So tonight in the development session, we have scheduled continuation of the public hearing for the definitive subdivision plan at 145 Davis Road. That would be four lots off of Jeffrey Circle. i'm and second item is request for endorsement of a plan believed not uh requiring approval i have for 174 through 176 middlesex turnpike uh that's uh cummings properties And I understand for the subdivision plan hearing that the applicant has requested that we continue testimony, that we continue the hearing to date certain July 14th, 2026.

That is correct. Okay. So they, they acknowledge that the board has requested a peer review. They've agreed for that peer review to be undertaken. And since that's not, um, since that not, that is not yet available, therefore they agree to, um, continue until we have that, which for the moment is just to continue to your next meeting on July 14th.

Um, and you have reached out to, um, a group that you'd worked with previously.

So the, the organized neighborhood is aware of that. That's why you don't see them on, uh, in attendance. And, um, Okay.

Uh, moved to approve the move to continue the hearing for the aforesaid property to the aforesaid date. Oh, I supposed to put a hand up and John was first.

I actually had a question. Mr. McClain, please proceed from Tony's.

memo he's saying about a gemma review what which is a term of art that i don't understand right that's the name of a consultant that was hired on behalf of the neighborhood okay um and that that review was included in your backup materials i may have missed that okay thank you i i second what steve said

So, Mr. Hagan, how do you vote? Aye. Mr. MacLean? Aye. Ms. LaFrance-Lyndon?

Aye.

Mr. Crowley? Aye. There's a hand raised in the audience, by the way. Yes, I'm going to take that after that, and the chair votes aye. So, hearing is continued to July 14th. So, with that, I'll take a question, comment from the audience. Alethea Yates?

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah, I'm here on behalf of the Historic Preservation Commission. Just wanted to give you a heads up regarding 277 The Great Road. Don't know if you're aware, but because that house was built in 1920, it is subject to the Demolition Delay Bylaw.

Okay.

I was in contact recently with Scott Gould over at Building, and he said he didn't think anybody had been aware of that. So I thought I'd just spread the word.

Okay, that's new to me. So thank you for sharing that.

And that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, I'll just confirm that she is correct. Yeah. And we have alerted the the new owners, the majority company that bought the approved project and they should be initiating that. Review with the well, the historic preservation commission keep forgetting to not try to use acronyms during the meeting. But, um, yeah, so that's that that is true and that'll hopefully get underway in the near future.

Very good. So, moving on to request for endorsement of the plan believed. Not to require approval. That is Cummings Properties 174 through 176 Middlesex Turnpike. And we have a representative of Cummings Properties.

Yes, good evening. My name is Michael Levaney. I'm an architect with Cummings Properties representing the multiple owners of this property. If you'd like me to go through them, I will. Otherwise, hopefully we're good. So yeah, we have this plan before you this evening. We believe that... you know, based on the fact that, um, it is unbuildable in that area, um, that we could potentially, um, turn this into an approval, not required plan and split off these, uh, create lot four X and four, uh, I'm sorry, four X and three X from the existing property. Um, that's there now. It just, um, it doesn't impact the development of any future development of this property and, um, you know, just superfluous. Most of its conservation restricted. There's a lot of straight conservation land on here, some wetlands. And the thought was we would just put that aside for now and maybe someday that becomes subject of a donation or something like that to some conservation, nonprofit conservation that actually has it in their manifest to maintain something like this, so.

All right, very good. Tony, do you have, or Mr. Veni, do you have drawings to share? I have them in my computer. am i muted uh not yet no please do i don't know let's see tony can you do that yeah thanks so tony you can share it or should i

Well, I did. I queued it up for you to be able to do it, too.

Okay. Fair enough. Hold on one second, please. See if I can do that. Boom.

Okay.

And for the benefit of the audience, these maps were in the package provided to board members. Posting them on screen is for the benefit of those watching online or on YouTube after the fact.

So I understand you all can see it.

The colorized ones?

I found those. you see what's on my screen now i can i just i found the black and white uh when i was reviewing it a little hard to interpret that's great oh excellent i had that open in the background just in case uh to me that makes a lot of sense and it's you know color speaks everything so it does yeah so what would happen is the uh lot four four b would be um this kind of lilac color and the lot the remaining of lot 3b would be the tan color and the the two in the green, the 4X and the 3X would be the parts that would be subdivided.

And the acreage of those lots?

Bear with me one second. It is one is 7.9, I believe. Let me zoom in. 7.6 and 13.4, respectively. So the 3X is 13.4 and the 4X would be 7.6.

Thank you. And Tony, did you have any comments?

no as i said because these lots are designated as unbuildable lots and as you hear they're intended to be and they are already protected by conservation restriction um you know so these are the you know the these are the Wooded areas behind the 2 existing office buildings that back up to route 3 and the. Removal of these from the gross acreages is bear in mind. This is Bedford woods. So it's a, it's a fairly large. complex and somewhere in history some very interesting property lines were arranged in order to create frontages for each of the lots on Middlesex Turnpike rather than using Bedford Woods Road as a road for frontage purposes. So that's why you see those odd configurations of these two lots. Bear in mind, there's two more lots in the complex which have similar angularity in order to get to the frontage on the turnpike. But in this case, there's this plan as presented is eligible for endorsement as an approval not required.

Thank you. Mr. Hagan.

Yeah, I have a question because although I had to review this property, could you remind me, you had to get approval from the Conservation Commission for this construction years ago. Was there any, can you remind us if there were issues on the percent buildable land, how much upland versus the total off? There's percentages that are required by the town. I was wondering whether or not, hiving this off, well, sure, now you don't, what you're building on, you have a much higher percentage of not wetland. But what happened at the original approval before these lots were designated to be separated, which you're trying to do now?

It's a good question. So we purchased the property back in January. I'm not as familiar with what the process was back in, I believe, around, it was either the late 90s or the early aughts that this was developed.

Right, right. Okay, my misunderstanding. So you're new owners, you don't know the history on this, so I'm not going to ask you about the history on this then. Well, it's also, I probably have some familiarity, but that said, since you're the new owners, I will just be quiet and say, you know, this looks appropriate, even from the Conservation Commission viewpoint, and hiving it off actually could be a help in the future if you want to donate it to the town somehow.

Mr. Crowley. Just carrying on with what Steve was saying, though, I mean, I assume that the current building with the current land that's going to be associated with it, well, I guess there's two buildings here, has enough land to meet the requirements with the new lot configuration? Yeah.

Just confirm. And I can chime in on that. we haven't disadvantaged the lot 3a or lot 3b there's still um let's see there's still 18 almost 19 acres and 14 and a half acres respectively left there so we're nowhere near any of the thresholds and actually we are looking at small little actually the 176 building the um uh the one that and the lilac there that we're looking at potentially thinking about a small little high bay addition to that to accommodate some um some users but that's the first thing i did when we sat down and looked at this this would this disadvantage us in any way and it's it's not even close mr again another question or comment do you own the ultragenics site also on this property

no sir we just uh manage these on and manage these two all right thank you all right further questions or comments all right so seeing none um do we have a motion to concur that a public hearing is not required under the Subdivision Control Law.

So moved.

Second.

All right. Moved and seconded. Mr. Hagan? Aye. Mr. McLean? Aye. Mr. Crowley? Aye. Ms. LaFrance-Lyndon?

Aye.

And the Chair votes aye.

All right. Awesome. Thank you so much. Certainly. For your time. Have a great night. Thanks. You too.

All right. So that concludes the development session. And Tony also is noting it doesn't look like Alethea Yates has been muted. She was asking if you could do so. Thank you. So business session. Preliminary discussion on the future of the Bedford Plaza Hotel at 340 Great Road. And we have Scott Cope with us to speak to that. Dark sky lighting. Outdoor lighting bylaw. I had a goal to come up with a timeline for implementation. Regrettably, I did not complete that, so plan on that for next meeting. Discussion of small clean energy facility permitting, data center permitting, reports from liaisons to boards and committees, and then staff updates. So, Scott, if you'd like to speak, I'm... Happy to give you the floor. Great.

Well, good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for having me 16 Mattawaska street in case you don't know that we haven't met. It's great to be together. Uh, I'm going to share my screen. I think I've been told that would be helpful. So I'm going to send that request and then I can. All right. All right. So hopefully you can see this now. So I'm going to read a little bit and then I can ad lib and I'll get to the end and ask any questions. And really, as you all know, the town has been working to revitalize the Shawshank district in some form or capacity for years now. And of course, that started in many ways with the Great Road business districts, Shawshank being one of the four. And there's not really been a lot of development and improvement and investment there. And so recently an opportunity has come up where the owner of the Bedford Plaza Hotel at 340 Great Road and the parking lot at 15 Shawshank Ave has indicated a somewhat urgent desire to sell. And as I've talked with him, it seems like there might be an opportunity for the town to acquire that and potentially create a public park at zero dollars to taxpayers. And it would be funded entirely through new new development that is enabled already through the zoning. So let me just read. Some of these paragraphs, this memo asked the planning board to consider to adopt a statement of preliminary support for the following concept. The town acquires the Bedford Plaza Hotel at 340 Great Road at independently appraised fair market value, demolishes it, and constructs a public park on the site. Acquisition, demolition, and park construction would be bonded by the town and repaid entirely through district improvement financing, DIF revenues generated by an adjacent private mixed-use development. with no impact on the general fund, community preservations fund, or existing taxpayers. I should say this does not in any way negatively impact the levy in any way. So to be really clear, there's no warrant article. There's nothing even remotely close to that level. This is really trying to just get a sense of the temperature in the room and to hear what people think. if the board would be open to working with myself on trying to revitalize. So according to Master Law Chapter 40Q, a town, a municipality may establish a district improvement financing in up to 25% of the land area of the town. And the basic idea is a virtuous cycle of public investment that is funded by private investment. And so they they help one another. And so basically to kind of cut to the chase, what I'm considering doing is buying the hotel at something like it's appraised value somewhere in the six to eight million range. And then I would give it to the town, sell it to the town. for the cost of the town would buy it. And then the town would need to, of course, pay for demolition and park creation. And so you might be thinking, well, Scott, where is the town going to come up with the $10 million needed for that? And the answer is that district improvement financing, the way it works is that future tax increment revenues pay for the civic, the infrastructure, or the public park. And so in that sense, the general fund is not touched ever. And CPA dollars, those aren't at all impacted. And so just to put it like really concretely, currently we have a hotel and a parking lot. The reason why the parking lot has stayed a mostly vacant parking lot is because of the parking minimums at the hotel. So insofar as that hotel is standing there, that parking lot will always remain a paved over parking lot. It will never become productive and beneficial for the taxes of Bedford, for the tax basis, or just a community service. It will have to remain that. And so what our proposal would do is it would get rid of, frankly, what is an eyesore, and it would create a public park, and it would enable a productive use of 15 Shawsheen Avenue, and it would produce long-term tax revenue for the town through this mechanism of a DIF, District Improvement Financing. There's all kinds of technical details that we can get into about how the bonding works, and I'm very happy to discuss that. If this is something eventually that the town would like to go forward with, it would be very helpful to have a development agreement between the town and myself about how this would happen. I've talked to 26 different residents about this, including on a number of boards and committees. And I've heard 26 affirmative, we love this idea, Scott. I had one gentleman tell me, I said, this isn't gonna impact the taxes at all. And he said, Scott, I don't care if you raise my taxes, just get rid of that hotel. Now, nobody has any plans to do that, thankfully. But just to be clear, so this project and the bonding and the acquisition of the hotel is based upon The future tax revenue, so no general fund impact and it's entirely on the basically the parking lot and maybe adjacent development that we would do that is enabled through the town's acquisition of the hotel. So, if there was sufficient agreement and excitement and interest on the board on this, I would ask that they would consider adopt. consider adopting the following statement tonight. The Bedford Planning Board finds this concept consistent with the town's planning goals. If a warrant article embodying this proposal and satisfying the fiscal and due diligence conditions described herein were presented at the town meeting, this board would recommend its passage. The reason it would be helpful for the board to adopt that statement is that we have capital partners that would be helped to know if the town is interested in working with a developer in improving the district. So I've spoken with Mass Development. They are on board. They think this is feasible. And I have a lot more details that I could share. I've spoken with a number of people individually, but at this point I'll shut up and turn it over maybe Chris to you or Tony or anyone.

Sure. Thank you, Scott. And I have a number of questions and I really appreciate you taking the time to develop this concept and to bring it forward. I think that this is a great thought. Other members of the board? Mr. McLean.

Yeah. So I guess I have two questions. So do we have to worry about running into the bond limit at all?

No, it does not count against if it's financed this way. Okay. Yes.

Great question. Yeah, and I probably could have just read FortiQ and figured that out, but... You're great.

There's two types of bonds. There's a general obligation bond and a special obligation. General obligation is backed by the full faith and credit of the town. A special revenue is just by the project.

Okay. And then the second question is, so I guess the magic interlocking pieces, 15 Shashin have... whichever the you want the parking lot to develop on and you feel like you can't get the parking lot without getting rid of the hotel precisely okay so so that's why something needs to happen to the hotel in this model and the projects can't go forward as okay i mean just as a random aside we could also adjust the parking minimums but

that will maybe john uh i would love to get there because part of one way that you could help us and we could help you is if uh under chapter 10 of the bedford zoning bylaw there is uh parking minimum uh yeah it would be helpful if we worked about if we talked on that as well i i i i don't necessarily i i i know people have feelings about the hotel and i don't necessarily want to get get in the way of those feelings but i also wanted to put in a plug for lower parking rooms okay thank you

Thank you, Mr. McLean. Mr. Hagan. Chris Gissen sent in a list of questions. I'd like to defer and hear Chris Gissen's questions in that discussion. Thank you.

So I am happy to Chris, I have those on this document and I can kind of just scroll down.

So just as a very preliminary, this is an example of a proposed park, what it would look like. And then you think, well, what would happen over here? An example of our proposed development would be something like this. So the ecological benefits we think would be significant, the tax benefits we think would be significant, the community benefits we think would be significant. So the first question, Chris, maybe I'll let you read the question and I'll give the answer. Yeah.

That sounds good. So what are the estimated annual bond payments? Range is fine. My intent in asking is to apply an estimated annual interest rate to the total bond value.

Yeah. So basically, the biggest variable in this is what the hotel rather appraises at. The refugees that were there a handful of years ago really inflated the tax value. It went from about 3 million assessed value to 14. And it has now been abated to five. So there's some ambiguity. The owner of the Bedford Plaza Hotel has an appraisal for 9.1. We think that number is probably higher than it would be today. And so Basically, the total bond cost would likely be acquisition at the appraised market value, demolition cost, part creation, and perhaps some capital costs as well. Hypothetically, if there was an $8 million bond, that'd be 475K per year over 30 years. If it was a 12.5 million bond, that'd be 745K over 30 years. The next number of questions, Chris, if I can just go there. Please, go right ahead. Just to be clear, this would be one version of our development. We would like to potentially go there, and you see that broken out on a chart here. We think it's possible to do a development beyond just the parking lot. We're interested in doing that or just the parking lot. And so here you see some addresses that we're working with. Now, I just want to be maybe really clear. I'll go back up to even a paragraph. that DIF financing only allocates additional tax revenue to the DIF project. Therefore, current tax amounts will continue to the general fund, only the tax increment will service the bond payments, which ensures the general fund does not decrease. Also, if projected tax increment is sufficiently higher than needed to repay the bond, the town can allocate less than 100% of the tax increment, e.g. 70%, to bond servicing. Thus, the new development would fund the DIF project and grow the general fund simultaneously and So here you see the annual tax revenue for some of the parcels that we are in talks with. None of that would decrease ever. That would always continue to the general fund. If Chris, you don't mind, I would like to pull in my associate, Mark Savage, who's on here and he could help walk through some of these. Mark, would you like to talk about this question about the diff bond cost in the 1.2X?

For sure. Hi there. Bored to introduce myself, Mark Savick. I'm an external consultant working with Scott, pulling in all sources of external data and double checking all these fact sources from the state and city level data, zoning bylaws, and DIF financing. So yeah, just to repeat this question that was sent over of what is the total property value corresponding to 1.25x the DIF bond costs? In an example scenario of an $11 million bond with a term up to 30 years, we wanted to highlight an example where the general fund could be contributed to automatically, and that could be a capture rate for the first decade of 80% to the DIF and 20% to the general fund, so the city starts seeing benefits, and then the capture rate later on being 30%. This is just an example calculator that we can share afterwards. Those rates can be changed, obviously, with the bond formation. Illustrated rate of 4.5 with Bedford's AAA rating, but I think that's quite realistic. What that means is that the city would have to see the project value be at least of $80 million in this example to have 1.25x of being an ample debt service. That for us is... our most conservative scenarios, even if in our most conservative scenarios of projected development, we aim to be over 20% that value amount, adding to the overall area of that mixed use development. So we've targeted a lot of room to ensure that we add additional value to the Bedford area so that a that tax revenue will increase dramatically for the next following decades.

Great. Mark, Chris, I don't know if there's any follow up or honestly, I think I might. Please continue. This is really good. Great. Mark, I think you've got the next couple of ones if you want to just keep going.

Yeah, for sure. So value per acre with similar development in the Metro West and Greater Boston area. So the value per acre is quite normal for the density. So I would say between conventional suburban multifamily and denser entering info termed as gentle density or missing middle density. So not large, tall, spiky condos, not single family homes, but that three to four story unit walkable urban district. That estimated value is 30 million per acre. That is higher than conventional low-density suburban developments, but consistent with compact and infills. So typically auto-oriented or garden-style suburban projects are at a 15 to 30 unit per acre, can be 7 to 15 million per acre of completed value. ours is closer to 30 units per acre so higher value per acre but is driven by just more homes more units on the same land but not unusually high prices for homes these are priced as starter homes for young married couples downsizing seniors folks new to town a price to sell not currently targeted for a rental scenario so studio one bedroom two bedrooms

um with additional three and four bedroom units um for you know any market demand um any any questions on that all right members of the board mr crowley just one you you know the written word here says our concept is greater than 30 units per acre but you said approaching or use a different word so do you know what i mean you may not know right now but is it greater or is it less than 30 that you're aiming for

I would say aiming for, sorry, Scott, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead. 30 units per acre, I would say, is our target right now.

And I think I'll just maybe double click on this last point, which is, we've really tried to take seriously the housing study that Bedford did. We've tried to take seriously with the council on aging and the need for the growing population of seniors in our town. And obviously there's a friend of this board who moved because she couldn't find the type of home that maybe she was looking for here. And so we in many ways are really, we're so thankful for All the families that can find a home here and glad to have them in our community. But we lose some of these amazing families and friends when they can't age in place. And so we would hope to help change that. Mark, do you want to talk about how we came up with our estimate? It's probably not worth getting into all the details here, but yeah, just just some.

some details for sure um yeah our primary source of work here is uh actually costing this um as best as we could in this in these early preliminary stages um so going very aggressively through and matching this with the current Bedford zoning bylaws um of what the actual setbacks are for the GRS zone which this would be entirely uh stationed in um accounting for all of the cutouts that we would have to provide for public plazas parking strategy and floors, as well as the GFA to unit mix. Everything as of right is possible for our scenarios, but there will be some further requests down the line of how we could improve this scenario with some potential special permits. But there are definitely scenarios where this is fully and totally as of right. For revenue, standard quotes that we've received from the area aiming for a $500 to $560 per square foot, depending on the unit size, ranging from studios to four bedrooms, as well as commercial value divided via the income approach, the NOI divided by the cap rate. This would have, due to mixed use, a mandatory amount of commercial space, which we are accounting and factoring for. For that cost, GFA times a blended construction rate from Boston area contractors that we have reached out to, roughly in best case scenarios, $270 per square foot to $320 per square foot, accounting for conservative and optimistic. Soft cost as a percent of hard, supported by myself and others not on the call here, as well as parking price by stall type, we have factored in surface parking, tuck under, basically first floor level parking, and potential scenarios for below grade. That is ballparked with three potential estimates. Each of those we think are possible in our scenarios, but we wanted to prove that this project is viable, not in a perfect world, but in many variations of the world, which we must be accustomed to.

um we've sourced all this sorry go ahead scott yeah and if i could just jump in there mark um as i was talking to mass development today i think they were very supportive of this and one of the things they said is is if this is the type of of of acquisition demo and park creation um if this is the type of project that the town was interested in the district improvement financing um could be much larger than our own development and what that would do is it would capture the tax increment value of of other parcels as well to repay the bond and then again really kickstart this virtuous cycle um because i think we all know in town there people say oh i wish i wish the shawshank district would improve and you know we all love going to mcdonald's or euphoria or bedford house of beef and but we all know it it's it's not quite what it could be. And we think the town has done really good work in setting some parameters in place, but the DIF is specifically designed to try to incentivize private, investment uh and so i think if there were concerns for example that hey scott your project alone cannot service the debt which we're very confident in we think the numbers back that up and even in our most conservative scenarios that would be one option if the town still said hey we like this idea we just think we need more revenue for it that would be one option uh to to grow the the diff Maybe, Mark, I'll take this. Chris, you asked if there are any developments in Greater Boston similar to what we're proposing. I'm not sure if the board members know the Lexington Place condominiums on Waltham Street in Lexington. Chris, I'll send you this document or Tony, and certainly you can send it out. But it's right off of Mass Ave. And I think it's about 40 units, three stories, mixed use retail on the bottom. And I think Woburn Village is one option. I think, honestly, the scale of that is significantly larger. That's the Market Basket. That's the Avalon Community. That's significantly larger than what we're doing. Let me, if I may, just kind of skip ahead because this is probably where the rubber meets the road a little bit. Sure, yeah. Chris, you say, if you don't receive town support for the DIF bond, yeah, maybe, I don't know, Todd, if...

Sorry, I don't know if you don't mind scrolling back. I saw something interesting with the Woburn one and you just said it's much larger, right? And so maybe we can't compare, but it said, increase the property value from 10 million to 57 million. And I thought you were kind of indicating something about 80 million for this site. before? Did I misread what I kind of saw?

It will depend on, frankly, the land assemblage that we are working for. We do think there will be very significant growth. I don't know if I can put a number on it right now, but yeah, very significant growth in the value that will contribute many times more in tax generated than whatever the bond would be. Yeah. Thanks. That's a great question. If we don't, will we proceed with the overall project? We intend to pursue land assemblage with multiple adjacent parcels. The DIF is the mechanism that allows us to include the hotel parking lot, 15 Shaanxi Ave, in our development plans. If the DIF is denied, we would likely not pursue acquisition of the hotel slash parking lot, but focus our efforts on adjacent parcels put another way. Without the DIF, the hotel will stay a two star hotel, and the parking lot will remain a paved over parking lot. Would you still plan to acquire the hotel, if so? If we knew that the DIF would be denied at special town meeting, we would likely not pursue acquisition of the hotel. We believe, frankly, somebody can make money on it. But that's not our goal. Yeah. So really, this is a way of moving the development from one parcel to another, if that makes sense. Yeah. And then maybe, yeah, just kind of this last one for this rubber meets the road part. How would not obtaining the diff bond affect other parcels involved in the plan? How would it change what we plan to build on them? So our vision is a pedestrian-friendly car light development that leans into a walkable mixed-use district, hence the gentle density above typical outer ring suburban development. A local park incentivizes this type of mixed-use walkable district. Without the diff that turns the hotel into a park, our development will likely need to be more car-oriented. The truth is, I think a park, a civic park, it can act as an anchor and it can incentivize and catalyze other development. Without it, It's harder for us to lean into the neighborhood as itself, the amenity, if that makes sense. We wanna try to say, hey folks, live at Scott's Development because you're in this wonderful neighborhood and you will love being here and the town will love having you here. If that doesn't happen, we're saying like, hey, live next to this big parking lot. It's just gonna be a heat island, like don't mind that and like run off and yeah, I can keep going. So I think that's how it would potentially change. Maybe I'll pause there. We're towards the end. We only have a few more questions, but it relates to kind of what special permits we'd be interested in based on the zoning bylaw. I'm happy, Chris, to take any questions from the board.

Members of the board, Mr. Hagan.

I have a different question, but adjacent to your parcel, and things may have changed since the last I knew, is another four or five acres. It used to be the tree. Are you interested in that parcel? Because then that gives you a, well, let's just say in an ideal world, you acquired that. you'd have a much larger development, which then argues even more for a park. And besides, if this goes forward, that question is going to come up. What's the status of the land, the multi-acres that abut yourself?

We would be delighted to work with any and all landowners and or developers and interested parties. I think Tony could probably answer that better than I could, but suffice it to say, we would be very happy to work with any interested parties.

Great, great. I really appreciate this. Any other questions from members of the board or shall let Scott proceed?

All right, so I'll just maybe finish up. Do we intend to use the Great Road Shawsheen mixed use district? We do. Will we need a special permit? Yes. Let me just, the special permit as laid out in the chapter 10 of the bylaw. One reason we would ask for these special permits in these ways is you will help us to secure the revenue that will pay for the bond that will improve the district. So, for example, we're asking for a reduction. We would ask for a reduction in the setbacks that will help us to increase the number of homes that we're able to provide. And that will increase the revenue that goes into certainly the general fund eventually, but ensures that the bond is paid off. So that's just kind of like big picture. The more the town is able to to do this, the board is able to do this, the easier it is and the quicker it is to pay off the bond and have all the money going into the general fund. The type of development that we would like to do is what's known as a courtyard urbanist scheme. And maybe you've been to various charming villages in Europe or more cities. And you'll find these delightful little squares. And I think you saw it a little bit in the visual here where there is a courtyard in the middle. So the way that the zoning bylaw is written, it's not kind of built with our thing in mind. It's built with people plopping down a multifamily podium building and not caring about the environment and not caring about open space. We care very, very much. The way that we would do open space, we would just ask for flexibility with the town on how it's arranged, where on the site the open space is. It's more condensed as opposed to, I'm sure you've all seen developments where you have a little park and it's 500 square feet, but you're like, but nobody would ever go there. right we're trying to avoid that we want to make it usable a helpful open space and certainly we were very eventually you know lord willing we're happy to very much talk about that we would very much need the fourth story again to pay for the diff to pay for the bond that's really important uh and so that's something we can one thing we can do uh if if the town was open to that we would just kind of that would enable us as is. But even if it was stepped back a little bit, we would certainly be open to that, to reducing the visual impact of that fourth story. And then finally, to John's point, we would, We would like to either eliminate or basically hugely reduce the parking minimum, as is the case in, for example, the I believe it's the center district, the Great Road Center District. We will certainly be providing parking. We will be providing sufficient parking. We will providing the parking that people need. We have no interest in not providing what future residents and current residents in town desire. However, the current minimums are artificially constraining. And so we would just like to get rid of the artificial constraints and deal with the kind of parking people actually want. All of this goes through the planning board as defined in Chapter 10, and we do not anticipate needing any Conservation Commission approvals. Though, Steve, maybe if there's something with the 500-year floodplain that I don't understand, please correct me if I'm wrong there. So I think that's the conclusion of my presentation, and I would love to hear the board's feedback.

Thank you very much for taking the time. I really appreciate this. They're members of the board. Yeah, thank you very much for going through my questions. Mr. Crowley.

Scott, you had talked to me about there's two different levels or two different types of bonds, like a higher... interest rate one or something. I didn't really see that discussion here. And I don't totally know the differences. I don't know if you had any thoughts about those or what we're gonna do.

That's a really great question, Todd. So whenever a bond, a municipal bond goes out, there's different types. And two of the main types are called general obligation or special obligation bonds. General obligation bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the town. So the bond goes out for a new school or a new fire station, whatever the case may be. And the town says to the investors who loan the money, we will make you whole no matter what, we pinky promise. Right. That's a general obligation bond. A special obligation bond says to the investors, Scott's development will make you whole. However, the full faith and credit of the town of Bedford is not backing up this debt. And therefore, because it is riskier to investors, the interest rate does go up. However, there is zero risk that the town will ever have to service that debt. So the concern that You know, if you'd say, oh, man, Scott, I'm concerned that you will not produce the revenue, the tax revenue sufficient to pay back the bond to get rid of the hotel and create the park from this development. That way, the town has no liability in any sense through a special obligation. Now, personally, we would be open to whichever bond town council and the select board would advocate for. We are totally flexible. We would do whatever the town would advocate for.

Thank you.

Follow up questions. I mean, sorry. Do you you're on the docket at all to talk to the select board or was it contingent on tonight's meeting?

Yeah, I I've spoken with a handful of FinCon members. I've spoken with one select board member. I have yet to receive any from the 26 people I've spoken to on CLA Chamber of Commerce. Other boards that I'm not thinking of, everyone is supportive. And again, I've told you some of the comments people have made about getting rid of the hotel and putting a park there. However, certainly tonight, I really wanted to get this through. And part of the awkwardness, if I may be so bold, is that the owner is trying to sell more quickly than we would prefer. Because we would prefer, it puts us in a little bit of an awkward position of having to spend a lot of money in the hope that the town in November is gonna be in a great, is gonna be in a good mood and say, yeah, let's do it. Let's for the environment, for the taxes, for the quality of life, let's do it. And so we're trying at this point to get a sense for how different boards, committees and residents think about the plan.

Sorry, clarification question. Was it two owners, one for the hotel, one for the parking lot, or no? One owner. Great question. Okay.

And I'll say this is really kind of amazing to me how the parking minimums play into this. It's like you have to get rid of the hotel to get rid of the parking lot and turn it into a more productive use. That's... Yeah, let's call it a textbook example of this kind of virtuous cycle. But yeah, Mr. McLean and then Mr. Crowley again.

I just want to second your flabbergastness about that. It is not what I expected today when I woke up. I'll third that.

Yeah, well, I should have at least said I'm super excited about this concept of this project. It seems absolutely amazing. The question might be for Tony. What is the current height of the hotel? Does anybody know? I was just curious.

I don't know off the top of my head.

I mean, it's three stories looking at the pictures. OK. But I will not cop to a height.

Is La France London?

Yeah, that was actually one of my questions, too, is how high is the current hotel? I mean, I think this has a lot of powerful elements for the town. I mean, I, you know, obviously, the devil's in the details. And as we, you know, go through it and see what, you know, what can happen where I think it turns a underused not particularly attractive area of town into a benefit in terms of open space, in terms of housing, in terms of bringing a little bit more vitality maybe to an area that is kind of on the cusp of a lot of things. There's a lot of good things down there, a lot of good things going on, but it has not reached critical mass to kind of push it over. a certain level where I think it can really blossom. And I think this has the potential to do that. That said, I'm not particularly aware of potential issues in funding or other challenges that may come up. I mean, I like it. I guess the one thing I would say, I would hesitate to say that I don't want us as a board tonight to do anything that binds a future board. you know, or that binds us in the future. I think there was something in your statement that said, you know, we will support it in the future. There may be a little wordsmithing that would need to happen there for me to be comfortable. You know, I'm very positive towards the concept. And yes, if, you know, if we can jump all the hurdles, that would be great.

Thank you. Mr. Hagan.

My question is, have you brought this to the full finance committee or at least to the chair and another one? Yeah, because what I'm hearing of the discussion is as far as a planning stuff, which is what we do, there's a lot of positive feelings. However, the questions are all on how are the bonds going to work, how the other, et cetera, such that if Fincom blesses this saying, yeah, that's not a problem as long as the planners think it's a good planning idea. That would matter a lot. What's been the feedback from FinCal in particular? Well, have you talked to Ben Thomas?

That's a great question, Steve. I really appreciate you bringing it up because I think that's been the universal question that I've shared. People say, wow, I love this. How does it work again? And so... I've spoken with one FinCom member at some length, and he had questions. Nobody's heard of this. Now, it's actually mass development has worked with tons of towns on this. So this is not kind of a really niche thing. This is this is regularly used by mass development, used by municipalities. But obviously, Bedford has not. done a diff before so their next meeting is september 3rd so i've not yet spoken with ben uh and my plan is to try to to talk with them sooner rather than later wow thank you other questions comments from members of the board

mr crowley totally unrelated how can a board take the entire summer off i'm sorry how is that possible they work very hard and lead up to yeah okay non-uniform distribution of work activity

Mr. Hagan.

Yeah, again, back on PINCOM. If PINCOM is still the chair, if you just got him to say, yeah, he understands all the financing and says this will work and town's not going to get stuck holding a bag, is it possible for you to get that within a week? And then you can send that out to all the other group committees and boards that you're working with. That way you don't have to wait for the full FinCon. Really what you just need the chair, a veteran chair, which I think has been to describe a blessing in the sense, not that I hardly endorse it, that I don't see any problems with this. And that's the, so if you could get that within a week, I think it'd be wonderful.

Great. I'll tell them you sent me.

yeah go ahead or thanks they have a special meeting it seems like to me but maybe not but i don't know it seems like it's possible that's the way i'm looking at this right now and and you know where you know where your concept is at

The planning board is a land use board, and I look at this in terms of change in land use and where this would end up. And I think it's... absolutely something that we should endorse. Yeah, the financing, that's absolutely essential to have sorted out. From my standpoint, it looks like you've got a good first cut at it. More I's to dot and T's to cross. But this looks to me very promising. So you can scroll back and we can look at your recommended wording. And actually, before getting to that, Tony, Steve, I'm thinking of the comprehensive plan. And Scott, you're a member of the comprehensive plan advisory committee. I'm curious if this relates to any discussions that have occurred in the comprehensive plan

development dawn too yeah dawn's a member also so let's defer to dawn because she has spoken the least but always speaks clearly thank you well i would say yes it does speak to some of the elements we've been discussing in the comprehensive plan development um particularly the idea of having kind of village centers in town um and you know that kind of missing middle housing and the you know the creation of open spaces and you know third spaces if you will for for gathering so yeah i think it's in alignment with what we've been discussing at the comprehensive plan agreed very good thank you mr mclean so just so i can get uh oriented i mean like many of you i

From a land use perspective, this is intriguing, but of course the devil's in the details. But this article would not be about those details. It would not assume those details in place, right? It would just say a project like this could exist, and if it was sufficiently profitable, then... lucrative for the town it could issue this sort of bond right so we're not saying we would support the project we're saying that we restore support a project that looks like this sorry we support using this particular financing mechanism for a project that looks like this right can i be less clear i can try

Scott, do you think it's, is it that, or is it maybe, is it to the supporting of the special permits that would make this project viable for a bond? That, um, and which, yeah.

I, yeah, that's a great point, Mark. Um, I think John, to your point, and then even Krista, what you had just said, that's exactly right. Kind of fincom, uh, they, they will get into all the, the levy and the ceiling and the bond rating and all that. Um, I think even yeah, I would be open to whatever the board might propose, but in some sense, it would be helpful to hear your thoughts on that special permit side of the house because of regarding land use in that sense to Chris's point earlier. But yeah, this statement was drafted and I'm very sensitive to Don's point that we don't want to be anything binding, but it was drafted with the recognition of John's point that we don't yet have those financial details. This is very much saying those need to work out. But in theory, if they did work out, we would be supportive.

But of a warrant article, which isn't actually going to have anything to do with special permits. I guess that's one of the things that I don't completely understand. The warrant article is just going to assume such a project could exist, but does not depend on the project existing. Right, so you could, so we could vote this, you feel confident going forward, and then you end up in special permit hell. Not that, I mean, I hope we wouldn't do that to you, but you know, and then it would kind of all be moot, right? yes if we if the special permits don't come through that decreases our revenue so that we're no longer able to service the right bond and and then we we the the town wouldn't be able to issue the bonds if that's even the right language but yeah okay um so i mean it's sort of a funny thing for us to endorse right it's we're endorsing an article about hold on hold on yeah so we're not endorsing an article we're

endorsing the concept of an article support for a land use concept and dawn is at her hand up so i want to uh okay but i i looking at this article we're not endorsing land use we're we're endorsing a article about financing as far as i can tell all right i'm suggesting that we yeah consider alternative wording that's fair land use don please go ahead

Yeah, and one thing that it occurs to me should be said is that this proposal is very well suited to that particular area in town, and it's a very... it's almost uniquely well suited to that area, right? Because if this were being proposed in various other sections of town, I think people would be like, oh, that's totally out of character for this area. And, you know, it's going to be, you know, it's just going to be too different. It's going to be, you know, the neighbors aren't going to like it and what have you. But I think, um for an area of town that needs something um i think this is a project that's i think you guys have done a good job in crafting your project to enhance that particular area of town um so to just kind of point that out that this is not a this is not just something you're looking for. Okay. Where can we put this down? You know, I want to, I want to do something. Where can I put it? Um, this is kind of taking it from the, okay, this is, this is what's here now. What can we do to improve it? So I like that approach. And, um, you know, and I, I do agree with the point that John was making that this, the statement that's in front of us, and I know we've talked about wordsmithing, it talks about the warrant in front of the town. And maybe that's not the statement we want to make. Maybe we need two different statements. There's statement about the warrant. There's a statement about the concept itself. I don't know.

Mr. Hagan and then Mr. Crowley.

I'm following on the last two conversations about this sentence. My suggestion would be you replace the word fiscal with land management or land use. This would be satisfying the land use and due diligence conditions described here because that's what we do. Fiscal is It's semi out of our lane, and that's the finance committee. So I don't think it puts me in uncomfortable saying we're satisfying fiscal. No, we're satisfying land use, and that's the point of the long-term plan. This would fit right in with the long-term plan, I believe, as long as you explicitly call it land use. Thank you.

All right. Sorry, I'm typing up the text with the intention of editing it in real time in a couple of minutes. Mr. Crowley and Mr. McLean, you can arm wrestle about who goes next.

I got it. So I'm looking at some technical stuff here in terms of to go back to the question regarding the special permits. Is this where the proposal is? Basically the parking lot, I guess, and then maybe a bit more, but that is in the Great Roads, Shawshank Sub-district, correct? Yes, that's correct. Which I'm trying to look through our zoning bylaws because I don't have it all memorized, but it seems like we do allow maximum building height of 48 feet in that sub-district.

By special permit, it's three by rights.

Right, right. Yeah, three or four. So for me, especially you talked about potentially further back, it's 48. And then in the front, maybe it's a three-story or something like that, potentially. I'm told that that seems reasonable to me. But considering it's allowed, it's in our bylaws, to me, this is part of the point of having these flexibility. So for me, the height makes sense, especially if it's further back than it's 48, maybe not all the way to the street. depending on the design but I was a little confused about the setbacks because you know I think for this sub district it's 10 side 10 rear and 20 front and I don't know if you need more relief than that if you're thinking about more relief than that that's that's a really good question Todd so I

Depending on the setback and I think, you know, our vision is really kind of an activated public space, if that makes sense. And so we would we would want to do that and this and yet also we want open space. And so the way we do that is through the courtyard so that we're basically moving, you know, like a 10 foot buffer that really you can't do much. And we're trying to consolidate that from the front side and back and move it into the middle for families, for kids, for the public. And so that's why we kind of would need it because basically it crunches the usable courtyard space in the middle if we have those setbacks.

Okay. So it's probably mainly the front that's a problem. But I don't even know, this is kind of a question for Tony, can we go less than 20

front well in my likes yeah the intent of the front is that there be public you know both us both a sidewalk yeah but also like a public some additional public space and, you know, space for street trees and other landscaping, street furniture. And that's why you see typically that we, I think we set up here a 10 foot minimum for the ability to have, you know, both the passable sidewalk, so the sidewalk is wide enough to meet ADA standards, plus some other public amenities.

But you're saying it could be less than 20, though.

But it, yeah, so I mean, that is, I believe, among the standards we gave, the board has the ability to vary. Okay.

And then, so there was height and there was setbacks, and I apologize if there was another.

Yeah, height's the one dimension you do not have the power to vary.

Well, we can go up to 48, though.

No, right. Kind of as that concept showed, you know, three stories is allowed up at the street, four stories is allowed farther back by special permit.

Okay. Okay. All right. So I guess I'm just trying to indicate, at least to answer the question, I'm amenable in this location with what we're seeing here, it makes sense to me in the back to go to 48 in this area. So to me, to answer the question, I can say that I'm I can see that it makes sense to grant special permits for this.

Mr. McClain, then Mr. Hagan.

So, yeah, I mean, I support the notion that we should stick to our land use knitting and not worry so much about the financing one way or another. But on a land use perspective, I mean, I love this rendering. I love everything you have said, Scott, about what your vision is. It all makes sense to me. But the truth is, it's like, we don't know what lots of sun right yet. Um, you know, we, we don't have any, any sort of plan. There's, I mean, I mean, there isn't even a schematic design here, right. Or is even that, or even before that. Right. So it's like, it all sounds good. Um, but. I'm not sure what it would make sense for the Select Board to say at this point besides, yes, this is encouraging. There's not enough here for us to say, yes, we would approve the special permit because we're kind of

I would frame it, and I'll share my screen in a moment, that transfer of the parcel at 340 Great Road to the town of Bedford for the purpose of creating a public park would strengthen applications for special permits required for the proposed development to proceed. Strengthens the applications.

Yeah. Just per se, I need to see something. I can't.

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm going to share my screen in a moment.

But whatever you say, Chris, I'm sure it's great.

Thank you. Mr. Hagan.

On the line of the special permits and et cetera, et cetera, I think for the purposes of this discussion, what Scott's asking for is conceptually, are we in favor of this such that although you can't in detail approve all special permits now, we don't foresee problems and we're willing to be flexible about special permits? and worked with the ZBA, et cetera, because conceptually, this fits with the goals of the planning board and the town. And so that's why we're saying, yeah, we don't know the details, but the special permits seem like they're all going to be approved at a conceptual level. Thank you.

So I'm offering text here to wordsmith in real time.

Mr. Crowley. Steve probably said it better than I was going to say it, but I mean, conceptually, this is exactly the type of plan that I think works for Bedford, works in that area. This is what we want to see. This is super exciting. Trying to find ways that we can like build the hype up for this and yeah, and help it go forward.

So if I may, Mr. Chair, so as the board looks at this, Do be aware it's very early in the process and it's kind of on, you know, it's on this agenda because if we, your next meeting's not for another three weeks, by which time, you know, as we're led to believe that the current hotel owner is looking to sell in short order essentially. And so this is very early in the process. Uh, we are working with Mr. Coke to set up a meeting next week with the town manager staff and some other departments. That, um, you know, so it, it has not. As you're learning through this as you, it's not been vetted by. any other boards at this point and not even really vetted at the staff level other than some individual discussions with certain staff members but um so there there is you know if this is going to try to come together there's a lot of things to come together but i think you clearly you could as a board express support for the concept presented here in and that You know, and it sounds like you want to recommend that Scott keep moving forward with trying to put this package together.

My feeling right now is it's too early for a firm commitment, but yeah, I think absolutely we've heard a lot of support here this evening, and I would like us to put that in writing and in a form that Mr. Koch can carry forward. Ms. LaFrance Linden.

two places in the revised thing that i think needs a little attention one is um i don't think we're at the point where we can say including those expressed in bedford's comprehensive plan because bedford's comprehensive plan will not be complete until the fall but i can think say under development um you know in you know in the comprehensive plan um so some Or just planning goals. I think that's, that's fine.

We can keep it simple there.

Keep it simple is always good. And again, at the at the end, I would need a word something like this board would likely recommend its passage or this, this board sees no impediments to its passage has no, you know, does not at this time see obstacles to its passage, some something along those lines.

I'm looking at the most positive language, which could be reasonably included and I likely recommend. We're acknowledging that the details have yet to be worked out, but we like everything we've seen so far.

And I think Steve's point is well taken about land use rather than fiscal. Because if FinCom is going to object, they'll have to do it themselves.

Yeah, plus the select board needs to I mean, you, you as a board really don't have any Any any part of the fiscal components of this so and the things that I'm trying to capture here is that we like the land use concepts.

I'm. I'm. Yeah, I is transfer the parcel the right phrasing to use. Sorry, I'm I don't always. Write well in real time. Better language, but

This looks good enough to me for what we're doing tonight.

Scott, what do you think?

Yeah, I think this is very helpful, and again, I apologize to the board for for the kind of rushed nature of this, it really is. the seller's urgency that given the public nature of this, of the park, that it felt like this was urgent enough to bring forward. So thank you everyone for your willingness to work on this in real time. I genuinely appreciate it. And my goal in a sense is really kind of being able to go to other partners and say, hey, look, other people would be potentially supportive. They also think this is a good idea. So yeah, Chris, this language looks great.

Okay.

And I will... One last commentary. When we use the phrase described herein, does that mean this statement is going to be attached to the memo that Scott created?

How about we just drop described herein? Due diligence. People can watch the... Sure. Watch the presentation from today. We've cited the date. It'll be in our meeting minutes. So I think there'll be plenty of artifacts that interested parties can reference. Mr. Crowley, then Mr. McLean.

The only thing I don't know if we should or should not add anything about special permit

Yeah. And here I was just saying that, yeah, transfer the parcel. Um, yeah, that, I think that strengthens, you know, it's adding, it's adding open space. Um, I think that that, that strengthens, uh, request for special permit. Sorry, I can't read. I apologize. My bad. Um, John and then Dawn.

So would you entertain a motion at this phase?

As soon as Don has a say.

My only thought is perhaps rephrasing the opening a bit to read something along the line. The Bedford Planning Board is receptive to the land use concept presented. I mean, if folks don't like that, I'm happy with it the way it is. I think just finding it consistent is only part of what this conversation has been tonight. I think we had a, I did not hear any real negative concerns from the board. And I think, you know, if it is in line with our planning goals, I think it's, I'm not sure I'd wanna go so far as to say, you know, supportive or proponents of, but I think the fact that we are receptive to this concept, it's been, you know, it's been presented to us and we're like, we would like to see that please, thank you.

The receptive and?

I would just say, well, either way I would have replaced fines, but I, you know, I'm open to.

Sorry, can you repeat your wording please?

The Bedford Planning Board is receptive to the land use concept presented on

And now bring in the town's planning goals.

Oh, no, to leave it. And finds, okay, and finds the, yeah, and finds it to be consistent. You know, or confirms it to be consistent. How about that? Confirms it.

I think finds is better here. Finds is better, yeah. All right.

This is why I hate meetings. We don't get an opportunity like this every day.

That's important. Towards Scott's concern about being a rushed, last-minute thing, I think it's important not to let the opportunity pass by just because we weren't expecting it.

in that spirit if i may be so bold i do think the word supportive or um i think something a little bit stronger to receptive would would be helpful of yeah of the works for me

I think we need the word enthusiastic, but that's just me.

Well done, Todd.

Significant.

And I'm not sure that second paragraph is a sentence.

Yeah. Transfer the parcel for the purpose of creating a public park. okay uh maybe it is word regards regarding the transfer is strengthening that finds that the uh so i'm just going to try something out About transfer of the.

Don't worry, Scott, we'll write it all for you.

And it's for the parcel through 40 great road to the town of Bedford for the person to create for the purpose of creating a public park would strengthen applications for special for for special permits required. In order for the. Or the proposed development to proceed.

Could we say special permits anticipated?

Yes. That's much better.

And I think you can just say anticipated for the proposed development to proceed.

Well, it's not a proposal. It's a concept at this point. Is that fair? Yeah. I'm going to get rid of the em dashes. Sorry.

And we could even say the board would anticipate recommending its passage.

It anticipates recommending its passage, yeah.

I guess I'm anticipating a lot tonight.

All right.

All right.

So the overall feel I'm trying to generate here is, yeah, considerable enthusiasm, but without a firm commitment. Firm commitment follows from a detailed proposal. What do you think? Does this look good? Is this going to get you the support you need, Scott?

This is great. This is very helpful. Yes, I think so. Thank you very much.

All right.

Good, good.

Mr. McLean. So moved.

Second.

Moved and seconded to approve a statement of support for the concept for 340 Great Road and Adjacent Lots presented tonight, June 23rd, 2026. So Mr. McLean, how do you vote? Aye. Ms. LaFrance Linden? Aye. Mr. Hagan? Aye. Crowley? Aye. In the chair votes aye. All right. I like this. I like this a lot. And really wish you all the success in the world, Scott. Yeah, this is very exciting. Yeah, this is, I wouldn't even say that this is an opportunity that comes around once in a generation. I don't think it's that frequent. So this is, this is really good.

Thank you all very much for your help tonight. This is genuinely a big help. Great. No, happy to do so.

All right. Um, So with that, I can pull up the agenda, maybe, if I don't close the window on my computer. Let's try that again. All right, so with that, outdoor lighting bylaw. Again, I had hoped to have a timeline at this point. Unfortunately, I do not. So nothing this evening. The 14th, I'll have something more definitive. With that, moving on to permitting of small clean energy facilities. Tony.

So I provided the board with a first pass at a potential bylaw without identifying exactly where in the bylaw, but trying to get at some of the points that are in the model. both in the model bylaw and things that other communities seem to be addressing. The chair did provide some feedback on that draft. And so for the, for others, if you have comments and ideas on how to um elements that you think need further addressing or elements that aren't even addressed yet in here um the um these and actually even over the last couple days there's been more news about battery energy storage systems in other locations including this company that's working with towns that have their own energy supply rather than the big corporate players that handle large regions. But so there's the I don't know. It just seems to me there's a variety of land use impacts that need to be addressed before we just accept the state's push to enable these to be more easily built in every community. So that's out there. At some point, I will share the draft with the Energy and Sustainability Committee. I do see a member is in attendance, and he who also provided some other background information that I find to be very useful. So we're continuing to look at this and we don't, You know, it's one of those things that we need to decide kind of by, you know, we need to know in September what matters we're going to try to submit for special town meeting in November. So we have still all of July and August to decide. to work through what a regulation might look like for addressing small energy facilities. And so we don't need to solve this over the next couple of meetings. It's just a topic of discussion that we need to be able to address because technically come October 1st, Um, communities are supposed to have a consolidated permit process in place with us, with a single point of contact. And, um, we've had limited internal discussions about who that should be. And, uh, given the retirement of the code enforcement director recently, uh, it might be that our department, since I, since I, I don't know, we, but, um, We may want to absorb that role, just because the this board is is used to doing a lot of the permitting processes anyway so. So it may be that we want to be the first you know, the first and primary point of contact and then work with. The other departments, although we're still waiting for some guidance from the state as to how. I still don't understand how they can require a consolidated permit, which is in my opinion, contrary to the wording of the wetlands protection act. And therefore I'm not sure how you roll the conservation commission permit into this consolidated permit, but, um, and, um, A variety of webinars that are scheduled through the Department of Energy Resources are actually, there's like one a month through September. So it's going to be an interesting learning curve to all try to all of a sudden have everything come together by the October 1st. Deadline yet very few communities have their fall town meeting prior to that. Time, so I'm assuming there'll be some leniency on on the part of the state because they issued their regulations too late for everybody to get it on their spring town meeting. And the deadline is, is, is to be honest, too early for fall town meeting season. So, um, but, uh, I think if we have a sense of where we're going, um, we can, uh, we can then be working with any potential applicants and, um, get through those things like there's a mandatory community meeting that needs to be held and so on. So at least getting those, if we have those pieces in place, at least in a draft regulation, the entities that are trying to build these battery facilities or even solar facilities would likely abide by those.

Oh, thank you. Mr. McLean.

So, yeah, I just had a few, I skimmed the draft and I guess I had a few reactions slash questions. So, and maybe I'll just go breath first and then you could decide to answer or not. I mean, my impression, especially at like the tier one scale, like on a day-to-day basis, these facilities are going to be a fine neighbor It's really just about if something goes wrong, which at some level I care more about the fire department than anybody else. Does it make sense slash is there any space to sort of be more cautious around wetlands if something does go wrong? And what zones are we looking to allow this sort of facility in? Everywhere over town, industrial sea only.

I'll just interject with regard to wetlands on that theme. I know that with the facility that I think has been approved to go ahead now in Oakham, there was a concern about placement relative to an aquifer. And there was substantial local objection based on that. I grew up out of that place, so I'm kind of familiar with what's going on out there.

And there was an aquifer protection district hearing at Select Board, so I assume that that would apply if this was all happening over a sensitive thing.

Assuming we deem something in the facility to be a hazardous material? that is regulated under the zoning for the aquifer district then there are well again that gets back to if if that is triggered it needs to be part of the consolidated permit that that one board is issuing so um so those um Those aspects are still under review and we'll have, um, we'll have need to continue to look at that. Um, a, a proposal for a particular, you know, uh, a proposal that we've seen for a facility to be put on the back of the Bedford marketplace, um, is probably within a hundred feet of wetlands and therefore would trigger review by the commission, but probably meets their. Uh, preferred standards of there being no structures within 50 feet of a wetland boundary, but it would, you know, but it would trigger review under the statute. So, um, so, so we'd have to look at those things, but, uh, and, but on the other hand, under current zoning, our four business districts along the great road are the. are the only locations where we would currently interpret that such facilities are prohibited. So, interestingly, these four business districts only make up 2% of the town. And, um, but we need to, uh, given this particular location also backs up to a multifamily residential, uh, property, you know, we need to think about what do we want to impose for setbacks? And as member McLean is referring to, you know, the public safety element of, of, um, if a battery facility heats up to the point of catching fire, we don't want it to be close enough to a wetland so that if they're trying to douse it with water and there's something in the facility that is a contaminant, we don't want that running off into the adjoining wetlands. So we're going to have to add elements addressing those types of issues into our proposal.

my sense is that there are significant safety concerns which well i at least need to educate myself more on at this point yeah this is this would be a high energy density storage area so i had to think of it as maybe not as much as storing an equivalent amount of gasoline but uh I would be concerned about catastrophic failures should they occur. Mr. McClendon.

Yeah, right. And most of the technology is still using lithium batteries, right? And so it's the same, like, you know, if you're... You know, if you have a hoverboard in your house with a, you know, there have been a handful of cases, you know, of somebody's hoverboard catches fire and it was just sitting in the closet, you know, or, you know, those handful of cases where an EV vehicle's battery caught fire, And you may have seen examples of the of the fire department using a forklift or some other hoisting device to get the vehicle up and literally placed into a pool of water to try to, you know, cool the thing down so the flames are suppressed. But you know, and local, you know, fire chiefs look at those worst case scenarios and that's we want to make sure we're working with them to get those types of concerns addressed because the you know clearly the state is kind of saying you know Don't be so worried about these things. We need you to get these things built. And that, you know, as planners, we need to step back and say, well, it's not that simple. So I think we just need to...

The former chemist will say it's not that simple.

Yeah. So as I say, we're looking at those elements, still doing a lot of research on on the various aspects. I mean, the battery energy storage facilities are the ones that are getting the most attention, but also those like the threshold as to where the state drew the line between a small energy facility to be approved at the local level and a large facility to be approved at the state level. You know, a 25-watt solar farm is actually quite a large array of solar panels, so it's how to how to how to appropriately address that is is still something to be considered so it's not just all about uh battery uh battery facilities and then when you know where bedford's um know our our geography does not generate a lot of wind at least under the current technology that's out there for wind power so we're not we don't expect to be a destination for proposed wind power facilities anytime soon but but we want to make sure the regulations are in place if if for whatever reason the technology suddenly uh you know we used to joke you know can you put it just a bunch of small wind turbines or or things literally in the median of route three that are that are uh fueled by the passing traffic and um that you know i think somebody's working on that technology it's just not yet at an economic scale but um But in the meantime, as I say, we have some time to keep working on this. And so it's something we'll be talking about internally with other town departments. And we'll keep trying to revise this so that we have a viable proposal by the end of the summer if we are Well, partly because as I say, there's the state mandate to have a, to have a permitting process in place.

Thank you, Tony. Uh, Mr. Crowley and then Mr. McLean.

Um, just clarifying, we can not restrict locations or where it's still, that's, that's still an unclear answer.

Okay. as to whether or not we could say we don't want these in random residential neighborhoods versus, you know, clearly I think we'd try to steer them to commercial and industrial locations, but the way the state law is set up, there's nothing that would prevent it from being anywhere. So, but it's unclear, like we need, You know, as I say, I think, as I said, at the moment, the argument we're making with somebody who was looking at that site at Bedford Marketplace, our argument was, you know, I know you're looking at this site, but we don't allow it here. And under current zoning, we would make the argument that it's allowed in 98% of the town. So to say that... you know, we're denying your application is preventing you from doing, you know, from, from, from doing this use is would be hard. I think in my mind, if it ended up in court, the judge would say, well, find somewhere else to do it because there's plenty of other places. If on the other hand, we'd come up with a proposal that says we're only going to allow this on 2% of the town's land area, that would be a problem. But, uh, if we, um, if we confirm that we're able to at least, you know, provide some limits on where this goes or provide parameters that require, you know, certain setbacks to residential structures or something, so long as we can prove that it's still feasible to meet the intent of the legislation, then we'd be okay.

Thank you. Mr. McLean?

So as not a former chemist but a current battery hobbyist, I actually think that this sort of thing is simpler than the public imagination. But one complexity which cuts both ways is the battery technology is evolving and changing. So the batteries used for this sort of application are actually a lot safer than the hoverboards and the Teslas world but of course that can also cut against you because five years from now there may be a different set of batteries that don't have those nice properties and i don't see any bureaucracy actually dealing with that problem particularly well right now like they're sort of fixated on the old threat haven't haven't understood the new lesser threat and i suspect if it's changed again we will still be behind the curve so Tony, I expect you to fix that.

Yeah, we've been talking with a company who uses carbon rather than lithium because it doesn't carbon can store the power and not and doesn't heat up the same way. And but so they've been looking to do it. They've been looking to put an R&D facility here in town, actually, to to bring their engineers in and design things, but not to actually store power here. But yeah, but I mean, it's an intriguing change to

to how future energy could be stored but even the lithium iron batteries are a lot safer than the lithium polymer lithium yeah yeah so you know there's a company in somerville which has been developing an iron air battery um you know there are uh vanadium oxide batteries that are you know they rely on an aqueous solution to I'm somewhat safer than the lithium polymer. So yeah, as you point out, the technology is evolving and I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what the state of the art will be in 10 years. All right. So unless there's anything else, thank you all for that discussion. We can move on to data center permitting. And I note that Mr. Dorr, a member of the Energy and Sustainability Committee is in the audience and would invite him to say a few words at some point during this discussion if he's so inclined.

and tony yeah otherwise i'd simply say similarly we're working on on some regulations to enhance how we regulate uh data centers there was an interesting article published today I think in the Boston, was it Boston Business Journal or somewhere where there's 40 cities across the world that are signed on to some compact about the issues that are associated with data centers and they've done some studies that talk about how the from some of these sizable data centers. So there's a six mile radius of a heat dome impact. And just in complaints that they're taking up all the water that could be otherwise used for residential development and they're heavy energy users and therefore we don't have enough we don't have enough energy to build, you know, the, the communities that we really want for the people. So, um, so anyway, we, we continue to research that and how, how to best try to, how to augment the limited rec. We have very limited regulations at the moment. So we're, we're, um, trying to put this together in some format that, you know, would prevent. For example, when the power company needs more power and they need to do an investment, they typically spread the cost of their investment across all the users in the community that's getting the increased, whatever the improvement is. And so we are hopeful to put this together in a manner that says if they need to, you know, build some sort of infrastructure, that cost is borne by the by the data center and not by the residents of the town. So there's a variety of aspects like that.

Thank you. And I see that Mr. Dorr has his hand raised. So I'll ask him to say a few words as he's so inclined.

Hi, Chris. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great. I just didn't want you to think I was standing you up. The only comments I have is this topic came to the energy and sustainability just three or four months ago. And in beginning to look at it, and we've had discussions over the last couple of meetings on areas that would concern us, such as clean energy or sustainable aspects of a data center. It's clear that it's catching a lot of people by surprise. It's growing almost exponentially. That might not be the right term, but it's multiplying. The amount of data centers, the coverage on them. I mean, now there's so many stories on data centers, mega data centers, the huge things, not the ones that have been around for 20 years. You could spend your whole day looking at it. main takeaway we have so far is a you know it really does come under the planning board relative to zoning jurisdiction what have you and we're we're there to help you in whatever way we can you know and sharing whatever we learn but from everything we've seen a community being prepared is better by far than having a project dropped on our doorstep and we're in reactive mode versus you know, planning, constructive mode. And there are a few examples of communities in Massachusetts that have gotten some zonings around data centers in place, some that are working on it. And some cities, I think Lowell actually, since it's a city, it's not a board, but they passed some ordinances from their city council. And I'm sure most of you probably heard there was a horrible experience with them. This data center is is almost in people's backyards. And the other key takeaway we have so far is whatever you do, don't fall for the promise that they're going to use clean energy. Because there's multiple examples of that promise sort of helping them get underway and then becomes very elusive. And even folks like Musk down in Louisiana, where he's playing the game that the diesel generators or jet engine generators he's using are on flatbeds, so they're temporary and they don't fall under anybody's jurisdiction. So it's a huge topic. I think everybody is being kind of caught, not by surprise necessarily, but there's a lot of a lot of challenges and we're there to help you in whatever way we can.

Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. And I'll try and maybe set up a time for us to talk in more detail.

Yep, for sure.

Great. All right. So with that, Liaisons to boards and committees. Anyone with anything to report? Mr. Hagan.

the uh not our local the m3 coalition had a uh a session on life sciences held at northeastern university about a hundred people of various professors and stuff talk about the research and students and internships but companies there too i'm i'm leading up to giving us a compliment. So I went there because I was on the planning board also because my wife has a life science company in town. But I played the planning game. At the meeting were Ultragenyx and Lantheus, who are both in this, and there's at least another one. And as luck had it, I was sitting right next to Lantheus. We had the inner board that were going to go speak. And when he came to me, I said, I'll let him go first. So he talked about what they do. And then I said, primarily, I'm here on Bedford planning. We're trying to make sure we in planning understand life science applications and lab spaces that are different than offices or heavy duty manufacturing. And so we've welcomed Ultragenyx, Atlantis. And that all went well. big with the audience, but Lanthia said he's had nothing but help from the Bedford planning. Whoever has spoken with him or worked with him. Um, thank you. Yeah. He told me, you know, Steve, it's been great. You guys in Bedford are terrific to work with.

I said, you're right. You're right.

But anyways, yeah, that that's the meeting I was in, uh, tons common. Others are still, you know, we're still, uh, running around. There's, um, Oh, the 10-year plan. I can let Don come talk or we're going to meet. We've been reviewing in detail the six areas and then lengthy discussions. And then we're supposed to maybe in July, I think, we present to the planning board. I'll be quiet now and let Don correct me.

Well, what we've been doing over the last two months is taking all of... the results of the outreach that we've done. And the consultant has basically grouped them into strategies for each of the topic areas that we've wanted to discuss. And so we have gone over them in detail as a group. And yes, I believe they are right now working on a presentation for the planning board in July, hopefully.

I'll look forward to that. Mr. McClain.

I went to select board. Um, things that might be of interest uh like i said there was a aquifer protection district special permit for two diesel fuel generators at 45 crosby drive and it's basically just make sure that the diesel does feel that if something bad happens diesel fuel does not end up in the uh the aquifer um they renewed the annual contract for the regional housing services office um which i'm sure you're all familiar with Um, special ed reserve funds transfers. I will just note, but it's not, not a land use policy issue. Um, Some audit results, ambulance write offs, they set the water and sewer rates, adjusted DPW fees. And in there, there was this interesting note that 277 slash 269 TGR got sewer deferral, got sewer fee deferrals for 38 residential units. So I infer from that that that's their new, The new number of units that they're expecting 43 previously.

Is that correct? But yeah, it's been downsized.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, contract for the Patriot pump station design. Um, and there was the embarrassment of me going and asking for endorsement of state law. And then they did a other, uh, uh interview of a third um town council candidate me tellerman and costa but they did not decide on who they're going to hire for the next five years thank you uh mr crowley all right kind of clarification um uh sorry no i just blanked but uh steve when you said uh uh i thought you said uh nothing but hell from the uh planning not

Help.

They love us. But I'll say they cited Todd Farley particularly.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm sure. You said the project that we're just talking about, 277, was downsized. The number of units has decreased. Has the size decreased at all?

no the building's essentially the same footprint yeah they've just reduced the number of units within the structure yeah meaning they've made the units some of the units larger some of yeah a couple of the smaller studio units are a little bigger and one bedrooms may have been yeah i have the bedroom count somewhere so i can get that out to you for the next meeting But yeah, deferral of the sewer fee simply means they don't have to pay it. When they apply for the building permit, they will pay it when they receive, before they receive an occupancy permit. So it allows them to be constructing the project, but nobody can actually live there until those fees are paid. So it just, it helps reduce the initial cost of getting projects up and under construction.

Yeah, and I just brought it up just because it was a change in the number of units.

Yes.

Which I thought would be of interest.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's some minor detailed changes to the, literally to the, some, there are some really minor changes to the, to the footprint based on, on the, on the, the length of particular wall sections, but it's not anything you would notice.

Sorry, Tony, I was just curious what your threshold is for coming back in front of the planning board in terms of like, let's say it went from 43 to 21, you know, like what's that threshold to come back in front of us?

Oh, well, it would depend on Yeah. And that gets like, if you would go to 21 and same footprint, but instead of like 43, one and two bedroom units, it's 21, four bedroom units. That might be worth a discussion. You know, if they're simply going to only build like a phase one of 21 units and kind of, it'll not build the other 20, but there's literally the they're building half the building. I'm not sure we'd bring that back for discussion. So thank you.

I'm so that should we move on to staff updates?

We met today, we being myself, the town engineer and the housing and economic development director, met with Beacon Communities, who are the team that last week was awarded the ability to move forward with a housing project on the Middlesex Community College parking lot at 210 Spring Road. So we had an introductory meeting today and kind of went through their concept and we kind of went through the modifications we might like to see, but also kind of preview the the theoretical permitting process because the state didn't really properly set up how such projects are supposed to be, you know, they didn't amend the zoning act or the or the wetlands act or anything. So, you know, when the state simply said surplus state land can be housing projects at a minimum density of four units per acre, unlike when they did the MBTA communities law, and they said, you shall amend your zoning to accommodate this. They didn't do that with this. They simply said, allow four units or more per acre, but you know, but they didn't say how, so, um, But it was kind of understood that we will mimic the standard site plan review process with a planning board to get to the endpoint, but it also on the way there kind of needs a development agreement with a select board. And so we'll have some more meetings with the design team. They actually don't yet have a civil engineer on board. So once that happens, we'll start some other discussions and start working towards the parameters that we will share with you and start working on the elements of agreement that should be brought to the select board for kind of ratification of how this project moves forward.

You had identified, for the benefit of the board, Tony and I had some correspondence about this earlier. You had identified some areas for discussion with Boston communities?

Yeah. For example, they had proposed putting the public parking amenity that we were looking for for access to the rail trail and the adjoining walking trails in the in the conservation areas they proposed that in what i'm going to call the southwest corner of the property which i'm not sure they realized was where the differential between the site property and the narrow gauge rail trail bed is the greatest so you literally can't get from the you know, you can't get from the parking lot down to the rail trail at that location. So they kind of, you know, they're open to, you know, like our recommendation is we would prefer the parking at a minimum be at the northeast corner where you have access to both the Fond Lake Conservation Area and across the street is the trail into the Wilderness Park. And then bicyclists, if you know if we don't get two separate parking areas, we we would set up some way for you to just pedal down the road or sidewalk to get to the rail trail kind of where the existing connection is because that's the. that's really the only place where that grade can be accommodated. So, but other, you know, other, you know, the, the goals of, of how to deal with the utilities, And the sidewalks, they are proposing different curb cut intersections than where the current ones are. So we talked about site distance questions and it being a scenic road and trying to minimize loss of any of the trees along the scenic road. Their timeline is such as DCAM gives them a year to close on the property, and they expect that they will need all of this year to go through their design. They have an initial 90-day due diligence period just to make sure they're able to move forward. But we did learn that they're not really thinking they're going to break around before next year, you know, a year from now. a little short of a year from now, but next construction sequence. So there's plenty of time to look at that. And then the, you know, whether or not they want to pursue some zoning changes or other questions about should this be a private street versus a public street and how that affects things like trash removal and so on. So we got into some of the broader parameters of how this might happen. but making no you know there are no decisions yet it's simply here you know these are among the things that need further discussion so um but that was you know so otherwise i think uh um well like their design involved on street parking and obviously if this moves forward as a if they want this to move forward as a public way we don't allow overnight on street parking so we'd have to think about how that plays out versus if it stays private and it's a homeowners association then they can do other things but um you know and we talked about the fact that you know this doesn't match zoning and therefore it'd be hard to do a subdivision so that each of the units is on its own lot that you could sell the lot as a subdivision lot unless we changed the zoning somehow. So so there's there's there's still to be discussions on on literally on, you know, keeping this as a private way, trying to trying to versus trying to do it as a public way. And what you know, if there's municipal maintenance, how does that impact any concerns we have about the design. But the changes we were mostly looking for related to moving the public amenity pieces so that our access to the adjoining public properties is more easily facilitated. And then the nuances of how the road is laid out and how those structures are laid out are all open for negotiation and they're open to all those discussions.

Thank you. Todd. Was there any discussion about the density that they're looking towards or is it just way too early?

We left it where the submittal they gave us was 25 units. Which is the, you know, the five units per acre using the, the, providing for the limits on the size of the structures that we had said as a town that we'd be open to more than four units per acre. We'd be open to five units per acre if there's an agreement to limit the size of the houses. This project also comes forward with a little more affordability than some of the other bidders, which is why I think it might have moved ahead of some of the others from DCAM's point of view.

If I recall correctly, the two bedrooms were a little over 1,000 square feet, 1,200 square feet or so for the three, and then the four were only 1,500.

This project has some really modest size dwelling units in its proposal.

The estimated sale prices were They were under $600 per square foot. I want to say it was in the 500s, but on the order of 550. So between them being smaller and the cost per square foot being noticeably lower than open market sales here, they were much more middle income affordable than any new construction that I've seen here in ages, meaning decades.

yeah right these are these units are more similar to the the new units at uh at the coast guard housing or what we now call pine hill crossing where the new units are about 1500 square feet and um you know the the the builders trying to use the mbta communities overlay or other things you know like some of these townhouses are quite sizable and weren't you know how do you um you know which is kind of where this kind of like with the the cottage overlay that just passed at springtown meeting was You know, using the state's 40-wide concept of 1,850 square feet, and even though some people think 1,800 square feet is still too big, left to their own devices, most builders are still trying to build the biggest They're trying to build something they think the market wants, which hits a certain price point for them. But this group, Beacon Communities, has done several affordable housing projects, mostly in Boston or Cambridge.

Is it Beacon or Boston Communities?

Oh, what did I say? Now that you say that, I may be wrong. I'm...

I could be wrong too. I thought I had heard Boston before, but.

The only thing I remember a lot about it, this is plan B. I figured that's close enough for me.

Well, it's proponent B, right? In other words, we were, right, the DCAM, not the number of applicants down to six, and they were kind of assigned there's, you know, proposal A, proposal B, proposal C, proposal D, proposal E, proposal F. So it's not like it is this, it isn't this company's plan D, or our plan B, it is simply you know, proponent or, or this was concept, not concept. This was bitter two out of the final six. So, um,

Other...

It is Boston communities. I don't know why I said Beacon. Sorry, I was just trying to look that up.

Beacon Hills in Boston. That's fair. Every time I drive by 440 Bedford Street, obviously in Lexington, not in Bedford, but I wonder when it's going to get converted into six stories of pickleball courts.

Well, the... If you're talking about the tennis club.

Oh, I know. I'm talking about the vacant biotech.

Oh, the existing biotech building? Yeah, I don't know. But across the street, where the Boston Sports Club used to be, and that's had recently still been even a tennis, active tennis, but they have closed up in preparation for for that to start its replacement project. So you know, and I think People fear that a lot of the new future residents of these Lexington projects are going to come shop at whole foods rather than drive into Lexington center for their stop and shop. And how, how difficult is local traffic going to be? If that happens is a question I get from time to time. And, uh, You know, we joked that we can just put a toll up and charge them for coming to town. On the other hand, it's like, well, we, we might want to encourage them to actually spend their money with Bedford. Let's keep our businesses open. And to actually, since the bus runs there, do it on the bus rather than driving.

I didn't realize, Tony, what's going to be across the street replacing that sports club? Is it a big development?

Oh, I was making a joke about the vacant biotech building. I know about that one. Yeah, the old Boston ski and sports club.

It was a Boston sports club.

But that was part of Lexington's MBTA community's zoning over life.

Yeah.

So it's going to become housing in there.

That's what I understand. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. The Lexington planning board has a section. I'm outlining all the MBTA communities, uh, projects in various States. And I believe that there is a section on, on that parcel.

Yeah. The one on. Hartwell Road, I guess that's about 400 units. That's moving right along. And now there's a new one. I don't know what it is, but it's where the Russian math club used to be, or school. And you're down to dirt right now, and I don't know what they're building.

Same thing. Both those sites are multifamily under the MBTA community's law.

Ah, okay.

Yeah, we had shown you those site plans somewhere in history. Yeah, the larger one is on the west side, but the Russian school is... Yeah, I don't. If I was in the office, I can pull those numbers up fast, but I'm not in the office. We will. I can I can try to revisit those. And if you're interested, send a summary of those cumulative projects.

Thank you. Any anything else?

No, not for this meeting.

All right. Thank you. Well, in that case, I think we can entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Mr. Hagan. Aye. Mr. McLean. Aye. Ms. LaFrance Linden. Aye. Mr. Crowley. Aye. And the chair votes aye. Thank you for a very productive meeting this evening. And have a great 4th of July holiday. And see you on the 14th. Okay.

Bye-bye. Good night, everyone. Have a good night.

Good night.